Chapel Noir by Carole Nelson Douglas

her being new to the establishment. The Rothschild family was just that: many generations of intermixed family business and marriage, risen from the meanest poverty to the most luxurious wealth. As a good Christian I had been taught that the Jews had slain Him whose Name named my faith, but since I had become only very slightly acquainted with the Baron de Rothschild, I had come to see the offense as historic rather than personal. And one thing I could say for the Rothschilds: they were not known as profligate.
    Irene did not comment on his sympathetic murmur, but instead paused in her pacing before him. “What is the question you really wish answered?”
    He responded just as quickly as she had challenged. “Could this be the work of the man London called Jack the Ripper?”
    She nodded, slowly. “It could. Although there are several objections to such a theory.”
    He seemed not to hear her qualification, but ran a harassing hand into the thinning white hair at his temples, as if we were not there.
    “This is very bad. You know the tendency in London to place the blame on ‘foreigners,’ always a code word for Jews?”
    Irene, less familiar with London nuances than I, could not nod, but I could, and did. The motion caught the Baron’s quick eye.
    “Yes, you see it, too, do you not, Mademoiselle Huxleigh?”
    I did not, but was not about to admit it, so I again nodded soberly.
    Irene looked betwixt us two, an expression of exasperation vying with one of amusement on her face. She waited. I always marveled that even when caught at a loss, she managed to turn a situation to her advantage.
    Her silence encouraged the Baron to further voice his fears.
    “Very bad,” he repeated. “The pogroms in Russia these last years. The accusations in London last autumn. And now, if the poison has moved to Paris . . . I speak not only of the poison of murder, but of the venom of slander.”
    He had spoken long enough for Irene’s quick mind to overtake her own ignorance of the events last autumn in London.
    “You fear some massive retaliation against the Jews.”
    “It takes a pin dropping to start some minor retaliation. These frightening, vicious deaths could cause a conflagration.”
    “Only two deaths in Paris, so far.”
    “So far. Yet I would be pleased if you would continue to investigate this matter.”
    “If there are links to the London killings, I am at a disadvantage. I know little of the events, since we were traveling on the far-flung edges of the Continent.”
    The Baron shook his head with an amused smile. “I will have the London branch of the family supply all newspaper and police reports by messenger. They should be in your hands within two days.”
    “Through official channels?”
    “Through whatever channels best suffice. If information is all you require, ask and you shall have it.”
    “What of the police reports here in Paris?”
    The Baron paused to stroke a forefinger through his silky side whiskers. “Those may require more finesse.”
    “You do not trust the Paris police.”
    “It is rather the opposite. The Paris police do not trust me, or any Rothschild. They have kept massive dossiers on me and my family for decades. And the climate has grown even more intemperate of late: the gossip, the lies, the hatred. The city throngs with newspapers of all stripes, with the anti-Semitic journals everywhere. We thought the Russian situation was severe, but I fear that Paris is burning for its own kind of pogrom. We Jews are too successful.”
    This was the first tang of bitterness I had ever heard in the Baron’s voice.
    “As I was at La Scala in Milan,” Irene noted wryly, putting her hands into her jacket pockets as if feeling for the presence of her revolver, “when the sopranos put ground glass in my rouge pot.”
    “No!” He looked up, both appalled and surprised by the petty acts among opera singers.
    “Success is always a cause for suspicion and resentment in the untalented.”
    We were