surprised.
“Show her in,” I said.
“Yes Monsieur. Madame Bihan will be out all day, Monsieur—may I go to the market in her stead?”
“Of course,” I said, a trifle impatiently.
Bihan shuffled out, and shuffled back in again a minute late, escorting the lady in the domino. It was not Marie Taglioni. I reproached myself sternly for having jumped to the wrong conclusion, when I could just as easily have jumped to the right one.
She waited until Bihan had closed the door behind him before reaching up and taking off the hooded cape, mask and all.
Jana Valdemar was less than two years older than when I had seen her last, but she seemed to have aged at least five years. Oddly enough, maturity suited her—or would have done had she been entirely well. She did indeed seem a trifle indisposed, both physically and emotionally: pale, drawn, and a little sad. I knew one or two connoisseurs of art who considered that a touch of melancholy or consumption always added to a woman’s charms rather than detracting from them, but I had never been of that opinion myself. She was still beautiful, but she no longer looked like a parody of a femme fatale; indeed, she seemed a trifle forlorn. She gave the impression that she might still have been able to play the femme fatale had she pulled herself together and made an effort, but at present she was not casting herself in such a role. Perhaps it was too early in the day. I guessed that she had slept even less than I had.
I reminded myself that she was a expert mesmerist, and that I might perhaps have cause to beware, especially given that she had planted a suggestion in my mind once before, which had not entirely ceased to plague my dreams even now.
“Mademoiselle Valdemar,” I said, politely, trying to conceal my disappointment that she was not Marie Taglioni, although I did not doubt that she had taken note of my reaction. “Do sit down. How may I help you?”
She sat down. “Firstly,” she said, “I wanted to thank you for pretending not to recognize me last night, and for warning me about Saint-Germain’s presence in the auditorium. That was...chivalrous.”
I was no longer in the theater, under the tyrannical rule of etiquette, but once a course has been taken, it is difficult to change tack.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “And secondly?”
“Secondly,” she said, with a faint smile, “I was asked to come to see you by the...other lady in Dr. Chapelain’s box.”
I could not resist the temptation. “Madame Taglioni,” I said.
“She is Madame in the theater,” the younger woman said, refusing me any tacit reward of evident surprise for my powers of deduction, “but Mademoiselle in private life. Yes, Mademoiselle Taglioni asked me to come, to invite you to call on her today. She would like to see you again...and she is particularly keen to meet Monsieur Dupin.” Her voice was slightly hesitant. I could imagine that the thought might make her apprehensive. I did not suppose that she was here by choice, but Marie Taglioni was presumably a woman used to giving out instructions, and having them obeyed, by her physicians and everyone else.
“I would be delighted,” I said, “but I cannot speak for Monsieur Dupin. As you know, he was unable to get to the theater last night, although he dearly wanted to be there. I am not sure that he will be free today—certainly not this morning.”
“The time is immaterial,” Jana replied. “I would be very grateful if you could help me in this matter. Dr. Chapelain suggested that you might be willing to do so...in spite of our past history.”
Since she had raised the subject, etiquette no longer forbade me to make any reference to it. “That’s very kind of him, I’m sure,” I said. “I have to admit, though, Mademoiselle Valdemar, that I’m not at all sure that you have any right to claim a favor from me, given what happened last time you introduced yourself into my house.”
“I’m truly sorry about that,” she, putting on a show of sincerity of which only an accomplished magnetizer—or, of course, a genuinely sincere person—would have been capable. “I have no excuse to offer for my behavior in that instance, and I take full responsibility for my actions. It is true that I had been under the sway of Monsieur Saint-Germain for some time—it was through him that I first made contact with Dr. Chapelain, as well as the Baron du Potet—but what I did when I tried to plant a suggestion in Monsieur Dupin’s mind, and, as a corollary, in yours, was entirely my own idea. It was, I suppose, an aspect of my attempt to break free of Saint-Germain’s influence. I wanted to go my own way; alas, I knew no other way to go, at the time, but to take a path parallel to his. I know better now.”
Jana Valdemar had attempted, with the aid of one of her father’s old acquaintances from New York, to establish herself as the sole possessor and dispenser of a fake elixir of life. Not content with recruiting the unwitting help of Honoré de Balzac, whose somewhat unfair reputation as a confirmed hypochondriac and insistent seeker of quack cures might have excited as much skepticism as credence, she had hatched a convoluted plan to involve Auguste Dupin, whose reputation as a hard-headed rationalist would have provided a much better advertisement. Her plan had, of course, misfired; Dupin had outsmarted her—and Saint-Germain, annoyed by his protégée’s attempt to escape his control, had helped him turn the tables on her, somewhat to Dupin’s annoyance.
So far as I knew, however, Saint-Germain had not been able to reassert his control, and Jana had fled from him. He had been searching for her ever since. Evidently, rumor had reached him that she was working with Chapelain again, and he had set someone to watch the physician’s home. He must have gone to the Opéra-Comique last night expecting to find her there, probably intending to follow her to her present lodgings after the performance. Obviously, the much-vaunted seers of the Harmonic Society had been unable to locate her by less conventional means.
“What is it that you want me to do for you, exactly?” I asked.
“I would like you to smooth things over between Dr. Chapelain and Monsieur Dupin, if you can—but most of all, I would like you to persuade Monsieur Dupin to see Mademoiselle Taglioni, as soon as possible. She is very insistent. For what it may be worth, I believe that Monsieur Dupin will be very interested in what she has to say. There is a mystery involved.”
“Which has something to do with the 1834 performance of Robert le Diable at the Comique, and Blaise Thibodeaux?” I queried.
“Of course,” she said. She seemed to be on the point of saying something more, but did not. She was not sure whether it would be politic to raise the question of the ghost just yet. I thought that I ought to try to put her at her ease.
“I doubt that any ‘smoothing over’ will be necessary,” I told her. “Chapelain and Dupin have always been on the best of terms, and I cannot imagine that Dupin will hold it against him that he’s working with you again. He’s not a man to bear grudges. As for Mademoiselle Taglioni, I’m certain that he will be interested in what she has to say, and that he will consider it a privilege to meet her, as soon as he is able to do so—my only reservation, I assure you, is that I cannot be sure when that will be.”
She smiled, albeit wanly. “Thank you, Monsieur Reynolds,” she said. “You really are very kind. Perhaps I should not have been intimidated by the thought of coming here, especially after what you said to me last night. After all, we do have something in common, do we not?”
“Do we?” I queried, genuinely puzzled.
“Yes,” she said, trying unsuccessfully
