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pretty dreadful. The most awful thing a body could ever see. Quite retchingly dreadful.”
    By now I was not anxious to know the details Irene had been sent to ferret out.
    “Tell me,” Irene said, sitting back in the chair to draw her elegant cigarette case from one pocket and a matchbox from another.
    The letter I worked large in diamonds shone like a heavenly constellation against the glorious blue-enamel case as Irene removed a thin brown cigar. The case was a priceless Fabergé creation, but seeing it always made me shudder. It reminded me of the two people I most detested in the world: Sable, the Russian spy who had given this poison-armed trinket to Irene, and Sherlock Holmes, who had discerned and disarmed the lethal gift while we had watched. That Irene should use this object, and even treasure it, struck me as foolhardy beyond belief.
    Pink watched her light the slender cigar in one hand by a lucifer from the other with wide eyes. “Does that taste good, really? I would like to try.”
    “So you shall.” Irene leaned forward to extend the small dark cylinder to her. “Just . . . sip.”
    That poor young thing put the smoking thing between her dainty lips and drew a shallow breath. Soon she was coughing again, while I cast Irene a disapproving look.
    “It takes practice,” Irene said, retrieving the tiny cigar and drawing thoughtfully on it until she was able to exhale a thin stream of smoke. “Now that your mind has contemplated other matters, perhaps it can return to the dreadful recent past with an objective eye.”
    Pink, clutching my handkerchief to her mouth, nodded. “I pride myself on an objective eye, Mrs. Norton, is it?” She straightened on her sofa cushion, posture alone drawing her spine taut as a bowstring.
    Her hands no longer trembled.
    “I have found murdered women in this house, two stories below. I was the first to find them, and to alert the inhabitants. I’m afraid I screamed.”
    “You are sure they were murdered?” Irene asked.
    Pink regarded her blankly, then spoke.
    “They were more than murdered.” Pink tossed back a great swallow of the brandy. Her voice came clear and sharp, precise yet angry. “They were butchered like carcasses one sees hanging in Les Halles, the great open marketplace of Paris. I only recognized them for women from the shreds of clothing clinging to . . . what was left.”
    As suddenly as this, I knew. I had solved a petty mystery that had been niggling at me all night: the French phrase “Abbot Noir .” The Black Abbot in English.
    I had felt foolishly reassured that a churchman was involved in the matter, even though he be Roman Catholic and the hue of his habit be black. But the inspector and Irene had not been speaking of my mythical head monk at all. Not “Abbot Noir ,” but “abattoir,” a word I did know even if I did not expect to hear it spoken in polite society.
    Abattoir .
    The French word for slaughterhouse.

5.
The Abbot Noir

    The disorders of the room had, as usual, been suffered
to exist
— EDGAR ALLAN POE, “THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE ”
    Not very much later, the girl’s brandy glass was empty, and Irene’s slender cigar had shriveled into a pyramid of silver ashes impaled by a dark dead stub in one of the empty crystal goblets.
    Much as I deplore the stench and the mess of the smoking ritual and much as I abhor spiritous liquors, I had to admit that these masculine vices had put raw emotion at a distance.
    “Stay here,” Irene told Miss Pink, who was much calmed for having unburdened herself of her dread cargo of horror. As for me, had someone offered, I would have indulged in a glass of the contents of the decanter, and I only drink spirits under severe duress.
    We left the room. The men guarding either side of the door leaped to confront us, their Gallic faces so eager for news they resembled agitated poodles.
    It would have been laughable had not we heard such grim tidings.
    Irene wasted no time on preliminaries.