Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

One might have expected this rigid commitment to authenticity to require that any version of Pirates of Penzance be filmed in Penzance. However, during the course of that long day, I had come to suspect we were not bound for that sleepy watering-place on England’s south coast.

Hale had shaved since flying out of the office that afternoon, although the smears of tiredness under his blue eyes were no lighter. He crossed the opulent library with his hand out, a ready apology on his lips.

“Miss Russell, can you ever forgive me for my state this afternoon? You must have thought you were in the company of a raving maniac – Thank you, Pullman, that will be all – or, no, ask Mrs Corder to send up a tray of – coffee, Miss Russell? Or tea? To go with these sandwiches and what-not? Coffee, then. Do sit down, Miss Russell, honestly, I’m not always in that sort of state.”

The first three minutes were spent with my mouth full as Hale delivered honeyed apologies while simultaneously performing the sort of dance upper-class males do when faced with a woman both of a lesser rank and in their employ: a polite, brotherly flirtation that lacks the faintest element of sex. It is amusing, particularly when based on invalid assumptions, but it must be even more exhausting to generate than it is to receive. Once I had relieved a meal’s worth of dainty snacks from the platter, I used my linen napkin, then cut the dance short.

“Mr Hale, I have a degree from Oxford, I am on the boards of several companies, I speak four languages fluently, five haltingly, and can read several more. As I said, this is a lark for me, since I’m at loose ends at the moment and I’m always up for a new experience. This is not a job I need to pay the rent. Why don’t you tell me what you are looking for, and I’ll tell you if I can do it?”

He sat back, startled as much by my blunt attitude as by what I had told him. “Er, yes. Very well. Perhaps you’d care for a drink instead of coffee?”

And so over glasses of brandy, he told me what I was in for: actors, crew, sets and costumes, local negotiations, food and housing, the lot. “We’re scheduled to spend ten days in Lisbon doing rehearsals – which, since you have little experience with the picture industry, I should note is not always the case, that many companies have neither rehearsals nor scripts. Fflytte Films uses both. We’ve found that if we don’t prepare the choreography, as it were, of the fight scenes, we waste a lot of time and miles of film.”

“And you have a number of fight scenes?”

“We do.”

“Sorry, but I’d understood that you were filming The Pirates of Penzance?” Which I remembered as a distillation of saccharine songs, much tip-toeing about, topsy-turvy logic, and slapstick chases. My attempt to keep any dubious feelings out of my voice was only partly successful: Hale’s quick glance at me glimmered with understanding and humour.

“Nothing so simple as that, Miss Russell, although making a silent film about a musical performance would be just the sort of thing Randolph would love to try. This is Pirate King: a film about a film about The Pirates of Penzance.”

“Very well,” I said slowly.

This time he laughed outright, and his face lost its pinched look, becoming both younger and more nearly handsome. “What do you know about Fflytte Films?”

“Not a whole lot. Randolph Fflytte is in the papers from time to time, of course, but I have to admit, I only go to the cinema a handful of times a year.”

“Don’t let Randolph hear you say that. Not unless you want to be sat down for a marathon screening of his work. You might say that Fflytte Films began in 1902, when Randolph got his first camera. He was seventeen at the time. For some years it was a summer-holiday toy, recording the antics of friends, playing around with effects. Randolph’s first serious attempt at telling a story on the screen came in ’07, when he bought up a lorry-load of Boer War uniforms and had every working man on his estate dress up to re-enact the Siege of Mafeking.”

“I don’t know that I’ve seen that one.”

“You won’t, either. There were only three prints made, and nine years ago, he threw them on the fire. Nearly burned the house down – cellulose nitrate is remarkably flammable. He was unhappy with Mafeking even as he was editing it, since a battle across Berkshire countryside looks nothing like a battle across open veldt. Every time he looked at it, he regretted that he hadn’t just piled his workers on a boat and taken them to South Africa.

“Two years after Mafeking, he took some friends to Paris to make a film, as a joke more than anything. This time, once he’d done the editing, he sold it. And decided that was what he wanted to do with his life. Before we knew it, we were making films commercially – most of them so dreadful they’ve blessedly disappeared from the scene, although Hester’s Grandmum wasn’t too bad, and She Begs to Differ had its moments.

“Then came the War, and while the Americans happily went on building studios and hiring actors, Randolph was reduced to filming the local evacuees and German prisoners on pig farms. But in 1915, he talked his way into France, where he shot The Aeronaut, about a spotter balloon. Two and a half years later, in winter of 1917, he managed to return, and was thrilled to come under live fire. Or within a mile or so of live fire, at any rate.

“It was a revelation. Randolph came home and burned those copies of Mafeking as a sort of vow, that utter realism would be the guiding light of Fflytte Films. And so it’s been to this day: We make the audience feel ‘the wind in your face and the lash on your back.’ ”

“I do remember that – the Roman galley film!”

“The first time Fflytte Films hit the headlines.”

“But wasn’t the case dismissed?”

“Not dismissed: settled out of court. Randolph paid the actor off, although, truth to tell, the chap hadn’t actually been beaten. It was camera tricks. Occasionally, we are reduced to mere verisimilitude.”

“I’m glad to hear you don’t sacrifice your actors for the battle scenes. Or bury them under volcano ash. But why on earth pay the man off?”

“One cannot buy that kind of publicity, Miss Russell. Fflytte Films pummelling its actors bloody for the sake of realism? Priceless word-of-mouth. Almost as good as burning down the village in Krakatoa-although the ash there was flour, and the volcano was only waist high.”

“Good to know. And now you’re doing The Pirates of Penzance-or at any rate, a picture about a picture about it.”

“The plot is, a film crew is making a picture about the pirates who come to Penzance in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. And as they film, the crew gets involved with real-life Barbary pirates.”

“Er, you do know that there aren’t any more Barbary pirates?” An American film-maker might not have picked up on this little fact, but a man with Hale’s accent would surely have had a modicum of history thrust down his throat.

“Of course. On the other hand, there will always be pirates of one stripe or another in the world.”

“And this film-within-a-film is about real pirates wrapped around fictional pirates?”

“You’re catching on.”

“It’s a farce, then?”

“No, actually, it’s more along the lines of an adventure. Do you remember the story in The Pirates of Penzance?”

“Dimly.” I had probably fallen asleep halfway through the first act: Music has that effect on me. A source of continual outrage from my musical husband.

“The young pirate Frederic, on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, announces to his fellows that he has never been able to stomach piracy, and that even though this particular band to which he has been apprenticed is soft-hearted, he intends to leave them and devote himself to fighting piracy. He falls in love with the daughter of a Major-General, but through a piece of trickery, the pirates take him back into their ranks, capturing the girl and her sisters to take as their wives. There follows a great deal of Gilbertian shenanigans before the pirates are revealed to be not only Englishmen, and loyal to the Queen, but of noble birth as well, which makes them appropriate husbands for the Major-General’s many daughters. Happy endings all around.”

To such had the wit of Chaucer and Shakespeare descended.

“How many daughters?” I asked.

“Productions of the opera have varied in the numbers of both daughters and pirates – there are four named