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

finished her much-embroidered story, Edith’s mother chimed in with a similar complaint. Celeste contributed a pointless but impassioned history of a job she’d had in a French production, when the producer had withheld a portion of her pay due to a tax question.

Soon, the cold dish of impending prison had given way to a nicely heated stew of resentments. Then, before it could boil over into action, Annie rescued us again. “I say, I know just what we should do with this extra day we’ve been given! If we can’t rehearse with our pirates, why can’t we rehearse without them? We know their scenes as well as they do – half of us can dress as pirates, the rest of us can practice around them. What do you say?”

With the alternative being another day of polishing nails and reading aloud, the actresses welcomed the opportunity. And I was not in the least surprised when someone suggested – Annie again – that we might as well be in costume.

The house-keeper and her two maidservants were alarmed when we stormed the upstairs lumber-room and began to hurl garments into the air. In suitably fractured French and one or two words of Arabic, I made her to understand that we were making a stage-play, dressing up, non? And although I could see that the three of them were shocked by the sight of young women in the dress of native men, honestly, what could one expect from the English?

It did, however, mean that we should be prepared, were we to need to leave the house disguised as so many males.

I participated in the action, since having the mothers, the seamstress, the make-up girl, and me in the stead of pirates let more of the girls act their proper roles. But after lunch, when the sun grew warm, most of us curled up on our sunny cushions and slept.

I came sharply awake just before three o’clock, hearing men’s voices. And not just men: Holmes. I sat upright, and saw the others doing the same.

June listened, then jumped to her feet and started to shout out a greeting to our neighbours – and three of us hushed her instantly: Annie, Edith, and me.

I hastened to explain. “They may not wish for us to talk to each other over the fence,” I told her. “Moslems, like the people whose house this is, are very fussy about keeping boys and girls separate.”

A ridiculous explanation, but one they seemed to accept. After all, who knew what sorts of rules heathens might have? So voices stayed down for a while, on both sides of the wall, until Annie (what a very useful associate!) sat down at the piano and began to play. The girls joined in, with that most English of Gilbertian odes, sung in the opera when propriety and sympathy conflict and the only option is to talk about the weather:

How beautifully blue the sky,

The glass is rising very high,

Continue fine I hope it may,

And yet it rained yesterday.

Annie continued on to various songs, concentrating on the girls’ choruses. When she ran out of those, she hesitated, but rather than repeat herself, she started one of the duets sung by Mabel and Frederic. Bibi’s voice rang out, strong and high, and after a time, we heard Daniel Marks from the other side of the wall, hesitantly, then more surely as the guards gave their tacit permission by not raising their guns or their fists.

It made for quite a cheerful matinee, Sullivan’s tunes and Gilbert’s words spilling over the scruffy and no doubt bewildered little town. Annie avoided the piratical songs, and the constables joined in with gusto on their song about the policeman’s lot-

When the enterprising burglar’s not a-burgling,

When the cut-throat isn’t occupied in crime,

He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling,

And listen to the merry village chime.

– although I had to wonder if her playing did not hold just a touch of spite as she crashed into the chords of the policemen’s other song:

When the foeman bears his steel (Tarantara! tarantara!)

We uncomfortable feel (Tarantara!)

It may have been my imagination that heard a slight falter in Annie’s hands on the keys at the words Go to death, and go to slaughter.

The moment that song’s chorus of blood-thirsty supporters and highly reluctant police ended, a violin swirled into life, sawing madly through the double-time tune of the Sergeant-Major’s song. Annie didn’t even try to catch him up, and when Holmes started to sing at the end of the verse (his accurate if nondescript voice was suited to the song’s limited range), he delivered the words at a rate nearly as fast as the instrument’s playing. The audience on both sides of the wall listened intently to the feat, although a few smiles of appreciation gave way to faint frowns as some of the words seemed to go awry.

He ended the tune with another round from the violin, and applause broke out.

“Didn’t the words-?” Isabel’s mother began, but her next words were drowned out by Annie as she launched into one of the songs from Pinafore. Which, being English, they all knew as thoroughly as they knew those from Pirates.

I left the smile on my lips and continued my slightly off-the-beat nods of the head (were I to join the chorus, it might set the dogs to howling, and drive the more sensitive souls from the rooftop) as the matinee edged into soiree and the cool sea air began to move in. In the middle of a song (this one from Gondoliers, a heartfelt rendition of And if ever, ever, ever they get back to Spain, they will never, never, never cross the sea again, they will never, never, never, never, never, never, never-) the voices from next door broke off in a series of protests and then shouts.

The piano stopped, the women’s voices dribbled into silence, as we waited, hearts in throats – but there were no gunshots, no cries of pain, it was merely that the guards wanted their supper.

Being a more civilised household, we took afternoon tea instead, but the meal that followed soon afterwards was not spurned as being too early. A day of excitement and fresh air took its toll on the younger girls and on their mothers, and to my relief, Holmes’ added words to his rapid-fire recitation had been forgotten.

Except by Annie.

When the tagine had been polished off (chicken this time, with pistachios) and the mint tea drunk, when conversation had lagged, lamps had been shut down, and everyone had retreated to their beds with a selection (carefully vetted by the mothers) from the book-shelves, a faint tapping came at my door, and Annie stepped inside.

Her eyes went to the window, although she had to look closely to see how I had removed and replaced the mortar. She sat down on the stool and gathered her hands in her lap.

“The words in that song were for you?” she asked.

“Various code-words and references, yes. Which, being Holmes, means I’ve probably missed half of them and got the meaning wrong of others, but the general gist of it seems to be that Hale may not be in league with La Rocha and Samuel, that La Rocha is delivering the ransom demand this evening, that I need to be ready, and that I’m not to stir from my room tonight.”

“You got all that from a few words?”

“And the way they were sung. There’s a mathematical- Ooh, never mind, it would sound like lunacy, and probably what he meant to tell me was that they’re all hale and hearty, that they’re eating raisins, and do I have a pen he can borrow?”

“The communication of true minds, I see.”

“I take it you’ve never been married? If the ransom demand has been delivered, I shouldn’t imagine it will be long before the government’s machinery gets under way.”

And indeed, the government’s machinery presented itself in our drawing room – or the Moorish equivalent, the courtyard – bright and early the next morning, in the form of two diplomats in their full battle regalia of high collars and chest-medals.

Any plans we might have laid went over the edge seven minutes after they were shown in.