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

sisters and simply a ‘chorus’ of pirates. In addition to Mabel and Frederic, Randolph has decided on twelve of each.”

“Thirteen daughters? Wouldn’t that make some of them a bit young to marry?” Or old.

“We’re classifying them as four sets of triplets. And Mabel, of course.”

“Mustn’t forget Mabel. And a dozen constables as well?”

“For symmetry, one might imagine, but no, only six of those. Plus the sergeant.”

“Twelve and twelve and two and seven – thirty-three actors?”

“We won’t have pirates at first, but you have also to add Ruth, Frederic’s piratical nursemaid, and Major- General Stanley, Mabel’s father.”

“And you want me to help keep that lot happy, healthy, and in some kind of order?”

“Plus the crew – cameraman and assistant, make-up woman, seamstress, three or four others. No servants; Randolph banned the actors from bringing their servants along after Anna Karenina-two illegitimate pregnancies, one divorce, and a bullet wound between them. Because of the cold,” he explained.

“Of course.”

“So no personal maids or valets. However,” Hale added, his voice innocent but his eyes taking on a wicked gleam in their depths, “the four youngest sisters – youngest in fact, not youngest on film – will bring their mothers.”

“Oh, Lord,” I said. I had encountered the mothers of young prima donnas before.

He laughed aloud. “You begin to see why I greeted you with such enthusiasm this afternoon.”

“You all but wept in joy. Well, if that’s the case, I’d best-” I started, but he cut me off.

“There’s something else.”

What on earth could surpass what he had already described? “Yes?”

He reached for the decanter, replenishing our glasses. The level in the glass rose; I braced myself. “You seem a sensible kind of person, Miss Russell. The kind of person who pays attention to details.”

“I try.”

“And the kind of person who dislikes … wrongdoing.”

The very model of an unwilling apprentice pirate, one might say. “Yes,” I ventured.

“And quite, well, sensible.”

Like my shoes? I wondered.

“Plucky, even.”

Plucky?

“Because I was thinking, perhaps you would be willing to … extend your assignment. Just a little.”

Please, please don’t ask me to dress up as one of the daughters. “Er,” I said.

“So that in the course of your job, if you come across something – how to say this? Something out of the ordinary – you will bring it to my attention.”

I kept my face still, although my heart gave a little thump. Was the man aware of the same activities that had attracted Lestrade’s attention? Or had one of his blue-blooded chums dropped a hint about the investigation, and he wished me to share any findings with him? Or – further concern – could he be laying a false trail for me by claiming concern for illicit behaviour?

Pirates within pirates, crime within crime …

“Perhaps you’d best explain what you mean by ‘out of the ordinary.’ ”

He picked up his glass, to swirl the contents into an amber whirlpool.

“Three years ago, Fflytte Films made The Moonstone. Do you remember it?”

“I did see that one, yes. Very realistic, as I remember, the scenes in India.”

“As I said, our hallmark. The actor playing Ablewhite – who you may remember dies in the story – was killed a few days after his final scenes were filmed.”

“How unfortunate.”

“He was drunk playing the Dame in a Christmas panto and fell into the orchestra pit, breaking his neck on the kettle drum, but yes, it was a tragedy. Later that year, we went to Finland for Anna Karenina, Finland being the closest we could come to Russia without getting involved with the Reds. But as I said, it was cold, and our Anna got frostbite when the filming was only halfway through and went home (quit the profession entirely, I heard the other day; she now runs a boarding house in Leeds), so we had to turn the story into a short about the frozen North instead. And even then, the polar bear rather chewed up its handler.”

“Oh dear. Perhaps a crew as accident-prone as yours ought to go into a less hazardous business.”

“And then in Jolly Roger, we almost lost two men in a freak wave.”

“Yes, so you mentioned.”

“With Krakatoa, two of the cinema houses where it was running burned down. In Coke Express, one of our actors decided to drive through Town in the altogether – that one took a lot of work to hush up. I had to prove that he was just drunk, not coked.”

I said nothing: True, the coincidences were piling rather high, but clumsiness in stunts did have a way of bringing its own punishment, and Hale himself had pointed out how inflammable film could be. And actors had been known to drink.

“Hannibal was cancelled, but one of the men we’d used as a consultant for Rum Runner was arrested, for rum-running. The Writer, about a failed writer, well, failed.” He knocked back a hefty swallow from his glass, and continued bleakly, “We’re cursed. Whatever the movie’s about, it happens. There: Now you’ll probably quit on me, too.”

I blinked. Lestrade wanted me to look into chronic lawbreaking; Hale was suggesting I investigate-

“You want me to help you with a curse?”

Hale went on with an air of determination. “Miss Russell, this current picture is about piracy. And yes, I will admit it sounds mad, but I’ve got the wind up about it. Getting fined for mistreating an actor is one thing, but I don’t have time for a court case involving some dastardly deed on the open seas.”

I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of If a beaten galley slave sells movies, wouldn’t a pirates’ curse make for a sure-fire hit? but caught myself. If someone in Fflytte Films had come up with that brilliant publicity scheme, it would either be Hale, or Fflytte himself.

Still, looking into a fantasy threat would give me the ideal excuse to snoop, if Hale happened to catch me at it. And he would be so grateful I stayed with the company – at any rate, stayed long enough to find who was responsible for the crimes that concerned Lestrade: say, fourteen days, 336 hours – that he would overlook any oddities in my behaviour.

“It would appear that building a reputation for realism has its drawbacks,” I remarked.

“It’s a major pain in the backside,” Hale replied. “But it is what we do. When we’re filming The Moonstone, we send a camera to India. If we’re making a film about the Punic Wars, we take some elephants to the Alps. Even if it nearly kills us all and leaves us bankrupt.”

“And when the script says pirates, you go to sea.”

“Lisbon first.”

“ ‘On, on, the vessel flies, the land is gone.’ ”

He cocked his head, and replied, “ ‘What beauties doth Lisboa first unfold!’ ”

“ ‘But whoso entereth within this town That, sheening far, celestial seems to be Disconsolate will wander up and down.’ ”

“Yes, Byron was not fond of Portugal, even before he had an unhappy affaire there.”

Long, long ago, as an unschooled orphan preparing for university examinations, I had a tutrix with a marked, even startling, affection for Lord Byron. There were lines of Childe Harold that the Byron- besotted Miss Sim had taken care to skip lightly over – thus guaranteeing that her adolescent student should commit them indelibly to memory. Triggered by mention of the Portuguese capital, some of those phrases began to rise now to the surface of my mind: memorials frail of murderous wrath, and the shrieking victim hath Pour’d forth his blood beneath the assassin’s knifeem›, and Throughout this