Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

methods of employment were always available to such. A modicum of acting ability came in handy when seeming to be delighted at the prospect of an evening — or ten expensive minutes — with Mrs. Halifax’s more peculiar customers. Vokins, officially an usher, also scouted out the nobs in the boxes and passed on gossip … all part of the great mosaic of life in the capital, Moriarty was wont to say.

First off, I asked if there’d been any break-ins or petty thefts lately.

“No more’n usual, Colonel,” he said. “None who didn’t tithe to the Firm, at any rate.”

“Seen any remarkable Italians?”

“Don’t see nothing else. The diva has a platoon of ‘em. Dressers and puffers and the like.”

“Anyone very recently?”

“We’ve a ‘ole new set o’ scene-shifters today. The usual lot, ‘oo come with the company, didn’t turn up this morning. Took sick at an ice cream parlour, after hours. All of ‘em, to a man, ‘ad cousins ready to step in. Seventeen of ‘em. Now you mentions it, they are a remarkable bunch, for eye-talians. Oh, you can’t mistake ‘em for anythin’ else, Colonel. To look at ‘em, they’re eye-tye through and through. Waxy ‘taches, brown complexions, glittery eyes, tight trews, black ‘air. But there’s a funny thing, a singular thing — they don’t squabble. Never met an eye-tye ‘oo didn’t spend all the hours o’ the day shoutin’ at any other eye-tye within ear-shot. Most productions, scene-shifters come to blows five or six times a performance. Someone storms out or back in. Elbow in the eye, knee in the crotch, a lot o’ monkey-jabber with spitting and hand-gestures ‘oose meanin’ can’t be mistook. There’s been woundin’. Cripplin’, even. All over ‘oo gets to pick up which old helmet. This lot, the substitute shifters, work like clockwork. Don’t say anythin’ much. Just get the job done. No arguments. Management’s in ‘eaven. They wants to sack the no-shows, and keep this mob on permanent.”

So, the Camorra were already in the house.

They couldn’t have the jewels yet, because the song was still going on. It would last a while longer. The Castafiore clique would call at least two encores. The rest of the house might be impatient to get on with the story — especially the bit in Act Five where Marguerite is hanged — but the diva would milk her signature tune for all it was worth.

I peeped through the main doors. Marguerite’s jewels sparkled in the limelight and her mirror kept flashing.

“When she goes offstage, what happens to her props?” I asked Vokins.

“A dresser takes the jewels and the mirror off her. ‘Attie ‘Awkins. She’s took ill, too. Must be somethin’ goin’ round. But ‘er sister turned up with the others. Not what you’d expect, either. Funny that a yellow-’aired Stepney bit called ‘Awkins ‘as a sister called Malilella who’s dark as a gypsy. I made ‘umble introductions and proffered my card, enquiring as to whether she’d be interested in a fresh line of work. This Malilella whipped out one o’ them stiletters and near stuck me adam’s apple. You can still see the mark where she pricked. She’s in the wings, waiting for the jewels.”

I saw where the snatch would be made. There was no time to be lost.

“Vokins, round up whoever you can bribe, and get them in the hall. I need you to reinforce the Castafiore clique. I need as many reprises as you can get out of her. Keep the “Jewel Song” going.”

“You want to ‘ear it again!”

“It’s my favorite ditty,” I lied. “I want to hear it for twenty minutes or more.”

Enough time to get round to the wings, minding out for the girl with the stiletto and her seventeen swarthy comrades.

“No accountin’ for taste,” said Vokins. I gave him a handful of sovereigns and he rushed about recruiting. Confectionary stalls went unmanned and mop-buckets unattended as Vokins lured their proprietors into an augmented clique.

Bianca Castafiore, up to her ankles in flowers tossed by admirers, paused to take a bow after concluding her aria for the third time. Even she looked startled when the crowd swelled with cries of ‘encore encore’. Never one to disappoint her public, she took a deep breath and launched into it.

“Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir…”

Groans from less partisan members of the audience were drowned out, though more than a few programs were shredded or opera glasses snapped in two.

This is where the Moran quick-thinking came into it.

The situation was simple: upon her exit, the diva would surrender the Jewels of the Madonna without knowing they were real. The valued new staff of the Royal Opera House would quit en masse.

So, why hadn’t the jewels been lifted before the performance? Well, if Don Rafaele Lupo-Ferrari held one thing almost as sacred as the Virgin Mary, it was opera. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Jewel Scene performed with real jewels was an overwhelming temptation. He would be in one of the boxes, enjoying the show before fulfilling his obligation to avenge the indignity perpetrated by Gennaro. I hoped his brains had been boiled by la Castafiore’s sustained high notes, for I needed him distracted.

Once the jewels were offstage, they were lost to me.

So, what to do?

Simple. I would have to seize them before they made their exit.

By a side door, I went backstage. In a hurry, I picked up items as I found them on racks in dressing rooms. When I told the story later, I claimed to have donned complete costume and make-up for the role of Mephistopheles. Actually, I made do with a red cloak, a cowl with horns and a half-face mask with a Cyrano nose.

I noticed several of the new scene-shifters, paying attention to the noise and the stage and therefore not much interested in me. I found myself in the wings just as la Castafiore, whose prodigious throat must be in danger of cracking, was chivvied into an unwise, record-setting seventh encore. A little man with spikes of hair banged his fists against the wall and rent his shirt in red-faced fury, screeching ‘get that sow off my stage’ in Italian. Carlo Jonsi, the producer, had little hope his pleas would, like Henry II’s offhand thoughts about a troublesome priest, be acted on by skilled assassins. Though, as it happens, the house was packed with skilled assassins.

The dresser’s supposed sister Malilella — she of the stiletto — was waiting patiently for her moment. I wouldn’t have put it past her to fling her blade with the next jetsam of floral tributes and accidentally stick the star through one prodigious lung.

“Can’t someone end this?” shouted Maestro Jonsi, in despair.

“I’ll give it a try,” I volunteered, and made my entrance.

To give her credit, the camorrista sister was swift to catch on. And her knife was accurately thrown, only to stick into a scenery flat I happened to jostle in passing. I boomed out the barrack room lyrics to ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir’, lowering my voice to deep bass and drawing out phrases so no one could possibly make out the words or even the language.

Marguerite was astonished at this demonic apparition.

Most of the audience, who knew the opera by heart, were surprised at the sudden reappearance of Mephistopheles but — after eight renditions of ‘the Jewel Song’ — were happy to accept whatever came next just so long as it wasn’t a ninth.

“Those joooo-oooo-wels you muuuuu-ust give baaaa-ack,” I demanded. “Your beau-uuuuu-ty needs no suuuu-ch adorn-meeee-ent!”

I picked up the prop casket in which the jewels had been presented and pointed into it.

With encouragement from Vokins’ clique, who chanted ‘take them off’ in time to the desperately vamping orchestra, Bianca Castafiore removed the necklaces and bracelets and dropped them into the casket. I was aware of commotion offstage. A couple of scene-shifters tried to rush the stage but were held back by non-Italians.

As the last bright jewel clinked into the casket, I looked at the woman in the wings. Malilella drew her thumb across her throat and pointed at me. I had added to my store of curses. Again.

There were Camorra in the wings. Both sides.

So I made my exit across the orchestra pit, striding on the backs of chairs, displacing musicians, knocking over instruments. I didn’t realize until I was among the audience that I had trailed my cloak across the limelights and was on fire.

I paused and the whole audience stood to give me a round of applause.