by Kim Newman
“It’s no go the bribery,” I told them. “Lukens won’t play that game. So, it’s the contingency plan, lads. The coin’s in the desk, the desk’s in the basement office. I’ve left a window on the latch. When the smoke bomb goes off and the bluebottles run out of the building, slip in and rifle the place. Take anything else you want, but bring the Professor his Item and you’ll remember this day well.”
Half a dozen nods.
“Ye’ll not be regrettin’ this at all at all, Colonel, me darlin’,” said Leopold — who laid on the brogue so thick the others couldn’t make out what he was saying. He was an Austrian who liked to pretend he was an Irishman — after all, whoever heard of a Dubliner called Leopold? It’s possible he’d never even been to the ould sod at all at all.
Ó Méalóid pulled out a foot-long knotty club from a place of concealment and Regan slipped out his favorite stabbing knife. McHugh’s long fingers twitched. Shaughnessy handed around a flask of something distilled from stinging nettles. The little band of merry raiders wrapped checked scarves around the lower halves of their faces and pulled down their cap-brims.
I left them and strolled back across the road. Pausing by the front door, I took out a silver case and extracted a cylinder approximately the size and shape of a cigar. I asked a uniformed police constable if he might have a lucifer about him, and a flame was kindly proffered. I lit the fuse of the cylinder and dropped it in the gutter. It fizzed alarmingly. Smoke was produced. Whistles shrilled.
My thieves charged across the road and poured through the open window.
And were immediately pounced on by the S. I. B. Head-Knocking Society.
The smoke dispelled within a minute. I offered the helpful constable a real cigar he was happy to accept.
From offstage came the sounds of a severe kicking and battering, punctuated by cries and oaths. Eventually, this died down a little.
Inspector Lukens came out of the building and, without further word, dropped a tied handkerchief into my hand. He went back indoors, to fill in forms.
Six easy arrests. That was a currency the S. I. B. dealt in. Six Irish crooks caught in the process of committing a stupid crime. As red-handed as they were red-headed.
This might shake your belief in honour among thieves, but I should mention that the micks were hand-picked for more than their criminal specialties and stated place of birth. All were of that breed of crook who don’t know when to lay off the mendacity … the sort who agree to steal on commission but think for themselves and withhold prizes they’ve been paid to secure. Dirty little birds who feather their own nests. Said nests would be on Dartmoor for the next few years. And serve ‘em right.
It didn’t hurt that they were of the Irish persuasion. I doubt if any one of them took an interest in politics, but the S. I. B. would be happy to have six more heads to bounce off the walls or dunk in the ordure buckets.
You might say that I had done my patriotic duty in enabling such a swoop against enemies of the Queen. Only that wouldn’t wash. I’ve a trunkful of medals awarded on the same basis. Mostly, I was murdering heathens for my own enjoyment.
I unwrapped the handkerchief, and considered the Eye of Balor. It didn’t look much like an eye, or even a coin — just a lump of greenish metal I couldn’t tell was gold. In legend, Balor had a baleful, petrifying glance. On the battlefield, his comrades would peel back his mighty eyelids to turn his medusan stare against the foe. Stories were confused as to whether this treasure was that eye or just named after it. Desmond Mountmain claimed it had been given to him during a faerie revel by King Brian of the Leprechauns. I suspected that the brand of pee-drinking lunacy practiced by his sister ran in the family. It was said — mostly by the late Dynamite Des — that any who dared withhold the coin from a true Irish rebel would hear the howl of the banshee and suffer the wrath of the little people.
At that moment, an unearthly wail sounded out across the river. I bit through my cigar.
A passing excursion boat was overloaded with small, raucous creatures in sailor suits, flapping ribbons in the wind. The wail was a ship’s whistle. Not a banshee. The creatures were schoolgirls on an outing, pulling each other’s braids. Not followers of King Brian.
Ever since the tomato stall, I’d had my whiskers up. I was unused to that. This business was a test for even my nerves.
After a few moments, I carefully wrapped the coin again and passed it on to a small messenger — a street urchin, not a bloody leprechaun — with orders to fetch it back to Conduit Street. Any temptation to run off with the precious item would be balanced by the vivid example of the six Irishmen. The lad took off as if he had salt on his tail.
I summoned the not-for-hire cab I had arrived in.
“The Royal Opera House,” I told Craigin, the Firm’s best driver. “And a shilling on top of the fare if we miss the first act.”
X
Some scorn opera as unrealistic. Large licentious ladies, posturing villains, concealed weapons, loud noises, suicides, thefts, betrayals, elongated ululations, explosions, goblets of poison and the curtain falling on a pile of corpses. Well, throw in a bag of tigers, and that’s my life. If I want treachery, bloodshed and screaming women, I can get enough at home, thank you very much. I dislike opera because it’s Italian. The eye-tyes are the lowest breed of white man, a bargain-priced imitation of the French. All hair-oil and smiling and back-stabbing and cowardice, left out in the sun too long.
This brouhaha of the Jewels of the Madonna of Naples was deeply Italian, and thoroughly operatic. The recitative was too convoluted to follow without music.
The gist: a succession of mugs across Europe got hold of the loot first lifted by Gennaro the Blacksmith, also known as Gennaro the Damned and Gennaro the Dead. A merciless, implacable brotherhood was sworn to kill anyone who dared acquire the treasure, but no fool thought to return the loot and apologize. They all tried for a quick sale and a getaway, or thought to hide the valuables until ‘the heat died down’. Under the jewels’ spell, they forgot about the only institution ever to combine the adjectives ‘efficient’ and ‘Italian’. The Camorra carry feuds at least to the fifth generation; there’s little to no likelihood of anyone or their great-grandchildren profiting from Gennaro’s impetuous theft.
As mentioned, the latest idiot was Giovanni Lombardo, a prop-maker for the Royal Opera. He’d received the package from an equally addled cousin who expired from strychnine poisoning at a Drury Lane pie stall a few hours later. Lombardo had been victim of a singular, fatal assault in his Islington carpenter’s shop. His head chanced to be trapped in a vice. Several holes were drilled in his brain-pan. A bloodied brace and bit was found in the nearby sawdust.
An editorial in the Harmsworth press cited this crime as sorry proof of the deleterious effects of gory sensationalism paraded nightly in Italian on the stage, instead of daily, in English, in the newspapers, as was right and proper. That Faust was sung in French didn’t trouble the commentator. Generally, the French are to be condemned for license and libertinism and the Italians for violence and cowardice. When foreigners copy each other’s vices, it confuses the English reader, so it’s best to ignore the facts and print the prejudice. The Harmsworth theory, which Scotland Yard was supposedly ‘taking seriously’, painted the culprit as a demented habitué of the opera, sensibilities eroded by addiction to tales of multiple murder and outrageous horror. No longer satisfied with the bladders of pig’s blood burst when a tenor was stabbed or the papier maché heads which rolled when an ingénue was guillotined, this notional fiend had become entirely deranged. He doubtless intended to recreate gruesome moments from favorite operas with passing innocents cast in the roles of corpses-to-be. No one was safe!
This afternoon, a gaggle of ladies of a certain age loitered outside the Royal Opera House with banners. One pinned a ‘suppress this nasty foreign filth’ badge on my lapel. I assured the harridan I’d sooner send my children up chimneys than expose their tender ears to the corrupting wailing of the
so-called entertainment perpetrated inside this very building. If there were still profit in selling brats as sweeps, I’d be up for it. Only the mothers of my numberless darling babes, mostly dark-skinned and resident in far corners of the Empire, would insist on their cut of the purse and render such child-vendage scarcely worth the effort.
While chatting with the anti-opera protester, I cast a casual eye about Covent Garden. No more suspicious, olive-skinned loiterers than usual. Which is to say that anyone in sight could — and perhaps would — turn out to be a Camorra assassin. One or two of the protesting ladies wore suspicious veils.
Lombardo’s wounds consisted of two medium-size holes, one small (almost tentative) hole and one large (ultimately fatal) hole. He had kept the secret of the jewels until that third hole was started. Then, the final hole was made to shut him up. All very Italian.
Lombardo had asked around London fences for prices on individual stones, so the spider in the centre of his web heard of it. Moriarty also knew the carpenter had been commissioned to provide props for the current production, and saw at once where the loot was hidden. In Act Three of Faust, Marguerite, the stupid bint who passes for a leading lady, piles on a collection of tat gifted her by the demon Mephistopheles and regards herself in a mirror. She gives vent to ‘the Jewel Song’ (‘Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir!’), an aria which sets my teeth on edge even when sung in tune (which is seldom). It’s about how much lovelier she looks when plastered with priceless gems.
Thanks to Moriarty’s learned insight, we knew about the jewels. Thanks to strategic cranial drilling, Don Rafaele knew about the jewels. The Camorra could have saved some elbow-work if they’d read their Edgar Allan Poe. The only person in the case — I dismiss Scotland Yard, of course — who didn’t know about the jewels was Bianca Castafiore, the young, substantial diva presently enjoying a triumphant run in the role of Marguerite. When the Milanese Nightingale performs ‘the Jewel Song’, the unkind have been known to venture she would look lovelier still with a potato sack over her head. However, la Castafiore had a devoted clique of ferocious admirers. I knew the type: several of Mrs. Halifax’s regulars couldn’t get enough of the Welsh trollop known as Tessie the Two-Ton Taff.
As I entered the foyer of the Opera House, I thought the banshee associated with the Eye of Balor had pursued me. A wailing resounded throughout the building.
Then I recognized the racket as that bloody ‘Jewel Song’.
A commissionaire was worried about a chandelier, which was vibrating and clinking. A small, crying boy was led out of the auditorium by an angry mama and a frankly relieved papa. I swear they were all bleeding at the ears. In the Garden, dogs howled in sympathy. The silver plugs in my teeth hurt.
Vokins, the Professor’s useful man at the opera, awaited me. Not an especially inspiring specimen: all pockmarks, bowler hat, and whining wheedle. His duties, mostly, were to fuss around the petticoats of chorus girls who no longer believed they’d be whisked off and married by a baronet — usually, being whisked off and something elsed by a baronet put paid to that illusion — or could rise to leading roles by virtue of their voices. Alternative 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 th
e 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.