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.”