Ten

Engels and the pirates hurried down to the opera house, though not so fast that they got a stitch. There was some debate about what the best way of getting into the opera would be. Some of the pirates suggested disguising themselves as moles and burrowing their way in. Some of them suggested putting mushrooms on the wall and waiting for it to rot away. A few of them suggested blocking out the moon, though they were a bit vague about how this would help. But eventually, Engels pointed out that seeing as it was an opera, perhaps the easiest way to get in would simply be to buy tickets. When they arrived at the box office, the pirate with a scarf, always keen to take care of the boat’s finances, got some of the pirates to walk on their knees, so that they only had to pay children’s prices, and he made sure he got a discount for the pirates who had eyes or bits of limb missing.

‘You’ve no idea how hard it was to get hold of the bears,’ said Wagner, as he led Marx, Jennifer and the Pirate Captain through the bowels of the opera house, ‘for the scene set in the dragon’s forest. You can’t have an enchanted forest without bears.’

‘Can they sing?’ asked the Pirate Captain.

Wagner pulled a face. ‘No. We tried training them. Like all bears, they love dancing, but we can’t get them to sing more than “Arooo” and “Rarrgh”. It’s a shame.’

The Pirate Captain couldn’t help but agree. He’d spent many a happy evening with the crew debating what a bear would sound like if it could sing. And at the back of his mind, he had a good idea that before long he’d be facing some sort of terrible peril, and it would go down a lot easier if there was a chorus of bears singing away in the background.

‘In Bootyopia, pigeons have taken the ecological niche of bears,’ the Captain started, but Wagner groaned and held up a hand to cut him off.

‘If you tell me one more thing about Bootyopia,’ he said, rubbing his temple wearily, ‘I’m going to pull out my own eyebrows. There isn’t a Bootyopia. You’re not the Crowned Head of Bootyopia. And this isn’t your harmless old butler. You’re the Pirate Captain, and this is the communist Karl Marx. I don’t know who the young lady is, but I must say she has lovely cheekbones.’

Jennifer beamed. The Pirate Captain always felt that the best way to deal with difficult situations like this was just to plough on regardless and pretend nobody had said anything untoward.

‘So, another interesting fact about Bootyopia is that we have the lowest average precipitation of any—’

‘Captain!’ exclaimed Wagner.

The Pirate Captain pouted. ‘How did you know?’

‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ explained Wagner. ‘Marx’s disguise is pretty good – he has that sort of servile look about him anyway. But, Pirate Captain, your boots – not only are they emblazoned with anchors and the like, but they also have “Pirate Captain” written around the edges.’

‘Damn my vanity,’ said the Pirate Captain, nodding.

‘And the piratical roaring that peppers your conversation. That’s a bit of a giveaway.’

‘Damn the irrepressible pirate blood that runs in my veins!’

‘And the big skull and crossbones on your hat, which is, incidentally, a pirate’s hat.’

‘Damn my reluctance to take off my pirate hat!’

The rest of the pirates spent so long trying to decide if it was best to have salted popcorn on top of sugared popcorn or the other way round that the opera had already started by the time they made it into the auditorium. They did their best to stop their buckles and cutlasses rattling as they tiptoed to their seats.

Up on stage, next to a gigantic and menacing-looking volcano, a hefty, statuesque blonde was singing about how terrible the liberal bias in the media was these days. The key theme of the opera seemed to be how feelings made people soft and useless. To make the point clearer, Wagner had incorporated several characters dressed in tabards labelled with ‘Being Sad’, ‘Staring At a Sunset’, ‘Cooing Over Babies’ and other feelings, who were now being chased about by bears.

‘These opera glasses are good,’ said the pirate with a nut allergy, peering into the albino pirate’s ear. ‘I think I can see your brain.’

‘According to this,’ said the pirate in green, reading from his programme, ‘everything has its own musical theme. There’s a theme for the volcano and a theme for the bears and so on. Isn’t that clever? We should adopt something like that for when we’re on the pirate boat.’

‘If the Pirate Captain had a theme, how do you think it would go?’ said the albino pirate.

‘Oh, it would be lilting,’ said the pirate in green, ‘but at the same time have drums and things, because you’d have to show his myriad depths.’

‘This is definitely our most cultural adventure yet,’ said the pirate with gout.

‘Right, tell us what’s going on, you rogue, or I’ll slice your gizzard open,’ said the Pirate Captain, deciding to take the more direct approach, and waggling his cutlass at Wagner’s wilful chin. ‘Bear in mind that I don’t even know what a gizzard is – so it would be a pretty messy exercise while I tried to find out.’ The Captain did his best piratical glower. ‘We were discussing the subject earlier, and Marx still thinks this is all something to do with his beard; whereas I’m convinced you’re his long-lost brother gone evil. So which is it?’

Wagner sighed. ‘Please, Pirate Captain, I am an innocent party in all of this. You must believe me. There is something unnatural here. I am beset by a demon! Something not of this world.’

‘Piffle!’ exclaimed Marx. ‘You’re not scaring us off with ghost stories.’

Wagner looked miserably at his shoes. ‘It all started some months ago,’ he explained. ‘I received a strange anonymous letter from somebody who claimed to be my biggest fan. He offered to become my benefactor. At first I was delighted. He asked for a private box at wherever we should be touring to, but nothing more. I thought it was maybe a little odd that he would only communicate by leaving me notes, but I didn’t pay it too much mind – I simply assumed he wanted to preserve his anonymity. But the notes became more and more demanding. He brought in his own staff. He wanted changes made to my work. The truth is, I’ve grown tired of goblins and magic swords. It all seems rather childish now. My real ambition is to write light-hearted comedies, ones where people fall out of cupboards and vicars are always coming round for tea at awkward moments. But he was having none of it. And I fear that now my whole opera is being used for devilish purposes.’

‘So you’ve never even seen this benefactor of yours?’

‘Just once. But it was dark.’ Wagner looked momentarily terrified. ‘And he had such a countenance as I cannot describe.’

‘A countenance like a wolf?’ suggested Marx.

‘No, not really like a wolf.’

‘A countenance like a zombie?’ suggested Jennifer.

‘No, not much like a zombie either.’

‘A countenance like a fish?’ suggested the Pirate Captain.

‘Well, shiny like a fish. So, yes, that’s probably closest. But bigger, a veritable giant. And shrouded in smoke, with the glowing eyes of a demon. That’s not just me using poetic language, he really looked like that.’

They stopped outside the entrance to an opera box. ‘Here it is,’ said Wagner, dabbing some sweat from his temple with a handkerchief. ‘The phantom’s secret box.’

‘You know,’ said the Captain, ‘I keep a box in my office onboard the pirate boat. I wrote “Top Secret!” on the side, and I warn the men to never go near it. In actual fact, all that’s in the thing is a pepper pot I made at school and a couple of nice pebbles I found on Brighton beach. But it drives the lads crazy. This glowing-eyed demon fellow is probably up to the same thing, but on a slightly bigger scale. Trying to give himself an enigmatic air of mystery.’

‘I suppose that might be all there is to it,’ said Wagner doubtfully. He looked at his pocket watch and gasped. ‘I must return to the performance, or he will know something is amiss.’ He cast a desperate gaze at the Pirate Captain. ‘Do you think you can rid me of this demon?’

‘Well, as something of an expert on this kind of phenomena, I have to say it all depends on the type of demon,’ said the Captain, with a shrug. ‘For instance, if it turns out that the opera house was built on the sight of an old Indian burial ground, then that could spell trouble. They’re the worst kind of ghostly phantasm, Red Indians, because when they kill you they don’t let any part of your anatomy go to waste, on account of them caring so much about their environment. I don’t fancy eldritch spirits using my hands as bookends or something. But we’ll do our best.’

Wagner shook his hand gratefully, bowed to Marx and Jennifer and then hared off down the corridor.

The trio crept inside. It was quite cluttered for an opera box – there was a wardrobe, and a table, and piles of books, as if somebody very untidy had been living there. It certainly lacked a woman’s touch. Some flickering candles cast spooky shadows across the walls, which were made even more spooky by the Pirate Captain doing shadow shapes of dinosaurs with his hands.

‘That’s really not helping,’ said Jennifer.

‘Sorry. Bit on the creepy side, all this.’

‘You don’t actually believe the culprit to be some kind of beast from the netherworld?’ asked Marx. ‘It’s balderdash. Superstitious mumbo-jumbo. There’s no such thing as giant glowering-eyed demons. What Wagner saw was probably just a trick of the light, or a weather balloon.’

‘Well, talking about it isn’t going to help,’ said Jennifer briskly. ‘We should search for clues.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ said Marx, looking around. He frowned. ‘What does a clue look like?’

‘Hard to say. That’s the trouble with clues. They can be all sorts. Hastily scrawled notes. A tell-tale piece of fabric left on a rusty nail. In this case it’s probably a file marked top secret, or some sort of plan.’

‘Where would you keep a plan?’ asked Marx, still at a bit of a loss.

‘Probably in a special drawer, or a nice new lever-arch file, something like that. We once had an adventure with a city council who wanted to build over protected fenland, and their plan was tattooed on the backs of a pair of twins who had been separated at birth.’

‘Have you found any twins who have been separated at birth yet?’ said Marx hopefully.

‘Not yet,’ said the Pirate Captain.

‘A secret diary would be good too. They’re a fantastic source of clues. Except of course you shouldn’t really read other people’s diaries, because it’s extremely impolite.’

All of a sudden Marx froze. ‘Look there!’ he hissed, the blood draining from his face. ‘There’s somebody watching us from that wardrobe!’

He pointed to the corner of the opera box where a huge wooden wardrobe stood, its door slightly ajar. In the gloom it was just possible to see a pair of gimlet eyes peering out at them.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Jennifer.

‘They’re just . . . staring. Staring with cold, dead eyes,’ whispered Marx.

‘Psychotic eyes! The kind of eyes that wouldn’t blink as they sliced you open!’ added the Pirate Captain, ducking behind him.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sakes!’ said Jennifer. She pushed past them, marched up to the wardrobe door and smartly yanked the door open. ‘Get out of there,’ she commanded.

The Crowned Head of Spain fell out on to the floor with a waxy thud.

‘Aha,’ said Marx, wiping his brow in relief. ‘So that’s what’s happened to the waxworks.’ Sure enough, the wardrobe was piled high with all the stolen crowned heads of Europe.

‘Well done, Jennifer,’ said the Pirate Captain, trying to make it look like he’d actually been tying his shoelace rather than ducking in fright. ‘That was admirably feisty.’

‘Not really,’ said Jennifer, giving him a bit of a look. ‘I’ve spent enough time on the pirate boat to get used to dealing with peeping Toms.’

The Pirate Captain stared guiltily at the floor, whistled a little tune and went back to busying himself with fascinating clue-hunting.

‘How about this?’ Marx indicated a big model town sat atop a desk. ‘Do you think this could be a clue?’

‘Yes, that’s almost certainly a clue, though I’m not sure what it means,’ said Jennifer.

‘Oh, this is brilliant,’ said the Pirate Captain happily. ‘You see, this is what I like about those villainous ne’er-do-well types. They always have stuff like this. Before I was going to be a pirate, I was going to be an architect. Mainly because I really, really like these kinds of models. I wonder if it lights up? Oh, look! They’ve even done little people doing marches. Fantastic.’

‘If you stand right next to it, it makes you look enormous!’ grinned Marx.

‘I’m King Kong!’ said the Pirate Captain.

‘I’m Gulliver!’ said Marx.

Marx and the Pirate Captain were so busy pretending to be giants that it wasn’t until Jennifer let out a gasp that they noticed a billowing cloud of diabolical fog rolling through the door.