Chapter 19
The process of waiting, that afternoon confirmed for me, slows time down to an unbearable rate. The seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, and so on.
I knew Sherlock. If he remained in that theater, it was because he had a plan up his sleeve. And I could not wait to find out what that plan was. As I walked back to the hotel, I went over the possibilities in my mind.
When I got to the Claridge’s, I read and reread the telegram from my father a thousand times. He wrote that he and Mother were stranded in Calais because of the rough seas and that they would be off to London as soon as the weather improved over the English Channel. Then I tried to entertain myself by paging through my guide to London and chatting with Mr. Nelson, but the sleepy atmosphere of the hotel soon made me antsy.
I said goodbye to Mr. Nelson, and for once I told him the truth — I was going out for a walk. But at the end of this walk, I found myself standing in front of the Shackleton Coffee House. When I walked into the café, there was no sign of Sherlock or Lupin. And so I had to wait again, but this time in the company of a cup of hot cocoa. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long, and when I saw my friends enter the café, I noticed something in their eyes immediately — there was some interesting news.
My two friends joined me, and Sherlock placed an old bronze key on the table next to my now-empty mug.
“Since you’re in London to sightsee, how about a visit to the Royal Opera House?” he asked.
“What a question!” I said excitedly. “Let’s go there now!”
But I soon learned that it was not possible to go there immediately. While Sherlock had been hiding in the theater, in addition to stealing a key to the back door, he had heard bits of conversation between some musicians. At five o’clock the orchestra would be done rehearsing, and the theater would then be empty. So we waited until five o’clock, drinking hot cocoa and getting lost in all kinds of theories relating to our investigation.
When it was finally five o’clock, we left the café and reached Covent Garden by carriage. When we arrived, the last of the musicians were saying their goodbyes in front of the theater. Once they were gone, we moved fast among the first coils of fog that were beginning to surround the city.
Lupin and I kept watch while Sherlock opened the door.
A few moments later, the three of us were inside, surrounded by almost complete darkness.
“Come on! I think I know where the wardrobe is,” Sherlock told us softly. “This way!”
We followed and found ourselves surrounded by the eerie, partly dismantled scenes of the stage. Some pieces of the set were attached to ropes that disappeared into the darkness above us. It felt like we were walking in a cemetery made of painted canvasses and wooden shapes. With each step, the stage floor creaked slightly with an unsettling sound.
Sherlock brought us to a steep and narrow metal ladder that led underground. He climbed down first, hunching his shoulders to avoid hitting his head against the low-vaulted ceiling.
The basement hallway was cluttered with stage tools, mirrors, mannequins, and drapes, and because of the darkness, it was difficult to walk. The soft lights at the ends of the corridor were barely enough to see by.
We reached a point where the corridor forked. Straight ahead led to the dressing rooms while turning right led to a lower basement. Sherlock pointed to the right, and I swallowed hard, trying to keep my breath quiet as it became more labored and heavy. We had just started on the new staircase when we heard some voices.
“Shh!” Sherlock hissed, making a sign with his hand to stop.
We tried to figure out where they were coming from, but the way sounds echoed between those narrow corridors made it difficult to know with any certainty.
Soon we were back at the fork in the corridor, crouching in the shadows. We heard two voices — one male and one female — coming from the stairs.
“Is that Collins?” I asked, whispering into Sherlock’s ear.
“I can’t say,” Sherlock replied. “He has an accent.”
“Italian,” Lupin said, sure of himself.
He was right.
A few moments later we heard the woman’s voice say the word “maestro.” I looked at my friends. The man who was coming up the stairs from the basement was Giuseppe Barzini. I leaned over to look down the hallway and saw the luminous glow of an oil lamp crawling slowly up the stairs.
Sherlock turned rapidly and looked down the corridor behind us, his eyes glittering in the dark. “Did you hear something?” he asked.
But neither Lupin nor I could take our eyes off of the two figures on the staircase.
“How can you deny it, my dear?” Maestro Barzini said. “It is useless to deny that we are all very worried. I was wondering if you, being such a dear friend to Ophelia, know something more than what Scotland Yard has told us.”
“No, Maestro. As I said, I know nothing more. Nor how she is doing or where they have brought her,” the woman replied.
The Maestro sighed. “All this is terrible,” he said. “Terrible and painful.”
The oil lamp swung.
“I have worked with Ophelia for almost twenty years, and I find it humiliating that the police treat me like I’m the last of the curious. Forced to beg for scraps of news about my poor student like an ordinary stranger! Does that seem right, my dear?” Barzini said.
“No, Maestro,” the woman agreed. “It does not. On the contrary, I say that after what has happened, Scotland Yard should also protect you!”
“You are kind, my dear . . . but that does not really matter,” replied the musician. “To see Ophelia, to know that she’s all right . . . that’s all I want right now,” he concluded with another sigh.
If they had taken just a few more steps, they would have reached us at the fork in the corridor. Sherlock, Lupin, and I silently consulted about where to hide next. We stepped back a few feet in the dark, hoping that the two would go in the direction of the dressing rooms.
“You will see that everything will be all for the best, Maestro,” the lady said with a polite tone.
“I would like to believe you, my dear!” he replied.
“You have to be strong in moments like these, Maestro.”
They stopped just before the fork.
“You promise that if you ever hear about Ophelia, you will tell me?” asked Maestro Barzini, his voice sorrowful.
“You will be the first to know,” the woman assured him, walking with him to the doors of the dressing rooms.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Prodding me to follow him, Sherlock tugged at the hem of my skirt. We crawled on all fours to the hallway that led to the basement, and we hid there, remaining motionless in the dark. We listened carefully, but from that position we could only hear a faint hum.
After a while, we heard some steps, then the voice of the woman again, now very close by. “Goodbye, Maestro and, I pray, do not worry yourself too much,” she said, taking her leave. Then we heard her walking along the corridor in the opposite direction.
“Shall we go down?” Lupin asked once the steps of the woman sounded far away.
“In the dark?” I asked.
“It’s only dark until the end of the staircase,” Sherlock explained. We agreed to wait a few minutes before making a move so we wouldn’t run into Barzini coming out of the dressing room.
Suddenly, there was a loud noise. The crash of glass breaking. All three of us jumped. The shattering was followed by a scream. Immediately, I thought about what the woman had just said to Barzini, “Scotland Yard should also protect you.”
“No! Not him now!” I said, with a strangled cry.
Sherlock and Lupin looked at each other.
“Did you hear that rumbling noise?” Sherlock asked.
“No. But perhaps the attacker is hidden, lurking,” Lupin said.
That word, “attacker,” nearly made my heart stop. I closed my eyes and saw the Spaniard. I could picture him hidden in the shadows of the haunting stage sets. He might have gone down to Barzini’s dressing room to kill him, too, after murdering his assistant and making an attempt to kill Ophelia Merridew. That thought made me freeze, petrified with terror.
Lupin suddenly made a move toward the dressing rooms.
“Freeze! Wait!” Sherlock whispered, grabbing him by the arm.
Lupin had just enough time to crouch down into darkness again when the door to Barzini’s dressing room opened.
We stood motionless in the dark while Barzini staggered into the corridor and passed by our hiding place, cursing softly. We watched him disappear in the direction of the stage. I noticed that one of his hands was bandaged with a rag. Red with blood.
“Let’s help him!” I said, fearing I might lose consciousness at any moment. “And get out of here!”
“Quiet, Irene,” Lupin said, shaking me. “There seems to be no one else . . .”
“True,” Sherlock agreed. “It’s quiet down here.”
Sherlock and Lupin went together and peered around the corner. Then they moved quickly toward the dressing room, dragging me with them. I was totally opposed to that decision, but I did not have the energy to resist.
All I could do was go along with them. My heart beat so violently, I thought it might break out of my chest and onto the floor.
“And now what?” I whispered.
We reached the door of Barzini’s dressing room. There were a few drops of blood on the floor. Lupin pulled a pair of white gloves from his pocket, put them on, and gently pushed the door open.
“I do not think this is a good idea,” I whispered, afraid of being attacked at any moment by the mysterious criminal who was hunting the artists of the Royal Opera House.
Instead I saw only Barzini’s dressing room, lit by the oil lamp that he had been holding just a few minutes before. The room was empty.
“Look!” Lupin exclaimed. He pointed to a broken mirror next to a music stand.
Sherlock picked up a bloody splinter of glass from the ground and muttered, “He injured himself.”
Just then, in a corner of the room that until that moment had been hidden from my view by the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes, I saw some familiar clothes tossed in a heap atop an old wooden chair.
It took a few moments, but when I finally began to process what my eyes were seeing, I could not help myself and I screamed.