“But finding one who’s a dead ringer for Prince Albert—” His Grace began.
“True,” Moriarty said. “I rather think that in this case the existence of the ‘dead ringer’ with murderous proclivities is what formulated the scheme, whatever it turns out to be.”
“You mean if this murderer hadn’t existed—” began the earl.
“Then,” interrupted Mycroft Holmes, “these people would have devised some other heinous strategy to accomplish their ends—whatever these ends may turn out to be.”
[CHAPTER SIXTEEN]
AN OUTRAGE AT COVENT GARDEN
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place; where we are is hell,
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
ON FRIDAY, THE TWENTY-SIXTH OF SEPTEMBER, 1890, the Prince of Darkness spent the evening at the Covent Garden Opera House. The performance that evening was Boito’s Mefistofele, an Italian look at the Faust legend written some twenty-five years before. Mephistopheles was being sung by Vespaccio Garundo. The fifty-six-year-old basso, who weighed in at twenty-three stone, was at the height of his long and successful career and, as several reviewers insisted on pointing out, was surprisingly agile for a man of his girth.
The management of the theater had been pleased when an impeccably dressed young man with a faint squint and a notable sneer appeared at the box office an hour before the performance, announced that he was a royal equerry, and requested seats for Prince Albert Victor and a small entourage. The theater staff were urged not to make a fuss, as the prince desired that no fuss was to be made. His Royal Highness merely wanted to see the opera, and not to be seen, the equerry said, so he wished to avoid the music, the waving to the audience, and all the attendant pomp that usually accompanied the circumstance of a royal presence.
Of course, word did go forth from the box office to the house manager to the cast to the stage hands to the ushers to the audience members as they were shown to their seats. How could it not? All eyes were on the slim, tall, elegant figure with the thin mustache and the black suit that was not quite a uniform, and all mouths were whispering as he took his seat in the royal box, accompanied by two servitors who were probably, the whispers decided, merely barons or earls.
There were none there who knew that Albert Victor had been missing for over a week, that he was suspected of several heinous crimes, that no one in the royal household had any idea where he was. None there to ask the young man in the box if he was really the prince and, if so, where he had been.
The house lights went down, pulling the audience’s eyes away from the royal box, the electric arc spotlights burned and hissed, and invisible trumpets bleated as the curtain opened on fluffy clouds and chubby cherubim. Mefistofele entered in his red costume and black cape, looking like a giant overripe tomato with a black bib, and complained to God, who was somewhere in those clouds, about the wretched behavior of men, who had sunk so low that it was no longer any fun to tempt them.
As Act One progressed Faust, sung by a spry young tenor named David Spigott, and Margaret, sung by thirty-four-year-old Mathilde van Tromphe, whose slender body, said the reviewer from The Times, held a surprisingly rich and full soprano voice, joined Mephistopheles in singing of Heaven and Hell, of beauty and truth, of desire and despair, while, aptly enough, the Prince of Darkness sat, silent and watchful, in the royal box at the far left of the first balcony.
Toward the end of the second act Constable Bertrand Higgins stopped by the stage door for a cuppa and a bit of a chat with Bix, the stage doorman, who was in the way of becoming Higgins’s father-in-law when his daughter Nancy, who had already said, “Of course I’ll marry you, Jock,” decided just when she would allow the event to transpire. First she wanted to, as she told her mother, finish sowing her wild oats.
“Can’t stay long,” PC Higgins told Bix. “The sergeant’s putting in a command performance at the call box by Tavistock Street. Keep us on our toes, that’s what he’s all about.”
“Speaking of a command performance,” said Bix, “we’s got a royal personage in the box tonight.”
“Coo,” said Higgins, “and who might that be, if I might ask?”
Something in Bix’s answer rang a faint bell in Constable Higgins’s mind, and he closed his eyes to recapture the memory. One of the standing orders from a few days ago, it was. Her Majesty’s household someone-or-other requested of the Metropolitan Police that the whereabouts of Prince Albert Victor should be communicated to the palace from time to time if one should happen to become apprised of said whereabouts. Perhaps not precisely in that wording, but that was it.
So, when this and that had been discussed and the cuppa had been downed, PC Higgins outed into the street with something to tell his sergeant.
* * *
Margaret died and was welcomed in Heaven at the end of Act Three, and Mathilde van Tromphe retired to her dressing room to rest her voice, kick off her shoes, pull off her wig, drink a cup of weak tea with honey, and lie back on her chaise longue for half an hour to await the curtain calls.
As Act Four began, a bevy of beautiful young maidens danced about the stage to amuse Faust, who awaited the entrance of Helen of Troy. Sometime during the dancing the Prince of Darkness left the royal box and went down the long corridor connecting the boxes to the backstage area.
Sid Scuffin, the stage manager, saw the prince arrive backstage, and even pointed the way to Mademoiselle van Tromphe’s dressing room. “Up that there flight o’ stairs and to your right, Your Majesty—second door—mind your head.” If a royal wanted to engage in a bit of backstage, er, conversation with a prima donna, who were we mere mortals to intervene?
* * *
Sergeant Cottswell was waiting at the call box when PC Higgins turned the corner to Tavistock Street. Tapping his feet, the sergeant was, and mouthing words, and the smile on his face was a tight little smile that did not indicate pleasure. Higgins was sure that the words concerned him and, when spoken aloud in a few moments, would not be words that PC Higgins would be anxious to hear. A constable should not keep his sergeant waiting. A constable should walk his rounds in a timely manner and arrive at the appointed place at the appointed time and not a moment before or a fraction of a moment after.
It would behoove PC Higgins to give Sergeant Cottswell something else to consider in a timely manner. If possible, in a very timely manner.
“Sorry I’m a mite late, Sergeant,” Higgins began, “but I thought you should know His Royal Highness is at the Opera House this evening.”
Cottswell frowned. “Of which royal highness are we speaking?” he asked. “Why wasn’t the Yard informed that he was planning to attend? The Palace Guard surely would have sent along an information had they known.” Along the corridors of the Metropolitan Police stations those assigned to the Special Household Branch were known as “the Palace Guard,” although their duties did not in any way encompass guarding any of the royal palaces but only keeping a watchful eye on the royal family while out in public.
“Albert Victor,” Higgins said. “He didn’t tell anyone as he was coming until he arrived, it would seem,” he added, “but there was an information come along over a week ago, if I remember rightly, saying as how we should keep note of His Royal Highness’s comings and goings if he should happen to come or go in our purview.”
“Purview, is it?” Sergeant Cottswell muttered. “Have you seen His Royal Highness yourself?”
“No, sir,” Higgins told him.
“You should have taken a glim,” Cottswell said.
“Well now, Sarge,” Higgins said, doing his best to sound aggrieved, “I had to come along and meet you here, didn’t I?”
Cottswell took a deep breath and blew the air out through pursed lips in an almost silent whistle. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing to it b
ut I should come back with you and take a look at his Royal High-and-Mightiness.” Cottswell had vague republican tendencies, which never got much beyond using mild epithets to describe members of the royal family and occasionally threatening to uproot his own family and move, bag and baggage, to Baltimore, where he had a cousin in the luggage business.
Higgins nodded and held back a sigh of relief. “If you think so, Sergeant Cottswell, then p’raps we’d better. This way, Sarge.”
It was force of habit that took Higgins around to the stage door, Sergeant Cottswell following. Bix welcomed them with a smile and a kettle. “A cuppa?” he suggested.
“We have come,” Sergeant Cottswell told him, “to have a glim at His Highness, as which I understand to be in this here theater.” He accepted the mug of tea that was thrust upon him. “This is in the way of being an official viewing, you understand, at the request of our superiors.” No way was he going to let the possibility hang about that he had any interest in regarding royalty, or nobility, or anyone but other hardworking yeomen and yeowomen.
“There’s a corridor that runs from offstage right to behind the royal box,” PC Higgins offered. “We can just tiptoe along there and the sergeant can see who he has to see.”
“No need,” Bix told them. “His Royal Highness is backstage at the moment. His Highness is, um, visiting Mam’zelle van Tromphe in her dressing room.”
“Mam’zelle van Tromphe?”
“The diva.”
“The principal lady singer,” Higgins explained. “The star, as it were.”
Sergeant Cottswell lifted his head from his mug. “Well, really!” he said. “A royal consorting with a woman of the theater. I never!” He contrived to look simultaneously shocked and satisfied, as though pleased to discover that his worst suspicions had been justified.
“And the opera not over yet,” said PC Higgins, listening to the muffled sounds of the orchestra.
Mr. Bix cocked his head thoughtfully to one side. “Theater people are not as you and me,” he said. “They has their own way of doing things. As for royalty—” He sniffed. “I could tell you some things. Though I’ve no doubt you’ve heard them yourself, in your line o’ work.”
“In France, it may be,” Cottswell told him, “but not here in London.”
Bix looked up at the big clock on the wall that regulated the comings and goings backstage. “Twelve minutes to final curtain,” he estimated. “Maybe fifteen. I believe they’re running a mite slow tonight. Mam’zelle van Tromphe will be coming down for her curtain calls right after the final curtain. No lady of the theater will miss a curtain call, no matter ’oo she’s entertaining in her dressing room. Certainly no principal player.” He considered. “And never no soprano. No gentleman of the theater either, if it comes to that.”
“I can’t wait fifteen minutes,” said Sergeant Cottswell. “I should be on my way back to the station house. I should be there already as it is.”
“Well.” Bix considered. “If you want to pop in on Mam’zelle van Tromphe and His Highness, and interrupt their, um, discussion of artistic what’ll-you-’aves, ’op to it my lad.”
“I am not your lad,” Cottswell pointed out.
“Well…”
Cottswell put his mug down and slapped his knee. “By God, I’ll do it! I have orders to see His Highness, and His Highness is who I’ll see.” He rose to his feet and thrust forward his jaw. “And if I happens to discover His Highness in flagellentay directo, as they say—”
“You’ll lose your pension,” offered Bix.
“That’s as may be. I has my duty.” Sergeant Cottswell adjusted his jacket, checked his buttons, smoothed his collar, ran his finger alongside his nose, tucked his helmet firmly under his arm, and headed for the iron staircase that led to the dressing rooms.
“It’s the second door on the right,” Bix called. “Mind you knock first!”
“P’raps you’d like me to approach the door on my knees, as befits an humble policeman,” Cottswell muttered just loud enough to be heard. “’Course I’ll knock. I doesn’t enter a lady’s room without I knock first.”
“Well, how was I to know?” Bix replied. “You are a copper, after all.”
“Now, now,” Higgins whispered, making a shushing gesture with the flat of his hand.
Cottswell would have knocked, he planned to knock, he was prepared to knock, but just as he reached the door and paused to raise his knocking hand, a high-pitched scream began and was as instantly squelched, as though somebody had clamped his hand over a screaming mouth.
All thoughts of whose room it was, or who might be inside, fled as he twisted the knob and bellowed, “All right then, what’s all this?”
The door wouldn’t budge.
“I’m a policeman, ma’am. Are you all right?” he called. Taking a step back, he kicked out, slamming the door with the heel of his thick policeman’s boot. The door sprang open.
A slender, elegant-looking man in what might have been a uniform boiled out of the room, slammed Sergeant Cottswell in the chest with his arm and in the stomach with a knee. Cottswell was thrown back against the iron railing and recoiled off it, hitting his assailant in the nose with his own head. The nose spurted blood, instantly soaking the trim mustache below it, and the man screamed, “Merde!” and vaulted over the railing to the floor below. Cottswell was thrown onto his back.
In another five seconds the man had dashed past Bix and PC Higgins, two stagehands, and three sopranos of the chorus and was out the stage door and away. By the time Higgins made it through the door he was able to make out the rear end of a black carriage as it rounded the corner, and for the next few moments he could hear the sound of galloping horses receding in the distance.
Cottswell pushed himself to his feet and went into the room. Mlle. van Tromphe was lying on the floor, her back propped up by the couch against the right wall. Both her hands were clutched around her own throat. Blood seeped between the fingers.
“Here now, mam’zelle,” he said, dropping to his knees. “How bad is it?”
She opened her mouth and made a slight croaking sound. Blood dripped from the corner of her lips. She closed it again.
Cottswell looked around wildly and spied a makeup-stained towel on the dressing table. He reached up for it and pulled it down. “Come now,” he said, prying her hands away from the wound, “let me wrap this around your neck, it will stop the blood. You can’t afford to lose too much blood.”
Her eyes grew wild with panic for a second until she understood what he was trying to do. Then she loosened her grip on the wound enough for him to wrap the towel around.
“Keeping as much blood in your body as possible is the key to pulling through this. We see a lot of wounds like this of a Saturday night in Cheapside. You’ll be all right if we can keep the blood in you. I won’t ask you just what happened because you shouldn’t talk now.”
He stood up. “I’ll get help!” He dashed from the room and scrambled down the stairs. “The mam’zelle is wounded,” he yelled. “We need a doctor. Now!”
Bix ran down the short corridor to the stage and grabbed the stage manager, who was standing behind the nearest tormentor staring at the oversized pocket watch in his hand. After a few whispered words and emphatic nodding from Bix, the stage manager gave the signal to bring down the curtain. The duet “Ah! Amore! misterio celeste” had just begun, and it took three firm repetitions of the stage manager’s order for the curtain to start down. Faust and Helen stopped singing, looking bewildered and annoyed. The orchestra dribbled into silence.
The stage manager entered stage front and motioned the audience to quiet. “I apologize for the interruption,” he yelled. “We’ve had a bit of an accident backstage. Nothing to worry about. We’ll resume shortly. Is there a doctor in the house?”
[CHAPTER SEVENTEEN]
CASTLE HOLYRUDD
It is in truth a most contagious game:
HIDING THE SKELETON shall be its name.
—GEOR
GE MEREDITH
IN 1738 THE TWELFTH BARON of Wittle and Palmsy died without an heir, and the ancestral lands, but not the title, went to a Scottish third cousin on his mother’s side. Most of the baron’s holdings were in Scotland, but Castle Holyrudd, a long-abandoned pile of stone, was in Ruddshire, in the north of England, along with some farmland that raised mostly nettles and a few dozen sheep. Cousin Angus wanted nae to do with the Sassenach land, so he drove the sheep north and sold the rest off—all but the castle, which even the English were not daft enough to buy.
A hundred and fifty years later a man who called himself the Earl of Mersy, a title that Debrett’s believed to be extinct, made an offer to buy Castle Holyrudd from Angus’s great-grandson Angus. The younger Angus made a hasty trip south to visit his family’s long-neglected property and see whether the extinct earl was mad or whether he had stumbled upon some overlooked value in the neglected stone walls. He found naught but drafty halls, gray dust, cobwebs, and crumbling stone, but almost decided not to sell the property anyway. The earl must have some use for the castle, and the fact that Angus couldn’t discover what it was he found very irritating. He finally decided to sell when he heard that the earl was looking at another castle in, if anything, worse shape on the Devon coast. If what the earl wanted was to live in a castle, then let it be Castle Holyrudd.
Two years later Albreth Decanare, who called himself the Earl of Mersy, looked around him and was content. He sat in what he was pleased to call his throne room, although at present it held only a sideboard too massive to move, an oversized fireplace with a pair fire irons in the shape of great lumpy dogs, and an ancient four-legged stool, and was as yet devoid of anything resembling a throne. Through the window he could see the workmen hammering at wooden forms and troweling gobs of what he assumed was concrete. He really should learn more of the arcane argot of these sturdy yeomen so that he could chastize and reward them using the proper terms.
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