Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Globe Murders Read online

  “Was there anything else that I missed while the ruffian was molesting me?” I asked somewhat huffily. “Only what he said.” Holmes by now was busy shaking the pages of the paper. “What he said?” “Yes, to add verisimilitude to his performance he attempted to emulate the cry of the paper seller. If I’m not mistaken, he shouted something like—‘British Position in South Africa Worsens. Read All About It!’”

  “And that was all?” “Yes, but more than enough to tell us that the fellow hails from North America—either Canada or, more probably, one of the north-western states. He turned ‘British’ into something closer to ‘Briddish’. It was faint but it was there. And there was no mistaking his pronunciation of ‘aboot’ for ‘about’. Once more, the American Connection. One of these days I must write a short paper on the subject. I may call it ‘Convicted from His Own Mouth.’ Perhaps you will remind me … ah, I thought so …”

  A small fold of paper had fallen to the floor of the cab. Holmes immediately picked it up and ignoring his usual ritual, began to study its contents. “Let’s see what our friend has to say to us …”

  Looking over his shoulder, I read it with him. In every way it was identical to the other two notes, except that this one had two quotations. The first one on the cover of the fold read:

  WE THREE, TO HEAR IT AND END IT BETWEEN THEM

  The Merry Wives of Windsor

  “We are now, I’m afraid, firmly cast as characters in his plot, Watson, whether we like it or not. I must admit, my regard for him is beginning to increase. He might easily have settled for ‘When shall we three meet again …?’ but, fortunately, our friend does not appear to lack a sense of humour as well as a textual knowledge. What else does he have to say?”

  On the inside of the note was a second message …

  MORE THAN WORDS CAN WITNESS, OR YOUR THOUGHTS CAN GUESS.

  The Taming of the Shrew

  “A challenge, Watson, I do believe—a challenge.”

  And then that infuriating man tipped his hat over his eyes and proceeded to sleep for the rest of the journey with a smile on his lips.

  Chapter Three

  I must admit that the report in the morning paper had not prepared me for the sight of the new Globe. Frustrated in his determination to build on the site of the original Globe by the prior claims of a brewery, a terrace of Georgian houses and—most permanently—by the traffic flowing over the major thoroughfare of Southwark Bridge Road, Florenz Adler had once again thought on a large scale. If he couldn’t have the original site, he’d have a better site. By the simple expedient of buying a row of busy warehouses and tearing them down, Adler’s Globe was actually on the river enjoying a nodding acquaintance with St. Paul’s on the opposite bank.

  What he had built was spectacular. Rising three stories high, part timbered and part plastered in gleaming white, it was capped with a roof of thatch, the first permitted in London (the writer informed me) since the Great Fire of 1666.

  I became aware of Holmes saying something. “But pardon, gentles all, the flat unraisèd spirit that hath dar’d on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Holmes,” I said, “I wouldn’t call it unworthy at all. Looks absolutely first rate to me.”

  “Nor would I,” Holmes smiled, “It was Will Shakespeare who did and he was, I suspect, being ironic. Can you imagine what it must have been like in his day to be standing outside the Globe, waiting to enter a world of magic? Ladies and gentlemen, scholars and scribes, cutpurses and courtesans, every level of society mingling here ‘to hear a play’, to feel a part of the performance. Watson, I fear that in our more ordered times we may well have sacrificed something of inestimable value. Let us see what awaits us inside the ‘wooden O’…”

  Picking our way through the builders and the debris that always appears to be infinitely more than the largest structure can possibly generate, we walked through a passage way and suddenly found ourselves once more in the open air with the warm September sun causing us to shield our eyes.

  Rising around us were three covered wooden galleries, enclosing us like a hand. Jutting halfway into the unfinished yard was the stage, almost at head height with its brightly painted roof supported by two enormous marble columns, which I later learned were, in fact, painted wood. Despite the noise of sawing and hammering, it took the breath away with its grandeur.

  This time it was a woman’s voice that brought me back to reality. It was as if she were answering my friend’s earlier soliloquy or perhaps continuing it …

  “‘Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts … for ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings’… I couldn’t help overhearing you quoting from Henry V as you came into the theatre, sir. It’s just about my favourite speech in the whole of Shakespeare. But I’m being very rude. May I introduce myself? My name is Carlotta Adler. My husband, Flo, is responsible for all this, I’m afraid.” And here she opened her arms wide in an unashamedly theatrical gesture to take in the whole of the Globe.

  It was something in that gesture that triggered a long forgotten memory. Carlotta …? Carlotta …? “Carlotta Montevecchio!” I exclaimed for, despite Holmes’s teasing, he knew perfectly well that I enjoyed the opera as well as he did. In point of fact, we’d spent many an evening at Covent Garden or the Albert Hall and during those empty years after the Reichenbach episode the image of my friend that recurred most frequently was of his rapt expression as the music enveloped us and of his long, elegant fingers keeping time to it.

  “Quite right, Watson,” Holmes interrupted my reverie. “Carlotta Montevecchio, known to her considerable public as ‘The Neapolitan Nightingale’. If I’m not mistaken, we saw her together on her farewell tour in—1882, was it not—shortly before my enforced absence? After which the world of opera lost a major jewel from its crown.” He took her hand and, to my surprise, bent and kissed it. “Now, Miss Montevecchio—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Adler—permit me to introduce myself. I am Sherlock Holmes and this is my friend and associate, Dr James Watson.”

  I shook the lady’s hand as firmly as a growing shyness would permit. Holmes is fond of deferring to me as a ladies’ man and I suppose over the years I have had my moments but here was I face to face with a legend, one of the most glamorous divas of modern times. And although the lady must be well into her fifties, the fineness of her features and the erectness of her carriage were unimpaired. Carlotta Montevecchio in the flesh remained the goddess she had always been on the stage. Then the goddess spoke.

  “Mr Holmes,” she said, “the honour is all mine. Who does not know of your successes? I had better own up to my guilty secrets before you discover them for yourself.” One look at her heightened colour and the sparkle in her eyes (which I now saw to be a bewitching shade of violet) told me that Holmes had awakened a sense of herself that had apparently been dormant. She was flirting with him!

  “I confess to the crime of not being The Neapolitan Nightingale! I further confess to having been no nearer to Naples, Italy than Naples, Florida, where I was born. I suppose it was that sliver of fact that allowed my creative spouse to create his edifice of publicity, until I almost believed it myself. I hope you won’t think less of me—or you, Dr Watson …” (I am persuaded that the lady knew simple hero worship when she saw it.) And she gave a little mock bow. “No matter where its owner hails from, madam,” I said, returning the bow, “the voice came from the gods!”

  At which point another voice joined our conversation. “Ah, my darling wife, collecting new admirers,” it said. “Who was it who said you can remove the diva from the applause but never the applause from the diva? Mark Twain, I suspect.”

  “Quite possibly. It doesn’t quite have the edge of our own Mr Wilde. But, unfortunately, at the moment neither does he.” (Wilde at the time was languishing in Reading gaol.) “Florenz Adler, I presume?” And Holmes moved towards the stage, where the impresario stood in casually mannered pose, as if waiting for the inevitable p
hotographer to appear with tripod and cloth.

  He was an impressive figure, though it was not immediately obvious why this was so. He stood at no more than medium height and could not be described as conventionally handsome. Nonetheless, there was a suppressed power about him. The man was a life force and every moment of that life was etched on his face. It had the sculpted look that belonged on a marble bust or Roman coin. The expensive coat with its astrakhan collar draped casually over his shoulders was merely a theatrical prop which, frankly, the man didn’t need. But my instinctive observation, which had gained something over the years from Holmes’s tutoring, told me he thought he did. Florenz Adler would be a difficult and contrary man to deal with and he had timed his entrance to perfection, like the former actor we knew him to be.

  His wife’s reply surprised me. “No, my dear, I leave that to you.” Was that an edge to her voice that I detected? “And now, gentlemen, if you will excuse me, I must go and supervise the costumes for tomorrow’s rehearsals. As a performer the lesson one must learn is that, even though the curtain may have fallen, there is another world behind the scenes.”

  With that she was gone, retreating along the corridor that we had traversed earlier. Adler’s eyes followed her but his expression was impossible to read. Then he turned on his considerable charm and beamed it in our direction. “Well, gentlemen, as you must know, your fame has long since o’erleaped the pond that divides us. So what brings the famous Sherlock Holmes and his equally famous colleague, Dr James H. Watson to grace my unworthy scaffold?”

  Holmes’s reaction to the question surprised me. He brushed aside the curtain of words and fixed Adler with the piercing gaze I knew so well. “Mr Adler, neither of us believes your re-creation of Shakespeare’s theatre to be anything but a magnificent feat of imagination … My congratulations to you and all those who have realised a dream so many have found to be impossible. That, however, is not why Dr Watson and I are here …”

  “Mr Holmes,” Adler interrupted, “forgive my earlier brusqueness. I have perhaps spent too much time among people whose instincts are to dramatise every emotion and to expect the same in return. My wife is always telling me that I cannot distinguish between my real feelings and what may create an immediate effect on others. I fear she may well be right but …” and here he laughed but without real amusement—“it will be a long time before I admit that to her! That little admission aside, let me say most sincerely that, whatever business brings you here, you are both most welcome.”

  “You might say that Mr Shakespeare brings us all here in one way or another but in our case the reason is less clear than your own. Perhaps you can help clarify it.” And with that he produced the note we had been shown in Baker Street and handed it to Adler. Adler studied it carefully, turning it this way and that, his expression growing increasingly puzzled. If the man was acting, his performance, without benefit of rehearsal, was in a class of its own.

  “I would surely like to, Mr Holmes,” he said at length, betraying the first trace of an American accent I had so far noticed, “but you’ve got me baffled. What is this and where did it come from?”

  “I was informed that it was delivered to you this very morning. My informant is your daughter, Flora. Do we have our facts wrong?”

  “Just about as wrong as they get, Mr Holmes. I’ve never laid eyes on this piece of paper in my life but that’s not the half of the problem we have here. The real problem is—I have no daughter. No Flora, no Fauna, no anything. I’m afraid Carlotta and I left all that too late, what with her career and one thing and another. I sometimes wish I’d had three daughters, then we could all have appeared together. I think I’d have made a pretty fair Lear. There are those who claim I have—without even setting foot on the stage! But tell me, Mr Holmes—what in Hades is going on here?”

  If Holmes was surprised, he hid it behind his usual impassive demeanour. “In that case, Mr Adler, perhaps you’ll be good enough to show me the other note you did receive this morning?”

  “But Holmes,” I interjected, “don’t you remember he destroyed the earlier notes?” Then I remembered the source of that information and busied myself clearing a small cough that seemed to be developing.

  Adler looked at my friend as I imagined he must have looked at many a performer auditioning for him. “What makes you think there is another note?”

  “When a man’s hand instinctively strays to his inside pocket before he can control his reactions, it is reasonable to assume that he carries something to which he attaches a degree of importance. When that reaction is triggered by the sight of an identical communication, the inference is virtually complete. May I see it, please? You thought it important enough not to destroy it but it may be much more significant—and yes, perhaps even dangerous—than you possibly imagine.”

  Adler hesitated only momentarily before putting his hand inside his jacket and removing another scrap of paper that looked to my eye well read. So the brash impresario was not as unconcerned as he might like us to believe.

  “I see your reputation is well earned, Mr Holmes, and I must admit I would welcome having some light shed on the matter. Abuse I can handle and threats come cheap in my business. I guess there are a lot of people out there who would welcome my come-uppance, as they would call it. No, I’m pretty used to all that and I don’t think I’m an easy man to scare but there’s something real weird about this whole business. Somebody pretty smart is going to a lot of trouble. Or maybe it’s because I’m superstitious enough not to take anything the Bard says lightly.” He jumped down lightly from the stage and handed Holmes the note.

  Once again there were two separate quotations. The first read:

  LIKE ONE THAT DRAWS THE MODEL OF A HOUSE BEYOND HIS POWER TO BUILD IT

  Henry IV (Pt.2)

  While beneath it, as if in answer …

  NOR BUILD THEIR EVILS ON THE GRAVES OF GREAT MEN.

  Henry VIII

  Holmes looked up from his perusal of the paper. “Whoever our friend is, he is working overtime on his Concordance. It has often been said that Shakespeare has an appropriate line for every occasion and now we are receiving proof of it.”

  If he had ever lost his composure, Florenz Adler now had it firmly back under control. Indicating that Holmes might keep the note, he said: “The thing that baffles me, Mr Holmes, is why now? I could understand this better if it had happened when I was first talking about doing this but the darned thing is almost finished, as you can see.” He swept his arm around his head to indicate the structure that surrounded us. Not for the first time since we had entered did I have the sense that we were all of us somehow players on its stage and that this is where the final act of this drama—whatever it turned out to be—would be played out.

  “Indeed,” Holmes replied, “but the human mind works in complex ways. The dream to rebuild this particular playhouse, to recreate the cradle of theatre as we have come to know it, is one that has burned in many of them. For one reason or another none of those schemes came to pass. There are those who believe the Globe is not destined to be rebuilt. Perhaps our quoting friend is one of them. However, I believe it to be more likely that he has some reason to wish to frustrate your personal attempt and, if he cannot achieve that, to extract some form of revenge.”

  “So you think I really am in danger?”

  “Perhaps. Were this confined to you alone, I might be inclined to dismiss it as the affectation of some jealous competitor but we have reason to believe that our curious correspondent has now cast his net wider to include certain others that we cannot afford to ignore. And last but not least, he has thrown down the gauntlet to Dr Watson and myself and I would be less than honest if I were not to admit that that aspect of the case intrigues me greatly. And since I know you have an appointment at Court, so to speak, a very few days from now, it behooves us to draw the threads together with all dispatch.”

  Adler looked at Holmes soberly for a moment: “I put myself in your hands, Mr Holmes. Betwe
en now and opening night—or rather, afternoon—I’ll take your advice implicitly. Just let’s try and keep things to ourselves. OK? Actors in rehearsal can get pretty distracted. There’s a lot at stake here for everyone—not least ‘the bubble reputation’.”

  Hearing a sudden increase of noise behind him from the stage above, Adler turned his head. “Ah, right on cue. ‘The players are come hither’. Gentlemen, join me on the stage and let me introduce you …”

  As he led us round to where some temporary steps allowed us to climb up on to the stage without undue acrobatics, Adler pointed out some of the people who had been drifting onto it one or two at a time during the latter part of our subdued conversation.

  “As I’m sure you know, the Globe was used mainly as a summer theatre. Your famous English weather saw to that even then. And while the Elizabethans may have ignored a drop of rain—you’ll have noticed the wooden ‘O’ is somewhat open to the elements—I rather doubt that your fellow citizens would welcome a drenching today … Next season we shall be open in earnest from May but this year, after Her Majesty has done the honours, we shall content ourselves with a short ‘Prologue Season’ to get our players used to the space in which they must strut and fret.”

  “And on which one of the Bard’s great works will you raise your curtain?” I asked, then quickly added—“Not that you have a curtain to raise, of course.”

  “Not on any one, doctor,” Adler answered. “We thought the Queen should be allowed to dine from a menu of Shakespeare’s best. Consequently, we shall perform a series of scenes from different plays. That way we can not only exploit this unique stage, but also what we hope will be the equally unique talents of the actors we have assembled.”