Opera?
Opera?
That thing where performers stood at fake balconies for hours upon hours and sang about how lovesick they were, and how they couldn’t live without the one man/woman/weird creature they were destined for? The thing that people attended as a pastime, with absolutely no thought of earning money in the process?
And Mr Rikkard Ambrose was supposed to be here?
Listening to an aria about…
‘Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro,
Al mio duolo, a’miei sospir!’
About amor.
I didn’t know much Italian, but even I knew that word. Rikkard Ambrose was here, listening to this?
No.
No, that couldn’t be possible. It had to be a mistake. Maybe I’d entered the wrong building. Maybe I had…maybe…maybe…
Slowly, inevitably, as if by magic, my gaze was drawn upward to one of the boxes. There, among the shadows, in one of the best seats in the house sat a tall, dark, ramrod-straight figure, his hands curled around the armrests of his seat hard enough to dent metal. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see those hands of his. The left little finger was twitching.
No.
No.
No, no, no. It couldn’t be, could it?
The sound of hurried footsteps from behind tore me from my daze. I had just enough presence of mind left to duck behind a decorative curtain before the two doormen burst into the room, looking around wildly. The audience didn’t notice them. They were too focused on the stage. And I…
I was still too damn focused on Mr Ambrose. Mr Rikkard Ambrose. At the opera. Listening to people singing in Italian about lo—
I couldn’t even think it.
The doormen whispered to each other in frantic French. Their searching gazes swept over the crowd, but couldn’t find any sign of the lunatic with the gun that was yours truly. I could only follow the gist of the hurried conversation in French, but after a while, they seemed to agree that whatever they had seen, it probably wasn’t a gun after all, and if it was, and some rich bugger got shot tonight, it would be better for both of them not to have seen a gun, and not to have let an assassin run past them without raising so much as a finger. With that agreement reached, they nodded to each other and returned to their posts, once more staunch guardians of the opera.
I, meanwhile, stood behind the curtain and waited. Waited as the people on the stage sang about eternal love and devotion, and as Mr Rikkard Ambrose’s little finger twitched ever faster. Finally, the opera drew to an end. The curtain closed, opened once more for a final round of applause, then closed for the last time last time.
So did the curtain up in the box of a certain someone.
Without even thinking about it, I launched myself from my hiding place and sprinted towards the nearest staircase. Around me, thunderous applause roared. I didn’t give a damn. Quick as a flash, I dashed up the stairs, down the corridor, around a corner, and…
There!
Two mint-condition ten-year-old coat tails vanishing around another corner. I ran faster. By the time I rounded the bend, no one and nothing was to be seen—except a closed door, with a plaque on it saying
ACCES INTERDIT!
Bureau du propriétaire
Hmm…
What could ‘acces interdit’ possibly mean?
Probably ‘please come in right away’. And of course, kind lady that I was, I would oblige. Marching forward, I pushed open the door.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. When they had, I saw before me a sparsely lit – and sparsely furnished – room, filled with stacks of papers. Lists, accounts, numerous books of music and song…the selection was varied and vast. A lone candle flickered on a rickety table. And in the light of the candle I could just make out a tall, dark form silhouetted against the window.