The Soprano's Last Song Read online

“Then we’ll see each other again!”

  I ran off, hoping it was the truth.

  Chapter 7

  DREAMS AND SURPRISES

  I arrived at lunch out of breath and a few minutes late, but my father didn’t even notice. He said hello to me like I was some kind of distant relative, without even asking where I had been or who I had met.

  I tried to start a conversation, but my father gave short answers. He ordered a roast with steamed vegetables on the side and ate in silence.

  When my father was done eating, he placed his napkin on the table and politely asked the waiter to take away his plate. He had barely eaten any of his meat.

  “Listen,” he began, with a long breath. “Your mother has not responded to the telegrams.”

  “Are you worried?” I asked foolishly. Of course he was. Everyone was. The news coming from Paris and the Franco-Prussian War covered the front pages of every newspaper.

  “I’m going to get her,” he said.

  “And are you both going to come back here?” I asked quietly.

  “Of course,” he answered, without looking into my eyes.

  Then he shook his head as if to shake off his worry, and pulled out a red book from the pocket of his jacket. It had a hard cover and a fabric bookmark. He handed it to me with a tiny smile.

  It was a small and elegant tourist guide of the city, with black and white pictures of London’s main attractions. On the page where the bookmark was lodged, Papa had written in small print by the text.

  “These are the things you should see while you’re here,” he explained.

  Only at that moment did he look straight at me, and I could tell by looking in his eyes that he had not slept well. “Will you promise me you’ll behave for Mr. Nelson? The idea of leaving you alone here . . . in a city you don’t know —”

  “Papa,” I interrupted him, reaching my hand across the table to touch his. I felt his hand tense up under my grasp. After all, this serious businessman was not used to people being nice — and he certainly wasn’t used to physical contact. “I’m not alone.”

  “I already explained to Horatio that —”

  I kept my hand on his. “Mr. Nelson and I will be just fine. I mean it. Don’t worry about me.”

  He nodded and looked away from me. Then he took his hand away and hid it under his napkin.

  * * *

  Compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, the guide to London was boring to say the least. I realized it that afternoon, when, while flipping through its pages on my bed, I fell asleep.

  I dreamed. I remember it perfectly. My dream seemed to be based on the few pages I had read on the Tower of London and the people who had been kept as prisoners there. I dreamed of the performance from the previous night. I dreamed about Miss Merridew. She wore a white gown, like an angel, and she was running on a dangerous wooden staircase. In my dream, I was sure that it was the staircase at the Tower of London, even though I had never seen it. I tossed and turned in bed, upset but unable to wake up. In my dream, Miss Merridew arrived at a closed door at the top of the stairs and started to knock, louder and louder.

  Bang.

  Bang!

  BANG!

  The door wouldn’t open. She kept looking behind her like she feared someone was coming after her. Then she saw him. She turned and saw someone who made her scream in fear.

  I woke up. I was the one screaming. I had kicked the bedsheets all over the place and had fallen asleep with my clothes on. What time was it? Three? Four? I rubbed my face in confusion.

  Bang! Bang!

  That noise again, not far away from me. It was then that I realized that someone was knocking on my bedroom door. Without thinking, I ran to open it. And who was standing there but the curious Sherlock Holmes.

  “Sherlock?” I asked, surprised.

  “Were you screaming?” he asked.

  “A dream,” I quickly answered.

  I saw a strange look in my friend’s eyes, as if he had something important to tell me, and I was curious to find out what it was.

  What was he doing here? And how did he find my room? At that point, I had not learned this yet . . . when you are dealing with Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it is pointless to ask questions.

  Suddenly, I realized I was not at all presentable and, by instinct, I tried to brush my fingers through my hair and flatten out my wrinkled skirt.

  But that was all Sherlock allowed me to do.

  “Can I come in?” he asked me quite directly.

  I let him in, glad to rebel against the etiquette my parents had taught me. “What’s happening?” I asked him, leaning my back against the closed door.

  He stopped near the closet and did his signature halfway turn. I knew this move quite well — he used it to observe the details of his surroundings. Then he held out a brand-new copy of the Evening Mail, a London newspaper.

  “You can’t even imagine,” he said. His tone was unusually serious; it immediately caused me to worry. I grabbed the paper from him and read the first page. Sherlock sat on the edge of the bed. As he looked around the room, he spotted the red guide to London.

  “Good publication . . . if you’re looking for all the boring things that you must not see in London,” he said, smiling as he walked over to pick it up off my desk.

  In the meantime, I read every headline in the Evening Mail, looking for something that would catch my attention. News of the Franco-Prussian War took up almost the whole paper, but I knew that was not what Sherlock wanted me to read.

  “I don’t understand . . .” I said, looking up at him.

  Sherlock had opened the London guide and was reading it. Without even looking at the newspaper, he pointed at an article on the bottom left-hand corner of the front page.

  I began to read. Alfred Santi, personal assistant of Giuseppe Barzini, the famous composer, had been found murdered in his hotel room.

  I looked at Sherlock, my mouth open in shock. “When?”

  “Last night. At the Hotel Albion.”

  I remembered the two young men from the previous night at the theater — Barzini’s two young assistants that I had seen bump heads as they both bowed. One of them was Alfred Santi. A victim of a front-page murder!

  I felt shivers move down my spine. But while it was a significant piece of news, it did not explain the worried look on Sherlock’s face.

  Sherlock considered murders exciting problems to solve. There had to be more to the story.

  “And how did it happen?” I asked, suspicious.

  Sherlock quickly flipped through the pages of the guide. “Finish reading the article,” he told me.

  According to the journalist, they caught the murderer. And it was a French acrobat, whose name was . . . Théophraste Lupin!

  I stopped breathing. I closed my eyes, swallowed, and then opened my eyes again. All the letters were still there in front of me, lined up to make that name.

  Théophraste Lupin.

  My friend Arsène’s father.

  Chapter 8

  A DARK TRUTH

  All it took was a look between us, and without a word, Sherlock and I were running toward the door.

  “Lupin’s father can’t be a murderer!” I said as we hurried down the red velvet stairs.

  “I know,” he replied. “Mr. Lupin is not a saint, but he is most definitely not a murderer.”

  Sherlock said those words like they were fact. That tone usually irritated me, but on this occasion, it made me feel reassured.

  As soon as we got to the lobby, I stopped. I couldn’t leave like that, without telling my father or Mr. Nelson anything. My father, I thought. Is he already headed back to Paris, or is he leaving tomorrow morning?

  Sherlock seemed to understand the reason for my hesitation and pointed at a waiter-filled hallway, which led to the back of the hotel
. “Let’s go that way,” he suggested, grabbing my hand. “So no one will see us.”

  I bit my lip. For a second, I stood my ground. But then I pictured the newspaper article featuring Théophraste Lupin’s name. If I was in shock from that news, I could only imagine how our good friend must have felt. And with that, I dropped all my hesitation. Lupin needed us — nothing else mattered.

  “Let’s go!” I said, leading Sherlock through the back hallway and out onto the street.

  “I guess you haven’t become too posh after all!” he said.

  When we got to the main road, a voice made me jump.

  “Miss Adler!”

  It was Mr. Nelson. He was leaning against the Claridge’s entrance, chatting with the concierge, when he spotted me.

  Sherlock immediately tried to disappear against a brick wall alongside the road. Mr. Nelson, with big steps that made his coattails snap, got to me in a matter of seconds.

  “What are you doing here, Miss Adler?” asked Mr. Nelson, staring deep into my eyes. “Were you, perhaps, leaving the hotel without telling me?”

  I tried not to look at him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Nelson, so sorry, but . . .” I waved my hands around as I tried to justify my behavior.

  “Let me remind you that in your father’s absence, I’m the person responsible for you. And I don’t think I need to remind you that running around in alleys like a thief is not an activity fit for a young lady,” the butler continued, his tone serious.

  “I wanted to tell you, believe me. It’s just that — it’s not my fault!” I objected, my mind completely muddled.

  “If it’s not your fault,” replied Mr. Nelson, “whose fault is it?”

  He looked behind me, inspecting the street. I tried to block his view of Sherlock, but I knew I could only delay the inevitable for so long. I decided to tell the truth.

  “It’s Lupin,” I said. “He’s in trouble, and he needs his friends!”

  Mr. Nelson pretended that he did not remember who Lupin was, but a sparkle in his eyes betrayed him.

  “Do you have anything to add?” asked Mr. Nelson, peeking into the alley and walking over to stop in front of Sherlock.

  My friend looked at me and shrugged. “I can tell you that I’m sorry,” he said. “Or that it was some type of game, but . . .”

  “But?” Mr. Nelson invited him to continue.

  “What I really want to say is that I would never put Miss Irene in danger.”

  “Wandering around London alone isn’t risk enough for you, young man?”

  “Even if it’s hard to believe, and I can understand why it might be, Mr. Nelson, London is a civilized city. So no — I don’t consider wandering around here more dangerous than anywhere else in this world.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Mr. Holmes,” said Mr. Nelson. So he remembers my good friend’s name! I thought. It was details like these that convinced me that Mr. Horatio Nelson knew me ten thousand times better than my parents.

  “I’m not playing games,” said Sherlock. “Irene and I just got bad news. It seems that our friend Arsène Lupin’s father is in trouble. Big trouble.”

  “I swear that’s true, Mr. Nelson!” I hurried to confirm. “We have to get to Lupin as soon as possible. That’s why we tried to run away.”

  “And I swear,” added Sherlock, “that I will take care of Miss Irene and make sure nothing bad happens to her.”

  “Do you swear, Mr. Holmes? That seems like a big promise to make for a young man such as yourself,” Mr. Nelson said.

  “I have nothing else to say to convince you, Mr. Nelson,” Sherlock answered, looking straight into his eyes. “But what we just told you — it’s the plain truth.”

  After standing still for a while, Mr. Nelson simply stretched one hand out in front of him to shake my friend’s.

  “All right, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I’m crazy, but I trust your word. I hope I won’t regret it,” he said.

  Sherlock shook his hand, his face glowing. “You’re not crazy, Mr. Nelson, but you’re a man that holds friendship in quite high regard,” he said.

  Mr. Nelson’s eyes widened, and he tilted his head back a little. His reaction seemed to reveal that he was impressed by my friend’s intelligence. Sherlock had grasped the essential point: friendship. Mr. Nelson looked as if he was wondering how that strange young man could have read his heart in that moment.

  Mr. Nelson shook his head as if trying to chase his emotion away and, smiling, stepped forward to pat Sherlock on his back. I think I also may have seen him whisper something in Sherlock’s ear.

  “What did he tell you?” I asked my friend as we walked toward the Old Bell Hotel, where Lupin was staying.

  “Nothing,” Sherlock lied.

  * * *

  After walking for half an hour, we arrived at the hotel. We immediately asked the concierge to tell the Lupins we were there. After consulting some notes, he told us that the Lupin family was not in their room. The man wore a pompous double-breasted crimson jacket and talked to us like he was annoyed. That, combined with his heavy Welsh accent, seemed to bother Sherlock.

  We looked around, not sure what to do. Finally, Sherlock went and sat on a couch in the lobby, where another person was waiting.

  I sat down beside Sherlock and tried to ask him a few questions. He kept giving me vague answers.

  It wasn’t until later I learned the reason he wouldn’t answer me properly. “I think that man in the lobby is a journalist!” he explained later, whispering in my ear. “God forbid that the press takes advantage of our research!”

  After almost an hour of waiting, a young boy came to replace the concierge on duty. The person who was waiting with us began to pace around the lobby. Finally, the man went to the desk to ask the new concierge if the Lupin family was still staying at the hotel. He received an unclear answer — it seemed that the boy had no idea how to read the guest list.

  The man cursed, paced in front of us a couple of times, and introduced himself. He was a journalist for the Globe, a famous London newspaper, and he was there for the same reason as us. The Lupin affair.

  “If I’m not mistaken, you kids asked about them, too,” he said, touching his mustache. He was a ruddy type — his cheeks were tormented by what looked like a rash left over from scarlet fever, and his stomach indicated he was a heavy drinker. “Do you know them?”

  “Not at all,” Sherlock answered before I could open my mouth. Then he gave me a look and pulled my guide to London out of his pocket.

  “My sister and I are waiting for our parents to go sightsee,” Sherlock went on. “We asked about the Lupin family just as a bet between us. We read about them in the paper, and my sister wouldn’t believe they were staying at our hotel. Now she owes me a penny!” he concluded with a grin.

  I nodded with a dumb laugh, pretending Sherlock was telling the truth. All of a sudden, a cold wind touched my ankles and made me shiver.

  The man kept looking at us, as if to determine whether we were being honest. Suddenly, Sherlock stood up from the couch and grabbed my hand, as if he was eager to get moving. “Mama and Papa are taking too long! Always late! Let’s go wait for them in our room, where we’ll be more comfortable.”

  I followed him down the hallway in complete silence. But as soon as we got to the stairs and I knew we were alone, I began to ask him something. “Where did —” I started.

  “Shh . . .” Sherlock interrupted, pointing a finger at me to make me shut up. But because of the absolute darkness in which we were standing, he miscalculated, and his finger landed on my lips.

  We both stopped, as if a magic spell suddenly turned us to stone. That sudden physical contact caught us both by surprise. Just for a moment, my eyes met Sherlock’s in dim light.

  “Come on, let’s go,” said Sherlock, like he wanted to wake both of us up from that strange dream.

>   In just a few steps, we reached a crooked door that opened to the back of the hotel, and we felt the afternoon breeze coming in. We heard a few steps on the stairs.

  “I think it’s Lupin,” said Sherlock. “I assumed, from the cold breeze in the lobby, that he, or someone else wishing to avoid the journalist, had decided to go in the back entrance.”

  I nodded. “Now — what room do you think he’s in?”

  “Seventy-seven, I’d say,” Sherlock Holmes said very seriously. “Seventy-seven is the room on the top floor, so it’s likely to be accessible to the roof — the perfect spot for an acrobat like Théophraste. I imagine that Lupin left in a hurry, as soon as he heard that his father got arrested, but I’ll bet he’s back there by now.”

  I could tell from the abrupt way he spoke that my good friend was just as embarrassed as I was about what had happened a few minutes earlier. We quickly and silently made our way to room 77.

  “It’s us,” I said, as we arrived at the door. “Lupin? Are you there?”

  I heard a couple of steps. Then the door opened, and Arsène Lupin appeared in front of me.

  “Irene!” he exclaimed.

  I barely recognized him. The handsome, tanned young man I had met in Saint-Malo that summer was now pale and skinny. He looked so fragile.

  He welcomed me with a tiny smile. He hugged me, and the firmness of that embrace made me feel that what we had read in the paper was true.

  He hugged Sherlock as well, but not the same way he hugged me. Then he invited us into the room that, like Sherlock had guessed, was just below the roof. I could hear pigeons landing on the gutter.

  There was plenty of light coming in from two rounded dormer windows, one of them overlooking the city and the other one overlooking a street that circled the hotel.

  We didn’t waste much time chatting and catching up, even though Lupin tried to serve us tea, which Sherlock and I both refused. We were there to hear what had happened to Théophraste.

  “It must be a mistake,” Lupin started. “A big mistake. Nothing more — I’m positive! Don’t trust what the paper says.”