Holmes shrugged. ‘Romance is your department, Watson. But it hardly matters.’ He glanced about him as if noticing for the first time the mounds of his personal clutter. ‘My friend, I have let things get out of hand here. Will you help me for a couple of hours? Then off to dinner and the Great Borelli’s performance as compensation?’

I hesitated. ‘I will help you, Holmes, this time. But it will all go into the fire.’

‘No! Some of these papers are vital. I need to find—ah, what a mess Madame has made of these!’

‘No promises.’ I bent down to relight the fire, and sighed. It was still too hot in the room for it. But perhaps burning his papers was the reason he had had it blazing in the first place.

As I leaned in with a match, this was confirmed for me. The charred remains of a stack of papers lay at the bottom of the grate. I made out the words at the top of one. It was a treatise on medieval locks. Was he going try opening my little box?

CHAPTER 8

A Close Escape

That evening we sat amidst a varied crowd in the cavernous, drafty stalls at Wilton’s Music Hall, located in Grace’s Alley, Whitechapel. While the place lacked the cachet of a West End theatre, it was a storied venue for variety acts and attracted a wide range of London’s social classes.

We did not know it at the time, but the place would be shuttered within a year and turned into a mission for feeding the poor, but at this moment it was filled with eager theatregoers. Above our heads, with elbows resting on the overhanging balcony surrounding on three sides, was a noisy crowd of working-class men, women and children. One small boy – his mother occupied with her flashy swain seated beside her – was folding tiny pieces of paper and dropping them on the heads of the better-dressed patrons sitting beneath him in the stalls.

I had been only ten years old myself when I first saw a magic show. That one had featured dancing dogs, and I recalled the canines were infinitely more entertaining than the florid, grotesque man who had performed after them, sweating under his battered top hat and manipulating cards on a stained, felt-covered table. But that was long ago.

The Great Borelli promised to entertain at an entirely different level. A spangled red and silver curtain billowed at the back of the stage. In front were arrayed various gleaming contraptions and velvet topped tables.

Seated next to me in the stalls, Holmes drummed his long thin fingers on his knee, as impatient as the young boy above us.