CHAPTER 52: UNDER AN UNLUCKY STAR
Sherlock stares at Giulia, incapable of reacting. She keeps her eyes fixed on him and swallows hard as chills run up and down her spine. The recent feeling of being constantly spied on turned out to be a haunting reality.
Sherlock exhales loudly to regain his cold determination and types furiously on his phone.
"There's no need to spam John. I'm sure he got your texts and is looking for a way out of his date. No wonder he is still single, with you as his nagging best friend." She rolls up her eyes, trying to lighten the mood.
"He is already on his way to meet us." He checks his watch and stifles a smirk. "It shouldn't take him more than a couple of minutes to come here from the restaurant. I am texting Mycroft now."
She furrows a brow. "I understand Moriarty is probably a matter of national security, but don't you think that if you tipped off the MI6 about our tickets to the National Theatre, Moriarty would vanish instantly?"
"I couldn't care less about national security or the little show that Jim has prepared for us. Your identity and safety have been compromised: that is worthy of Mycroft's time and attention," he states, clumsily trying to dissimulate the subtext that even with a madman on the loose, she remains his number one priority.
She takes a deep breath, grasping the disturbing implications of that situation, then strives to think straight.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Why would Moriarty even be interested in me, for starters?"
Because you could be used as leverage against me, Sherlock mentally replies, realising for the first time the actual risks of his sentimental involvement. He clears his throat to provide a more neutral reply.
"Blackmailing reasons. Can you imagine what would happen if he notified the Mafia family that they failed to kill you and you are alive and well in London? They would swoop down on you like hawks."
She stares at him and gulps down nervously, as the blood turns cold in her veins. By knowing her real identity, Moriarty possesses an atomic bomb against her life.
At that moment, a cab pulls over next to them, and John jumps out of the car with confusion and bewilderment painted all over his face.
"What is going on here? What is the emergency? Are you alright?" He rushes his questions as his eyes travel over the two figures standing in front of him, finding no trace of life-threatening wounds.
"In great shape, indeed. I've just solved the tenor's case and sent five people to jail," Sherlock gloats and signals the cabbie to wait.
John stares at them, stunned. He could ask a thousand questions at this moment, but the only thing he says is, "I didn't get the memo about dressing up. You'd better not make it a habit to show up to crime scenes dressed so ridiculously fancy, or I'll stop hanging out with you both." His comment eases the tension for a second, pulling a smile from both of them. Then he narrows his eyes at his friends, suspicious.
"Seriously though. Why are you looking so smart tonight?"
Sherlock clears his throat and steps closer, lowering his tone.
"It turns out we are sporting the perfect outfit for an exceptional theatrical performance of Iphigenia at the National Theatre. Moriarty has surfaced back again and has invited us. Nice of him, isn't it?" He shoots him an ironic smile, handing him the ticket with his initials.
John gapes as Sherlock pushes him aside to get into the waiting taxi.
"Are you out of your mind? He clearly set a trap for us, and you intend on diving in headfirst?" John yells, frustrated.
Sherlock doesn't even blink but simply stares at him and replies plainly, "Do you want to catch him or not?"
John grunts and hops into the car after Giulia, sliding into the seat next to her. His eyes linger on her ruby gown before he raises his gaze to her flushed face and cocks a brow.
"Lovely dress, but a bit impractical to chase after a criminal mastermind, don't you think?"
He doesn't need to say more because she can read his unexpressed question in his eyes: If I ask you why you two decked out, are you going to tell me the truth, or will you skirt the issue like Sherlock?
She cracks an embarrassed smile at him and resorts to her usual irony to bail herself out.
"We had a previous commitment at a museum gala, but couldn't stand the idea of leaving you out."
"Right. I guess you really missed me, huh? You couldn't even let me finish my date."
"How could you get here on such short notice, by the way?" She asks him.
"Honestly, I was quite surprised when Sherlock texted me saying you were just around the corner from the restaurant where I..." he trails off and whips his head towards his friend. "Cheeky bastard. You were the one who suggested that quaint place when I asked you about good restaurants in the city. That was intentional, wasn't it? You knew that the theatre was only two blocks away."
Holmes shakes his head, and his curls bounce on his forehead.
"To be fair, I didn't know I would solve the case tonight, but I assumed that your proximity to the theatre-crime-scene would come in handy. Truth be told, I had originally planned on asking you to perform a little breaking and entering to look for additional clues at the end of your dull date."
"It wasn't dull. It was going pretty well, actually," he rebuts, peeved. He had imagined a slightly different ending to that night. Being summoned to chase after a criminal mastermind wasn't part of his fantasy.
"Oh John, you live on such low expectations," Sherlock sighs before hissing at the empty screen of his phone, "Why isn't Mycroft replying to my texts? Can't he pause his boring black-and-white movies for one second?"
"Shocking that some people don't rush to your side whenever you whine," Watson mocks him.
"This is unusual for him, though. Giulia might be in danger, and he isn't reacting in the slightest. He must be watching Casablanca," Sherlock groans, pestered.
"Not to belittle Giulia's safety, but when Moriarty is involved, the whole world is in the crosshairs," John points out. "Speaking of evil incarnate, did you figure out what his connection to the homicide was? After all, we have known about Jim's involvement ever since you received the second package at the convent, and we could easily assume he masterminded the whole murder plot by turning it into a whodunnit-style novel. But that can't be enough. The nun was his starting gig, and that's why he chose a rather peculiar victim. But you said it yourself: he was upgrading his game, meaning that he must have had a good reason for wanting the tenor dead, besides exploiting the grievances against him. Am I wrong?" He inquires, nonchalantly resting his shoulders against the backseat. The situation is anything but relaxing, yet John is so accustomed to that dangerous lifestyle that he thrives in it.
Sherlock arches a brow at his question. John couldn't care less about the overall solution of the case; he is done acting all impressed at his extraordinary deductions. By now, any proof of his exceptional intellect is business as usual in their world. Yet he has become much more perceptive and finally focuses on the relevant details.
"Excellent question, John," he congratulates him. "You're right. Jim had a personal connection to the victim. Vincent Storing was one of his employees," he hesitates on the last word, smirking.
"A burglar or an assassin for hire?" Giulia asks, tilting her head with curiosity. He didn't mention any of that in the theatre.
"Weapons smuggler."
John and Giulia exchange a puzzled look, and Sherlock quickly specifies, "We all know that Mr Storing had some skeletons in the closet, but the most suspicious thing about him was that in the last two years, he had travelled to Africa and the Middle East every weekend. His wife called his wild tours pleasure weekends while his mistress wasn't appreciative of his choice to travel exclusively with his private orchestra; she thought he was performing for sheiks or warlords to scare up some money to repay his debts. She wasn't wrong there—he did travel to make some money. Though his business was far more lucrative than singing some arias. It is easy to imagine that the instrument cases that were invariably travelling with him could fit rifles and ammunition. It was the perfect front: a bunch of instrument cases travelling with a famous lyric singer wouldn't attire too much attention and inspection at the airport security checks. That's how Vincent Storing used to smuggle weapons to foreign countries for Moriarty's network."
"Which also explains why all the instrument cases disappeared from his dressing room the moment he died. Moriarty must have asked some of his henchmen to dispose of them to eliminate any connection to himself or his business," Giulia concludes, and Sherlock nods.
"But if the tenor was working for him, why did he kill him off?" She asks.
He looks out the window into the misty night. "Mr Storing was planning on eloping to America, and Jim doesn't like to be abandoned. Let's say that Moriarty isn't exactly the kind of guy to whom you can say no or bye."
"But apparently you can tell him, Sure, why don't we go to the theatre together? It'll be mortally fun," John taunts Sherlock's reckless attitude, then becomes serious again. "What is your plan for that?"
"I don't have one yet. I need to assess the situation first."
"And when exactly are you going to do it? While standing in front of a crowded theatre?" John blurts out.
At that moment, the cab pulls over in the deserted parking lot of the National Theatre. They get out of the car with confusion in their eyes.
Sherlock turns to his friend, cocking a brow. "You were saying?"
Giulia turns her gaze around, disappointed. She doesn't know what she was expecting from a criminal mastermind, but she was expecting something. That place, on the contrary, appears ominously empty.
"I feel a bit scammed about the tickets," she jokes around and takes hers out of her pocket to check it. "This play is supposed to be on every night, starting from yesterday, the 13th of February."
"It's obviously a sham," John says, spinning around in the desolate parking lot. "So, what do we do now? Wait for Moriarty to send a sign?"
Sherlock is studying his ticket and replies distractedly, "No, he has accurately planned it. He must have already given us directions."
He squints his eyes at the printed information and reads out loud the subheading of the fictitious play, "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." He wrinkles his nose, perplexed. "That's odd. Why insert a Latin quote on a performance about a Greek tragedy, as is the case for Iphigenia?"
John shrugs. "Maybe Jim wanted to show off his massive knowledge. I am not well versed in Latin, but I presume the word religio has something to do with religion, right?"
"Not exactly," Giulia intervenes, and the two men turn around to look at her with an intrigued expression. "As much as the Latin religio constitutes the origin of the English word religion, in the specific case of that sentence, translating it with religion would be an improper use. That is a quote from the philosophical poem De Rerum Natura by the Roman poet Lucrezio."
"Improper translation? Are you saying you know the actual meaning of this sentence?" Sherlock goggles at her, as she timidly nods.
"I do, but please don't assume I can translate from Latin on the spot. I simply studied those verses with my private teachers. The quote can be translated as: to such a degree of evil could superstition induce. The word superstition is more suitable, considering that in that passage of the poem, Lucrezio is presenting the myth of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and he certainly didn't hide his disapproval. He thought that the sacrifice of the poor virgin was useless and merely dictated by unfounded superstitions and irrational devotion to meaningless divinations. For your information, according to the Greek myth, Iphigenia was—" she gets interrupted by Sherlock talking over her.
"The daughter of the Greek king Agamemnon, who waged war against the city of Troy together with his brother Menelaus, the king of Sparta and husband of the infamous and unfaithful Helen. On his way to the Trojan War, Agamemnon offered his daughter Iphigenia as a human sacrifice to the goddess Artemis to appease her wrath against him and allow his army to continue the journey. Yeah, I am familiar with that myth." He flashes her a rapid, complicit smile for their intellectual rivalry.
"Thank you for the constant inferiority complex, folks." John sighs, then his pragmatism takes over. "Giulia has just provided the link between the Latin subheading and the Greek tragedy. If I understood correctly, they both tell the same story. But why would Moriarty put that quote on some fake tickets?"
"What if Lucrezio's interpretation of the myth was the key? His sentence is a scathing critique of superstition. Look again at the starting date of the show: Friday, the 13th. It's notoriously a bad luck date," Giulia says.
"It makes sense, but we need some more clues," Sherlock comments.
Giulia's words echo in his mind with a one-second delay and he blinks at her, puzzled.
"I lost track of time with all the recent homicides and the search for the guilty party, but if yesterday was the 13th, it means that today is—"
"February 14th," she finished his sentence. Hardly a deduction.
"You mean, Valentine's Day?"
"My attempt to give a boost to my love life with a romantic date tonight wasn't enough of a clue?" John taunts him, still cursing him for ruining his night.
"Oh." Sherlock suddenly realises, staring at Giulia and blushing slightly. His invitation to the exhibition at the gallery assumes a whole different meaning now.
She smiles softly at him. "This reminds me: earlier I forgot to mention one more romantic thing that I'm not a big fan of—the celebration of this day. According to the legend, during the third century, Roman Emperor Claudius II believed single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, so he prohibited young men from marrying. Valentine, a priest who lived in Rome, considered the decree to be unjust and secretly continued to perform weddings for young lovers. When Claudius found out about his defiance, he ordered Valentine's execution. And now we exchange gifts and chocolates for the martyrdom of a priest. A bit disrespectful, isn't it?"
Sherlock chuckles, glad that she took all the embarrassment out of the situation.
"I never pegged Jim Moriarty for a romantic, but I'm sure he is an attentive plotter, so he must have scattered some more clues around. Let's search this place," he proposes.
They look around, and Giulia gets distracted by the breathtaking view of the river Thames flowing gently under the gigantic wheel towering over the river banks, a few meters away. She instinctively checks her watch and smiles. At that moment, she should have been queueing under the London Eye. She had a ticket for a night ride. Oh well, this is much more exciting.
She lowers her gaze on her long, fancy dress before turning her eyes up to Sherlock, standing so close that their arms almost brush against each other. His mere presence makes her heart hammer as she feels the blood rush up to her cheeks.
At that moment, fireworks light up the night sky. She stares peacefully at the upwards light trails, followed by those cheerful explosions, and her eyes glimmer under that shower of colours. She chuckles to herself. If they weren't tracking a lunatic murderer, it could almost be a romantic scenery.
Sherlock turns to John and shoots him a confused look.
"I thought fireworks were a prerogative of Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th of November. Have we Brits always been so extra in celebrating Valentine's Day?"
John shrugs and shakes his head. "Not to my knowledge. Maybe it's just a welcome present or a loving gesture by dear old Jim."
"I'm not sure about the fireworks, but I'm pretty confident that one definitely is from him," Giulia replies, pointing at a solitary cat strolling lazily down the parking lot. "It's a black cat. I don't know about England, but I can tell you it is considered a sign of bad luck in Italy. Not that I believe in such rubbish."
"Good or bad luck, that's irrelevant. A black cat is strongly linked to superstition. That one is probably trained; we'd better follow it," Sherlock says, taking some steps toward the animal.
John scowls at him. "Are you joking? You want to follow a cat? At first, it was a mysteriously disappeared rabbit in Baskerville, now a black cat leading the way. What's next, a winged horse?"
Holmes is about to retort to his sarcastic comment when a gunshot breaks the immobility of the night, and a bullet flies a few inches above his head.
"Someone's shooting at us! We are out in the open. Let's take cover by the theatre," Sherlock yells. They run towards the main entrance just a few yards away, as several sets of footsteps chase after them.
Upon hearing the shot, the black cat bolted forward, preceding them. John sneers under his breath, "I suppose we are following the cat, after all."
They are about to reach the glass doors of the theatre when a round of bullets flit right over their shoulders and shatter the doors before their eyes, forcing them to change route and dive into a lateral alley. They jump behind some rubbish containers to catch their breath.
Giulia lifts the hem of her long dress to reveal her sneakers, then flashes a weak smile at Sherlock.
"I told you they would come in handy."
"The only useful thing right now would be a police car and some backup. But hoping that you notified Scotland Yard about the grave danger you were running to would be wishful thinking, wouldn't it?" John glowers at his friend.
"The police are not ones to ignore shots fired. They'll be here in a handful of minutes," he reassures him, unperturbed.
"No, they won't. That's where you're wrong," Watson rebuts furiously, making Sherlock raise a brow. What did he miss?
John points at the intermittent flares that are colourfully lighting up the sky above their heads.
"There's a firework show going on. And now I'm fully convinced they are indeed part of Moriarty's plan. Anyone standing a hundred meters away would mistake the gunshots for the cracking of the pyrotechnics. Nobody knows we're in danger. Nobody can hear anything down here," he groans desperately.
Sherlock widens his eyes at a loss for words, while Giulia stares into space for a few seconds, repeating softly, "Nobody can hear us."
As she lets the realisation sink in, she stands up from their hideout and carefully makes her way to the closest corner of the wall opening onto the parking spot.
"Giulia, what the hell are you doing?" John cries out, panicking.
She turns around briefly and quirks a smile at him.
"I was so relieved that the museum wouldn't ask the guests to walk through metal detectors for the gala night. I would've had a lot of explaining to do," she says, drawing from her purse the gun that Sherlock gave her for Christmas.
John gapes at her, then immediately snaps his mouth closed. She went on a date with Sherlock. Bringing a gun is the least surprising thing.
"Don't you think it'd be better if either Sherlock or I handled i—" John doesn't get to finish his sentence because she steps forward, crouches down by the wall, and fires repeatedly at their chasers, who shoot back in their general direction.
She almost empties her clip at them. In the crossfire's commotion, a bunch of her bullets dart across the parking lot, blinding some nearby lampposts: three in a row next to the entrance of the alley, then another series of three a little further away, after a trio of street lights that seem to have miraculously escaped her shooting spree. The reduced lighting isn't much of an improvement, but their hideout is slightly less exposed now.
Contemplating the damage and seeing that her itchy trigger finger didn't cause much trouble to their attackers, John scratches his neck and gives her a stern look.
"Thanks for granting us ten more seconds to live due to the momentary darkness you created in the parking lot, but no offence: you don't exactly have impressive marksmanship. Remind me never to let you toy around the flat with a gun in your hand, or we will be forced to have all the lightbulbs fixed."
John turns to Sherlock with fiery eyes. "Why do you never call the police?"
"Had we shown up here with Scotland Yard's men, Moriarty would have aborted his plan and resumed it later, when we least expected it. That was never an option for me. It all comes down to this place, tonight. This is his strategy, and we have to follow the rules."
"Sure, and it's so fair-play of him to send a dozen men to kill us in a bloody parking, right?" John barks, exasperated.
Sherlock pauses for a second, before whispering, "In fact, they are not trying to kill us."
"What?"
"Just think about it. They missed us from a distance of less than sixty feet, utterly uncovered. Then they pulverised the main glass doors but didn't even scratch our shoulders or the side of our heads. It makes no sense. Either they are the worst shooters in history—"
"You mean like Giulia?" John interrupts him, and she scowls at him. At least she tried to do something. She surrenders and hands her gun to John, who puts the safety back on and tucks it in the waistband of his jeans.
"Or the best and they purposely missed us," Sherlock completes his reasoning. "They never wanted us dead: they were just pushing us in a very specific direction." He squints his eyes toward the far end of the darkened alley. They were always supposed to get to that passageway.
"And what's so interesting about this stinky place?" John asks.
"That," Holmes exclaims, pointing at what looks like an oblique obstacle blocking the passage.
As they move closer, they can distinguish the outline of a tall wooden ladder whose feet are wedged in the base of the right wall of the alley while the top is leaning against the opposite wall, forming a huge triangle.
John clenches his fists, about to lose his temper. "Does Moriarty want us to climb to the first floor of the theatre and enter like burglars?"
Giulia smirks at Sherlock, finally following his train of thought, and walks confidently towards the ladder.
"No climbing involved. We need to walk under the ladder. It's Moriarty's sign of showing us the way in keeping with the superstition theme."
"I wish he drew some arrows on the ground instead," John grunts.
They duck one after the other under the ladder and continue down the alley until they reach the intersection with another street.
"In which direction now?" Giulia asks, looking around warily.
Taking advantage of the cover provided by the wall, John peeks out to assess their options, but as soon as he peeps his head out under the cone of a streetlight, four men to the far right see him, shouting and pouncing on them.
"Not to the right for sure," he says, looking to the road on the left to check their only escape route. He stares in horror as four more men come running down the road. "And the street to the left is quite crowded, too," he mumbles helplessly.
Sherlock sticks his curly head out and squints his eyes in both directions with a sly grin.
"No, my dear doctor. That's just an optical illusion."
He whips around, spots an abandoned bottle of beer, and picks it off the ground. Holding it by the neck, he leans forward into the crossroad to throw it with full force into the left road. The green bottle glides in the air for a couple of seconds, then a sudden crash echoes around as a mirror wall is smashed to smithereens.
Sherlock beams at them before running in that direction.
"I hope none of you is superstitious. A broken mirror will bring us seven years of bad luck."
"I'd consider us quite lucky just to get to live for seven more years," John mutters under his breath, rushing down the street. "How did you realise it was a mirror?" He asks when they are passing through what had been a looking-glass wall until a few seconds ago.
"I simply noticed that out of the group coming from the right, the second man to the left had the same limp as the second man to the right of the group running from the opposite direction. It was obvious they were the same person, or rather, a person and his mirrored reflection," Sherlock explains calmly.
"How did I not notice that?" John steals a glance at the glass shards on the ground he is stepping onto, still struggling to realise what just happened.
"Because you're an army man. You are naturally over-sensitive to danger. Your instinct reacts way faster than your logical mind."
"Whatever. I know you said those men aren't trying to kill us, but I'd rather not let them catch up with us to find out what they truly want. They don't look very friendly, either. So, where do we go now?" His tone is itched in concern, and he looks over his shoulder at their assailants gaining ground on them.
"There must be some side entrance to get access to the theatre. After all, the tickets were a clear sign that Moriarty wants us to get inside. He must have prepared something," Sherlock mumbles breathlessly while they keep skirting the building.
"Like that?" Giulia stops abruptly to point at a fire door; a horseshoe is hanging from it.
John tries the door but concedes defeat almost immediately.
"It's locked. There's no time," a panicked note in his voice. He pushes his shoulder against it, but the reinforced door doesn't budge.
"Hold on a second." Giulia narrows her eyes at the door, deep in thought. "Isn't there a saying about turning the horseshoe on the right side?" She reflects, gently pushing John aside. She places her hand on the horseshoe on the door and makes it turn 180 degrees until it is upside down. When the horseshoe reaches the new position, the door opens inward with a loud click.
They rush inside, slamming the door behind them right when their chasers are about to reach it. They lean their backs against the door, doubling over to catch their breath.
"That was... clever," Sherlock stammers in an awkward attempt to compliment her.
She flashes him a quick smile before turning her gaze around.
"This is the second theatre we are raiding tonight to search for criminals. I'd rather not make it a habit."
John straightens up and takes a few steps forward and grumbles, "Bloody hell, I hate the three-card trick, especially when it's done with doors."
Giulia and Sherlock follow his gaze and frown at the sight of three identical doors at the end of the corridor ahead of them. They step forward to take a closer look. There is a poster on every door, each representing three of Shakespeare's plays: Hamlet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Giulia arches a brow. "There's a 33% chance. How are we supposed to choose?"
Sherlock smiles smugly and shakes his head. "It's not a game of chance in this case. We are still playing by the same rules. According to superstition, it is considered bad luck to pronounce the name of the tragedy Macbeth inside a theatre, which is why actors traditionally refer to it as The Scottish Play."
"I didn't know you were a theatre expert."
"I am an expert in everything," he boasts. "To be fair, though, Mycroft is the theatre fanatic of the family. He used to take drama classes at school, and he even performed in the school production of The Importance of Being Earnest. I must admit he wasn't half bad."
He strides forward, places his hand on the handle of the door with the Macbeth poster, and slowly lowers it without hesitation. The door swings open, and they walk into a room plunged into darkness. As soon as the last one steps in, the door slams shut automatically.
John turns around and fiddles frantically with the lock in a vain attempt to open it. In the dark, he sighs, turns towards his friends, and whispers, "Wrong door?"
"Not at all," a familiar Irish voice echoes in the room, making them all jump.
One second later, one light switches on, and Moriarty's face emerges from the darkness.
"Lady and gentlemen, welcome to the Impossible Game."
Author's note: Dear readers, what are your thoughts so far? Are you excited about this new game? What do you think will happen next?
P.S. Shoutout to the never-ending support of Mr. Clever. I'd love to consider a career involving writing... Maybe one day, who knows?