Setting the Trap with Scenery Cords

Who among thirty hysterics had the nerve to climb down into the bilge water to recover four ounces of naval iron? That was the wager I laid on the prompt desk, right beside my shears and the running sandglass.

First Mate Hollósy had arrayed eight of his marines along the battery wall with fixed bayonets. The brass lanterns hung low from the deck beams, their yellow light swaying over twenty-four yards of grease-streaked canvas and a chalk outline that still marked where Ignác Pálffy had sung his last G-sharp.

"I will not stand in his chalk," Gizella Nyáry declared. She gathered six yards of black mourning crepe around her hips, glaring at the center stage planks. "It offends the muse. Furthermore, the salt draft from that gun port is drying my uvula. Mister Hollósy, tell your cutthroats to lower their muskets. An artist cannot emote while staring into half a pound of lead."

"You are not here to emote, Madame Nyáry," Hollósy barked, resting a scarred hand on his cutlass hilt. "You are here because Mistress Gyöngyössy claims an honest sailor didn't pack that blunderbuss. If this pantomime fails to deliver a culprit before my sandglass empties, every throat in this company will taste salt spray off the reef."

"Take your positions," I said, clapping my palms together with the sharp crack of an overture cue. "Act Two finale, directly into the Act Three entrance. Mihály, stand by the pin rail. Zsófia, take your chair at the pit coaming. Mariska, you belong stage right behind your dressing screen."

Mariska Bánhegyi stepped past the chalk outline without looking down. Her swan-feather bodice was cinched tight, her powdered face as pale and smooth as marble, though her jaw held rigid. The snipped hem of her rehearsal petticoat remained pinned with two brass bodkins where I had sliced it twenty minutes earlier. She offered neither an excuse nor a theatrical shudder; she simply took her mark beneath the shadow of the velvet tormentor curtains, her hands tucked neatly into the folds of her wide crinoline skirt.

"We begin at bar twenty-four of the soprano cadenza," I called out, tapping the heavy calfskin prompt-book against the timber lectern. "The moment when the house lights dim and the fly crew scrambles aloft."

"I hit a high C in bar twenty-eight," Gizella muttered, smoothing her crepe. "A flawless, shimmering C."

"You screeched loud enough to rattle the stern windows," I corrected her, "which provided precisely two minutes of acoustic cover. Zsófia, give us the tempo."

From the edge of the sunken orchestra pit, Zsófia Panyiczky raised her ebony boxwood flute and trilled a sharp, fluttering phrase. The brisk notes bounced off the low carlings and echoed against the iron cannons.

"Now observe Master Csaplár," I directed, pointing my brass shears toward the fly gallery overhead. "Ten minutes before the curtain, a ball of oiled tow flare catches in sheave box number four. Csaplár and his boys charge up the hemp ratlines to save the counterweight lines. That leaves the scenery deck deserted. The prop chest stands unlocked for twelve minutes."

Csaplár spat into the scuppers, his calloused thumbs hitched into his leather apron. "Told you. A greasy diversion. Smelled of kitchen beef tallow, not ship's pitch."

"And while Master Csaplár was aloft extinguishing the flame," I continued, pacing along the chalk boundary on the floor, "our saboteur slipped into the props locker, lifted the brass blunderbuss from its baize tray, and carried it down beneath the center stage hatch. Right below your feet, Gizella."

Gizella gasped and hopped two steps sideways, nearly tripping over her train. "Beneath me? While I sang?"

"Precisely while you sang," I said. "Because seating a cold naval grape-shot pellet into a fouled blunderbuss bore requires eighty pounds of downward pressure. The killer lacked the wrist strength to do it freehand. So she wedged the muzzle against the oak floor timber below the trapdoor, using the ship's very ribs as an iron fulcrum."

A quiet murmur rippled through the gathered chorus girls. Several second-row dancers exchanged wide glances, their feather headpieces trembling.

"Zsófia heard the scraping," I said. "Forty bars. Two full minutes of rhythmic iron friction against the hull timbers while Gizella held her top note. The iron pellet was seated. The horsehair wad was replaced. And the weapon was returned to the stage wings before the third-act bell even chimed."

Hollósy took two heavy strides forward, the deck timbers groaning under his naval boots. His dark eyes fixed on the prompt desk. "A pretty reconstruction, mistress. But we already know Pálffy caught grape-shot in the ribs. What we do not have is the missing ramrod. The heavy iron naval rod used to drive that lead home."

"A naval ramrod does not evaporate into sea fog, Mister Hollósy," I replied, raising my voice so it carried clearly to the wings and the darkened companionway behind the scenery flats. "The saboteur could not carry a thirty-inch iron rod onto an open deck in broad daylight. She could not fling it overboard through a gun port without my sentries seeing the splash. And she certainly could not leave it in the props chest."

"Then where is it?" Hollósy demanded, his brow furrowing with dark impatience.

"At the bottom of the hull," I announced, turning slowly to face the company. "Dropped through the ballast grating into the center pump-well. She tossed it into the bilge water, assuming two feet of stagnant brine would conceal the iron until we made landfall."

Mariska's posture stiffened by a fraction of an inch. Her gloved fingers tightened against the wire hoops of her skirt.

"The bilge?" Csaplár grunted, scratching his stubbled neck. "The muck in the well is thick enough to drown a rat. You'd need a grappling rake to dredge anything out of that soup."

"Master Carpenter," I said calmly, meeting his eyes, "we have something far better than a rake. Half an hour ago, I spoke with the ship's armorer. We rigged a sixteen-pound lodestone—a salvage magnet used to recover dropped iron bolts from the chain lockers. It is lashed to a sounding lead on thirty fathoms of braided twine."

I let the words hang in the stuffy air of the gun deck. The only sounds were the slow groan of the frigate's oak hull and the dry hiss of red sand slipping through Hollósy's sandglass on the prompt desk.

"The armorer is greasing the drop line now," I said, projecting each syllable with theatrical clarity. "Within thirty minutes, the magnet goes down the main hatch into the pump-well. An iron ramrod has ten times the surface area of a standard nail. The lodestone will snatch it off the keelson on the very first cast. And when that rod comes up out of the muck, the grease will still carry the culprit's fingerprints."

Hollósy gave a slow, predatory grimace. "Thirty minutes. I will post two marines at the pump hatch to take custody of whatever your stone drags up."

"Company dismissed to their berths," I ordered, snapping the calfskin prompt-book shut with a sharp clap. "Go. Pray that your fingers didn't leave tallow on the barrel."

The actors dispersed with frantic haste, tripping over their petticoats and stage boots in their rush to flee the battery deck. Gizella swept toward the ladderway, shrieking instructions to her dresser about camphor water. Csaplár lumbered off toward the carpenter's bench, muttering dark oaths about ruined counterweights.

Only Mariska lingered for three breaths near the painted velvet wing. Her dark eyes darted from the prompt desk to the low ladder leading down to the lower orlop passage. When she moved, it was with the taut, gliding speed of a dancer who knew every loose nail in the deck.

Hollósy stepped beside me, his cutlass clattering against his scabbard. "You don't have a lodestone, do you, Gyöngyössy?"

"A sixteen-pound magnet would cost twenty thalers in Amsterdam, Mister Hollósy, and Captain Vályi wouldn't spend twenty thalers to save his own grandmother from drowning," I replied quietly, sliding my brass shears into their leather sheath. "The armorer has a rusted sounding lead and half a keg of salted lard."

"Then why the speech?"

"Because a thief who thinks her prize is safe will let it lie," I said, blowing out the tallow candle on the lectern. "A killer who thinks her weapon will be fished out in half an hour will run to move it before the rope drops."

I left the first mate standing in the gloom of the battery deck and slipped into the narrow, unlit companionway behind the wardrobe store.

The corridor was pitch black, smelling of cedar shavings, damp wool, and stale sweat. I pressed my back flat against the bulkheads between two hanging racks of velvet Spanish doublets, holding my breath.

Two minutes crept past in absolute stillness, save for the rhythmic creak of the frigate rolling over the ocean swell.

Then, from the bottom of the ladderway, came the hurried whisper of silk against wood. A rustle of heavy crinoline skirts brushed the narrow walls, accompanied by the distinct, unmistakable scrape of cold iron shifting against whalebone stays.