A Chorus of Detectives (15 page)

“He's too …
small
to do something that big,” she'd explained. “Look at him. He imitates Toscanini rather than develop a style of his own. He yells and screams just to prove he has the right to do so. He's even said he'd like to do operas with all the chorus parts cut out—because
this
chorus isn't up to scratch. Those are the acts of a small man, but killing five people—well, that's an epic undertaking, isn't it? No, I just can't see Quaglia in the role of killer.”

O'Halloran had no way of knowing how accurate her analysis was, but it seemed to him that killing off chorus members was a poor way to make them perform better. Quaglia seemed to have the least to lose of the five—some damage to his reputation as a conductor so long as the chorus sang poorly, but that was all. Surely a conductor's livelihood didn't depend on how well the
chorus
performed, did it? Not to the extent that a chorus master's future did, certainly. O'Halloran decided to talk to Giulio Setti next.

Since the chorus wasn't rehearsing that day, Setti would not be at the opera house. O'Halloran thought he'd try his home on West Forty-second Street, across from Bryant Park. Setti lived in one of the few buildings in the neighborhood not yet converted to commercial use.

But when he got there, O'Halloran met Emmy Destinn coming down the front steps. “Well, this is a surprise, Miss … Destinnova,” he remembered to say at the last minute.

“Is it? Why?” she said. “Setti is an old friend.”

“And you just happened to go calling on an old friend at this particular moment? The way you just happened to be at the opera house yesterday?”

“Why shouldn't I be at the opera house?”

“Because you weren't singing in the opera they were rehearsing,” O'Halloran explained patiently. “Why were you there?”

She turned a look on him that would have made a lesser man shrink. “Am I a suspect, Captain?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then you have no right to question my movements.” She sailed away.

O'Halloran decided to let it go for the moment. He climbed the steps and rang the doorbell; Setti himself answered the door. O'Halloran introduced himself and said he had a few questions to ask.

“I am not surprised,” the chorus master sighed. “Come in, come in.” He led the way into a fussily overdecorated room; the furniture was dark and heavy, Victorian, and polished to a sheen. The place dwarfed the man who lived there, but Setti seemed quite comfortable in his surroundings. He offered O'Halloran a seat and a cup of hot chocolate.

The captain accepted the former but declined the latter. “I suppose you know why I'm here, Mr. Setti. I need to ask you about these five deaths at the Metropolitan Opera. Let's start with the first one, during
Samson and Delilah
—”

Setti held up a hand. “Perhaps I save you some time, Captain. First, I am present at opera house all five times a chorister dies. Second, I see nothing unusual or suspicious during any of those five times. Third, no, I have no idea who is the killer. Are those the questions you wish to ask me?”

“On the button,” O'Halloran grunted. “How'd you know?”

“I am asked them before,” Setti said with a grimace. “First Pasquale Amato comes here, eh, forty-five minutes ago. He asks. Then Antonio Scotti calls on the telephone to ask. Then just before you arrive—”

“Emmy Destinn was here,” O'Halloran nodded. “I ran into her as she was leaving. Same questions?”

“Same questions.”

“Good Lord, are they
all
playing detective?” O'Halloran muttered to himself.”

“
Scusi?
” But before O'Halloran could reply, Setti's telephone rang. The chorus master answered; and as he listened, a look of bewilderment came over his face. He covered the mouthpiece. “It is Gerry Farrar,” he hissed. “Asking.”

“Let me.” O'Halloran took the phone and put on his ‘official' voice. “Miss Farrar! I hope you aren't doing what I think you're doing. If you are, I want you to stop it right now.”

“Who's that? Captain O'Halloran?”

“The same Captain O'Halloran who's investigating this case. There's no one named Farrar who's supposed to be investigating.
Is there
.” Not a question.

“Oh dear, that was subtle. I just wanted to ask Setti—”

“Don't. Don't ask him, don't
want
to ask him. Setti or anybody else. Do you understand me? You got lucky once, but this case is different. Keep out of it.”

“Lucky! Well, I like that!” the soprano exclaimed indignantly. “I was a real help to you once—you can't pretend I wasn't!”

“No, I'm not denying that. But the situation is more dangerous this time, Miss Farrar. This man we're hunting doesn't seem to care whom he kills. You stick to singing and leave the detective work to me. Do you hear?”

“Captain O'Halloran,” she said sweetly, “do you speak Italian?”

“Italian? No.”

From the earpiece came a stream of angry words he couldn't understand, followed by the sound of a receiver being slammed down. O'Halloran smiled and hung up. “If she calls you back, tell her I ordered you not to talk to her,” he told Setti, who responded with a look of relief.

The captain still wanted to go over the five killings one at a time, but the chorus master had nothing to add. He said he too had thought they were accidents at first, that the Metropolitan was having an unusually vicious run of bad luck. But when poor Teresa Leone was stabbed during a performance of
Carmen
—well, then there was no denying what was going on. He didn't know who was responsible, but …

“What is it, Mr. Setti? Anything you know might help.”

“I do not
know
anything, Captain, but it seems to me the person doing these killings must surely be one of the choristers themselves.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Eh, there is such discord in the chorus. Little factions, always quarreling. And one big schism—the Germans and the Austrians on one side, everybody else on the other. The chorus is still fighting the war, you see.”

“Mr. Setti, I don't see how it could be one of the chorus—they're all watched too closely now. Maybe the first murders, but the chorus singers were under guard by the time someone slipped the poison into the orange juice pitcher.”

The chorus master shrugged. “The guards, can they watch all the time?”

O'Halloran snorted. “They'd better. Gatti-Casazza tells me each chorus member has a personal bodyguard now. That's going to be a hard defense to get past.”

“Perhaps.” Setti seemed unconvinced.

O'Halloran hesitated, and then took the plunge. “Mr. Setti—you're in danger of losing your job, aren't you? Because of the chorus?”

The older man's face grew red. “Quaglia!” he spat. “Quaglia, he tries to get Gatti to dismiss me!
Me!
I am with Gatti for twenty years, and this, this
newcomer
says I must go!
Follia!
”

“Then it's all Quaglia's doing?”

“
Così è!
Gatti, he never lets me go—never! But Quaglia, he hates choruses … and chorus masters! He wants to be rid of all of us.” Setti realized what he had just said. “Do you think
he
…?”

“I don't think anything yet.” O'Halloran didn't tell the other man that Gatti-Casazza was indeed seriously considering letting him go; not for him to say. “Why does Quaglia hate choruses so much?”

“Eh, he always has trouble with choruses. The chorus at La Scala, one time they walk out on him! Right in middle of
Aïda
. Another time, the Covent Garden chorus petitions management—they ask for Quaglia's dismissal. They say he is too …” Setti had to grope for the word. “Dictatorial—they say he is too dictatorial.”

“Did they get him fired?”

“No, but now he is not invited back so often as before. Same thing happens at La Scala.”

“And now he sees it happening again here?”

By now Setti was beaming. “
Sì!
And so he kills them off, one at a time—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. How could he stab a woman backstage during the performance of
Carmen
when he was out front conducting?”

“He stabs her before performance starts? She is found during first act.”

“That's right, she was.” Obviously Quaglia's whereabouts were going to have to be checked into very carefully for all five deaths. And Setti's too, although it seemed to O'Halloran that the chorus master would be more likely to go after Quaglia than the trouble-making chorus. He tried to pin Setti down as to his exact movements during the five murder nights, but the older man said he was on the go constantly and couldn't remember where he was every minute.

Just as O'Halloran was about to leave, Setti let loose an unexpected cackle. “I just remember something, Captain. Do you know what Quaglia's first job in opera is? He is assistant chorus master!”

“Is that true? Where?”

“In Naples, a small house there. And Captain,” Setti grinned, enjoying himself, “he is discharged! For incompetence!” The chorus master went into a fit of cackling.

Well, you're certainly building a good case against your enemy
, O'Halloran thought. “So you no longer think the killer is one of the chorus singers?”

“No, no—you convince me I am wrong.”

Hm
. “So, Alessandro Quaglia was an assistant chorus master before he became a conductor. What did Edward Ziegler do before he became the assistant manager?”

“Ziegler?” Setti was caught off-stride by the change of subject. “He is, ah, he is music critic for newspaper. Eh … the
Herald
, I think.”

“And you, Mr. Setti? What were you before you were a chorus master?”

A gnomish smile spread over the older man's face. “Captain O'Halloran, I am
born
chorus master.”

O'Halloran halfway believed him. He thanked Setti for his help and left, wondering whether the man really didn't know his position at the Met was in jeopardy or whether he was just putting a good face on it. Gatti-Casazza wouldn't think of firing him on Quaglia's say-so alone, O'Halloran felt sure; the chorus master had probably been slipping for some time. And Quaglia himself—the conductor's motive was looking a lot stronger than it had looked an hour earlier.

The sky was turning dark and the wind had picked up; the snow on the sidewalks was dirty and beginning to freeze. O'Halloran climbed into the police car. As he drove back to the station house, he remembered something Pasquale Amato had said yesterday. When Amato asked O'Halloran if he thought the killer was out to murder
all
the members of the chorus, O'Halloran had said he thought it was a distinct possibility.

Whereupon Amato shook his head sadly and said, “Captain, when the chorus is at full strength, it numbers one hundred forty singers. What kind of man sets out to murder one hundred and forty people? The killer, he is insane, you see. He must be insane, yes?”

He must be insane, yes. Such an undertaking was indeed insane. So insane, in fact, that O'Halloran now was beginning to doubt that killing off the entire chorus was the murderer's true goal. Hearing Amato put a number to it—one hundred forty people—well, that threw the whole enterprise into the realm of the absurd. But what, then? A slew of incidental murders to conceal the one significant one? Was that any saner?

Either way, Amato was right. They were looking for a madman.

Edward Ziegler sat at the desk in his office next door to Gatti-Casazza's, his head buried in his trembling hands. The cool, self-possessed assistant manager had lost control of himself—and in front of the chorus! How in the world could he ever negotiate with them now, when they'd heard him wish out loud that more of them were
dead
! Whatever had posessed him?

A throat-clearing sound made him look up. Enrico Caruso stood in front of his desk, having entered without knocking. The tenor looked ill at ease. “Mr. Caruso, I didn't hear you come in,” Ziegler said, pulling himself back together.

“I must say something to you.” He sat down without being invited. “I hear.” He nodded soberly at Ziegler.

Ziegler waited but was rewarded only with more nodding. He asked, “What do you hear?”

“I hear what you say to the chorus yesterday. That not enough of them … die.”

Ziegler took a deep breath and held it as he tried to decide how to handle this unexpected development. Appeal to his sympathy, that was it. “I need a vacation, Mr. Caruso. I've been carrying the burden of dealing with the chorus alone for too long—the stress is beginning to wear on me. I'm not thinking clearly. I would never have said such an unpardonable thing if it weren't for the killings that occupy my mind night and day—I wouldn't even have thought of it! In a moment of anger I blurted out my worst fear, and managed to turn it into a sort of curse.”

“
Una maledizione
,” Caruso breathed.

“A slip of the tongue. Inexcusable, of course, but … these things do happen sometimes.”

“You say you do not mean it?”

“Of course I didn't mean it!” Ziegler snapped. “Good God, even the chorus understands that!” He laughed bitterly. “Not that they'll let me forget it. Oh no—they'll
never
let me forget it!”

Jus then Gatti-Casazza walked in. “Ziegler, something we must—eh, Enrico, I do not know you are here.”

Caruso nodded complacently. “
Sì
I am here.”

Gatti waited a moment but when Caruso didn't take the hint, he said, “I have urgent business to discuss with Ziegler. You come back another time, Enrico, yes? You talk to him later.” Both he and his assistant stared at the tenor pointedly.