A Chorus of Detectives (17 page)

Joseph picked up his laden tray and shouldered it. “I hate opera,” he snarled, and charged away without taking their order.

7

The Belgravia had seen better days, Captain O'Halloran mused. The age-darkened stone of the apartment building looked dingy in the weak morning light, and the ornamental corner balconies all had the look of disuse to them. But the address was still a prestigious one, the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. Inside, the air of faded gentility was an even stronger reminder that the Belgravia had once been the ne plus ultra of luxurious apartment living. No po' folks allowed. O'Halloran took the elevator up to the eighth floor where Alessandro Quaglia lived. The conductor was expecting him.

Quaglia was dressed except for a brocade dressing gown that covered his boxer's physique. “Does this take long, Captain? I have much to do today.”

O'Halloran murmured something noncommittal and took the chair Quaglia offered him. The first thing he wanted to find out was whether the conductor had been present in the opera house each time one of the choristers had died. He hadn't been there when the urn had fallen on the chorus soprano or when the tenor had been found hanging in the dressing room, Quaglia said; he did not conduct
Samson
or
Mefistofele
. But he'd been there the other three times.

“Do you ever attend an opera you're not conducting? Just to listen, I mean.”

“No more. I go when I am younger and still learning, but not now.”

“Why not?”

Quaglia's upper lip lifted. “I do not add to other conductors' prestige by sitting in their audience!”

“But singers go to hear
their
rivals.”

“
Singers
are totally irrational breed of animal,” Quaglia said in all seriousness. “You cannot ever, under any circumstances, expect rational behavior of singers.”

O'Halloran thought of the conductor's battle with Geraldine Farrar and suppressed a smile. “If you hold such a low opinion of singers, why are you working in opera?”

Quaglia let out a sigh that seemed to come all the way up from his toes. “Because, Captain O'Halloran, the human voice is most beautiful musical instrument on face of the earth. The instruments we manufacture, they imitate it but they never reproduce it, not exactly. If you want to work with that exquisite sound the voice is capable of producing, eh, then you must work with singers. No matter how infuriating they are.”

“Are you thinking of Miss Farrar?”

Quaglia started, and laughed. “Am I so obvious? Farrar is
senza dubbio
the best vocalist I ever work with. Her musicianship, it is near faultless. But the voice,
per sfortuna
, it deteriorates. She should not sing Marguérite … in
Faust?
” O'Halloran nodded. “The role is too high for her now,” the conductor explained. “Yet once in a while—the last rehearsal, for instance—she finds the top notes to sing the role superbly.”

“You told her she was flat.”

“Did I? I do not remember. But my point is, you cannot tell her anything. She remembers the way she once sounds and does not admit the voice is different now. She is impossible woman.”

O'Halloran tried a different tack. “Mr. Quaglia, did you ever work as an assistant chorus master?”

A look of distaste crossed the conductor's face. “Never! Assistant to chorus master—it is worst job in opera! Why do you ask?”

“I was told you started out as an assistant chorus master.”

“Who tells you this?” he cried. “
Ella sbaglia!
I have nothing to do with rehearsing chorus!”

“What was your first job in opera?”

“Violinist, in orchestra. I am seventeen years old when I am hired,” Quaglia added proudly.

“Where was this?”

“Naples. Il Teatro San Carlo.”

O'Halloran asked the conductor to spell it for him and wrote it down. A wire to the Naples police politely asking for help ought to clear the contradiction up quickly enough. When Quaglia asked him again who had said he'd once been a chorus master, O'Halloran thought it better not to tell him.

The conductor leaned forward in his chair, his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands clasped between his knees. “Mr. Gatti? No, he has no reason to tell such a lie. It must be Giulio Setti—he once accuses me of encroaching on his territory.” Quaglia snorted. “I would not have his job for ten times the money I am paid to conduct!”

O'Halloran asked him where he was when the first two murders took place. “The two times you say you weren't at the opera house.”

Quaglia looked annoyed but answered. “When the hanged man is discovered, I am home. The first violinist calls me on the telephone and tells me. The other time—I do not remember.”

The police captain made a note to check with the first violinist, thanked the conductor for his help, and left.

Antonio Scotti was in a part of the Metropolitan Opera House he hadn't even known was there. It was a small room in the substage area, the official resting place of mops, buckets, scrub brushes, five-gallon jars of ammonia, tin containers of brass polish and wax, bar after bar of lye soap. A clothesline holding drying rags was strung across one end of the room, and the sharp tang of some cleaning compound made the baritone's nose tingle. Crowded in among the cleaning supplies was a wooden bench, two discarded auditorium seats, and a low three-legged stool. In one corner stood an enamel coffeepot on an electric heater. The cleaning crew's greenroom.

“Another, ladies?” Scotti asked.

“Sure and that's a fine idea, Mr. Scotti,” Mrs. Reilly said, holding out her coffee cup.

Scotti topped up her drink from the flask he'd had the foresight to bring with him; rye whiskey was not his favorite libation, but in these prohibitory days one took what one could find. He and the plump Mrs. Reilly shared the wooden bench. Mrs. Poplofsky, as long and lean as Mrs. Reilly was short and round, sat in one of the auditorium seats; and on the three-legged stool perched Just-Call-Me-Maude. Scotti filled their cups. The whiskey was tingling pleasantly in his veins, and the three scrubwomen were looking a little more content with their lot in life.

“Perhaps she does not talk much because of difficulties with the language,” he said, continuing a line of conversation he'd initiated.

“Nooo, that's not it,” said Mrs. Reilly. “She's just not what you'd call a friendly soul, doncha know.”

“Mebbe she can't talk English,” Mrs. Poplofsky said in a tone of secrets-sharing, “but that don't mean she can't understand it.” She closed one eye conspiratorially.

Scotti raised an eyebrow. “You mean when you speak English to her—”

“I mean she understands what it suits her to understand,” Mrs. Poplofsky nodded. “Oh, she's a deep one, she is!”

Mrs. Reilly laughed. “Deep! That one? Sure and you're mistaken, Mrs. Poplofsky. She's by way of bein' standoffish, that's what she is!”

Scotti looked at Just-Call-Me-Maude. “What do you think?”

She giggled and said she didn't know.

Mrs. Poplofsky took out a box of cigarettes, offered one to Scotti (who declined), and toed a scrub bucket into position to use as an ashtray. “She's up to something, mark my words.”

Scotti took a swallow from the flask cap he was using as a glass and thought to himself that Just-Call-Me-Maude had a rather sweet face—or was that the whiskey's opinion? “Mrs. Bukaitis is up to something? What?”

“Can't rightly say what it is,” Mrs. Poplofsky replied, “but she's alla time going places she has no business going.”

Scotti suppressed a desire to cough; Mrs. Poplofsky had taken only two puffs of her cigarette but already all the breathable air in the basement room was filled with smoke. Nobody else seemed to mind, but then they were all getting a bit glassy-eyed. “Where does Mrs. Bukaitis go that she should not go?”

“Well, once I caught her trying the door of Miss Farrar's dressing room, and everybody knows that
nobody
cleans that room except Miss Farrar's own maid. And another time she was nosing around that platform thing they got out there—you know, the platform that goes up through the trap door in the stage?”

Scotti sat up straight. “Is this before or after the chorister falls to his death?”

Mrs. Poplofsky thought back. “After.”

“Oh.” Scotti sank back, deflated.

“Poor man,” Mrs. Reilly said sincerely. “Tumblin' down like that, not knowin' what's happenin' to him. Dreadful, just dreadful.”

Mrs. Poplofsky crossed one long leg over the other. “Funny thing 'bout that time. She had a box she kept trying to hide from me.”

“Her cigar box?” Mrs. Reilly asked.

“Naw, bigger'n that.” She blew out a cloud of smoke.

Just-Call-Me-Maude hiccupped.

“Mrs. Bukaitis keeps her personal things in a cigar box,” Mrs. Reilly explained to Scotti.

Scotti nodded as if that were something he'd been wondering about. He rubbed an itching nose; the combination of cigarette smoke and cleaning compound was making it hard for him to breathe and he was growing woozy. A little whiskey should clear his head—but the flask cap was empty.

“You too, huh?” Mrs. Poplofsky said pointedly.

Scotti poured her some rye. “Maude?”

“Yespleaseandthankyou.” She held out her cup. But when Scotti turned to Mrs. Reilly, only a drop was left in the flask.

“Awr, now ain't that a cryin' shame,” she said mournfully.

“Do not distress yourself, dear Mrs. Reilly,” Scotti said happily as he reached into a pocket and pulled out a second flask. “
Per servirla!
We still manage to ward off the cold!”

“Glory be!” cried Mrs. Reilly. “Now there's a sight for sore eyes!”

Just-Call-Me-Maude laughed and spanked one thigh with her free hand.

“I like a man who thinks ahead,” Mrs. Poplofsky said, closing one eye meaningfully and holding out her cup still again.

When they had further fortified themselves against the winter, Scotti said, “The box she tries to hide from you, Mrs. Poplofsky—what kind of box is it?”

“I dunno, just a box. About so big.” She demonstrated with her hands, trailing cigarette ash.

“Her lunch?”

“Nooo, couldn't be,” Mrs. Reilly said. “She brings her lunch wrapped in paper.”

“Mrs. Poplofsky, you are sure this is
after
trap door breaks open?”

She guffawed. “I was sure until you found that other flask.” She stretched a long arm down to stub out her cigarette in the bucket at her feet. “Now you got me addled.”

Just-Call-Me-Maude fell off her stool.

“Aow, there she goes,” Mrs. Reilly sighed. “Come on, lass, up with ye.” She hoisted the other woman back up on her stool and explained to Scotti, “She's not used to spirits so early in the day.”

He wondered why her face was growing blurry and turned back to Mrs. Poplofsky. “
Per favore
, try to remember,” he entreated her. “Is important.”

She scrunched her face up in the effort of concentration. “You know, Mr. Scotti, now that I think on it, I ain't all that sure it was after. It mighta been before.”

“
Che fortuna!
” the baritone cried, exuberantly flinging out an arm and knocking over a row of mops that had been standing in their buckets next to him. “Oh—
scusi, scusi!
”

“Ah, don't you be worryin' yerself about them mops, darlin',” Mrs. Reilly laughed. “You can't hurt 'em.”

Scotti fought down an urge to rest his head on Mrs. Reilly's motherly bosom. “Do you see what she does with the box?” he asked Mrs. Poplofsky.

He was answered by a snore. Mrs. Poplofsky's head had sunk forward on her chest.

“Ah, poor dear,” Mrs. Reilly crooned. “She works hard, she needs her rest.”

Just-Call-Me-Maude was weaving unsteadily on her stool, humming a little tune to herself and smiling at no one in particular. It was beginning to seem to Scotti that he'd spent half his life in this close little room among the mops and the brooms and the lye soap. He fumbled his watch out of his vest pocket, but the Roman numerals on the face were a blur. He held the watch out to Mrs. Reilly. “Tell me the time?”

She squinted at the watch. “It's gone a quarter past the hour of eleven.”

Scotti moaned. He was supposed to meet Gerry fifteen minutes ago; she was going to be furious! “I must go.” He got shakily to his feet—and stared helplessly at the barrier of spilled mops that separated him from the door.

“Never you mind,” said Mrs. Reilly, disposing of the mop obstacle with a few well-placed kicks of her surprisingly small feet. “Allus wanted to do that,” she muttered. “Now you lean on me, dear. You're not lookin' any too steady.”

Scotti placed one hand on her plump shoulder and let her lead him to the door. “I think you take me all the way out, yes?”

“Be careful!” Just-Call-Me-Maude squeaked unexpectedly.

“Of what?” he asked, but Mrs. Reilly was already leading him away.

She took him to the Seventh Avenue scenery doors, which were standing open to accommodate the shifting of stage flats out into the street. A light snow was falling, ignored by the stagehands maneuvering the scenery through the gaping double doors. “Now, Mr. Scotti, what you're needin' is a brisk walk in the fresh air,” Mrs. Reilly told him. “Invigoratin', it is. You take deep breaths, hear, and you'll be feelin' right as rain in no time.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Reilly, I follow your advice.”

“And be sure you come back to see us again,” she laughed. “You're allus welcome!” She waddled away toward her basement kingdom, still laughing.

Scotti stepped out onto Seventh Avenue, where the stage scenery was stacked on the sidewalk exposed to the elements, waiting for the trucks that would haul it away to a warehouse; the Metropolitan Opera House had no room to store its own scenery. Scotti followed Mrs. Reilly's instructions and took a deep breath of the December air—which cut through his lungs like a knife. This was supposed to make him feel better?