A Chorus of Detectives (6 page)

Gerry gave her her pendant back. “You don't really think this will protect you, do you, Emmy?”

“I think we need all the help we can get.” She plumped herself down in an armchair. “Are you serving anything?”

Since it was still morning, the refreshments the maid brought in were coffee and tea and little dainties to go with them. When Caruso had consumed about four thousand calories, he tried to press his ‘curse' theory again. “Suicide, accident, murder,” he said. “Things such as these, they do not happen unless there is curse behind them.”

“Only in opera,” Gerry said grimly. “In real life, there has to be a human hand behind such goings-on.”

Scotti raised an eyebrow. “You think they are all murder?”

“I think we'd be fools not to consider it. I only hope the police are thinking the same way.”

“The police say very little,” Gatti-Casazza remarked. “Only that the knife, it is of a kind that can be purchased anywhere.”

“Not much help,” Emmy grunted.

“Mr. Ziegler finds the body,” Scotti mused. “Why is he the only one who looks behind roller curtain? Perhaps he knows the dead lady is waiting there?”

“
Non lo credo
,” Caruso objected. “Finding her does not mean he kills her. Me, I also find dead body once! Ten years ago—remember?”

“Besides,” Amato smiled, “it is Mr. Gatti who finds the man hanging in chorus dressing room. Do you also suspect Mr. Gatti, Toto?”

“
Cielo!
No!” Scotti was horrified.

“Eh, I am only second one to see him,” Gatti said. “One of the scrubwomen, she finds him.”

“Oh?” Emmy said. “I didn't know that. How did she happen to find him? What is her name?”

“Her name is Mrs. Bukaitis, and I imagine she finds him when she goes into chorus dressing room to clean. I do not know.”

“Didn't you talk to her about it? Ask her questions?”

“I try to talk to her next day, but she has little English and no Italian. I think she comes from one of those new countries, the ones that used to belong to Poland or Russia?”

“Estonia?” Gerry suggested. “Latvia? Lithuania?”

“
Sì
, Lithuania. I think.”

“
Un momento
,” Amato said. “Why does this Mrs.…?”

“Bukaitis.”

“This Mrs. Bukaitis, why does she go into chorus dressing room to clean so near to curtain time? Surely this must be done earlier in day—before the choristers start to arrive?”

“That is good point, Pasquale,” Scotti said. “We must find someone who speaks Lithuanian and ask her.”

“Ziegler did something else besides discover a body,” Emmy said unexpectedly. “He insulted me.”

“Emmy!” Caruso exclaimed. “How?”

“He spoke German to me.”

Gatti spread his hands. “A slip of the memory—”

“No, wait,” Emmy said. “Why German? Everyone speaks Italian backstage. If Ziegler didn't want to speak Italian for some reason, he would have spoken in his own language—English. Why did he choose German? He knows I do not permit that language to be spoken to me. It was a deliberate insult.”

Nobody had an explanation, and nobody else thought it particularly important. Caruso made a few sympathetic cooing sounds in Emmy's direction and turned the subject back to the murder. “Why does somebody hate the chorus? What has the chorus done to deserve such treatment?”

“Perhaps it is anarchists,” Scotti said gloomily.

“Oh, Toto,” Gerry sighed. “You've got anarchists on the brain. Would you kindly explain to me why
anarchists
would want to harm the chorus of an opera company?”

Scotti threw up both hands. “Who knows why anarchists do the things they do?
Nessun lo sa
. All I know is they destroy things.”

“I think it is one murder,” Gatti said ponderously. “One murder, and the other incidents are precisely what they appear to be—one suicide and two accidents. I think we are making mountain out of, uh …?”

“Molehill,” Gerry said. “I hope you're right.”

Caruso burst out coughing. It was so bad that Scotti rushed to his side, concerned. “Rico? What is it?”

“Cigarettes,” Gatti muttered.

Caruso had recovered from his coughing fit. He wiped his lips with a handkerchief and said, “I do not have one cigarette yet today.”

“Yet.”

“Two each day, that is all now.”

“Really?” Gerry said. “Good for you, Rico.”

“Perhaps Mr. Gatti is right,” Amato said suddenly. “Perhaps there is only one murder—one important murder, that is.”

“
Important
murder?” Emmy echoed disbelievingly.

“Important to the killer,” Amato explained. “Perhaps all these other ‘accidents' are arranged to, eh, to lay down the screen of smoke?”

“That is possible,” Scotti nodded.

“And almost impossible to prove,” Emmy commented. “How could we ever know if only one of the killings is significant?”

“We will know,” Amato said thoughtfully, “if they stop.”

The Metropolitan Opera generally held auditions in the afternoons during the regular season; always, a horde of singers could be found pounding eagerly at the doors, unknowns who thought they were good enough to sing at the Met—and sometimes they were. Young Rosa Ponselle had joined the company in just that way, but it had taken her three auditions to do it. At one of them she'd been so nervous she had fainted.

But now the need was for chorus singers. Most of the defecting choristers had been replaced from the pool of standby singers the Met maintained; but there were still a few openings to be filled, and the standby pool itself needed replenishing. The day after Teresa Leone's murder, Gatti-Casazza was busy practicing his specialty, that of keeping the press at bay without actually granting an interview. That left Edward Ziegler to take his place at the auditions. Ziegler, who attended every audition anyway, was joined in the auditorium by Alessandro Quaglia and Giulio Setti. They'd just dismissed a thin-voiced soprano from the stage with a courteous expression of thanks and were now listening to a young tenor wobbling all over the scale. The Met-employed piano accompanist couldn't stop himself from making faces.

When the wobbling tenor had finished and the next singer had not yet appeared on the stage, Ziegler said, “I've had an outrageous thought. Do you suppose someone could be killing off choristers just to create an opening? Could our killer be a frustrated singer?”

Quaglia laughed humorlessly. “Then why does he kill both men and women? Your frustrated singer would have to have most unusual voice to sing both men's and women's parts.”

“Oh dear, that's right,” Ziegler winced. “Not too brilliant a suggestion—please forget I said anything.”

Setti smiled ruefully. “Besides, the chorus is what they wish to escape from, no? It is only a stepping stone—at least for
this
chorus. They all think of themselves as soloists who have been denied their rightful place center stage.”

Quaglia grunted agreement; that was one matter on which he and the chorus master were in accord. The chorus had degenerated abysmally from its halcyon pre-war days; now they sang competitively instead of
ensemble
. No one seemed to know what to do about it. Quaglia blamed Setti; he thought the chorus master should exercise stronger control.

All three men put the recent series of events out of their minds when the next auditioning singer stepped out on the stage. He was a handsome bass-baritone who turned out to have just the kind of voice they were looking for. Unfortunately, the bass-baritone was Greek and didn't speak a word of English; he'd brought a young boy with him to act as his interpreter. The boy's English, recently acquired, was not quite the aid to communication it was meant to be; it remained uncertain just how much chorus music the bass-baritone knew. Ziegler suggested they put him on standby until they could determine the extent of his knowledge. The other two agreed.

By the time the day's auditions were finished, they'd hired two sopranos and chosen three other singers for standby, including the unintelligible Greek bass-baritone, in decisions made more hastily than usual. Not wasting any time, Setti hustled the two sopranos off to a rehearsal room. Ziegler said to Quaglia, “I've scheduled a special audition session for Sunday afternoon, Maestro.”

Quaglia nodded curtly. “I will be here.” Of all the conductors at the Metropolitan, Quaglia was the only one who concerned himself with the hiring and firing of choristers, claiming he'd had too many performances ruined for him in the past by unruly or inept choruses.

“I do hope the police don't dally in their hunt for the killer,” Ziegler said as he stood to go. “Conditions will never return to normal here until they find him. The chorus will undoubtedly use the murder as a bargaining point when next they ask for more money—they're not overly burdened with ethical considerations, I've found.”

Quaglia looked startled. “Do they not just get new contract?”

“That won't stop them,” Ziegler said sourly. “I had to give them the sun and the moon this time—next time they'll want the stars as well. I'm sure they'll ask me to renegotiate this last contract, as soon as one of them thinks of it.”

“Mmm. The longer these incidents continue …”

“The more intractable they become. Well, perhaps the killer is finished now—let's see what happens during
Parsifal
.”

Nothing happened during
Parsifal
. The lengthy Wagnerian opus went off without a hitch; there were no accidents, no suicides, no murders. Even the normal backstage problems that plagued every opera production were less troublesome than usual. But any hope that this uneventful production would help allay the choristers' fears was soon dispelled; most of them were quick to point out that this was a
German
opera that had escaped being sabotaged. To the non-German segment of the chorus, that was further proof that the German singers at the Met were exempt from and possibly responsible for the unsettling series of incidents that had been taking place. The chorus remained as divided as ever.

Pasquale Amato was not thinking of the chorus; he was thinking of what an incredibly lucky man Antonio Scotti was. They'd both been singing for over a quarter of a century, but Amato had never had a beautiful soprano buy
him
a fur coat for Christmas.

“Turn around,” Geraldine Farrar commanded.

He turned slowly, letting her examine every inch of the expensive mink coat he was modeling. “It is loose in the shoulders,” he complained.

“That's all right, Toto is bigger through the shoulders than you are.” She flashed him a smile to let him know she wasn't being critical. “What do you think, Pasquale? Do you think he would like this one?”

Amato stroked the fur lapel sensuously. “He is fool not to like it, Gerry. It is lovely present.”

“Mmm.” She didn't look convinced. They were at Revillon Frères on Fifth Avenue; Gerry had warned Amato that she expected him to devote all of Saturday afternoon to helping her find just the right coat for Scotti's Christmas present. “I wonder if the belted style is right for him? He
is
getting a bit thick around the middle, you know.”

“Toto loathes the coats that hang straight down.”

“I know. Perhaps one of those with the indented waistline but without the belt?” She motioned to one of the three clerks hovering nearby. “You know the ones I mean?”

The clerk assured her he did indeed know the ones she meant. He disappeared momentarily and came back carrying three coats. Gerry selected one and Amato slipped it on. “I think I like this one best,” he volunteered. He was getting a little tired of modeling.

Gerry squinted her eyes, trying to visualize what Scotti would look like in the coat. Another clerk came forward expectantly, holding out a chestnut-colored coat. Gerry waved him away. “Wrong color. It has to be black.”

“
This
one is black,” Amato said pointedly, holding out both arms to illustrate.

She laughed. “Another minute.” The baritone and the three clerks all kept quiet while she tried to make up her mind. “I just don't know,” she finally said. The four men sighed.

Gerry asked the clerks to put the coat aside for a few days, just long enough for her to think about it. The two singers left and paused for a moment outside. Fifth Avenue's wide sidewalks seemed more crowded than usual. The air was crisp and smelled good; the afternoon light was beginning to fail and the electric streetlights would be coming on soon. Reluctant to call it a day just yet, Gerry took Amato's arm and started to stroll unhurriedly up the avenue.

They looked in store windows that displayed their wares among carefully arranged wreaths of holly and big red bow ribbons and cornucopias spilling out oranges and pears and walnuts. One store window had a mannequin of Saint Nicholas, complete with long-stemmed pipe and cape, standing beside an open burlap bag bursting with toys—a puppet, a toy drum, a bright yellow wooden horse. Two boys pressed up against the window, their noses flattened against the glass.

Amato made a
tsk
ing sound. “The Christmas shopping—every year, it starts a little earlier.”

Gerry smiled. “It can't start early enough for me. I love Christmas.”

“I must buy new
galosce
,” he muttered. Overshoes. “Before the New York snow starts to cover us up.”

“Oh, good heavens!” Gerry stopped in her tracks. “You've just reminded me, Pasquale. I left my new boots in my dressing room.” She looked up at the darkening sky. “Do you think it will snow this weekend?”

“
Senza dubbio
,” he said fatalistically. “Always it snows when one leaves the boots in the dressing room.”

“That settles it, then. We'll have to stop by and pick them up.”