Falling in Love (29 page)

They got back to their respective sides a few minutes before the curtain. The scaffolding behind which Brunetti had hidden had been restructured into the stairs leading to the rooftop of Castel Sant’Angelo, so he was left with nowhere to hide. He moved slowly through the darkness in the wings until he found a place that afforded him a view of the rooftop where the events of the third act would unfold.

A moment later, the two guards accompanied Flavia to the steps that led to the ramparts and waited while she climbed them, then retreated to their places at the sides of the stage.

Although there was only death to come, the scene opened with soft flutes and horns and church bells and the utter tranquillity of night’s slow mellowing into day. Brunetti detached himself from watching the shifting of light on the stage and studied the people on the other side, who stood still with their heads tilted back to allow them to follow the action on the ramparts above them.

Brunetti, far off to one side, saw most of the area where the act would take place; above it rose the towering figure of the sword-carrying Archangel after whom the castle was named. His perspective also allowed him to see through the wooden frame that supported the ramparts, behind which stood the platform, raised on a hydraulic lift to about a metre below the ramparts, which held the cushioned Styrofoam panels that would catch the falling Tosca. Both the mechanism and the platform were invisible from the amphitheatre; indeed, from the ramparts themselves. A ladder led from the platform to the stage and would allow the resurrected Tosca to climb down in time to take her bows.

He watched the events unfold, heard the tenor sing his aria, saw Tosca rush on to the scene, but then he lowered his eyes and swept the backstage area, looking for any sign of anything or anyone out of place. Shots rang out from above him: Mario was a goner, although Tosca didn’t know it yet. Calmly, calmly, she waited until the bad guys were gone, and then she told Mario to get up, but Mario was dead. The music grew wild, she panicked and screamed. The music screamed some more. When she ran over to the left, Brunetti could see her high above, standing at the edge of the wall, looking backwards, one hand raised ahead of her, the other flung out behind.
‘O Scarpia, avanti a Dio,’
she sang. And then she leaped forward to her death.

The applause from behind the closing curtain drowned Brunetti’s footsteps, and the curtain hid him from the audience as he moved around behind the painted scenery to the bottom of the ladder leading down from the platform. He heard some thumping from above, and then he saw a foot and leg appear over the side of the platform. Her foot kicked the hem of her dress out of the way, and she began to climb down.

Brunetti moved over to stand at the side and called up to her loudly enough to be heard above the applause that still came towards them from the theatre. ‘Flavia, it’s me, Guido.’

She turned and looked down, stopped suddenly, gripped the sides of the ladder and pressed her forehead against the rung in front of her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘What is it?’

She pulled her head back and, very slowly, started down again. When she got to the bottom, she stepped on to the stage and turned to him, eyes closed, one hand still clutching the side of the ladder. She opened her eyes and said, ‘I’m afraid of heights.’ She let go of the side of the ladder. ‘Jumping on to that thing is worse than singing the entire opera. It terrifies me.’

Before he could respond, a young man carrying a bag of tools appeared between her and the mechanism that raised the platform to the ramparts. Though he was at least a generation younger, he gave her an appreciative smile and said, ‘I know you hate it, Signora. So let’s take it down and get it out of the way, eh?’ He raised a metal ring that held a number of keys and turned his attention to the machinery.

Brunetti watched her as she notched up her smile and said, moving away from the young man and towards the curtain, ‘Ah, how very kind of you.’

Brunetti shook his head at the raw charm of it and said, ‘Well, you’re down here now, safe and sound.’ She forgot about her smile, and it disappeared, leaving her face tense and tired. ‘It was wonderful,’ he added and pointed at the curtain, whence still rolled the sound of applause and shouts. ‘They want you,’ he said.

‘I’d better go, then,’ she answered and turned towards the noise. She placed a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Thank you, Guido.’

27

He and Vianello stood together on the left of the stage while the cast took their bows. Baritone, tenor, soprano, and as their voice range rose, so too did the volume of the applause they received as they went out to take their solo bows. Flavia swept the board, as Brunetti thought only right and understandable. He watched her first solo bow through the opening in the curtain. No roses fell, an absence which filled him with great relief.

The applause went on and on, filtering back to the stage to mix with the sound of hammers and heavy footsteps. The hammering stopped well before the applause did, and when that began to die down, the stage manager, who turned out to be the young man with the
telefonini
they had met earlier, appeared and waved to the singers and conductor to take no more bows. He congratulated them on a successful performance and ended by saying, ‘You were lovely, boys and girls. Thank you all and see you at the final performance, I hope.’ He clapped his hands and said, ‘Now, off you all go to dinner.’

When the young man noticed Brunetti and Vianello, he stopped and said, ‘Excuse my rudeness earlier,
signori
, but I was trying to stop a disaster and had no time to talk.’

‘Did you stop it?’ Brunetti inquired. Beyond them, the applause faded and then disappeared.

He grimaced. ‘I thought I did, until five minutes ago, when I received a text message that has led me to abandon all hope.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Brunetti said, unable not to like this peculiar character.

‘Thank you for the thought,’ he said, ‘but, as I told you earlier, I work in the circus and am surrounded by ravening beasts.’ He gave a polite half-bow and moved off to speak to the tenor, who had not yet left the stage.

Glancing around, Brunetti saw that the stage manager, the tenor, and he and Vianello were alone there, nor was there the loud bustle of a production being taken down. The crew had probably begun its strike.

Flavia had reappeared and was now talking to the stage manager. The young man waved a hand towards the back of the stage, opened his arms wide, and then shrugged with exaggerated emphasis. She patted his cheek and smiled at him, and he went away looking better for it.

She turned and, when she saw Brunetti, came over, and he took the chance to introduce her to Vianello. The Inspector was strangely awkward and could do no more than say thank you a few times and then go mute.

‘We’ll walk you home,’ Brunetti said.

‘I hardly think that’s . . .’ she started to say, but Brunetti cut her short.

‘We’ll walk you home, Flavia, and go up to the apartment with you.’

‘And give me hot chocolate and cookies?’ she asked, but with a warm voice and a small laugh.

‘No, but we could stop on the way if we pass a restaurant that’s still open.’

‘Didn’t you eat already?’ she asked.

‘Real men are always hungry,’ Vianello said in the deep voice of a real man, and this time she laughed more easily.

‘All right. But I have to phone my children. I try to call them after every performance: if I don’t do it, they’ll get grumpy.’

She reached out quite naturally and grabbed Brunetti’s wrist, but it was only to turn it so that she could see his watch. Just finding out what time it was made her look tired. ‘I’d rather be singing Lauretta,’ she said. When she saw that Brunetti didn’t understand, she added, ‘In
Gianni Schicchi
.’

‘Because she doesn’t have to jump?’ Brunetti asked.

She smiled, glad that he remembered her fear. ‘That, of course, but also because she has only one aria.’

‘Ah, artists,’ Brunetti said.

She laughed again, relieved that his evening’s performance was over. ‘I might be some time. It takes forever to get out of this,’ she said, sweeping her hands down the front of her dress.

Looking around and failing to see the two guards, Brunetti asked, ‘Where are your gorillas?’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I told them the police would be here for the curtain calls and would take me back to my dressing room.’

Like Ariadne, she knew the way, turned left and right without hesitation and took them, in a matter of minutes, to the door of her dressing room. A woman sitting outside got to her feet when Flavia approached. ‘I’m not on strike, Signora,’ she said with restrained anger. ‘Just those lazy slobs in the stage crew.’

Brunetti made no remark about the solidarity of the working class. Instead, he asked, ‘When did that start?’

‘Oh, about twenty minutes ago. They’ve been threatening it for weeks, but tonight their union voted for it.’

‘But you don’t agree?’

‘In the middle of a financial crisis, those fools go on strike,’ she said, with no attempt to disguise her irritation. ‘Of course we’re not joining them. They’re crazy.’

‘So what happens?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Everything stays put, and the people at the concert tomorrow afternoon can look at the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo while they’re listening to Brahms.’

So that’s what the phone call had been about, Brunetti realized. And that was the disaster that had made the stage manager uncertain about seeing everyone at the last performance.

Perhaps the woman heard the rancour in her own voice, for she added, ‘I understand they haven’t had a new contract in six years, but neither have we. We’ve got to work. We have families.’

Years ago, Brunetti had vowed never to engage strangers in discussions of politics or social behaviour, aware that it was the safest way to avoid armed conflict. ‘Then the performance won’t . . .’ he began when Flavia interrupted to say, ‘I’m going to change and make those calls. Come back in twenty minutes.’ Brunetti and Vianello started off down the corridor, aiming to take a slow walk around that floor of the theatre.

When they disappeared, Flavia said, pulling at the skirt of her costume, ‘I’ll hang it up and leave it. You can go home, Marina. You have a key, don’t you, to get in tomorrow?’

‘Yes, Signora.’ And then, ‘I’ll be at work,’ she said, with heavy emphasis on the pronoun.

Flavia opened the door to the dressing room, switched on the lights above the dressing table, and turned and locked the door from inside.

‘Good evening, Signora,’ a woman’s voice said softly from behind her. Flavia gasped, regretting her hurry to make those calls, her eagerness to rebuff Brunetti’s caution.

‘Your performance tonight was glorious.’

Flavia willed herself to remain calm, forced a smile on to her face, and turned to see a woman standing to the side of her dressing table. In one hand she held a bouquet of yellow roses. In the other she held a knife. Was it the knife she’d used to stab Freddy? was Flavia’s first thought, but then she saw that the blade was longer than the one she had been told had been used on him.

As Flavia watched her, the woman went in and out of focus, or at least Flavia saw different parts of her but failed to make out the whole. Try as she might to see her face, at first all she could see were the eyes and then the nose and then the mouth, but no matter how she concentrated, she could not bring them together to tell what the woman looked like. The same thing happened when she looked at the body. Was she tall? What was she wearing?

Flavia softened her expression and kept facing in the direction of the shifting form near her dressing table. Dogs smell fear, she had once been told; they attack when they sense weakness.

She recalled an old saying of her grandmother’s: ‘
Da brigante uno; a brigante, uno e mezzo
.’ If a brigand gives you one, give him back one and a half. But first you had to calm the
brigante;
you had to lull the monster into sleep.

The knife had never gone out of focus, but Flavia ignored it to the degree that she could, pointed to the flowers and said, ‘Then it’s you who’s sent me those roses. I’m glad, finally, to be able to thank you for them. I’ve no idea where you managed to find them at this time of year. And so many.’ She was a prattling fool, utterly transparent but unable to come up with better lines. The woman would sense her fear; soon she would smell it, too.

The woman, however, behaved as if she found Flavia’s comments perfectly normal, as in a sense they were, and said in response, ‘I didn’t know what colour you’d like, but then I remembered you wore a yellow dress to dinner in Paris a few years ago, and I thought it might be right.’

‘Oh, that old thing,’ Flavia said in her most dismissive girls-all-together voice. ‘I found it in the sales and bought it on impulse – you know how it is – and, well, I’ve never been sure it really suited me.’

‘I thought it looked lovely,’ the woman said, sounding wounded, as if she had given Flavia the dress, only to have it rejected.

‘Thank you,’ Flavia said, then walked very slowly and naturally to the dressing table, pulled out the chair in front of the mirror and sat. She waved to the sofa and said, ‘Why don’t you have a seat?’