The Wrong Rite (25 page)

“No!” Lisa took a firmer grip on the much-tried pullover. “Whatever it is, I have to know. More likely than not, I already do know. Go ahead, Dafydd, tell him.”

“Yes, Lisa.”

Dafydd was looking at Madoc as though he’d never really seen him before. This was no younger brother. This was a man used to authority, somebody in charge, somebody competent, God willing, to do what must be done. “What do you want of me, Madoc?”

“First, I need to know whether you’ve paid any blackmail during the past eight years.”

“What? My God, that’s one I didn’t expect. No, of course I haven’t. I’ve never in my life paid one pennyworth of blackmail to anybody, for any reason. Nor have I ever been approached to do so. Does that answer your question?”

“Yes, Dafydd, quite satisfactorily. Thank you.”

“But why did you ask?” Lisa demanded. “Had it something to do with Arthur?”

“There’s reason to believe it has a great deal to do with Arthur. According to information received a short while ago”—since he’d been shoved into performing as a policeman, Madoc decided he might as well talk like one—“about six months after Arthur Ellis was found dead, Mary Rhys began receiving substantial sums of money on a fairly regular basis, which she gave her brother to understand were some sort of annuity. Were you aware of that, Lisa?”

“No, not at all. But the money can’t have come from Arthur. It certainly wasn’t in his will, he’d left everything to Tib and me. You’re not trying to say he’d established some kind of trust fund for Mary before he died? Why should he have done that? It’s not as though she’d have been in dire poverty if he weren’t around to give her work. Her father had left her and Bob amply provided for, she had other clients, and goodness knows she charged enough. Arthur used to be livid over the bills she sent. Bob sent, I should say.”

Lisa was talking too fast, working herself up again, but Madoc didn’t try to soothe her down. “He kept on using her services, though.”

“Only because of the old family tie, and the promise he’d made to his own father. Arthur didn’t even like Mary, he practically foamed at the mouth every time he had to meet with her. I know, Madoc, you’re thinking he might have had something going behind my back, but Arthur had no talent for subterfuge. His mind simply didn’t work that way. He was totally honest and totally decent. He didn’t drink to excess, he didn’t gamble. He didn’t chase after other women. It was so unspeakably wrong, the way he died! He’d have loathed being found stretched out behind a—ugh! When I think of those ghastly French
flics,
insinuating that he’d been—”

“Steady, Lisa.” Dafydd was minding this even worse than she. “Madoc, do you have to go on at her like this?”

“No, Dafydd, it’s back to you. I understand you’d had dinner with the parents in Marseilles that same night Arthur was killed. Is that correct?”

“It is. How the hell did you know?”

“Mother happened to mention it to Jenny, and she told me. You were all in transit, she said, so it wasn’t exactly a spur-of-the moment thing, was it?”

“Lord, no! We’d had to arrange it months in advance, one always does. Normally I shouldn’t have been routed through Marseilles, this required some unusual ticketing. The chap in charge of bookings was quite shirty about it, as I recall.”

“Did you know Arthur Ellis was also going to be in Marseilles that night?”

“How could he?” Lisa broke in. “Arthur’s plans were always flexible, they had to be. He might fly to Paris, and phone me the next night from Rome or Amsterdam. Anyway, he and Dafydd weren’t—they didn’t know each other all that well.”

“Thank you, Lisa.” Dafydd’s face had become a handsome chiseled mask, his beautiful voice totally unmodulated. “To answer your question, Madoc, I did not know Arthur was in Marseilles, and shouldn’t have tried to meet him if I had. My sole object was to see the parents, since I hadn’t had the chance for quite some time and shouldn’t have again for another three months or so. I’d been singing at Melbourne and had to be in Munich for rehearsals the following day. The weather was foul, my plane was late landing, I had the hell of a time getting a cab. I got to their hotel just as Mother was about to call the morgue, we had a drink and chatted a bit, then went to dinner at some new restaurant somebody’d told them about. I forget the name. Mother might know, if it matters. I then went on to Munich by train, got to my hotel late the following afternoon, and phoned Gwen at her flat in London.”

“You couldn’t be a bit more precise as to the time?”

“Oh, probably half-past five or thereabouts. You might check it out with the Schwanallee Hotel. They may still have their records from eight years ago. Germans are so methodical, you know.”

“All right, Dafydd. What did you call Gwen about?”

“Well, naturally I wanted to tell her about meeting the parents. We always try to keep in touch as best we can, you know that. I assumed she’d be playing that night, which she was, as it happened, and I wanted to catch her before she left the flat. She was still there, rather upset. She’d learned that same afternoon about Arthur’s being found dead in Marseilles and wondered if I knew any of the details. I didn’t, of course.”

“She didn’t know what he’d died from?”

“No, I believe we decided it must have been a heart attack. He was getting toward that age, you see, and on the chunky side. It was rather a hurried conversation, I was supposed to be meeting with the Munich people and she had to get dressed. I asked about flowers and things and she said never mind. She’d called Uncle Huw to make sure it was in fact the right Arthur and asked him to order flowers from the family. She’d sent Lisa a telegram and would go to the funeral if she could get time off. I told her where to reach the parents, sent Lisa a cablegram of my own, and dashed off to my meeting, for which I was by then shockingly late, to the unconcealed annoyance of my hosts.”

Madoc wasn’t through yet. “You say you went to Munich by train. Mother seems to have had the impression you were going to fly.”

“I’d had every intention of flying. My bags were checked straight through, and I’d gone from the restaurant directly to the airport. As I mentioned earlier, however, it was an utterly filthy night. After I’d hung around awhile, it became clear that nothing was going out. I waited a little longer hoping matters would improve, but they didn’t; so I more or less swam to the railroad station and caught the midnight train to Geneva by the skin of my teeth. I shared a compartment with a carpet salesman from Namur who regaled me into the small hours with what I gathered were funny stories in either Flemish or Walloon, neither of which I either speak or understand. From Geneva, I caught the nine o’clock to Munich and arrived there at four fifty-eight pip emma,
um punkt.
I dimly recall the carpet salesman’s having given me a card, but I’m afraid I didn’t keep it. Sorry, Madoc.”

Janet supposed she oughtn’t to blame Dafydd for being resentful, though he couldn’t possibly suppose Madoc was doing this for fun. A person had to admire him for the dogged way he was sticking to the job.

“So you talked with Gwen, and that was the last you heard about Arthur Ellis?”

“Au contraire, mon vieux.
I had rehearsals the following day, rather taxing ones that I wasn’t really up for, all things considered. When I got back to the hotel, looking forward to an early dinner and a badly needed night’s sleep, I was greeted by a chap from the Sûreté named Javert, of all things. He was interested to learn why I’d shown the execrable taste to assassinate in so unrefined a manner the husband of my
bonne amie.”

“Good Lord! Whatever got him on to that?”

“After a good deal of shouting back and forth, I gathered that he was acting on information received. Some anonymous benefactor had rung the station and given the
flics
an earful about Lisa and me being lovers.”

Madoc gritted his teeth. “Was there any truth in the allegation?”

“You do have a rotten job, don’t you? Yes, but not enough. Lisa and I—” Dafydd shook his head. “We’d been kids together, she and I and Tom. And occasionally Iseult, during school holidays. Having Iseult around was no great treat, she was older and something of a pain. I suppose I’m a cad for saying so, but there it was. Anyway, it was always clear to me that one day Lisa and I would marry. Unfortunately I messed up.”

There was just so much a brother could ask. Madoc waited. At last Dafydd went on in that dead-and-alive monotone. “As you know, I had the dubious good fortune to become an overnight success at too early an age.” A momentary flicker of amusement broke the rigidity. “I wasn’t quite twenty-one. I’d begun doing shepherd boys and voices off, serving my apprenticeship, getting the feel of the stage. This time, I was one of Sarastro’s priests in
The Magic Flute,
and just for the experience, they’d given me Tamino to understudy. Around noontime of the final performance, the lead tenor ordered kippers for breakfast and got a fishbone stuck in his throat. It wasn’t so bad, I had time enough to get the costume altered, find a pair of tights that fit me, and alert the family. Even you showed up, Madoc. You probably don’t remember.”

“Yes, I do. You galloped on yelling that a serpent was after you, then three old ladies in nightgowns came along and killed it.”

“You would remember that part. I suppose you were disgusted at my being such a coward.”

“No, I assumed that was what you were getting paid for. I did think those baby-blue tights were a bit much.”

“So did I, if you want to know, but I was prepared to make sacrifices. What I hadn’t counted on was the celebrity thing: the interviews, the parties, too much attention from the wrong people. I”—Dafydd shrugged—“rather lost sight of my priorities. And Lisa took umbrage.”

“Why shouldn’t I have?” Lisa was in command of herself by now, just barely. “My father was a celebrity of sorts too, Jenny. He wrote those full-blooded novels, you know what I mean, and was always chasing after some new inspiration. Usually a pretty young female one, judging from the fights he and my mother used to have. They split up when I was eight. He went off to America, and that’s the last I ever saw of him. Mother married again in a year or so, a City man. I hated London and wasn’t too fond of my stepfather, so I stayed here with my grandparents as much as I could. It’s not that I didn’t care for Dafydd, I always had. But people gossiped, and Tom was always sending me clippings out of the nastier papers. I didn’t want the sort of mess my mother’d got into. I wanted someone who’d stay put.”

“So you married a chap who was at home about five days a month.” And Dafydd was still bitter about it.

“But it wasn’t the same,” Lisa protested, as Janet suspected she’d done before. “Arthur was older and steadier, and not the sort one would have had to live up to. What sort of wife would I be for a celebrity?”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say! You’re a celebrity yourself, for God’s sake, or could be if you weren’t always hiding under your shell. What about those film people who’ve been hounding you to let them do a cartoon series about Tessie?”

“Yes, and having her run over weasels with army tanks and blow them up with exploding meat pies. You know why I fell apart at Uncle Caradoc’s, Dafydd? That beastly Reuel was giving me this jolly scenario about Tessie murdering a whole gang of armadillos in various gruesome ways. I will not have my tortoise turned into a monster! It’s bad enough being thought one myself.”

“Darling, dearest angel fathead, I’ve told you over and over again, it’s not you. I’m the villain in this production.”

“And I’m the witch who’s supposedly put you up to killing her husband. Dafydd, we’ve been through this again and again. It’s not just you Javert’s out to get, it’s both of us.”

“Javert?” said Madoc. “You mean the Sûreté’s still on your trail?”

“Oh yes,” Dafydd replied wearily. “He pops up every so often, twirling his big mustache and wondering when I’m going to crack. His great ambition is to send me to the guillotine. Offing an opera singer for a
crime passionel
would be his passport to fame, fortune, and promotion, one gathers.”

“He comes after me now and then too,” said Lisa. “Trying to get me to admit that Arthur was cruel or unfaithful or impotent, even that Tib is Dafydd’s child. You can’t imagine what that beast has put us through, just because some vicious, spiteful, lying—”

Dafydd covered her writhing hands with his own. “So far, Madoc, Javert’s accomplished one thing. He’s made it impossible for Lisa and me ever to have any sort of life together.”

His lips twisted, not into a smile. “Sounds silly coming from me, don’t you think? Early on, I’d thought all those pretty women were just a perk of the position. When Lisa married Arthur, I realized how abysmally wrong I’d been, but it was too late. I was stuck playing the Duke of Mantua, I decided there was nothing left but to relax and enjoy it. After all, it’s an old operatic tradition: Caruso, Scotti, all that. And one does get damnably lonesome sometimes. But it palls. God, how it palls! And I still have to keep going through the motions on account of some perverted practical joker and a French
flic
who wants his name in the papers. If I quit playing the field, Javert will have an excuse to start spouting off that it’s because of Lisa, and she’ll be put through the mill again. God, I’m so sick of acting the role of a buck rabbit! Madoc, is there nothing we can do?”

“Well,” said Janet, “I suppose we could boil up another kettle.”

They needed the laugh, any excuse would have done. “Why not?” said Lisa. “We can have some of Dafydd’s ginger biscuits for dessert, he always brings me a packet.”

Lisa wasn’t yet ready to separate herself from Dafydd. She was combing his hair with her fingers, fussing with the crumpled shirt collar that showed above the neck of his pullover. “Can you remember where you put them, Enrico?”

“You’re funny, aren’t you.” Sharing the load must have done him some good; this time the smile, though not wide, was genuine. “Of course I can. You know I’ve a memory like an elephant.”

He probably did, Janet thought, he’d need one to retain every word and note in his large repertoire. There’d also be the stage business: when to come on, when to go off, when to stand or sit or charge around being heroic or cowardly as the case might be. Not to mention keeping track of what city he was in at any given moment, where he must go next, and when, and how, and with whom. Poor Dafydd! She’d been rotten to misjudge him so totally.