A Chorus of Detectives Read online

  All the time she was talking Scotti studied her broad shoulders and her strong arms, thinking she would be quite capable of overcoming a healthy man in a struggle. “Now ask her what she is doing in chorus dressing room so close to performance time.”

  A strange look came over Tucciarone’s face, but he repeated the question in Lithuanian and listened carefully to the answer. “She says she went back for a bucket she’d left there.”

  Scotti looked closely at the other man. “What is it? Something?”

  “Mr. Scotti, I think she’s lying. And I think I know why. We’ve had a problem with petty theft all year—small things taken out of the dressing room, sometimes cash. It’s not a big problem, but every once in a while something just disappears. I think maybe she went to the dressing room to steal.”

  Scotti frowned. “Before the choristers arrive? Nothing is there to take!”

  “Sometimes a few of us come in early and get dressed and go to the greenroom to wait—to avoid the crush in the dressing room. It gets awfully crowded in there with all of us trying to get ready at the same time. In between the time of the early arrivals and the time when the rest get there—that’d be a very good time to do a little pilfering.”

  Scotti noticed that while they were talking, Mrs. Bukaitis’s eyes kept darting back and forth between them. They were alert and intelligent eyes, he thought, oddly out of place in one who held so menial a position. Mrs. Bukaitis almost looked as if she understood what they were saying. “Is something stolen from you?” he asked Tucciarone.

  “I’m missing a pocket watch. It wasn’t valuable, but it was mine and I hate being stolen from.”

  “Ask her if she takes it.”

  When the chorister asked her, a stream of loud, angry, unintelligible words erupted from the scrubwoman’s mouth. Tucciarone looked at Scotti and shrugged helplessly; he couldn’t keep up with her. But there was no doubt in either man’s mind that the woman was telling them exactly what she thought of them, and none of it was flattering.

  “Eh, thank her for her help,” Scotti shouted to make himself heard. “I think we go now.”

  Tucciarone yelled something at the woman and the two men fled, pursued by the sound of Mrs. Bukaitis’s voice giving vent to her outrage at their audacity in even suggesting that she might be a thief.

  Beniamino Gigli played with the little dog in his lap the whole time Captain O’Halloran was interviewing him. They were in the tenor’s hotel suite; Gigli on a sofa and the captain on a hard chair facing him. Gigli had said he was resting his voice and didn’t want to talk, but O’Halloran had persuaded him to let him in.

  Gigli had made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the Metropolitan Opera chorus. “Nowhere in Europe or South America do I suffer from such persecution by the chorus!” he declaimed. “Only in New York! Always there is soprano or another tenor who is jealous, one of the soloists, I mean. One expects that. But the chorus? È imperdonabile!”

  “What’s that?”

  “I say their behavior is not to be forgiven! Gatti is too softhearted. Because someone is attacking them, he allows them to behave in ways he does not tolerate otherwise. Captain, you must find killer fast! We never have normal opera house until you do. Gatti is too lax.” He bent over the dog in his lap and sang to it softly, seeking comfort from the small friendly body.

  O’Halloran flipped through his notebook. “The way I understand it, it’s Mr. Setti who’s in charge of the chorus.”

  The tenor made a sound of annoyance. “That is another thing. Setti is too old for the job. But he is longtime friend of Gatti, so Gatti keeps him on the payroll. He is soft-headed as well as softhearted, our general manager.”

  O’Halloran was beginning to wonder if Gigli liked anybody at the Metropolitan. “Were you in the opera house the night the woman was killed by an urn falling on her head? Between acts of Samson and Delilah, that was.”

  “Samson is Caruso’s opera. I stay home.”

  “What about the night the man was found hanging in the chorus dressing room, ah, before a performance of Mefistofele? That was December sixth.”

  “Of course I am there,” Gigli said. “Mefistofele is my opera.”

  “Did you go to the chorus dressing room anytime that night?”

  “I never go to chorus dressing room on any night. Why should I? I only hear about dead man, I do not see him.”

  “Well, what about the night two of the choristers fell through the trap door? That was—”

  Gigli cut him off with a slicing gesture that startled the dog. “Pagliacci. Caruso.”

  “You weren’t there?”

  “No!”

  “Carmen, on the ninth? When the woman was stabbed?”

  “No.”

  “La Forza del Destino, when the man was poisoned?”

  “No, no, no! I am there one night, when I sing! Questions, questions! Caruso, he just calls me on the telephone and asks me all these same questions! Basta!”

  O’Halloran moaned. “Caruso?”

  “And he believes me when I say I am not there,” Gigli said pointedly, “and he promises not to bother me anymore. Ask the doorkeeper. He knows I am not there.”

  “Now, Mr. Gigli, you must know how easy it is to slip around an opera house without being seen.”

  The tenor dumped the lapdog on the sofa and stood up, stretching to make himself taller. “I am a star, Captain O’Halloran. I am always seen.”

  And that, O’Halloran understood, marked the end of the interview. It was just as well; there wasn’t much else he could ask until he’d gotten one of his men to check on Gigli’s story that he wasn’t in the opera house on four of the five lethal occasions.

  In the meantime, he might have another problem; it looked as if Enrico Caruso was ignoring his warning not to meddle. And from the grilling Geraldine Farrar had given him the day before, one might suspect that the lady too was thinking of putting on her detective hat again. In fact, all of them had been bursting with questions—Gatti-Casazza, Amato, and Scotti as well as Miss Farrar. O’Halloran couldn’t really blame them; with five deaths taking place within a two-week period, they had the right to demand answers.

  But O’Halloran had finally made them understand he wanted to ask them questions. There was a lot of hypothesizing and contradicting one another and outright guessing; but by the time they were finished, O’Halloran had a list of five names, people who had reason to hate the chorus. The two singers, Rosa Ponselle and Beniamino Gigli, whose performances were being sabotaged by the chorus. Edward Ziegler, whose thankless task it was to keep the chorus on stage and functioning without bankrupting the Met. Giulio Setti, whose loss of control over the chorus could well put an end to his career. And Alessandro Quaglia, whose long-standing dislike of all choruses had been aggravated by the undisciplined behavior of the present one.

  Scotti had wanted to add a sixth name to the list of possibilities, that of the scrubwoman who’d discovered the body of the chorister who’d been hanged. Everyone had looked at him as if he were crazy.

  Thinking back to the vitriolic rehearsal he’d witnessed yesterday, O’Halloran had asked Geraldine Farrar if she thought Quaglia was the killer—and was surprised when she said no.

  “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 conduct
or’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 k
now 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?”