Prima Donna at Large Read online

  “She throws a chair at me once,” Caruso sighed.

  “And a vase of flowers at me,” Toscanini smiled.

  “And an open bottle of wine at me,” Amato added, “alas.”

  “I am lucky,” Scotti said. “At me she throws nothing harder than a pillow.”

  I gave O’Halloran my tenth-best smile. “I throw things, Lieutenant.” The first words I ever spoke to him.

  “Number three,” he plowed on, determined to make his point, “Duchon himself accused you of doctoring his throat spray. The way I get it, he staggered out on the stage and pointed his finger at you. He was going for you when he collapsed. Or did I get it wrong?”

  A dead silence descended over the stage; there was no way of arguing that point away. Finally I said, “No, you didn’t get it wrong, Lieutenant. But Duchon did. I didn’t put ammonia in the spray bottle. Good heavens, I’m a singer myself! I couldn’t do a thing like that. Besides, I don’t carry ammonia around with me!”

  “I do,” Emmy spoke up. “At least, I did tonight. There’s a bottle in the medicine bag.”

  Lieutenant O’Halloran pounced on that. “Is there any missing? Was the bottle full when you got here?”

  Emmy wasn’t sure. “You’ll have to ask Dr. Curtis—it is his medicine bag.”

  “Was this bag out of your possession anytime during the evening?”

  “Oh, I put it down three or four times. While I was waiting for Pasquale.”

  “Pasquale?”

  “Me, Lieutenant,” Amato said. “Emmy carries the medicine, to help Dr. Curtis. I am not in the opera house for a few weeks because I have been ill. So I go visit and say hello, I am back—you understand?”

  “So the bag was left unattended several times during the evening. Meaning anyone could have taken the ammonia bottle.” He looked directly at me. “Anyone.”

  “Oh, cut it out, Lieutenant,” Morris Gest snarled unexpectedly. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Gerry wouldn’t seriously harm anyone—it’s not her way.”

  O’Halloran raised one eyebrow. “A lady who throws things?”

  Toscanini chimed in, “But that is precisely why she does no serious harm! She lets the anger out often, in little spurts. This does give her the unfortunate reputation of being stubborn, selfish, unreasonable—”

  “Thank you very much,” I snapped.

  “—but she does not let the anger, eh, pile up—you see? She does not hold it in and let it grow and become dangerous. Per dio, Lieutenant—Gerry is the last person you should suspect!”

  T’amo, you funny man.

  “Mm, that’s as may be,” the lieutenant was saying, “but we’ll save that for later. Right now, I want to go over everything that happened here up to the time Duchon pointed his finger at Miss Farrar. I want you to think back over what you saw, and be sure to check each other on details. Mr. Caruso, you start.”

  That sounded like a simple enough procedure, but it turned out that nobody remembered anything the same way. It was incredible, the number of different versions of the same incident that came out! Even simple little things, like where Emmy had put down the medicine bag in my dressing room. I distinctly remembered seeing her drape it over the back of a chair, Scotti said she put it on the dressing table, Emmy claimed she put it on the floor because she remembered having to stoop over to pick it up, and Amato didn’t remember her putting it down at all!

  Everything that had happened came out that same garbled way. Osgood Springer said my castanets had hit Duchon at the corner of the mouth (it was the hairline), David Belasco said he’d seen Scotti backstage at a time Scotti insisted he was still out front, Toscanini said Dr. Curtis was attending to Duchon on the right side of the stage when in fact it was the left, Jimmy Freeman said he didn’t get into costume until the first act was well under way (I could have sworn I’d seen him dressed earlier than that), Caruso thought he saw Gatti go into Duchon’s dressing room but Gatti said he hadn’t been upstairs all evening, Emmy was convinced that Uncle Hummy’s new tweed coat was brown instead of gray, Amato said he’d bumped into Morris Gest backstage before the first act but Morris said it was after, and on and on and on. Lieutenant O’Halloran was beginning to get a glazed look in his eye.

  David Belasco finally spoke up and put an end to it. “If I may make a suggestion, Lieutenant,” he said with that surprisingly soft-voiced authority that got him attention whenever he wanted it, “these people have had a long and stressful evening. They’re tired and upset. A good night’s sleep can sometimes work wonders toward clearing the memory. Perhaps we can continue this tomorrow?”

  I was glad to see Lieutenant O’Halloran was a man who could take suggestion. “Not a bad idea, Mr. Belasco—we’re not getting very far this way. Go on home, folks, and thanks for your help. Somebody’ll be around to talk to you tomorrow.”

  A cheering thought. Morris Gest headed straight for me. “Are you all right, Gerry?”

  “Dead on my feet, but otherwise unscarred. I’m all right, Morris—don’t worry.”

  He gave my arm a little squeeze and went back to collect Belasco. Toscanini gave me an encouraging wink and Scotti came over to help me with my coat.

  Caruso went up to O’Halloran. “Lieutenant, you worry about these conflicting stories, no? Do not distress yourself. I will help you get the truth! I assist you in your questioning and—”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort, Mr. Caruso. You will keep your nose out of it this time. You will do no ‘investigating’ on your own. None at all. Understand?”

  “But I help you before!” Caruso protested. “You tell me I am a help! You stand right here on this stage and you say—”

  “Mr. Caruso, listen to me. Listen carefully. Don’t meddle. Don’t ask questions, don’t eavesdrop, don’t read other people’s mail. Don’t do any of those things you did the last time we met. Whatever occurs to you—don’t do it. If I catch you playing detective even once, I’m going to throw you in the pokey for obstructing justice.”

  Caruso’s mouth dropped open and his eyes grew huge. “You do not do such a thing!”

  O’Halloran leered. “Just give me the excuse. I mean it, Mr. Caruso. Keep out of it completely. I’ll tolerate no interference from you this time.”

  “But … but … but …” Caruso sputtered.

  “No buts. No nothing. Keep out of it! Do you understand?”

  Emmy and Amato exchanged a knowing look, and without speaking a word marched over to Caruso. They each took an arm and gently steered the sputtering tenor off the stage.

  That “last time” they’d been talking about had been just a little over four years ago, when a small-time impresario had been killed shortly before the world première of La Fanciulla del West. Caruso had taken it upon himself to find the killer, of all things. I wasn’t involved in it, but Emmy Destinn told me Caruso had poked and pried and made such a pest of himself they were all ready to drop him into the East River. But his bumbling around had helped turn up the killer, and I guess he was thinking of doing the same thing again—until Lieutenant O’Halloran wrote paid to that little plan.

  “Ready?” Scotti said. “One good thing about all this—no fans waiting at the stage door at this hour, yes? They are all home in bed like good sensible people.”

  But he was wrong. Mildredandphoebe were outside, huddling together against the cold. “What happened?” Mildred said instead of hello. “The doorkeeper wouldn’t let us in—he said something about a police investigation.”

  “Police,” Phoebe nodded.

  I was so tired I was ready to drop, but they’d been waiting there in the cold all this time and I couldn’t just brush them off. I told them as briefly as I could what had happened.

  “That’s terrible!” Mildred exclaimed. (“Terrible!” Phoebe echoed.) “And they have no idea who did it?”

  “Oh, they have an idea,” I said dryly, “but they’re wrong. Look, I’ll talk to you about this some other time. Right now, I am dreadfully tired.”

/>   “Perhaps in a few days?” Scotti suggested.

  “Of course,” Mildred agreed quickly. “Take care of yourself, Miss Farrar.” Phoebe nodded vehemently; they really are nice girls.

  It wasn’t until I got home that I remembered David Belasco had said something to me about a late supper—but that was before Duchon had made his dramatic entrance in Act II. Belasco must have forgotten about it, as I had. Fortunately.

  “Riposi bene,” Scotti whispered, and kissed me goodnight.

  10

  I didn’t sleep well, but I rose at my usual hour and got in my daily practice—scales, lieder, a few arias. Scotti called and tried to persuade me to come to the Knickerbocker for lunch, but I didn’t want to go out. I knew I was going to have to talk to Lieutenant O’Halloran sometime during the day, and I didn’t feel like being sociable with that impending interview hanging over my head.

  One thing I did was write a congratulatory note to Jimmy Freeman. Poor Jimmy. He’d done a remarkable thing last night, taking over for Duchon that way—under circumstances that would have shaken even a seasoned singer. But he’d done it, and he’d done it well. Last night was a big step forward for Jimmy, and we should all have been fussing over him afterward instead of sitting in a semicircle arguing about who saw what when.

  Sometime during the morning I called the hospital and inquired about Philippe Duchon’s condition: no change. Also, no visitors. I tried to imagine what Duchon must be going through, not only the physical pain but also the devastating knowledge that his life as a singer was over. Not even during those moments when I outright hated him had I ever wished so horrible a fate for him. I called Wadley & Smythe and ordered two dozen orchids to be sent to the hospital. Maybe he’d remember.

  It was late afternoon before Lieutenant O’Halloran arrived. The maid had to ask him twice for his derby hat; he was obviously used to wearing it indoors. “Well, Lieutenant,” I said once he’d settled on a sofa, “have you come to arrest me?”

  He gave a lopsided grin. “Now, Miss Farrar, I just want to ask you some questions.”

  “Oh, is that all? And here I was thinking that last night you virtually accused me of putting ammonia in Duchon’s throat spray. Did I dream that?”

  He sighed. “Miss Farrar, one thing I’ve found out today is that you and Duchon fought like cats and dogs—and that alone makes me think you’re not the one who tampered with the spray. Someone bent on destroying a man would be more circumspect. But I’m not allowed to go on hunches. I have to deal with evidence, and I have to account to my superior for what I do—you understand?”

  I didn’t believe that at all; I thought he was trying to put me off my guard. I sat down in the chair farthest away from the sofa and said, “Very well, Lieutenant, ask your questions.”

  He gave me a mildly reproachful look and left the sofa for a chair nearer mine. “First of all, tell me what you and Duchon fought about.”

  “Everything. Philippe Duchon is arrogant and overbearing, and impossible to work with.” The lieutenant wanted details, so I told him about Duchon’s refusing to rehearse Carmen, his presuming to pick out the numbers I was to sing in our joint concert—now canceled, I suddenly realized—and a number of similar things. “But Lieutenant, that’s only half the story. We disagreed a lot, yes, but we always made the effort to work together. Duchon is as adept at apologizing as he is at causing trouble. He’d bring me flowers, take me to lunch, write me little notes—”

  “Like this one?” He pulled out a notebook and found the single sheet of paper he’d slipped between the pages.

  It was the note Duchon had written last night, instructing me to stay seated during his aria. “How did you get this?” I asked.

  “Never mind how I got it. Is that what you were fighting about last night?”

  “That started it, yes.”

  “Miss Farrar—why did you throw your castanets at him?”

  Oh, I didn’t like this! We were getting into a personal area that was really none of the police’s business. What had tipped the scale for me last night was that one final insult, when Duchon accused me of enjoying seeing Jimmy Freeman make a fool of himself in Delmonico’s. The story made me look bad, it made Jimmy look bad, but—worst of all—it did not make Duchon look bad.

  So I told that nosy police detective that I didn’t remember. “You must understand, Lieutenant, Duchon was a constant irritant—he was always doing something to make me angry. It could have been anything.”

  “The way I hear it, he said you enjoyed watching James Freeman make a fool of himself.”

  Oh, for … I felt like throwing something at him. If he already knew the answer, then why did he bother asking me? To see what I would say, obviously. “That could be right,” I smiled coolly.

  “Miss Farrar,” O’Halloran said in a way that let me see how patient he was being, “I know about the rivalry between your protégé and Philippe Duchon. I know about the scene in Delmonico’s. What I don’t know is your version of it. So why don’t you tell me?”

  Jimmy must have already told him about Delmonico’s, or perhaps one of the people I had told about it. “What did you do, Lieutenant, talk to everybody else before you came here? Were you saving me for last?” He just smiled, so I went on and told him about Jimmy’s ineffectual verbal attack on Duchon in Delmonico’s. In fact, I ended up telling him just about everything he wanted to know; he knew it all anyway.

  When I’d finished, I asked him a question. “How is all this going to help you find the killer?”

  “The killer?”

  “Killer, yes. Killing Duchon’s voice is the same as killing the man. For all practical intents and purposes, Duchon’s life is over. He can’t sing. He’ll never manage an opera company without being able to talk. He can’t even coach. So what’s left for him? You don’t spend your life creating music and then switch over to permanent silence without batting an eye. That’s death, Lieutenant.”

  “Mm, I suppose it is, in a way.”

  “So why aren’t you trying to find out who put the ammonia in the throat spray? Why do you keep asking about irrelevant matters like that little scene in Delmonico’s?”

  “We might not find an eyewitness to the act, so now I’m looking for motives. Who had a reason to want Duchon out of the picture, that sort of thing.”

  “But surely you don’t mean—” I caught myself in time and clamped my lips together.

  It didn’t make any difference. “Go on and say it, Miss Farrar. Surely I don’t mean James Freeman? Ask yourself one question: Who gains the most from Duchon’s removal from the scene?”

  “That’s absurd, Lieutenant. Jimmy Freeman is a sweet boy who wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  He didn’t think that worth commenting on. “Freeman was scheduled to sing Pasquale Amato’s roles while Amato was ill, until Duchon showed up and took his job away from him. Freeman was demoted to standing by for his rival, and Duchon was planning to sing at the Met next year—making Freeman’s chances for getting ahead even slimmer. And there was bad feeling between the two, on the verge of erupting into something nasty, looks like. Last night Duchon wanted Gatti-Casazza to get rid of Freeman, didn’t he? Freeman has a motive, all right.”

  “Oh, Lieutenant, everybody has a motive if you want to be picky about it. I’m telling you, nobody liked the man. Why single out Jimmy Freeman?”

  He grunted. “Unfortunately, you’ve got a point. Everyone does have some kind of motive—including you, don’t forget. Gatti-Casazza was worried that Duchon was after his job, for instance.”

  “He needn’t have been. The board of directors would never have fired Gatti to hire Duchon.”

  “But could he be sure of that? And if Gatti went, what would happen to Toscanini—who was already at loggerheads with Duchon?”

  “Maestro Toscanini has a place at the Metropolitan for as long as he wants. He’ll leave only when he chooses to go.” Not for another hundred years, I hoped.

  “Then there’s your manager.
Duchon cheated him, and from what I can find out, nobody cheats Morris Gest and gets away with it.”

  I was silent. That was true.

  “Duchon and Emmy Destinn have been enemies for years, dating back to their singing together at …” He flipped through his notebook until he found what he wanted. “At Covent Garden. Her reasons for disliking him seem to be about the same as yours. She told me their working relationship had settled down into a good, dull, solid hatred.”

  “Ha! Good for her.”

  “The other two baritones, Amato and Scotti—they were both in danger of losing their roles to Duchon.” He sighed. “Ten years ago I wouldn’t have believed something like that could be an adequate motive for attacking a man. But that was before I’d worked with opera people. Now I know better, if you’ll excuse my saying so. So I’d have to say both Scotti and Amato had motives too. In fact, about the only ones who don’t have motives are David Belasco and Enrico Caruso. Belasco didn’t even know Duchon. Caruso got along with Duchon better than anyone else managed to, but he still got mad enough one night to ask Gatti-Casazza to replace him. That was during a performance of …” He started flipping through his notebook again.

  “The Huguenots,” I said.

  He couldn’t find the page. “That sounds right. But even so, Caruso could never stay mad long enough to carry out an act of retaliation.”

  I smiled, halfway meaning it. “You sound as if you know Rico well.”

  “Well enough,” he said dryly. “I know he fancies himself a detective. If you’re his friend, Miss Farrar, you’ll convince him I meant what I said last night. I’ll lock him up if I catch him snooping this time.”

  “But you wouldn’t really.”

  “Yes, I would,” he said simply—and I believed him, Lord help us. “Now, Miss Farrar,” the lieutenant went on, “I want to go over your movements last night one more time. Don’t rush; try to remember everything you saw and name everybody who saw you. Take your time, get it straight.”

  How tedious. I told him basically the same thing I’d told him the night before, but with more detail. He’d interrupt now and then to get something clarified, and he asked a few questions when I’d finished—such as did I actually see Uncle Hummy pick up Caruso’s throat spray or did I only hear about it afterwards? I’d only heard about it. “By the way,” I said, “have you found Uncle Hummy?”