A Chorus of Detectives Read online

  “Emmy? I know Gerry once did something like that—”

  “Her too. And Caruso. They fancy themselves detectives, you see. You wouldn’t be doing any of that, would you?”

  “Any of what? Investigating, you mean?” Rosa looked astounded at the suggestion.

  “That’s what I mean. Are you?”

  “Are you crazy? Why would I pretend to be a detective? I wouldn’t dream of going around asking questions and sticking my neck out! Not on your life!”

  “Bless you, my child,” O’Halloran sighed, and left.

  8

  “Idiota!” Antonio Scotti grabbed his hair with both hands. “Why do I not think of it? I forget, I forget!”

  “Then it is true?” Gatti-Casazza asked.

  “Sì, sì—he is here all night!”

  The Geraldine Farrar team of detectives was meeting in Scotti’s apartment in the Knickerbocker Hotel to compare notes. “Are you sure of the date, Toto?” Gerry asked. “That’s important.”

  “It is night trap door falls open in Pagliacci,” Scotti said. “I remember thinking when I hear, this terrible thing happens while I am busy relieving Gigli of his last singing fee. It is same night.”

  “And he is here playing cards all the time?” Gatti persisted. “He does not go out for a while?”

  “Only to visit the amenities. He comes right back, to this very room.”

  “Eh, then,” Gatti smiled, pleased with his work. “Now we remove one name from list of suspects, no?”

  “Gigli is not good card player,” Scotti offered by way of general information.

  Gerry made an apologetic sound. “That was smart detective work, Gatti—but I’m afraid we can’t take Gigli’s name off the suspects list just yet.”

  “Perchè non? He is here playing cards all night with Scotti! Other men are here too, they are also witnesses. How can he wreak havoc at the opera house and be here playing cards at same time? No, Gerry—Gigli has good alibi.”

  “But he didn’t have to be at the opera house that night. He could have sabotaged the trap door earlier. Whoever the killer is, he didn’t have to wait for the actual performance.”

  “È vero,” Scotti nodded. “She is right, Gatti.”

  Gerry said, “Here’s something to consider. What was the last opera performed before Pagliacci?”

  “Mefistofele,” Gatti answered. Gigli’s opera. “But that does not mean he is guilty!”

  “No, of course it doesn’t. But it does mean he had a good opportunity to fix the trap door so it would give way the next time a lot of weight was put on it.”

  “You mean he can fix it right after Mefistofele performance ends.”

  “Or the next day,” Gerry said. “He’d have had plenty of time.”

  Gatti slumped in his chair. “I do not think Gigli is guilty.”

  “Neither do I,” Gerry admitted promptly. “But if we’re looking for evidence to eliminate suspects, we just don’t have any for Gigli yet.”

  The general manager groaned. “Cielo! And I think I do such good detective work!”

  “But you do!” Scotti said, trying to cheer him up. “That was smart, going to Gigli’s valet.”

  “But not very nice,” Gatti said despondently. “And it is for nothing!”

  “Well, murder isn’t very nice either,” Gerry said. “Don’t worry, Gatti—you’re going about your investigation the right way.”

  But it wasn’t his proficiency as a detective that was bothering Gatti. It was the loss of the hundred dollars he’d paid the valet Roberto that he was mourning. He’d had no idea detective work could be so expensive.

  Emmy Destinn resisted the temptation to finger the Flemish lace, remembering how Caruso had squawked the last time she’d touched it. “What is it you want me to see, Rico? Something new?”

  “See? I do not ask you to come because I want you to see.”

  Enrico Caruso had his own art gallery. A quarter of a century of accumulating antiques and objets d’art had resulted in a collection that took up too much room to live with comfortably. So the antique watches, velvets, brocades, bronzes, enamels, candlesticks, paintings, and the like had to be given their own resting place, a rented gallery on Fiftieth Street near Fifth Avenue.

  Emmy turned away from the lace. “If you don’t have something for me to look at, why did you want me to come here?”

  “I ask Edward Ziegler to meet me here, and we agree not to face suspects alone, no? So I call a teammate. You are my protection!”

  “But why here? Why not just talk to him in his office?”

  “Too many interruptions,” Caruso growled. “I try in office, but always are interruptions. Here is better.”

  Caruso fidgeted while Emmy amused herself looking at his collection as they waited. After a while she too began to fidget. “When is he coming?” she asked.

  “He is supposed to be here now,” Caruso worried.

  “Well, I can’t wait all day. He’s not going to tell you anything anyway. What do you expect him to say? ‘Yes, you are right, I did it’?”

  “You do not know, he might.”

  “Oh, don’t be absurd, Rico! Don’t you have a plan? What are you going to ask him?”

  “I think we just talk, and maybe he gives something away.”

  Emmy was astounded. “That is your plan? Wait for him to give himself away? Oh, Rico, that is plain silly! You are silly. Shame on you, wasting my time like this.”

  He looked pained. “Emmy, you do not even try to be agreeable any more!”

  “I do not feel agreeable!” she snapped.

  “I already know that!” he snapped back. “Everybody at the Metropolitan Opera knows that! Ever since you come back from Prague, you are grouch.”

  Sputtering, Emmy grabbed up the Flanders lace and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Emmy, take care!” Caruso cried. “The lace, it is fragile! I tell you before! Now put it back!”

  “Lace is meant to be worn,” she snarled, “not spread out on a table and stared at!” But she put it back.

  Fortunately that was the moment Edward Ziegler opened the door to the gallery and let himself in. “Sorry I’m late, Mr. Caruso—I was meeting with the new insurance underwriters and couldn’t get away.” He spotted Emmy. “Oh, Miss Destinn. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  “She knows all,” Caruso nodded, trying to look Solomon-like.

  “All?” Ziegler peered at them over his pince-nez. “Are you referring to that unfortunate slip of the tongue when I was negotiating with the choristers? You aren’t going around telling everyone about that, are you?”

  “The choristers, they talk, yes? So what does it matter if I—”

  “Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right,” Ziegler said irritably. “What is it you wanted to see me about?”

  Caruso looked surprised. “That is what we talk about. You and the chorus.”

  “What about them?”

  “You do not like the choristers, no?”

  “I’m not too fond of the ones we have at the moment, you might say.”

  “Might I also say you go so far as to hate them?”

  A look of comprehension crept over Ziegler’s face. “I? You think … I am the one killing the choristers?” He worked his mouth wordlessly a moment. Then: “How dare you accuse me? How dare you?”

  Caruso was uncomfortable; he wasn’t very good at confronting people. “Mr. Ziegler, can you tell us someone you are with at time of murders? Some person who can give you alibi?”

  “Why should I? You’re not the police!”

  “No,” the tenor sighed. “I am Caruso and you are Ziegler and we must work together in the opera house. Mi dica, di grazia—one name? One murder?”

  Ziegler was still angry but he made the effort to think back. “Well, during Forza … when the chorister was poisoned—”

  “No, not that one,” Caruso interrupted. “The poison, it can be put in pitcher any time, yes? Perhaps Carmen?”

  “
This is preposterous! How do you expect me to remember that far back?”

  “Not so far. Please try. The time right before the curtain.”

  Ziegler scowled, trying to remember. Suddenly his face lit up. “Quaglia! I was talking to Maestro Quaglia—I’m sure of it! Yes, that was the night two of the orchestra members called in ill and Quaglia was complaining that our orchestral pool was inadequate, that it should be maintained at the same level as our pool of contract singers. We talked right up to curtain time, I’m sure of it!”

  “Bene!” Caruso cried. “You see, you do remember! Now, Pagliacci—”

  But the Met’s assistant manager had had enough. “Mr. Caruso, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m not going on with this. I don’t have to account for myself to you.”

  Caruso put on his best menacing leer. “Do you prefer to account to Captain O’Halloran of the police?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I think I would prefer that.”

  Caruso hadn’t expected that. “Eh, um, so you, uh.” Ziegler crossed to the door and opened it.

  “Mr. Ziegler, one word before you go,” Emmy said, speaking for the first time. “Right before Pagliacci, you came to my dressing room and you spoke German to me. Why did you do that?”

  He looked puzzled. “Why did I come to your dressing room?”

  Emmy let her exasperation show. “You know perfectly well what I mean. Why did you speak German to me? You’ve known for two years that I do not permit that language to be spoken to me.”

  Ziegler showed a little exasperation himself. “How can I possibly remember a thing like that? I’d probably been talking to some of the German choristers and just forgot to switch when I spoke to you. That happens sometimes, when you speak four languages.”

  “I speak five,” Emmy said, “and it’s never happened to me.”

  “Which simply proves what a truly superior person you are,” he said, bowing sardonically. He left without another word.

  Caruso walked over to the door and looked out through the barred window, watching Ziegler as long as he was in sight. “Emmy,” he asked, “who is it that investigates Maestro Quaglia?”

  “Pasquale.”

  He nodded. “I think I must ask Pasquale to check on this Carmen alibi Ziegler gives us.”

  “Yes,” she murmured after a moment, “that is exactly what you must do.”

  The Met’s doorkeeper scratched the bridge of his nose. “That’s a tall order, Mr. Amato. A couple hundred people come troopin’ in here ever’ night.”

  “I know I ask a lot,” Pasquale Amato replied, “but please, try to remember.”

  “Why do you wanta know when the Maestro was here anyway?”

  “It is these killings,” the baritone said, looking for the best way to shade the truth. “If one person is backstage all five times a chorister dies, then perhaps that person sees someone else who is here all five times—you see? So I ask myself, who can be here all five times? And I answer myself, perhaps Maestro Quaglia? Perhaps he sees someone who does not belong here?”

  “Why doncha just ask him?”

  “I think I check with you first.” Amato was on shaky ground there, so he hurried on: “Di grazia, do you remember? Is he here?”

  The doorkeeper scratched his nose again. “He don’t come for the Germans. He’s never here when we’re doin’ one of the Germans.”

  “But no chorister dies during a German opera. What about the Italian or French operas he does not conduct?”

  “Yeah, ever’ once in a while he drops in. Never stays long.”

  “Was he here during Samson and Delilah? Mefistofele?”

  But the doorkeeper couldn’t remember, and Amato had to settle for a maybe. Quaglia wasn’t at the opera house; Monday’s opera was Zazà, which he did not conduct. It was just as well, as Amato wasn’t ready to confront him yet. The conductor could have been backstage during the crucial times—but wait! Amato suddenly thought. What were the ‘crucial’ times? Three of the killings could have been rigged hours ahead of time—the falling urn, the broken trap door, the poisoned juice pitcher. Amato shook his head; trying to pin down times wasn’t the answer. He’d have to find some other line to follow.

  “Mr. Amato!” a voice called. “I do not think you rehearse today.”

  Amato turned to see the chorus master approaching. “No, Mr. Setti, I come to see you,” he improvised, steering the older man out of earshot of the doorkeeper. “It is about Maestro Quaglia that I wish to speak. I know he has trouble with choruses in past—”

  “È vero!” Setti smirked. “Quaglia knows nothing of choral singing. He does not know how to tell the chorus what he wants—I think because he does not know what he wants himself. So he blames choristers for his own imprecision.”

  “Eh, he has no trouble telling soloists what he wants,” Amato remarked dryly. “When does it start, this hating of choristers?”

  “At La Scala,” Setti guessed, “or perhaps Covent Garden. You know chorus petitions against him there?”

  “Sì, I—”

  “Do you know why? Because he tries to strangle a chorus tenor! He loses control of himself completely … and they fight!” Setti looked out of the corner of his eye to see how Amato was taking that.

  Amato was taking it with a great deal of astonishment—because he knew Setti had just told him one enormous lie. The Covent Garden chorus had protested in a dispute over what they claimed was Quaglia’s lack of consistency. The chorus would have perhaps one full rehearsal with the soloists and orchestra before a performance; Quaglia would conduct their music one way at the rehearsal and another during the performance. There had been no fight, no attempt at strangling. Amato knew, because he’d been singing at Covent Garden at the time it all happened.

  Openly pleased with the effect his bit of ‘news’ had created, Setti pushed it a little farther. “A man of uncontrolled violent impulses, our Maestro. I do not wish to make accusations, but …” He held his hands out, palms up, leaving it to Amato to finish the sentence any way he wished.

  Amato at last found his voice. “No, no, you are right—we must take care not to start accusing one another.”

  The chorus master scowled; that wasn’t the response he’d been angling for. “But it does not hurt to be careful, eh? Do not allow yourself to be alone with him, Mr. Amato.”

  Amato glanced at a stagehand sweeping the floor and then looked back to the doorkeeper. Right then he was more worried about being alone with Setti than with Quaglia. He mumbled something and found an excuse to get away; the chorus master was suddenly making him nervous.

  Very nervous.

  Emmy Destinn was in something of a bind. First of all, she’d taken on the task of investigating a murder suspect that no one seriously believed could be guilty, including the investigator. Emmy wasn’t overly fond of Rosa Ponselle, but the only thing she had by way of evidence against her was that Rosa had poured out the poisoned orange juice for the unfortunate chorister who picked the wrong time to get thirsty. Calling that little bit of nothing ‘evidence’ was stretching it a bit. Anyone could have picked up that pitcher of juice and poured a glass; it was mere chance that it happened to be Rosa.

  Second, there was the problem of how to investigate. There was no point in talking to the choristers; every one of them would swear to having seen Rosa Ponselle lurking backstage when she had no business being there, a knife in one hand and a vial of poison in the other. Rosa lived with her sister, but there was no point in talking to her either; she would swear on a stack of Bibles that Rosa had been home every night, knitting shawls and singing hymns.

  But the main obstacle was one that Emmy reluctantly acknowledged as virtually insurmountable: it was just too improbable to think that the younger woman would jeopardize her future simply to get even with a bunch of ill-mannered hecklers. Rosa Ponselle didn’t have the world at her feet yet, but it was only a matter of time. She was on the right track, she had Gatti-Casazza guiding every step of he
r career, she was fresh and young and still had it all ahead of her. Emmy tried to remember what that felt like.

  Rosa and her sister lived in an apartment building on Ninety-seventh Street near Riverside Drive. Perhaps the doorman?

  Emmy took a taxicab farther uptown than she’d ever been before. When she arrived at her destination, she was annoyed to learn that the apartment building had no doorman. But there was a doorbell labelled BUILDING SUPERVISOR. She pushed it.

  The man who answered the door was in his late forties. Thin lips, tight jaw, suspicious eyes—constipated-looking. “No vacancies,” he told Emmy, “and we don’t keep no waiting list.”

  Emmy sized him up quickly and reached into her purse for a twenty-dollar bill. “I will pay you one dollar a minute for your time,” she announced.

  The man’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the twenty, and he motioned Emmy inside. The first thing she saw in the tiny foyer was a bicycle propped up by the side of the staircase. The building supervisor was struggling to get the door to click as he pulled it to. “Fool latch is broken again,” he muttered. “I’m gonna have to fix that before they all start yelling.” He glanced at Emmy. “Twenty minutes?”

  “At the most.” She pointed to the bicycle. “Is that …?”

  “Belongs to one of the tenants. A singer, she says.” He led Emmy down to a large basement room that seemed to be a combination living room–bedroom–kitchen–workshop–office. The man let her find her own seat and then said, “First of all, I gotta know who I’m talking to.”

  “Ema Destinnova,” she said, and waited.

  No flicker of recognition. “What can I do for you, Mrs.?”

  “Tell me your name?”

  “Bridges.” Nothing else.

  “Mr. Bridges, can you hear when people come in and go out of this building?”

  He pointed to the ceiling. “Steps run up right over there.”

  “Can you tell from the sound who’s climbing them? Or coming down?”

  Mr. Bridges allowed the ghost of a smile to appear. “You’re kinda new at this, ain’t you, Mrs.? Who you wanta know about?”