A Chorus of Detectives Page 18

  “I am Italian,” Gatti protested faintly.

  “And I am Czechoslovakian,” Emmy said proudly.

  “Well, I’m American,” Gerry growled. “Do you want to try spitting at me?”

  Mrs. Bukaitis considered it, saw the expression on the soprano’s face, and decided discretion was the better part of survival.

  “All right, folks, I think that’s enough,” Captain O’Halloran said. He motioned with his head and Scotti reluctantly gave up his hold on Mrs. Bukaitis’s arm. A uniformed officer stepped up to take his place, and the two policemen marched the would-be bomber off between them. “I’ll let you know when the hearing’s set,” O’Halloran said to Scotti. “You’ll be needed to testify.”

  “I testify with pleasure,” Scotti announced. “I and Mrs. Poplofsky.”

  When O’Halloran left, everyone started talking at once. There were a few hysterical laughs and some outright cheering. Only Gatti seemed to remember that they were supposed to be performing an opera; he did his version of hurrying around, getting things going again.

  “Emmy,” Gerry said, low, “do you think she did it? Do you think she murdered the five choristers?”

  Emmy hesitated, and then muttered. “No.”

  Gerry shook her head. “Neither do I.”

  Scotti came swooping down on them. “Eh, what you say now? Gerry, you laugh at me, carissima,” he reproved. “You think I am foolish to investigate scrublady, no? But now—you think I am foolish now?”

  She looked at him with an expression he’d never seen before. “You saved my life, Toto,” she said simply.

  They wrapped their arms about each other and stood there shuddering for a moment or two, at last letting it sink in what a truly close call they all had had.

  Rosa Ponselle decided it was time she and the Metropolitan’s chorus master had it out.

  On Tuesday, the day after Zazà, the chorus was just finishing a rehearsal in the roof theatre. Rosa waited outside, bravely facing the stream of choristers as they left. Setti was always the last to leave; she went inside and closed the door behind her. “Mr. Setti, we have to talk.”

  He smiled pleasantly. “But of course, Miss Ponselle. I fear I have only uncomfortable chairs to offer here—”

  “I’ll stand. Mr. Setti, why are you doing it? What did I ever do to you?”

  He blinked. “I do not understand.”

  “Oh, you understand, all right. They aren’t bothering me right now, I admit—but how long is that going to last? When will they start again?”

  “They … you speak of the choristers?”

  “Of course I speak of the choristers! Who else? What I want to know is why you put them up to it. Why did you?”

  “Put them …” Setti’s face fell as he at last understood what she was saying. “You accuse me? You say I cause them to … you are wrong! You cannot be more wrong! I try to get them to stop.”

  “Oh, don’t do that! Don’t tell lies. I heard you, Mr. Setti!”

  He looked so honestly puzzled that Rosa felt a twinge of uncertainty. “You hear me … say something?” Setti asked. “What do you hear?”

  “Right before Forza, I heard you telling some of the choristers to box me in, not to let me move around so much. You actually told them to stand on my feet to keep me from moving if they had to! Now don’t lie about it, Mr. Setti—I heard you!”

  The chorus master looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “But it is not you I am talking about, Miss Ponselle! Yes, I say these things—out of desperation, I might add. But not about you!”

  “Oh, sure!”

  “Consider. Do you hear me say your name? Think back.”

  Rosa was uneasy. “Well, I don’t actually remember hearing my name. But you had to be talking about me. Who else could it be?”

  “I speak of Irene Matera. She is contralto—you know her?”

  Rosa didn’t know many of the choristers by name, but she did know Irene Matera. “Oh, that one.” That one had been making trouble for Rosa since the first time she set foot on the Metropolitan stage.

  “Eh, she crosses in front of you,” Setti said. “Almost every performance, she finds way to cross while you are singing. I tell her not to do this, but she ignores me. So before Forza, I find four choristers I can trust and instruct them to stop her from crossing. Do you remember Forza? Does anyone cross in front of you?”

  Rosa was dismayed. “No. That was the first time this season someone did not cross in front of me. Oh my.”

  “If you are not certain, I give you names of choristers I instruct to—”

  “Not necessary, Mr. Setti, I remember perfectly well. How could I forget? That was the night Spike died.” She was silent a moment and then said, “Oh, Mr. Setti, I owe you a whopping big apology. I heard something and I jumped to conclusions and I got it all wrong.” She rolled her eyes upward. “Lord, this is embarrassing! Can you ever forgive me?”

  He smiled. “But of course! Do not feel bad.”

  “Well, I do. I suspected you of doing something to hurt me and all the time you were just trying to help me. Dumb, dumb. I am so sorry.”

  “Do not concern yourself, dear Miss Ponselle. It is what happens here that makes our judgment faulty. Singers are killed and we get nervous and suspicious of one another.”

  “I s’pose. It was still dumb.”

  “Then I too am ‘dumb’. I tell you something,” he added confidentially. “Before that Lithuanian bombing woman is caught, I suspect one member of the company of being killer!”

  “Really? Who?”

  “Maestro Quaglia,” he admitted. “Please—mi faccia questo piacere, do not tell him I say so.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. What made you suspect him?”

  The chorus master shrugged. “He is sour man—sour inside, you understand? From disappointment, failed expectations. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot be Toscanini!”

  Rosa laughed. “Oh, how I wish I’d been here in those days—before the war, I mean! Toscanini’s been gone … what, five years? And you’re all still talking about him!”

  “Maestro Toscanini, he is very special man.”

  “He must be. Is it true he and Gerry Farrar had an affair that lasted seven years?”

  Setti was shocked. “Miss Ponselle, we do not speak of such things!”

  “I know,” she complained, “and I surely wish someone would! All the rest of you know all these juicy things about each other and I don’t know a thing. Not for sure. I think it must have happened—Gerry and Toscanini, I mean.”

  “Miss Ponselle,” the chorus master said sternly, “do you forget so quickly how unkind gossip can be? I refer to rumor that says you have affair with married man.”

  With Caruso. “Oh dear, I thought that nasty bit of business was over and done with! I’m not having an affair with anyone.” She bit her lip. “I did it again, didn’t I? Jumped to conclusions.”

  “It is hard not to hear gossip in the opera house,” Setti conceded, “but you do not have to repeat it!”

  Yes, Daddy. “Don’t worry, I won’t. Not anymore. And I won’t go around accusing people of things, either. Mr. Setti, you don’t hate me, do you?”

  “Of course not,” he smiled. “How can anyone hate you?”

  “Well, thanks for being so nice about it.”

  Rosa left the roof theater feeling a lot better than when she’d gone in; it was best to get these things out in the open. She was on the bicycle recently recovered from that bicycle thief Emmy Destinn and well on her way home before she realized he hadn’t really answered her question about Gerry and Toscanini.

  Enrico Caruso gave a dinner party on Wednesday, two nights after Mrs. Bukaitis had been arrested. He invited only the two teams of self-appointed detectives, since the dinner party was to honor Antonio Scotti’s emergence as investigatore supremo. Dorothy Caruso had grown accustomed to entertaining on short notice; she’d long since memorized the telephone numbers of the necessary caterers an
d florists. Gatti-Casazza supplied the champagne—his bootlegger had come through.

  Emmy Destinn and Geraldine Farrar refrained from voicing their reservations about the ‘solution’ to the crimes that had been plaguing the Metropolitan; they didn’t want to throw a damper on Scotti’s big evening. He had caught a potential bomber and he deserved to be honored for that. But Mrs. Bukaitis’s potential as a destroyer of opera houses would not have been realized on Monday after all, as it turned out; the dynamite she’d used in her bomb had been defective.

  “Not a very good bomber, eh?” Pasquale Amato grinned over the oysters Rockefeller. “Captain O’Halloran, he says the dynamite is stolen from place where they build new bridge. The man in charge—the foreman, he says box of dynamite is set aside so they can send it back to manufacturer. That is why it is so easy to steal.”

  “How big a box was it?” Dorothy asked. “It’s hard to think of one woman stealing a whole box of dynamite by herself.”

  “Captain O’Halloran thinks she has help. Several times she says ‘we’ plan to blow up stage for the attention.”

  “I don’t understand why she waited until the place was swarming with people to set her bomb,” Emmy remarked. “Why didn’t she just take care of it earlier in the day?”

  “Because of Mrs. Poplofsky!” Scotti cried gleefully. “After we talk, Mrs. Poplofsky too becomes suspicious of Mrs. Bukaitis. She watches her like hawk—Mrs. Bukaitis cannot fix bomb earlier in the day!”

  Gerry raised an eyebrow. “Lucky for us the detective business is so contagious.”

  Gatti-Casazza watched glumly as his champagne disappeared more rapidly than he had dreamed possible. “Does she admit to killing the five choristers?”

  “That is strange thing,” Amato said. “At first she says no, but then she stops answering all questions and talks only of how the Poles must be driven out of Vilnius. Now when the police ask her do you kill this chorister or do you kill that chorister, she just says what do you think, or do you not know, or I tell you when Vilnius is free.”

  “How odd,” Gerry said. “It sounds as if she wants to be blamed.”

  “It makes her more important, you see.”

  “But … murder! Surely she wouldn’t risk a death sentence—”

  “Ah, but she is already convinced she is going to stand before a wall while firing squad shoots at her! She refuses to believe this country has one penalty for murder and another for attempted murder. It is explained to her many times, but she does not believe.”

  Emmy asked, “How do you know all this, Pasquale?”

  “I and Toto, we go to police station and ask!”

  Scotti laughed. “The captain, he is not overjoyed to see us, but he answers our questions. He feels obligated to me, you see, and this captain, he does not like to feel obligated. He feels same toward Gerry and Rico. Three times singers solve crimes for him—this cannot be good for the captain’s self-esteem.”

  “I think you are wrong, Toto,” Caruso said. “Captain O’Halloran, he is good man. He does not resent us when we truly help.”

  Everyone laughed out loud at that. Scotti said, “Mrs. Bukaitis makes mistake—she grows impatient. Killing choristers one at a time, it is too slow. So she thinks with one big bomb—boom! Many at once! Bomb is great time-saver!”

  “Do not joke,” Caruso said sharply. “Do not ever joke about bombs!”

  Startled, Scotti looked at his friend … and understood. “You are right, Rico. I forget. I do not joke about bombs again. Forgive me.” Just the past summer Caruso had been singing in Cuba when someone threw a bomb at the stage; bombs were not to be treated lightly.

  “Well, backstage is going to seem positively deserted now,” Gerry said lightly, deliberately turning the subject. “With all those policemen and private guards gone. Not that I’ll miss them.”

  “The police are gone,” Gatti said. “Not the guards.”

  “You haven’t discharged the guards?”

  “Not yet.”

  Emmy asked, “Why not? Do you think there is still danger?”

  Gatti hedged. “I think they stay a little while longer.”

  The two sopranos exchanged a look. Gerry said, “Gatti, you’ve never in your life spent a penny you didn’t have to and those guards are costing you a fortune. You must have some reason for keeping them on.”

  The general manager made a noise of exasperation. “I have no … reason. I just think it better that they stay a little longer.”

  Gatti’s tacit admission that he wasn’t satisfied that the real killer was in jail cast a slight pall over the dinner party. Good hostess Dorothy immediately called for dessert and tried to start a conversation about the Chicago Opera, now back in business after the war. No one was interested.

  “I think tonight we meet to disband our investigating teams and to celebrate Toto’s victory,” Amato remarked, “but now I am not so sure. Mr. Gatti, do you say we should continue looking?”

  Gatti thought about that. “I do not think it hurts to investigate a little more.”

  “Bravo!” Gerry cried. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I feel the same way. I’m convinced the attempted bombing and the murders are two separate things. Emmy?”

  Emmy nodded. “Sorry, Toto. I agree with them.”

  Scotti looked as if he’d just been told he’d never sing again. “But Mr. Gatti—you do not worry sufficiently to make your presence known at the opera house tonight, no? You are here instead, are you not?”

  “Ziegler is there. He takes my place.”

  “Ziegler!” Caruso exclaimed. “He is my suspect.”

  “What is the opera tonight, Mr. Gatti?” Dorothy asked brightly, still hoping to get away from this morbid subject.

  “Lucia,” Gatti answered shortly.

  “Gigli,” Caruso muttered. Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor was another of the roles he was sharing with the new tenor.

  They finished their dessert in silence and left the dining room. No one wanted to go home with the question of further investigations left unresolved, but no one seemed to know how to approach the subject. Gerry joined Emmy at the window and for a few moments the two sopranos looked quietly out at the night lights of New York’s skyline. Gerry said, “Gatti was a surprise, wasn’t he? If we could just come up with some specific reason for going on with the investigation! We need something solid to convince the others.”

  “I know,” Emmy said. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of something. But the truth is, I am like Gatti—I do not have a reason. A conviction, yes. But not a reason.”

  Just then Dorothy Caruso came up to them, looking ill at ease. “I must ask your help,” she said. “This is supposed to be a party, but everyone is standing around like mourners at a funeral. I am going to suggest we play a parlor game. If you two agree to play, then the men will play.”

  Gerry took her hands. “Dorothy, I know this must be dreadful for you—and I’m truly sorry you got caught up in it. But we can’t just drop the subject. What if the killer is still loose?”

  Dorothy shook her head. “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “I know you don’t, but we must think about it, you see,” Gerry said gently. “Every time I’ve gone into the opera house these past few weeks, I’ve had to wonder if anyone was going to die that night. We can’t just pretend nothing has happened.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “We’re going to have to talk about it, decide what we’re going to do. Would you rather we went somewhere else to talk?”

  “You don’t have to listen,” Emmy said tactlessly.

  Dorothy blushed but held her ground. “Yes, I do have to listen. Stay here. If it concerns Rico, it concerns me.”

  Emmy relented. “Of course it does.” She managed a half-smile.

  Off to the side, Caruso was also smiling as he stood watching these three fine women all under his roof at the same time. Across the room Gatti-Casazza watched Caruso watching the women. Caruso h
ad proposed marriage to all three women, and he’d kept proposing until one of them said yes. Gatti cleared his throat. “We must talk,” he said.

  “Yes,” Amato agreed, “we must.”

  No one said a word.

  The atmosphere was beginning to grow tense when a maid appeared and said Mr. Gatti was wanted on the telephone. Gatti excused himself and followed her out.

  The maid’s appearance had broken the tension. “I tell you what I think,” Amato said. “I think we are presumptuous to go on investigating after police make arrest. It is like saying we know better than police.”

  “The police can be wrong,” Gerry murmured. “Pasquale, the five murders were all individual acts—personal and up close and full of risk. But bombing, that’s killing from a safe distance. They’re just too different to be done by the same person.”

  “Pah! Who is to say how a killer thinks?”

  “Someone had better say,” Emmy declared dryly. “Gerry has a point—more than one person is involved. Mrs. Bukaitis is responsible only for the bombing part.”

  “Only the bombing?” Scotti exclaimed indignantly.

  “You know what I mean. There’s somebody else who hasn’t been caught.”

  “Captain O’Halloran, he is satisfied,” Caruso said. “Is he not?”

  “Quite satisfied,” Amato said. “He even thanks Toto.”

  Gatti-Casazza came back into the room, his step even slower than usual. One look at his face and everyone knew something was terribly wrong. Gatti had to swallow twice before he could speak. “That was Ziegler. It is not over. It is still happening.”

  A dead silence crept over the room. “Tell us,” Gerry whispered.

  “Someone fires a gun backstage tonight. Twice. Two times he shoots at chorus baritone.”

  Scotti swallowed. “Is he …?”

  Gatti’s expression lightened. “No! He is not even hurt! Ziegler says the man with gun must fire from great distance—because of the guards, you understand? He misses first time, fires again, misses second time, everyone starts shouting, he runs away!”

  “Per dio,” Caruso breathed heavily, “you do right when you keep the guards!”