Death on the High C's

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Certainly the impression I’ve got,’ said Nichols, ‘is that Miss Ffrench was, shall we say, decidedly cooperative.’

  ‘She’d sleep with anyone who asked her and a good many who didn’t,’ said Raymond, smiling briefly and not too attractively. ‘Not that I’m suggesting I was reluctant, or anything. Still, she went through men like other women go through paper tissues. She kept me on longer than most—two or three nights was par for the course, I believe. Actually, it was me who gave her the push, not vice versa.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  ‘Well, as you can guess, I suppose, she became a bore.’ He leaned forward in his chair to get his point over to Nichols. ‘She was very enjoyable for a few nights—she’d been well-trained at Coonabarrabran High, I’ll give her that—but along with her you had to take that thundering, blundering, bull-dozing egotism, that was the rub. Of course we’re all egotists in this game, more or less, but we all put up pretences—of sympathy, interest, pleasure in other people’s successes, and so on. And how right we are. Because naked egotism like Gaylene’s becomes the most crushing bore imaginable.’

  During this long speech Raymond Ricci had become conscious of the jerky twistings of his hands, and he put them down heavily on the arm of the chair, and then reached into his pocket for his packet of cigarettes. Nichols watched him, wondering whether to believe that it had indeed been he who had broken off the affair (if that was the right word for so unromantic an arrangement) with Gaylene Ffrench.

  ‘How did you end the . . . relationship, sir?’ he asked. ‘Were there rows, scenes, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Good Lord no. ’Fraid not, Superintendent. I just said I wouldn’t be coming round that night, and she said “Balls to you” or words to that effect. No, I lie: she actually said: “Balls to you.” Then she made other arrangements, as she was bound to.’

  ‘With Mr McKaid.’

  ‘So I gathered later. And the best of luck to both of them.’

  ‘You don’t like him.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But I would imagine that he and Gaylene would be pretty ideally suited to each other.’

  ‘Tell me, what was your first reaction when Miss Ffrench made the accusation that someone was trying to kill her?’

  ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t surprise,’ said Raymond Ricci, puffing at his cigarette thoughtfully. ‘Oddly enough, I believed it, right from the beginning. I think like most I was impressed by the way she played it: she looked such a sight—all red and blotchy and vicious. But when she made so much mileage in publicity out of it, of course I had second thoughts and assumed it was just one of her little tricks. All of us did, I imagine, since we knew Gaylene.’

  ‘She liked publicity?’

  ‘She drank it up. She needed it like she needed T-bone steaks and peanut butter sandwiches. As far as I thought about it at all, I assumed that she resented all the stuff about Bridget and Calvin—’

  ‘Their engagement?’

  ‘That’s right. The papers made quite a thing of it. I imagine she must have been green with envy, particularly as she hadn’t managed to drag him into her unselective arms. So that’s what made me change my mind and see it as a silly stunt.’

  ‘But not now?’

  ‘Well, obviously, one has to revise one’s opinions—in the circumstances.’

  Nichols watched him. An odd customer, he thought. By no means easy to know where you were with him, nor whether he was telling the truth. He was obviously relaxing now, presumably as the stimulus of the rehearsal was working off. The hands came to rest more often, and he was slipping down in his chair into a more comfortable position. But he was still not an easy person to come to terms with.

  ‘Was there any connection that you know of between Miss Ffrench and Sergeant Harrison?’

  ‘Connection? They joshed each other a lot—about the test matches, and that sort of thing—heavyweight fun, you know.’ His face suddenly went serious. ‘But I’m sorry about Harrison, we all are. It’s a really dirty business. I didn’t know him well, and he sometimes got on the wrong side of us, but he was a good chap. It’s not like with Gaylene—no one could say that he asked for it.’

  ‘You’d never talked to Harrison about Miss Ffrench, had you? He never told you anything—for example, anything that he’d noticed, about her private life, perhaps?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Superintendent We only swopped the time of day. He wasn’t really the kind of chap you had conversation with, unless you had some interest in common, like cricket, or the army. He kept his own counsel—you know the type.’

  Nichols sighed. ‘That’s what I was rather afraid of,’ he said.

  ‘Now Gaylene was a different kettle of fish entirely,’ said Ricci, becoming expansive. ‘If she knew anything about anybody she’d tell it. Trouble was, you never knew what was true and what was dreamed up in her nasty little mind. Mostly one worked on the assumption that it was all a load of bull.’

  ‘While you were . . . together, did she tell you anything that might suggest some sort of motive?’ asked Nichols, walking down the path Ricci had rather obviously opened up for him. ‘I mean, some motive beyond the general one of—’

  ‘Of Gaylene being a pain in everybody’s arse?’

  ‘Yes, it is a motive, but not too good a one.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Except that we are theatricals, and that does make a difference. Well, let’s see. Remembering her conversation is a bit like splashing round in a sewer. About Calvin, of course, she said the obvious—cold-fish, repressed homosexual, all that crap. “So much for the myth of the virility of blacks,” she used to say. Actually, she said it to his face.’

  ‘How did he react?’

  ‘Very well. He just said: “So much for the myth of Anglo-Saxon reticence and self-control.” I don’t think she understood, though. Probably wasn’t aware of being Anglo-Saxon. But it was a good reply. Luckily with Gaylene one could get a pretty good idea of the sort of thing she was likely to say, and think up something in advance.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Owen she was fairly careful with—he was letting her have her head, in the sense of letting her be as blatant and vulgar on stage as she could have wished, and so she went easy, in so far as was in her to. Bridget she riled the whole time, and Gaylene used to go on about how she would sing herself out in a couple of years’ time—ruin the voice, you know. Usual professional spite. Simon Mulley—oh yes, she’d somehow got the idea he was a bigamist. She went on about it one night when we were in bed.’

  ‘A bigamist?’

  ‘Yes, God knows where she got that from. Used to lick her lips and say he must be a sex-maniac, which was pretty rich coming from her.’

  ‘Didn’t that make her interested in him?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But she never got anywhere with him. If you were a bigamist you’d think twice about taking on Gaylene as well, I imagine. I think she decided it must have been a long time ago, and that he was past it now.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Well, even Gaylene hadn’t managed to dig up anything on Mr Pettifer—that’s the repetiteur. And she hadn’t had time to get anything on Giulia Contini. Jim McKaid she kept joshing about being a member of the IRA, and though he told her over and over again that he was a Protestant, she just said “Same thing”. God knows what she thought she meant. She was abysmally ignorant about anything outside her own little circle of interest—outside herself, that is.’

  ‘And you, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I was a pommie-wop. And probably a lot more things when she was talking to someone else. I think that about covers most of us, doesn’t it? One or two of the minor singers she hardly came in contact with, since she only appears in the last scene.’

  ‘And Mr Turner?’

  ‘Mike? Oh, the comparatively gentle treatment, as with Owen. As far as that was possible with Gaylene, you understand. Both of them were people she could hope to get something out of, in the way of parts, or prominence, an
d so on. She was no fool, and she knew which side her bread was buttered. I think she was trying to get Mike to put on Samson and Delilah or one of the other big mezzo vehicles for her. But he’s no fool either—I doubt if he was responding.’

  ‘You don’t think she could have done the part?’

  ‘Samson, yes. Delilah, hardly. But seriously, Gaylene wasn’t that big a fish, and as far as Mike was concerned she’d have to prove her drawing power first. Anyway, we haven’t the money for things a bit outside the basic repertoire.’

  ‘You yourself missed the second attempt on her, didn’t you?’ asked Nichols.

  ‘That’s right. I’ve just been catching up with it in the newspapers. Most of them don’t have a great deal on it—I don’t imagine they were taking her very seriously by then.’

  ‘So you were away when the booby trap was set?’

  Ricci stubbed out his cigarette. ‘If it was set on Wednesday night or Thursday morning as everyone seems to be saying. I was in Oslo. She was dead when I got back.’

  ‘We’ll check that, of course, sir, but I imagine that means you’re in the clear.’

  ‘I’ve got the reviews,’ said Ricci, reaching in his pocket. ‘The chap who drove me to the station got me the morning papers. As I say, we singers are avid for publicity and reviews, even when we don’t understand a word of them.’

  The reviews were quite short. One of them said:

  Den Norske Opera bød igår på en meget lovende debut av Raymond Ricci fra Storbritannia. Han hadde en varm, følsom stemme, og det var noe sydlandsk over hans tolkningsmåte. Det var stor applaus. Vokalt følger hans Giovanni i Brownlee og Gobbi tradisjonen heller enn i Pinza og Siepi tradisjonen. Riccis utførelse lover godt for fremtiden, og med mer erfaring vil han bli blant dem man vil huska i rollen.

  Other reviews included such words as ‘sukses’, ‘populære’ and ‘applaudert’. It seemed as if Ricci had gone down fairly big with the Oslo public.

  ‘It’s not a wonderful company,’ said Ricci, with dubiously sincere self-depreciation. ‘Rather provincial. One or two good voices, and some really rather dreadful ones. It’s not exactly the big time.’

  ‘The main thing is, it gives you an alibi,’ said Nichols, not too interested in the operatic league division table. ‘We’ll check at the Oslo end, as I say, but it seems fairly clear. Well, I think that will be all. I’ll let you get back to rehearsal.’

  Raymond lit another cigarette as he got outside, and strolled back towards the stage. That hadn’t been too bad, after all. As he neared the auditorium he heard Rigoletto and Gilda letting off every vocal firework in their armoury for the big duet at the end of Act II—he swearing vengeance on the Duke, she begging him to pardon her seducer. Giulia Contini’s words being what they were, this last point hardly got across, but the impetus of the music carried the point fiercely through to the audience, though that audience was only Owen, Mr Pettifer, Calvin and one or two others. Raymond drew his hand across his forehead. It struck him, almost for the first time, that the emotions of opera were often rather remote from those of modern everyday life.

  • • •

  ‘Rather a smarmy individual,’ said Sergeant Chappell.

  ‘Let’s have none of these racial smears,’ said Nichols. ‘Or you’ll have nice Mr Caulfield on to us.’

  ‘You can be smarmy and English,’ said Sergeant Chappell. ‘That one looked a typical womanizer to me.’

  ‘That’s not a term of abuse these days,’ said Nichols. ‘I agree he’s probably a go-getter, with his eye on the main chance. On the other hand, he virtually admitted as much himself.’

  ‘How far would you trust his reports about Gaylene Ffrench’s conversation?’

  Nichols shrugged. ‘If he is entirely in the clear—and we’ll have to check plane times and so on as well—he seems to have nothing to gain by lying. He reported it all pretty enthusiastically, I agree there. But it was mostly garbage, I imagine—it didn’t seem to open up an obvious road to the truth. Pity he’s in the clear, though. I could fancy him with a knife.’

  ‘So could I. But he’s not the only one in this company,’ said Sergeant Chappell, with an expression of distaste. ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘I thought while they are still at their damned rehearsal we might have a word with Harrison’s assistant. Then I suppose we’d better talk to Cross.’

  ‘The black?’

  ‘Don’t say things like that,’ said Superintendent Nichols.

  CHAPTER X

  Sinfonia Domestica

  Nichols stood in Gaylene’s dressing-room with Bob, the assistant stage-door-keeper, soon to be promoted to stage-door-keeper, short, sandy-haired, with an air of being somewhat put-upon, perhaps a consequence of working under Sergeant Harrison. The two men were looking once again at the little device of wires which was obliging so many choral societies in the North and Midlands to begin casting around for a new contralto for their Christmas Messiah. Bob shook his head.

  ‘Oh, it was simple enough to do,’ he said, in answer to a question from Nichols. ‘Nothing simpler. Let’s see, it was cosy, Wednesday night, wasn’t it? Nichols realized he meant Così. ‘That means Elizabeth Jenkins would have been here. She’d have been out by eleven or eleven-fifteen, I’d guess—not one to hang about that one. He could have done it then, and hoofed it out the window.’

  ‘Or she,’ murmured Nichols.

  ‘Aye, or she,’ said Bob. ‘Women are up in that sort of thing these days. Come to that, whoever it was could have done it before Harrison locked up for the night, and then just left the theatre in the usual way.’

  ‘True,’ said Nichols. ‘And I suppose it’s just possible that he noticed that someone was much later than usual.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Bob, rather dubiously, ‘though it’s not easy to be that precise about when they’re likely to go home. They’re theatre people, and I gather that night was a bit special, what with all the cheering and congratulations and so on.’

  ‘Sergeant Harrison wouldn’t have gone round checking all the dressing-rooms before he locked the stage-door finally?’

  Here Bob frowned. ‘I doubt it. He probably wouldn’t have checked the principals’ dressing-rooms, because he was very particular about noticing them as they went, and saying good-night, so there was no need to see if they were still there. He might have checked some of the others. He might very well have checked up on the principals’ dressing-rooms next morning. These rooms are only cleaned once a week—economy like—’ here Bob winked—‘so he usually made sure things were reasonably ship-shape for whoever was using the room that day, especially if it was one of his favourites.’

  ‘I suppose Miss Ffrench wouldn’t have been one of his favourites, though?’

  ‘No, of course she wasn’t,’ said Bob. ‘Can’t imagine she was anyone’s favourite. Even her mother must have wondered what hit her. Still, she and Sergeant H. jogged along quite nicely, and she never gave him the wrong side of her tongue that I heard. And I would have heard, and so would she, I can tell you.’

  ‘He didn’t stand any nonsense from the company?’

  ‘Not him. Nor from the audience either, or the fans. He was a real old army man, was Harrison.’

  ‘So in fact there was a very real chance that he would have checked the dressing-rooms yesterday morning before Miss Ffrench or any of the others arrived?’

  ‘Yes—a much better than even chance, I’d say. On the other hand, he got those little bouts of malaria fairly frequently, and he usually felt them coming on in advance. He could have mentioned that to somebody—he did to me, so I knew he might be off yesterday.’

  ‘You didn’t hear him mention it to anyone else?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But our times didn’t overlap more than a couple of hours on Wednesday, and most of that time I was down in the basement, doing a spot of carpentry—repair work and so on. And Sergeant H. kept to his office—the one you’ve got now—as he usually did. So he could have told anyone.’


  ‘People dropped by and talked to him, as a rule, did they?’

  ‘Not exactly that, because he wasn’t really the chatty type. But they had to go into the office to collect their mail, and any messages. He was very strict about his room: if he wasn’t there, it was locked, and they’d have to come back later when he was there. He said that was necessary because of all the lost property there, but to my way of thinking it’s just a lot of junk, so if I’m on duty I don’t worry all that much. In fact Miss Ffrench had been nosing around there just before her number was called.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nichols, ‘she picked up a letter. ‘But normally she wouldn’t be able to do that?’

  ‘No, not unless Sergeant H. was off the whole day. As a rule I’d follow his example if I thought he might pop in at any time and catch me out—he could really blow you up if he felt like it. The usual thing was that they’d stop by and ask for post, or Harrison or I would call out to them as they passed that there was something for them. Then we might have a chat, or might not, depending on the person. So he could have told anyone about his malaria on Wednesday, and I wouldn’t know about it.’

  ‘Either way,’ said Nichols, ‘it was a bloody dangerous way of doing somebody in.’ The humour of the phrase struck him, and he amended it: ‘Slap-happy. Didn’t mind if he did someone else in in the course of his nasty little tricks, so long as he eventually got Gaylene Ffrench. For a start, Sergeant Harrison could have seen the doormat outside the dressing-room, smelt a rat, and started investigating.’

  ‘He could,’ said Bob. ‘There were one or two of those around the theatre—it’s a mucky town, Manchester. But that’s a pretty funny place to have one. On the other hand it’s a nasty dark corridor.’

  ‘Still, a really ruthless sort of mind.’

  ‘That’s what gets me,’ said Bob. ‘Think of there being someone like that around in the company. And it could be any one of about a hundred and fifty. Gives you the shakes.’

  ‘It doesn’t make us very happy,’ said Superintendent Nichols. ‘Right, I think I’ve got the picture now. But if you think of anything Sergeant Harrison did or said in the last few days that was at all out of the ordinary—come straight to me. And don’t on any account say a word to anyone else first.’