Death on the High C's

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I should just faint clean away,’ said a woman who would have watched the St Bartholomew massacres with polite interest.

  Eventually they drifted in, in ones and twos and gossiping groups. The old theatre seemed to cast off a few degrees of dinginess: the dull scarlet of the seats and walls seemed to brighten up by a shade or two, and the gilded cherubs looked golder and younger, as if they were assuring themselves that the good old days were come again. The audience settled in their seats, ate a few chocolates, and read the synopsis in their programmes with sinking hearts. By the time the lights dimmed the whole theatre was full, with the exception of one aisle seat in the tenth row. The rumour went around that this was reserved for Royalty, and this rumour was followed by a pooh-pooh which said that of course Royalty wouldn’t come along. Finally it was said that Royalty had in fact already arrived and had gone to the dress circle, and all the stalls craned their necks to try and spot it there. And then the lights went down altogether.

  • • •

  Backstage there was tension, a nervous eyeing of others and a good deal of tittering and backbiting, but the topics of conversation were different from those in the audience. Murder was not mentioned. In fact, if it had been, almost every member of the cast would have started in surprise, and would have had to make a giant effort of memory to gather what was being talked about. Gaylene and Sergeant Harrison were of the past. Owen—whom the press, with fair accuracy, had reported to be suffering from ‘nervous exhaustion’—was of the past. The present was a matter of wigs and costumes, the look of a sword, the security of a moustache. The present was a matter of either the performance or their performance, and every mind was concentrated on one or the other or both. Only rarely could their attention be drawn to anything outside those narrow limits.

  ‘Mike looks worried,’ said Calvin to Bridget, as they watched him hurry past like the white rabbit.

  ‘Well, don’t pretend you’re a stranger to butterflies,’ said Bridget.

  ‘Oh, I’m a wreck. But he’s usually as cool as lime-juice. What’s this about his wife wanting a divorce—have you heard?’

  ‘Something. What difference would it make? They’re never together anyway. Look, when we have the little dialogue after the minuet, could you take my left hand, and then turn round, so that we both have our profiles to the audience . . . ’

  The pair were watched greedily by the unemployed school-leaver who had first summoned Bridget to stardom, and who by now was head-over-heels in love with her, with opera, with the theatre and life, and was meditating various fantastic ways of removing Calvin from this world, involving cunningly poised meat-axes, poisoned darts shot at him from the prompter’s box, and genuine knives substituted for stage ones. He had become all too well assimilated into his milieu.

  Mike Turner did look worried. He looked less than usual like the sort of young man wished on marginal seats by Conservative Central Office. In fact, he gave the impression that in a few years he might well be cultivating that haggard-distinguished look so popular among musicians. As he walked among the stage-hands and cast he was thinking: All this—just going up in smoke because that rich bitch has got herself a fancy man with a title. Just when all the spade-work was beginning to pay dividends. What chance of coming to an agreement: a quicky; easy divorce in exchange for a large cash sum? That at least would keep us going to the end of the season. Trouble is, she’s got me over a slow fire, so why should she come to an agreement? There’s plenty of big-wigs out there. No one can say I haven’t licked the municipal arse when necessary. And what have I got out of it? The chances of a thumping grant from that lot are precisely nil. In the end, it all comes back to the Arts Council. We can only carry on if they come up with a subsidy. And to do that we have to ‘prove ourselves artistically’, whatever the stingy bastards mean by that. What chance of them stumping up? What chance?

  As he arrived behind the orchestra pit and stood waiting for the lights to dim, two tears forced themselves to the corners of his eyes. He was thinking of the subsidy paid to Covent Garden.

  In the wings everything was poised for the lights to go down. Simon Mulley was alone, thinking himself into his part. Everything he could do to improve Owen’s conventional-style production had been done. Now everyone would have to take care of themselves, even Barbara. Now he had to think of his own performance. Raymond Ricci, not on till the second scene, was also apparently thinking of his own performance. He was prowling around the wings, a saturnine, threatening presence, now and then letting his hand stray to the long knife by his side, and occasionally throwing threatening glances—or so they seemed, with his sinister makeup—in the direction of a dark corner, where Giulia Contini was gesticulating charmingly in conversation with Hurtle Marwick, who had somehow managed to get backstage. Perhaps he was going to help shift the scenery. Barbara Bootle was as usual hugging the darkness, sitting in a corner, sometimes uttering little groans to herself, but sometimes looking out at the bustle and seeming to be affected for the better by the tension and fuss.

  Calvin and Bridget stood poised, ready to start the opera, Calvin wondering how any composer could expect his tenor to throw off an airy piece like ‘Questa o quella’ after less than a minute on stage, Bridget how one was to make any sort of impression on an audience in a part that consisted of two or three phrases. Both were together, in love, and yet solitary.

  And then the lights were finally extinguished, and Mike Turner made his way through the brass and strings to take his place on the podium.

  • • •

  The opening chords of the opera, sinister and threatening, penetrated to the stage-door-keeper’s office as if through a heavy blanket, and Nichols pricked up his ears.

  ‘Well, they’ve got started,’ he said. ‘I hope they’re going to be able to finish.’

  ‘What shall we do if the call comes through during the performance?’ asked Chappell.

  ‘We’ll have to go in for the kill. We’ve no option. We can’t police the entire theatre, and anyone could get a warning in to him. We can’t be oh-so-polite and let them finish if there’s any risk of him getting away.’

  ‘What’s Special Branch come up with so far?’

  ‘A lot of interesting stuff, though most of it’s not solid as yet. That will depend on the woman. But as far as I can gather they’ve got the general picture pretty well sorted out.’

  ‘It’s not one of the terrorist groups, of course?’

  ‘Oh no—nothing of the kind. I didn’t expect that for a moment, not with that sort of chap. It’s one of these protection rackets. These last few years they’ve been like limpets, clinging on to the main part of the Northern Irish problem. They sprang up in Belfast in the early seventies, and they’ve spread over here in the last couple of years or so.’

  ‘I’d heard of some sort of Catholic outfit operating in Liverpool, but I don’t know much about it.’

  ‘Well, both lots have them, and they milk both sides. Religion is pretty irrelevant, of course, with people like that, but officially they retain their allegiances. They get smallish sums out of the Irish businessmen over here—publicans, bookmakers, small shopkeepers, people like that. It becomes a sort of retainer: pay up, and you’re safe from both sides.’

  ‘I suppose it’s worth their while to pay, when you consider some of the things that have happened over the past years.’

  ‘Yes, I gather the Catholic thugs have made a pretty good thing out of it among the Irish community in Liverpool for a fair while now. The Prots moved in there last year, and now they’re extending operations to Manchester.’

  ‘You say it’s not a question of enormous sums?”

  ‘Oh no. Just a tidy living for a few crooks and their hangers on. There’s been no need for any great degree of violence—just a few “exemplary sentences”, as they charmingly call them. A couple of shootings in the knee, three or four minor explosions—enough to put the business out of operation for a week or so. It makes an impression.’


  ‘I’d heard about them of course,’ said Chappell, ‘but I’d assumed they were just regular IRA feuds. I’ve never got to the bottom of what goes on among that lot.’

  ‘Has anyone?’ said Nichols gloomily.

  ‘So probably there hasn’t been any need for huge amounts of explosives or weapons?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t imagine the amount of stuff brought in has been all that large. That’s why they’ve got away with it so easily. Mind you, it had all been adding up. They had a fair supply of guns and gelignite at their base—they were planning to extend their operation, that’s obvious. Through the North and down to London, I’d guess. Ultimately the tie-up is back to Belfast, and pinning anything on anyone will be one hell of a headache for Special Branch. You know how those tribes cling together.’

  ‘Thank God it’s not our responsibility. So we’ve only come up with one of the small fry? McKaid and his lovely lady wife weren’t among the big-boys in the set-up?’

  ‘Oh no—cogs in the wheel. But useful, none the less, because he went between Manchester and Liverpool regularly with the company, and fairly often home to Belfast. She came over every month or six weeks “to be with him”, so there was no earthly reason why their comings and goings should rouse comment. She was supposed to be in the audience tonight, by the way. There was always a good excuse for coming over. For them it was a nice little supplementary income, or perhaps a bit better than that. From the look of his flat and his wardrobe I’d guess he had a taste for luxury.’

  ‘Rather tarty, I’d call it.’ said Chappell disdainfully.

  ‘He’s a back-street boy, not slum but the next worst thing. It often takes them that way. She looked as if she needed to put up a pretty good front to the world as well—underneath the make-up I’d guess she was a hard, bitter sort of person.’

  ‘So at last we have our motive, and it’s nothing more than good old-fashioned greed?’

  ‘Exactly—with a small admixture of fear, perhaps. I’d guess that McKaid had very little to do with the gang himself. There were several people involved, and the aim must have been to keep the lower thugs in ignorance of the names and descriptions of the upper thugs. McKaid seems to have been a middle-man—he and his wife—and that’s what will make them particularly useful. They brought explosives from Northern Ireland, and they distributed them to the little men when a job was in the offing. Just a simple matter of arranging time and place—often at or near the stage door, I’d guess. Very small-scale—just a couple of guns here, a few sticks of gelignite there.’

  ‘But still worth killing for.’

  ‘Yes, especially in view of the sort of sentence handed out in cases of this kind recently.’

  ‘I suppose something must have gone wrong with the transfer system.’ said Chappell.

  ‘Not necessarily. The briefcase was empty—though there were certainly traces of what it had been used for. I guess he just left it around somewhere backstage by accident, or while he was rehearsing, and Harrison collared it. Everyone in theatres is jumpy about bags and cases these days, probably Harrison more than most. He found it was empty, put it with his collection—but he wasn’t happy, and McKaid must have realized he wouldn’t be.’

  ‘And the silly chap didn’t do anything about it.’

  ‘No—more’s the pity for him. Of course, to be fair, all he had to go on was a near-empty briefcase with a smell. Not very much. I expect he just felt vaguely dissatisfied, and stewed it over in his mind. But McKaid would have known he was in a hell of a dangerous position.’

  ‘By then, I suppose, the attacks on Gaylene must have started, mustn’t they?’ said Chappell.

  ‘Yes, I think so. I’d think he probably rigged up his little device a day or two after he lost the case.’

  ‘Of course, he’d been in on Gaylene’s little dodges from the beginning, hadn’t he?’ said Chappell. ‘I suppose the morning after he slept with her she must have got the papers with the engagement of Cross and that Lander girl we never got to talk to, and that gave her the incentive.’

  ‘I’d think it sent her livid with rage—and that’s probably why she was by all accounts so horribly convincing when she marched down to the rehearsal and accused them all of it. The gassing wheeze was just the sort of thing to appeal to McKaid’s nasty sense of humour, I’d guess, and he probably gave the story a bare minimum of corroboration when necessary. I bet he was glad he did—it came in useful later on.’

  ‘And then when the electrocution failed, he must have had to get Sergeant Harrison as quickly as possible, I suppose.’ said Chappell thoughtfully. ‘I presume he just went to his house, happened to overhear his telephone conversation with us—’

  ‘It had been a boiling hot day,’ put in Nichols.

  ‘Yes—and then waited outside his door and stuck a knife into him. The slum kid’s weapon.’

  ‘Quieter than a gun, too, which is a consideration in a built-up area of that kind. Yes, I think as soon as Gaylene was killed instead of Harrison, McKaid must have realized it was a fair bet Harrison would get even more suspicious, and come along to us. And we were bound to connect explosives with Northern Ireland—even two dim-wits as we’ve proved to be over this case. And then there was this.’

  He took in his hands the piano score of Rigoletto found in the briefcase. He flicked through the pages, all of them clean, until he came to the point in Act II where there were two pencil marks over the part of Marullo so minute that he had to point them out to Sergeant Chappell.

  ‘Harrison can’t have seen these, but he was bound to realize their significance if he did decide to look closer. And so would we. No, the two crucial things that decided Harrison’s fate were Gaylene being killed and us moving in here. When that happened, Harrison had to be killed.’

  The two were silent for a moment. From the stage area still muffled but rather impressive, came the wonderful sound of chorus and powerful voices in full flood.

  ‘How long have they had her now?’ asked Chappell at last.

  ‘Special Branch picked her up just after McKaid left his flat for the theatre. She denied all knowledge of the house in Plimsoll Street. She was very cocky and confident, apparently. Not that that kind are necessarily the last to crack. It will depend on how she weighs up the advantages and disadvantages.’

  The phone rang, and Nichols was on to it in a flash.

  ‘Nichols here . . . She’s cracked—good work . . . Talking nineteen to the dozen . . . No, not yet . . . I see—it could be that she doesn’t know much about that . . . Anyway, I’ll bring him in and hand him over to you for the moment . . . Be there in a matter of minutes.’

  He banged down the phone. ‘Right,’ he said to Chappell. ‘Let’s bring him in.’

  As they approached the wings, the music swelled out at them with increasing fierceness. Rigoletto had been cursed by Monterone, and Simon Mulley was doing a wonderfully convincing imitation of a superstitious man suddenly caught on the raw—he was cringing and muttering, in so far as one can mutter in a way that reaches more than a thousand people over an orchestra in full flood. He was watched by Calvin, carelessly laughing, by McKaid, sneering, and by the whole line-up of the chorus. As the last chords of the first scene thundered out from the orchestra pit and the great looped curtain swooped down, Nichols and Chappell dived into the shadows at the rear, and watched.

  The moment the curtain was down and the applause had begun, the principals began assembling in line for the curtain call, though all around them the noise and chaos of a full-speed change was deafening and bewildering. Mulley, Bridget, Calvin, the singer playing Monterone, and Jim McKaid went to the front of the stage, linked hands, and as the corners of the curtains were lifted went to the front, bowing, curtseying and smirking to acknowledge their reception.

  It was James MeKaid’s last curtain call.

  As the curtain came down again, Monterone, the Countess Ceprano and Marullo detached themselves from the line, leaving Calvin and Simon together to take a secon
d curtain. Bridget stood by to hear Calvin’s reception, but McKaid plunged through the disorder of scene changers and props towards the wings. At the sight of Nichols and Chappell he pulled himself up: for one second the expression on his face was a question—fight, or flight? But in one second more their hands had come down heavily on his wrists and he was taken into custody, and not even Nichols and Chappell could hear his whines and bluster above the sounds of enthusiasm from the auditorium.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Finale

  Mike Turner saw them taking Jim McKaid away as he came from the back of the orchestra pit to mop his brow during the brief pause between the first and second scenes. One of his many virtues as director of an opera company—one without which no director could retain any remnants of his sanity—was an ability to keep his head. It was based on an inclination to count his blessings.

  Thank heavens it wasn’t Rigoletto, was his first thought.

  His second thought was: what is the done thing in the circumstances? Ought he to cancel the rest of the performance, and go out in front to inform his be-spangled audience that one of his singers had just been hauled off to the jug? No—that was inconceivable. The show must go on—an admirable motto, and one as much to the liking of performers as of audiences, for they seldom feel inclined to let anything prevent them appearing before their public. The cast of Rigoletto would be no exception to this rule, and they would be particularly anxious to ‘go on’ in this case because the only reaction most of them would feel to the arrest of Jim McKaid would be a feeling of relief. McKaid had not had the art of pleasing.