Swan Song

by Crispin, Edmund

‘No, sir. I wish to call a new witness.’

  ‘That would be very irregular. Are you sure that what you have to ask is relevant to the matter in hand?’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s relevant all right,’ said the foreman, and there was an unpleasant gleam in his eye.

  ‘Who is it you wish to call?’

  ‘I see she’s here,’ said the foreman. ‘It’s Miss Joan Davis.’

  In the fractional hush which followed Joan twisted round and said desperately to Fen:

  ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fen, and he looked worried. ‘But keep your nerve, and above all, tell the exact truth.’

  In response to the coroner’s summons, Joan walked slowly to the witness-stand, clutching her handbag in fingers which trembled a little. The public, which had become apathetic and restless, stiffened to attentiveness. The foreman of the jury leaned forward impressively. Evidently he was enjoying his little moment.

  ‘Miss Davis,’ he said. ‘I believe you have in your possession a quantity of a drug named Nembutal?’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Are you aware that this drug is one of the barbiturate group?’

  ‘Certainly I am.’

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it, that a large quantity of this drug has disappeared from your possession during the last few days – more than could be accounted for by its normal use?’

  ‘Yes, but anyone could have –’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Davis. Will you cast your mind back to the evening on which Mr Shorthouse died? After dinner you were, I believe, with a small gathering of friends in the bar of the Randolph Hotel.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you, or did you not, make a remark to the effect that you would like to poison Mr Shorthouse?’

  ‘Yes, but it was only a casual –’

  ‘That’s all, Miss Davis.’

  ‘But you can’t accuse –’

  ‘I have no more questions for you.’

  Fen, observing the interest of the reporters, put one hand over his eyes and groaned audibly. Joan lost her temper.

  ‘Listen to me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Listen to me, you self-important little ape –’

  But the coroner, while obviously sharing her distaste, was obliged to put a stop to this. Joan returned in anger to her chair.

  ‘And now, perhaps,’ said the coroner sardonically, ‘I may be permitted to sum up what we have heard. But before I do so I would like, in view of the questions which have just been asked, to remind you of the function of this court. It is an inquisition, and not a trial. Your duty, members of the jury, is to decide whether the deceased met his death by accident, suicide, or murder: should you decide on the last of these three possibilities, it is open to you to name some particular person as the culprit. But it is not your duty, or even your right, to comment on any other aspect of the affair whatever. If you decide, as you surely must, that the deceased met his death by hanging, then the poison which, as we have heard, was taken by the deceased previous to his death – but which did not actually cause his death – is important only in so far as it bears on the central problem. We are concerned not with the person, if any, who attempted to kill this man, but with the person – if any – who actually did kill him. And as the evidence has shown, no such person can possibly exist.

  ‘The testimony of the Inspector, of Dr Shand, and of the stage-doorkeeper leave us no doubt on this point. Dr Shand has said that the dislocation of the neck must have occurred at 11.25 or even later. The stage-doorkeeper has told us that no one entered or left the room after 11.10. Dr Shand has further stated that no one except the deceased was in the room when he entered it, and the Inspector has certified that it contains no possible hiding-place. Therefore unless we postulate any murderer capable of escaping through a skylight scarcely large enough to admit a bird, we cannot postulate any murderer at all; for to the best of my knowledge no means of hanging a man by remote control has yet been devised.

  ‘So we are left with accident or suicide. Into the reasons militating against accident I need hardly enter; they will be sufficiently clear to all of you. It is of course remotely conceivable that the deceased, having placed his head in a noose, allowed the stool on which he was standing to slip away from beneath his feet, and was thus inadvertently hanged, but there is no clear reason why he should have made such a foolish experiment.

  ‘On the other hand there would seem to be some evidence to support the theory of suicide. The deceased’s brother has stated, though without offering any very substantial proof of his assertion, that the deceased was mentally unbalanced. Moreover – and this is more important – a medical witness has testified that one of the effects of a large dose of barbiturate, before coma supervenes, is to produce a condition of mental aberration. It is at least possible, therefore, that the deceased hanged himself while made temporarily insane by the influence of this drug. And the “outbursts of self-pity” to which another witness has referred make this a colourable hypothesis. As regards the telephone call to Dr Shand we have no clue. But it was made about the time when Furbelow was conducting Mr Stapleton to the stage-door, and it is therefore not beyond conjecture that it was made by the deceased himself, from the instrument at the end of the corridor in which his dressing-room is situated. Feeling the effects of the drug, he may have attempted to call medical aid, and have succumbed subsequently to the mental disorder which the drug induces before that aid could reach him.

  ‘As to this, however, there is no certainty, and it rests with you, the jury, to decide between a verdict of accident and one of suicide. That is all I have to say to you. Do you wish to retire to consider your verdict?’

  After a few moments’ surreptitious argument the jury announced that they did wish to retire. The court adjourned. A good many people went out into St Aldate’s to smoke. Fen went to interview Mudge.

  ‘I don’t trust that jury,’ said the Inspector gloomily. ‘They look an obstinate, muddle-headed lot to me. And as for the foreman . . .’ He paused to meditate some adequately indelicate form of abuse.

  ‘Who informed him,’ Fen asked, ‘about Joan Davis and the Nembutal?’

  ‘Anonymous letter, I fancy. Someone has a grudge against the woman.’

  ‘Or alternatively the murderer wants to suggest that the Nembutal and the hanging are unconnected.’

  ‘So they must be,’ said Mudge. ‘Anyway, I’ll have words with that smart-alec after the verdict’s been brought in.’

  Fen gave him news of the attacks on Elizabeth.

  ‘Lord,’ said Mudge in despair. ‘What’s going to happen next? All right, sir, I’ll look into it.’

  ‘I wish you joy,’ said Fen. ‘In my experience it’s an unrewarding job . . . By the way, I suppose you’ve questioned Karl Wolzogen?’

  ‘Yes. It seems he was in bed at the time Shorthouse died. Almost everyone was in bed,’ Mudge added peevishly. He seemed distressed at the sloth of his witnesses. Fen left him to seek out the persons who had been present at the emergency meeting in the Randolph. His questions resulted in the information that its proceedings had been sufficiently widely reported to offer no clue regarding the identity of the person who had communicated Joan’s unfortunate remark to the foreman of the jury.

  In about half an hour they heard that the jury were on the point of returning, and crowded back to the scene of operations. Scarcely anyone doubted that the verdict would be suicide, but there was some curiosity as to whether anything would be said about the provenance of the Nembutal in the gin. The members of the jury looked harassed and exceedingly ill at ease. A hush fell as the foreman got to his feet.

  ‘You have arrived at your verdict?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Coroner. We find that the deceased was murdered by some person or persons unknown.’

  Sensation.

  ‘And we further find that an attempt was made to murder the deceased by Miss Joan Davis.’

  After a moment’s initial stupefaction, there was a roar of
excited chatter. Joan was very pale. The representatives of the press began making hysterical haste for the door. The coroner rapped for silence.

  ‘I confess,’ he said, regarding the jury with open detestation, ‘that the processes of reasoning by which you have arrived at your verdict wholly elude me. Your decision will, however, be communicated by the police to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who will decide what is to be done. And no doubt you yourselves, as public-spirited citizens, will inform those in charge of the case by what esoteric method this murder was carried out.

  ‘There is one other thing I have to say. You have seen fit to add a rider to your verdict charging a specific person with attempted murder. I would like to emphasize that that rider has no validity whatever, that it is not equivalent to an indictment, that the police are perfectly at liberty to ignore it if they choose, and that I personally regard it as a flagrant instance of grotesque and wanton irresponsibility. I would further ask the representatives of the press to deal with it with that discretion for which they are justly famed . . . That is all. The court is adjourned.’

  ‘“Discretion”,’ Fen muttered to himself as he joined the rush for the doors. ‘There is true optimism. “Jury Accuses Prima Donna of Attempted Slaying” . . . Oh, my dear paws.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IN THE AFTERNOON he visited a member of the jury and found that their deliberations had consisted almost exclusively of a monologue by the foreman. It was evident that he had been possessed by a kind of undirected malignancy against which his dimmer-witted colleagues had no defence. It was further evident that the verdict of murder had depended much less on the evidence than on the sensational conjectures of the newspapers, though no member of the jury had regarded the evidence of a suicidal frame of mind as adequate. This, Fen reflected, was just; it had all along been one of the weakest links in the police theory.

  He telephoned Mudge and learned that the foreman of the jury had indeed received an anonymous letter. He had, however, burned it after mastering its contents – and at this Mudge’s language became lurid. Fen bought an evening paper on the way home, and saw that his fears had been well-founded.

  There ensued several days of feverish coming and going. Reporters pestered everyone remotely connected with the opera, including Fen, who, however, eluded the worst effects of their attentions by issuing statements so scandalous and incredible that no one dared print them. Elizabeth was kept under rigid surveillance. Adam went so far as to borrow a revolver, but found that even apart from being heavy to carry about, it bulged too conspicuously in his pocket; so he put it in a drawer in his dressing-room and instantly forgot about it (he was not aware that someone passing outside at the time observed and took note of the existence of the weapon). The aconitine had been extracted from the tea, and Mudge bustled to and fro engaged in fruitless inquisition. Beatrix Thorn and the Master settled at the ‘Mitre’. It transpired that they at least could not have attacked Elizabeth, since there were witnesses to prove that they had been at home during the whole of the day. On the Friday Judith Haynes and Boris Stapleton were married at a London register-office, with Adam, Joan and Elizabeth in attendance. Stapleton’s health continued to deteriorate. In the midst of it all the new academic term began, and Fen became preoccupied with lecture notes and collection papers. He still found time, however, to visit occasionally the Meistersinger rehearsals, and it was during one of these visits that he spoke to Karl Wolzogen.

  The old man was relaxing momentarily from his labours, which were naturally becoming more exigent and various as the day of the performance drew nearer. He wore a pair of disreputable flannel trousers and a leather jacket, from the breast pocket of which drooped a large red silk handkerchief. His gnome-like face was brown, eager, heavily lined, with a greying stubble about the chin, and he was absorbed in the rehearsal even though at present he was taking no active part in it.

  ‘That Peacock,’ he said, ‘is a true Wagnerian conductor. He has the – wie ists genannt? – the flexibility which the Meister craved for and which Richter never had. I have seen or worked with them all, you understand – Toscanini, Bülow, Richter, Nikisch, Mottl, Barbirolli, Beecham . . . All of them. I know the real thing when I see it, glauben Sie mir. This Peacock is good.’

  Fen regarded him with interest. ‘You’re a very fanatical Wagnerian,’ he said.

  ‘Aber natürlich.’ ‘Karl always relapsed a little into his native language when he was talking to someone who could understand it. ‘My whole life has been opera – and Wagner in particular, selbstverständlich. If my father had afforded to give me the musical education I should myself have been a conductor. But I began to learn too late. So I have always been régisseur, or producer, or call-boy. At the Weimar opera, when I was sixteen, I was call-boy . . . After that I was in many of the German opera-houses, and for a time in America. When the Nazis came I was too old for their ideas, and I hated that such fools should worship the Meister. I had preferred that they banned his performances. So I worked here, and then there was the war, and fools said: “Because Hitler is fond of Wagner we will not have Wagner in England”. Hitler was also fond of your Edgar Wallace, with his stories of violence, but no one said that they were not to be read . . . Now it is better, and soon I shall return to my own country. But there is no Wagner there, and before I die I must hear the seven great operas once again. So at present I stay in England.’ For a long time he meditated, then he said, in a slightly altered tone of voice: ‘You, sir, you are investigating the death of this man?’

  Fen shrugged. ‘I was.’

  ‘Wäre es nicht besser –’

  ‘That the murderer should remain undiscovered? On the face of it, yes. But none of us has the right to assess the value of a human existence. All must be held valuable, or none. The death of Christ and the death of Socrates,’ Fen added dryly, ‘suggest that our judgements are scarcely infallible . . . And the evil of Nazism lay precisely in this, that a group of men began to differentiate between the value of their fellow-beings, and to act on their conclusions. It isn’t a habit which I, for one, would like to encourage.’

  Karl was silent for some moments before replying.

  ‘Veilleicht haben Sie recht,’ he said at last. ‘But I am glad he is dead.’ His voice sank to a whisper. ‘I am glad this man is dead.’

  The dress-rehearsal of act one was on the Saturday; of acts two and three on the Sunday. Marvels of artistry and effort had been performed in the meantime, and any anxiety which may have been aroused by the belated substitution of a new Sachs was now dispelled. Fen attended the rehearsal of act two with Elizabeth. When it was over, at half past six in the evening, Adam joined them.

  ‘We progress,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It should be all right tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll get a good house,’ said Fen amiably, ‘if only because of poor Joan’s notoriety.’

  ‘We’re booked out for the whole run,’ Adam told him. ‘Sensation-seekers are hardly the kind of audience we want, but no doubt their money will please Levi as much as anybody else’s.’

  ‘How is Joan taking it?’ Fen asked. ‘I haven’t spoken to her for a day or two.’

  ‘Stoically enough, I think. It hasn’t been so bad recently . . . I suppose the police aren’t going to charge her?’

  ‘They haven’t enough evidence – though I believe they still regard the dope and the hanging as unconnected.’

  ‘Aren’t they unconnected?’

  ‘I think not – the anonymous letter to the foreman of the jury suggests as much – but I’ve no means of proving it, unfortunately. It may be, of course, that that anonymous letter was prompted by simple malice, but I’ve not yet succeeded in discovering anyone who dislikes Joan . . . By the way, what happens next?’

  ‘Scene one of the last act,’ said Adam. ‘Since we’re behind schedule, we’re leaving scene two till tomorrow morning. The chorus has been told it can go home.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Fen pensively, ‘if a drink –’
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br />   ‘I’ll tell you what.’ Elizabeth was groping in her bag for a notebook and pencil. ‘We can take this opportunity of getting my interview done. All right?’

  ‘Decidedly all right,’ said Fen, pleased. He reflected briefly. ‘The era of my greatest successes,’ he began, ‘may be said, roughly speaking, to extend from the time when I first became interested in detection to the present moment, which sees me engaged on a case as baffling and complex as any I ever –’

  But here, to his annoyance, he was interrupted by Judith Haynes, who came rapidly up the gangway and said:

  ‘You haven’t seen Boris anywhere, have you?’

  Evidently the girl was worried. They could hardly make out her expression in the semi-darkness, but her voice was urgent, and the hand which she laid on the back of one of the seats trembled perceptibly.

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Elizabeth. ‘That’s to say, not for the last half-hour. I thought he was with you.’

  ‘He was until a few minutes ago. But now I can’t find him anywhere.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone home.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have done that,’ said Judith. Floodlights were turned on and threw a halo about her fair hair. ‘At least, not without telling me.’

  ‘But surely’ – Elizabeth spoke gently – ‘there’s nothing to worry about?’

  ‘He wasn’t feeling at all well. It’s been getting worse all afternoon . . . Please help me.’

  She was so near to tears that there was no possibility of rejecting the appeal. Fen and Adam separated to search the theatre. Ten minutes later, they met at the foot of the iron ladder which led from the top corridor of dressing-rooms through a trap-door on to the flat roof. Adam by now was wearing a great-coat over the green doublet and hose in which he had been impersonating a sixteenth-century knight of Franconia.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Fen. ‘I don’t know you from Adam.’ He laughed very merrily at this; Adam did not join him.

  ‘There’s no sign,’ he reported instead. ‘I think the man must have left. Obviously that’s what he’d do if he were feeling ill.’