by Carola Dunn
Alec turned towards Bettina Westlea, just in time to stop a short, stout man stepping on the damp patch of floor littered with broken glass.
“I’m a doctor,” the man declared, reaching for Bettina’s wrist, which dangled limply over the edge of the stage. Blank eyes bulging, her lips were blue though her face was suffused with blood. “No pulse. I’m afraid she’s dead.”
“Cause of death?” Alec demanded.
“I shan’t commit myself, but it looks to me very like cyanide poisoning.”
Alec bent down and sniffed. A strong smell of bitter almonds met his nostrils. He nodded.
Above his head, a shriek rang out: “¡Asesino!”
He looked up. Miss de la Costa, her face a mask of horror, was pointing a quivering, accusatory finger at Gilbert Gower. Did she know something, or was she merely being irritatingly foreign and operatic?
From audience, orchestra, and choir arose a swelling clamour. Two more men hurried up to announce themselves as doctors.
“Damnation!” Alec muttered. Here he was, a Scotland Yard officer miraculously witness to a murder—an apparent murder, he corrected himself—and he had far too much to do to be able to observe the reactions of the horde of presumed suspects on the stage.
As the three doctors conferred, Alec glanced at the victim’s sister. Muriel Westlea sobbed, her face buried in her hands. Beside her knelt Daisy, a comforting arm about her shoulders.
“Damnation!” Alec repeated, softly but vehemently. He ought to be resigned by now to the inevitability of Daisy involving herself in whatever was going on around her. At least she was looking about her, and she was a keen observer and meticulous reporter—when she didn’t decide for reasons of her own to keep information from him.
Shrugging, he turned back to the doctors.
“Cyanide,” confirmed the tall, scrawny, elderly one. “Flushing, collapse, cyanosis, all typical symptoms.”
“It could have been a natural seizure,” the third suggested tentatively. A youngish man in gold-rimmed spectacles, he was very pale, his forehead gleaming with sweat. Amazing how many doctors couldn’t cope with sudden, unprescribed death.
“The odour, Doctor!” said the first, disdainful. “The odour of bitter almonds is unmistakable.”
“I can’t smell it.”
“Some can’t discern cyanide,” the elderly man agreed.
The stout doctor nodded. “Cyanide it is,” he said.
Two out of three and the evidence of his own nose were enough for Alec. “If there’s nothing you can do for her, gentlemen,” he said, “I’ll ask you to return to your seats. I shall need official statements later. By the way, I’m Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, Scotland Yard.”
“Scotland Yard!” came a groan from behind him. Alec was just in time to stop the groaner stepping on the shattered glass. A tubby man with a bristling moustache, his forehead was bedewed like the young doctor’s but his complexion was florid. “Jove, you fellows are fast! Peter Browne, Major, Albert Hall manager.”
“Tell your ushers to close and guard all exits, at once, please, Major. I need a telephone.”
“My office.” Browne started off.
“Just a minute. You there!” Alec beckoned to the nearest cellist. “I need a couple of music-stands.”
Mystified, the man passed down two stands. Alec arranged them crosswise over the damp patch and the glass shards. That would have to do for the moment.
Catching Daisy’s eye, he mouthed, “Telephone.” She nodded. He hurried after the manager.
When Bettina fell, Daisy had been watching Muriel. She saw her expectant delight in the music turn to dismay, to horror. As Muriel hurried to her sister’s side, Daisy followed Alec past the knees of their stunned neighbours and down the aisle.
The leader, Yakov Levich, had risen to his feet and stood there indecisively, holding his violin. While Alec spoke to Cochran, Daisy called softly, “Mr. Levich, help me up, please. I’m a friend of her sister’s.”
Levich set down the violin and bow on his chair and leaned down to offer a lean, long-fingered hand. He was stronger than he looked. With his aid Daisy scrambled onto the stage, blessing short skirts and the demise of corsets. She crossed behind the podium, where Cochran was asking the audience for calm, and joined Muriel just as the short, stout doctor declared Bettina dead.
Muriel broke down in tears. Daisy, her arm about Muriel’s shoulders, looked up as Consuela de la Costa gave a theatrical shriek, “¡Asesino!”
The curvaceous Spanish soprano’s quivering finger accused Gilbert Gower of the dire deed.
“Here, I say!” stammered the startled tenor weakly. Close to, he was much older than he had appeared from the auditorium, in his fifties, with thinning hair discreetly Marcelled and deep lines in his face, though still passably good-looking. “You don’t want to go about saying things like that, my sweet.” Moving closer, he said something Daisy couldn’t hear above the growing noise of the agitated throngs.
Miss de la Costa promptly flung herself into his arms, sobbing hysterically. “Oh, mi querido, mi amor, I mistake. I not mean.”
Holding her rather closer than was strictly necessary to comfort her, he murmured soothingly in her ear.
Daisy glanced at the bass soloist. Dimitri Marchenko was still seated, hands on knees in apparent stolid calm. However, his eyes glittered with what looked like satisfaction, and in a soft, malicious voice he sang a reprise of his Confutatis maledictis: the damned condemned to the flames. There was one person who was not sorry Bettina lay dead.
Eric Cochran, on the other hand, was aghast, practically tearing his hair. Daisy remembered the curious scene in the Abernathys’ front hall, when Bettina had taunted Cochran, and Olivia Blaise was so obviously less than thrilled to see him. And later Muriel had told Daisy the conductor gave the mezzo part to Bettina although Miss Blaise expected it. Yet Cochran had gone to the house to meet Miss Blaise, and he hadn’t seemed attracted to Bettina. Nor did he seem grieved now by her death—more appalled. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Daisy.
While she contemplated the reactions of those around her, consoled Muriel, and tried to avoid looking at Bettina’s congested face, Daisy was aware of Alec talking to several men. One of them muttered something about a seizure, but the others insisted on cyanide. That explained the almondy smell. She was familiar with it from Lucy’s darkroom, where a solution of cyanide of something-or-other was used as a fixing agent.
So Bettina’s glass had contained deadly poison. It lay smashed on the floor below the stage now, shards scattered across a damp patch of carpet already drying in the warm air of the hall.
Daisy wondered how much of a substance Scotland Yard’s forensic lab needed for chemical analysis. Luckily the odour made identification obvious. Nonetheless, Alec had barricaded the spot with music-stands; he probably hoped one of the larger pieces of glass would provide what his sergeant, Tom Tring, referred to as “dabs.”
He’d caught her eye, mouthed, “Telephone,” and gone off with a plump, red-faced man—leaving Daisy to cope with a stageful of questionable characters, she thought indignantly.
One of the characters now approached, though actually she was predisposed in favour of the helpful Yakov Levich. His bony face was sensitive, his dark eyes kind, troubled now as he regarded Muriel’s bent head.
It was a bit soon for condolences. “I think Mr. Levich wants to speak to you,” Daisy murmured in Muriel’s ear. “Shall I tell him to go away?”
“No!” Looking up, her face blotched with tears, Muriel gave the violinist a tremulous smile. Daisy helped her stand up and she held out her hand.
Levich took it in both his. “My dear Miss Westlea,” he said, his diffidence evident despite a strong accent, “I regret so much.”
“Thank you, Mr. Levich.” Muriel spoke shyly but she gazed up at him with a glow which transformed her face.
Oh dear, another complication!
“Betsy!” The despairing cry momentarily hushed
the milling orchestra members. A way opened between them and Roger Abernathy stumbled through. He stopped beside his dead wife, staring down. “Betsy, no!” His anguished voice broke. “Oh, my dearest girl!”
His thick spectacles misted over. His lips were bluish in his suddenly white face, and he clutched at his chest in a gesture horribly reminiscent of Bettina’s clutching at her throat.
“Come and sit down, Roger.” Calm, gentle, yet decisive, Muriel took his arm and made him sit on the nearest chair. To the hovering Levich she said, “Please, a glass of water.”
“I fetch.” He strode off.
“Shouldn’t he lie down?” Daisy asked as Muriel felt in Abernathy’s inside pocket and produced the pill-bottle.
“No, he can’t breathe if he lies down when this happens. Oh, drat! Only one left. Here, Roger dear, put this under your tongue.”
Obedient as a child, he opened his mouth while tears trickled down his cheeks.
“He has his pills?” Olivia Blaise materialized beside them.
“Only one,” Daisy told her, unsure how many were needed.
“I know a couple of people in the choir who use the same stuff. Just a minute.”
Both choir and orchestra were beginning to leave the stage, but Miss Blaise found whomever she was looking for and came back with half a dozen tiny tablets.
“Bless you!” said Muriel, scooping them into her brother-in-law’s little bottle. She and Miss Blaise sat down on either side of him, leaning protectively towards him.
Levich returned with a glass of water. Miss Blaise glanced round, her gaze going past him and taking on such a depth of contempt that Daisy turned to see what she was looking at.
Eric Cochran was talking to a woman whose silver-fox-fur coat hung open over a heavily embroidered silk dress. The river of diamonds sparkling at her throat was not quite the thing for a matinee performance. Despite expertly applied cosmetics, she was clearly several years older than the young conductor.
“My career’s over, Ursula,” he said to her in despair. “No important orchestra will hire me after this.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” she responded bracingly. “Just because the little … an unfortunate young woman has met her end when you happened to be conducting, there’s no reason to give up.” She cast a look of venomous dislike at Bettina’s body, lying there for the moment ignored, unmourned.
Daisy felt it was rather indecent to leave the dead singer sprawled in undignified death. To her relief, because her eyes would keep sliding back to the horrid sight, one of the uniformed Albert Hall ushers appeared with a cloth to cover the body.
However, Alec would not appreciate any effort to straighten the contorted limbs before the police had done whatever they had to do. Daisy stepped forward to warn him.
“Chief Inspector’s orders, miss,” said the usher. “I shan’t touch, just cover her up, like. You’ll be Miss Dalrymple? He said to tell you to hold the fort, he’ll be back soon as he can.”
Pleased at the hint of Alec’s appreciating her assistance, Daisy helped the usher spread the wide, oddly shaped green baize.
“Piano cover, miss,” the man explained.
Enveloped in the trappings of music in death as in life, Bettina disappeared beneath the strange shroud.
When Daisy turned back to see how the new widower was doing, the youngest of the three doctors was bending over him, consulting with Muriel. “Quite right, Mr. Abernathy should not lie down,” he said, “but we must get him to a more comfortable chair, where he can relax. The name’s Woodward, by the way.”
“He’s not fit to walk, Dr. Woodward,” Muriel protested.
Yakov Levich laid his hand on her arm. “I help to carry,” he offered.
The doctor nodded. “Thank you, sir, we’ll manage between us. But where to?”
“The conductor’s private room,” Miss Blaise suggested, not without a glint of malice. “I know the way. Follow me.”
Muriel came over to Daisy. “Will you come with me?” she begged, her eyes anxious. “Poor Roger’s in a bad way and … .”
“I would,” Daisy said apologetically, giving her a hug while watching another new arrival on the stage, “but Al … Chief Inspector Fletcher sort of depends on me to keep an eye on things here. I came with him, you see. He’ll be back shortly, and I’ll come and find you.”
“Oh please do.” Muriel followed the others.
The woman who had just arrived was middle-aged, plain and plump, her clothes of good quality but dull and dowdy. Her lips tightened as she regarded Gilbert Gower, still locked in a barely decorous embrace with the gorgeous Consuela de la Costa.
Gower caught sight of her and let go of the soprano like a live wire. A nervous hand smoothed his waved hair.
“Jennifer, my dear.” He came over to the woman, took both her hands in his, and kissed her cheek. She must be Mrs. Gower. “Miss de la Costa was fearfully shocked, practically hysterical. I’ve been trying to calm her down. These foreigners, you know.”
“They do tend to be emotional, don’t they?” Mrs. Gower said dryly.
“I … er … I didn’t know you were coming.”
“The children were invited out to tea and tennis so I decided to make use of the ticket you gave me.”
“I’m glad.” Suddenly the aging tenor clung to his wife. “It’s the deuce of a mess, old dear. The police are here already. I gather they suspect Bet … Miss Westlea was deliberately poisoned.”
Mrs. Gower started to speak, but Daisy was distracted by Alec’s return. She sat down on the edge of the stage, legs dangling, to talk to him.
“Any trouble?” he asked in a low voice.
“Not exactly, except Bettina’s husband’s weak heart playing up. I’ve got lots to tell you, though.”
“I was sure you would,” he said, resigned. “Don’t think I’m not grateful, but I hope you aren’t expecting …”
“ … To involve myself in the case?” Daisy said guiltily. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to, but I’m afraid Muriel wants me to be with her.”
Alec groaned. “I might have guessed. I suppose if I send you home, I’ll be accused of bullying a female witness. I have to speak to her, of course, and the husband. He’s the choirmaster, right?”
“Yes. They’re both fearfully upset, though I must say Muriel calmed down right away when Mr. Abernathy was taken ill. She’s used to coping with his attacks, but one of those doctors is with him, too. A Dr. Woodward.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take medical advice on whether he’s fit to be questioned.” He ran his fingers through his hair, which, dark and crisp, showed no sign of disarray. “I’ve got bobbies from the local division on their way to man the doors, and most people will only need to leave their names and addresses. The trouble is going to be deciding whom else I ought to see.”
“The other soloists, for a start.” Daisy looked around, but by now the stage was empty except for the baize-covered body. The nearby area of the auditorium had cleared, too, though many people had remained in the upper reaches rather than move out to the doubtless crowded passage and lobby.
“Yes, I gather the soloists all shared a suite,” Alec said. “The organist used it, too. The manager, Major Browne, thinks Mrs. Abernathy’s glass may have been there during the interval. An usher was posted at the door during that period to keep out the unauthorized, but I’ve not had a chance to speak to him yet, nor to see the room. Browne has locked it and given me the key.”
“It wasn’t kept locked during the performance?”
“No. One doesn’t exactly expect late-arriving concert-goers to pinch the soloists’ handbags, let alone to poison them.”
“Rather not!”
“I’m praying I shan’t have to trace latecomers. This place is a nightmare in terms of universal access to everything. With the circular construction, there’s no proper backstage. The dressing-rooms—if that’s the proper term—are around the outside of the building, with performers and audience mingling in the
passage. Chaos! Still, I have to concentrate on the most likely suspects.”
“You’d better have a shot at the conductor,” Daisy suggested. “He’s been behaving a bit oddly. He …”
“Save the details for later, please. Any more?”
“His wife, I should think, and Olivia Blaise, who’s—who was a rival of Bettina’s. And Gilbert Gower’s wife, perhaps, though I don’t know that she had anything to do with Bettina. That’s her with him now. I can’t think of anyone else.”
“With the organist, the three doctors, and Browne, that’s plenty. They’re not the sort of people I can leave Tom Tring to handle on his own, either.”
“Is Sergeant Tring coming?” Daisy was pleased. She and the elephantine sergeant had a mutual soft spot for each other.
“I telephoned him and Ernie Piper at their homes, and they’ll both be here as soon as they can. I’m assuming the case will be assigned to me, as I’m on the spot, though the local divisional Super could insist on jurisdiction.”
“He’s a chump if he does.” She recalled Cochran’s abject despair, Marchenko’s glittering eyes, Consuela de la Costa’s hysterical accusation. “I’ve a feeling you’re going to find yourself up to your ears in artistic temperament!”
4
Daisy took herself off to join Muriel Westlea as Major Browne hurried up to Alec with the glass jar he had requested.
“It had olives in it,” the pudgy manager apologized, “at the bar. I had them wash it out.”
“Thank you, it will have to do.” Alec crouched and, his hand protected by his handkerchief, picked up the larger fragments of glass and put them in the olive jar, screwing the lid on tight. “Did you find a good, sharp knife?”
“Yes, but I really must protest, Chief Inspector. I can’t believe it’s necessary to cut a hole in the carpet!”
“Sorry, sir, but our laboratory chaps will need all I can give them of the residue of Mrs. Abernathy’s drink.”
