Requiem for a Mezzo

by Carola Dunn

  “I find titles quite superfluous in artistic circles, don’t you, Mrs. Cochran?” Daisy struggled to keep a straight face.

  “Why, yes, perhaps. Modern young women are casual about such things, I know. I fear I was not aware that you are Lord Dalrymple’s daughter.”

  “Cousin.”

  Before Mrs. Cochran could rally, her husband joined them to express his condolences to the bereaved parents and second the offer of hospitality after the funeral. Daisy saw Olivia say a word to Muriel and depart.

  No doubt Cochran would tell his wife he had arranged for Olivia to sing the mezzo part in the Requiem. Not for a moment did Daisy suppose they had reached agreement only on musical business. Surely Mrs. Cochran must have realized by now how matters stood between the two?

  11

  Alec and his henchmen managed to steal away from Abernathy’s house without seeing Daisy. She had been very helpful but he had no intention of discussing the case with her any further, since she chose to champion his prime suspect.

  “Muriel Westlea seems an unlikely murderer,” he admitted to Tom as the Austin Seven pulled away from the kerb, leaving a couple of disconsolate reporters behind. “Can she be clever enough to make me believe she’s candid and ingenuous at the same time she’s stupid enough to have left those prints on the decanter?”

  “There’s only the one set of dabs all right, Chief,” was Tom’s unhelpful response. “Clear as a bell, the last lot on the stopper. They’d more’n likely be smeared if summun other’n you had used gloves or a hankie over ’em.”

  Young Ernie Piper was still less helpful. “She seemed like a nice lady, Chief.”

  “And her brother-in-law’s a nice gentleman,” said Alec acidly. “Abernathy’s motive is stronger. He’s not faking that dicky heart. Is he faking the sorrow? He put up with her shenanigans for years, but so did Crippen with his wife until Ethel le Neve came along. Any hints from the servants why he might have cracked now, Tom?”

  “More t’other way about, Chief. Mrs. Abernathy was between lovers, ’ccording to her maid, and she was that taken up with practising for the big concert she didn’t bedevil the poor bloke as much as usual. It was more her sister she was badgering, over the Yid.”

  “The Jewish gentleman,” Alec reproved him. “Another nice gentleman, and highly talented, I understand.”

  “We going to see him next, Chief?” asked Piper.

  “No, we’ll tackle Marchenko first. I want to leave time to find an interpreter today if he persists in his claim to speak no English in spite of having chatted to Miss Dalrymple. Anything else of interest, Tom? What did you find in the desk?”

  “Bundles of love-letters, Chief, all tied up with pretty pink ribbon. I swiped the ones from Marchenko and Gower, like you said. They was the only ones mixed up in this. None from Mr. Cochran. Beryl, the house-parlourmaid, confirmed he used to come here to meet Miss Blaise. She had her eye on his chauffeur, good-looking chap like his master, she said, but he never came in. They’d drive up in front, then Mr. Cochran’d dismiss him and he’d go off on foot.”

  “Did he, now! I wonder if he went home and reported to Mrs. Cochran that he’d taken her husband to Mrs. Abernathy’s house? Have a word with him, Tom, when we call on them.”

  “Right, Chief. The only other thing—can’t see what it’s got to do with what but it struck me as a bit odd—Elsie said Mrs. Abernathy’s doctor came round while the family was at lunch. He wanted whatever was left of some medicine he’d made up for her.”

  “What, why, and did he get it?” Alec asked, interested. “And what’s his name?”

  “Some cough syrup, Chief, he said he’d made it special for her and it wouldn’t do Mr. Abernathy any good if he was to take it. Elsie’d already thrown all that stuff out, clearing out the bathroom cabinet for the vicar and his missus, and the dustbin men came around noon. But the oddest thing of all, it was that Dr. Woodward, who was at the concert.”

  “Very odd.” Alec frowned as he drove into a narrow, dingy street lined with tall, narrow terrace houses. “Here we are. What’s the number Major Browne gave us, Ernie?”

  Piper, with his phenomenal memory for numbers, had Marchenko’s address on the tip of his tongue.

  As they climbed out of the little motor-car, which rocked as Tring extracted his bulk, Alec continued, “Woodward never said a word about being Mrs. Abernathy’s doctor, though he was the only one of the three who thought it might be a seizure, not poisoning. I’ll have to see him.”

  Ernie Piper rattled off the doctor’s address and telephone number.

  “Showing off, young ’un?” said Tom indulgently, adding in a low voice, “Curtains twitching inside, Chief, and both sides and opposite, too.”

  “They’re all wondering how we stuffed you into the car in the first place, Sarge.”

  “Cheeky bugger. You want me to talk to the neighbours, Chief?”

  “Not at this stage, Tom. There’s no question of alibis. Come in and take his prints, then you can buzz off and find a telephone booth. Make me an appointment with Dr. Woodward for tomorrow morning, before the inquest. I’m not going to have time to see him today.”

  “I’ll write down his number for you, Sarge,” said Piper, grinning.

  “All right, Ernie, see what you make of this,” said Alec. He pointed at the row of bell-pushes beside the front door. Like most in this area, the once respectable middle-class house had been divided into flats and bed-sitters. Each bell was labelled with the name of the tenant—every one written in Cyrillic script.

  “Easy, Chief.” The young constable thought better of his certitude and hedged, “Leastways, I’d try the ground floor. See, the first two letters looks like an M and an A, and the last two’s K and O. Near enough, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like it’s Chinese.”

  Alec pressed the bottom bell.

  Dimitri Marchenko’s flat was sparsely and cheaply furnished. On the rack of an elderly upright piano a vocal score stood open. Having admitted the three detectives, the bass stood by the deal table in the middle of his untidy room, glaring at them. By the light of a single naked electric light bulb—the curtains were tightly closed—he looked more than ever like a bear. An angry bear, but Alec thought he saw wariness in the big man’s eyes.

  “I’m hoping you have remembered your English, sir,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, speaking clearly. “Otherwise, we’ll come back with an interpreter from the Soviet legation.”

  “Soviet, nyet!” What little of Marchenko’s face was visible among the hair turned dark red, a pulse beating at his temple. “English I spik some. Vchera—yesterday—was shock, make to forget.”

  “I quite understand, sir. First, if you wouldn’t mind, my sergeant will take impressions of your fingerprints.”

  Marchenko whipped his hands behind his back, an interesting response, as well as one which made it clear he followed English more easily than he admitted to speaking it. At once he thought better of his reaction and sheepishly held out both hands as Tom Tring stepped forward. The two large men stared hard at each other, then, as if by mutual agreement, both dropped their eyes to the fingerprint kit which Tom set on the scarred, ringed table.

  That messy business completed, the sergeant departed on his errand. Alec and Marchenko sat down at the table and Piper took up his usual unobtrusive position slightly to the rear of the suspect, notebook at the ready.

  Alec scarcely had to prompt Marchenko before the accusations against Yakov Levich poured out. He was a Jew, a Russian, a Bolshevik spy, what more did one need to know?

  “Much more,” said Alec. “Why should a Bolshevik spy—supposing Mr. Levich to be one—choose such an unlikely victim?”

  “I hear, I see! Always she stop him talk to sister: ‘Come sew button, Muriel’; ‘Go fetch coat, Muriel’; ‘I tell father you like Jew, Muriel.’ This I hear. And to him, oscorbleniya …”

  “In English, if you please, sir,” Alec requested as Piper chewed his pencil in despair.

&nb
sp; “Insults, much insults.”

  “I understand Mrs. Abernathy insulted you, too, sir, after accepting a number of gifts.”

  Paltry trinkets, Marchenko claimed, or at least that’s what his muddled explanation, scattered with Russian phrases, amounted to. As for the insults, what else could you expect from a “veetch?” (Bitch? Witch? Wasn’t one Russian letter written B but pronounced V?) A sensible man took no account of such things.

  Marchenko spoke calmly but his eyes glittered. Better take a look at those gifts, maybe have them appraised, Alec decided.

  “And what did you see, sir, which roused your suspicions of Mr. Levich?”

  “I see him at table in soloist room. What he wants there? Has own room for orchestra, nyet? Own refreshment, also.”

  “Did you take a drink from the table, sir?”

  “Da. To sing make thirst. Take samovar for tea. English tea otvratitelny.”

  Alec didn’t bother to ask for a translation of that. He went on to ask about everyone’s movements in the soloists’ room.

  “After Lacrimosa we come from stage, I get glass tea, bring to men’s room. Gover already in room, drinks Scotch veesky from flask. Never he goes out, always drinking and pimping.”

  A muffled gasp turned into a cough came from Piper.

  “Perhaps primping is the word you want, sir?” Alec suggested.

  Massive shoulders shrugged. “Pimping, prrrimping—you English swallow letter errrr.” He gave it the full rolling Russian sound, like a bear’s growl. “Gover sits at mirror, plays with hair.”

  “You are quite sure Mr. Gower never left the men’s dressing room during the interval?”

  “Quite very sure. Only drrrinks and prrrimps,” Marchenko said with scorn. “When Cochran comes, quickly he hides flask.”

  It looked as if the tenor was out of it. “What did Mr. Cochran want?”

  “Has new idea to phrase ‘quam olim Abrahae.’ Is not bad idea, but too late to rehearse. We talk, sing few notes. When he leaves dressing room, I go with to get more glass tea. There is gospozha Cochrana looking after him.”

  “Mrs. Cochran looking for him?” Alec proposed, more for Piper’s enlightenment than his own.

  “Tak.” Marchenko nodded. “They talk. I go to samovar. Then Cochran knocks on ladies’ door. Out comes Miss de la Costa, Miss Vessstlea,”—he hissed the name—“and sister. Miss Vestlea has glass in hand. Like Gover, always taking nipples.”

  Momentarily stumped by the possibly apposite but presumably misapplied word, Alec glanced at Ernie Piper. “Taking nips, sir,” the young detective said, wooden-faced.

  “I stay to listen to music talk.” Once started, the bass seemed suspiciously eager to cooperate. “I see Miss de la Costa stay at end of room.”

  “She did not go anywhere near the table?”

  “Tak. Next comes in young woman—Bless is name, da? Olivia Bless?—short dark hair, much chic. Miss Muriel goes in ladies’ room, brings out papers to her. I am talking about ‘quam olim,’ not see if Miss Bless goes near table, but notice later she still there, talking to Muriel. Then comes Abernathy, also talks music. Soon he goes to table, brings cup tea for wife, English tea. ‘Peeg sveel,’ she says. ‘I not drinking that peeg sveel.’” Marchenko’s relish made clear his hearty concurrence.

  “Cochran and wife go away,” he continued. “Miss de la Costa go into dressing room. This is when Levich arrives. At door he talks to Cochran, one moment, then he looks round room, goes to table, and puts poison in Bettina’s drink.”

  “You actually saw him put some substance in the decanter, sir?”

  His eyes shifting, Marchenko backed off a little. “I know this is what he does. He is filthy, murdering Jew.”

  “Yes, well, sir, we’ve been through all that. Was anyone else in a position to see what he was doing?”

  “Miss Bless goes to him at table on way out. But plenty time before to put in poison.”

  “Was Miss Blaise with him long?”

  “Just moment. Two ticks of lamb’s tail, as you say. After, he goes quickly to Muriel. At once Bettina finds loose button. ‘Muriel, sew on button!’ like I tell you.”

  “So you did, sir.”

  “Like I tell you, never she lets Levich talk to Muriel, so Levich kills her.”

  “That remains to be seen, sir. What happened next?”

  “I go back in dressing room,” said Marchenko, disgruntled by Alec’s scepticism. “See nothing no more. That is all.”

  Except where Levich was concerned, Alec saw no reason to doubt his word. In fact, he had turned out to be an excellent witness. Abernathy had already mentioned the cup of tea for his wife, and most of what Marchenko had said could be checked with other people.

  As for his own innocence or guilt, the most telling points would be the value of his gifts to Bettina and whether the team presently trudging from chemist’s to chemist’s found evidence of his having purchased cyanide. The name he signed in the Poison Book, required of everyone buying dangerous substances, might be false, but no one who had seen and spoken to him could possibly forget him.

  Alec thanked Marchenko for his help and warned him not to leave London without informing the police. Then he and Piper went out to the car, where Tom awaited them.

  “Got you an appointment with Dr. Woodward, Chief. But whatever he has to say, I reckon it was that Russian done it. A nasty piece of work, he is, and you ’member the mad monk, Rasputin? It was cyanide they tried to put him away with, afore they up and drowned him.”

  “You didn’t meet the Spanish singer, Sarge,” Piper said as Alec started the car. “She’s a regular Loo-creature Borger. If you was to ask me, she done it.”

  “She never went near the table,” Alec pointed out. “Anyway, Lucretia Borgia was Italian, and Marchenko is Ukrainian, Tom, not Russian. And we’re on our way to see Gower, who’s Welsh. Any takers?”

  “Nah, the Taffies’ll scrag you in a scrum,” said Piper, a keen sportsman, “but they’re not the poisoning sort.”

  “There’s always Mrs. Gower, Chief,” Tom put in. “Poison’s a woman’s weapon.”

  “There, what did I say, Sarge? Loo-creature Borger it was! She used one of them slow-acting poisons.”

  Alec laughed. “It was cyanide, Ernie. Besides, I think Miss de la Costa is more the dagger sort, and still more likely to scratch out her rival’s eyes, as she threatened. Tom, assuming the Gowers are at home, have a chat with the servants after you’ve taken their prints. See if Mrs. Gower was unusually on edge in the weeks before the concert. She may well deny that she knew about Mrs. Abernathy being her husband’s mistress. We’ve only Miss Westlea’s word, and Miss Westlea has every reason to try to throw suspicion elsewhere.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  The Gowers’ house, in South Kensington, was a solidly respectable Victorian semi-detached, shielded from the street by laurels. A neat, elderly parlourmaid opened the door to the three detectives. After informing them that the master was out but expected back any moment, she went to see whether her mistress was “at home.”

  She returned to usher them into a sitting room where Mrs. Gower stood waiting, her plain, pudgy face pale, her hands twisting, amid comfortably shabby furniture. The inevitable piano had Für Elise open on the rack and a dozen framed photographs on top. On tables and walls were displayed more photographs. Most were snapshots of two boys and a girl in various combinations, from babyhood to late adolescence; a few showed Gilbert Gower in one or another of his operatic roles. In pride of place over the mantelpiece hung a studio portrait of the three youngsters. The girl was about twenty, the boys perhaps eighteen and sixteen.

  Would a woman so obsessed by her offspring risk being convicted of murder and taken from them for ever?

  “Fine children,” said Alec, walking over to study the portrait after greeting Mrs. Gower and receiving a shaky response.

  “Aren’t they?” she responded eagerly. “My daughter is engaged to be married, to such a nice boy. My sons are s
till at school, of course, but growing up so fast!” She sighed. “I have plenty of time to spare for my volunteer work now. They don’t need their mother as they used to.”

  And there was his answer. He remembered himself at that age, the long, serious talks with his father about his future. For a year or two his kind, fussy mother had seemed irrelevant, often irritating. He hoped he had hidden it better than the Gower boys seemed to have. If Mrs. Gower felt herself less necessary than their father to her children, for their sakes she might have struck out at the woman she feared was tearing him away.

  “But I expect you want to ask me some questions, Chief Inspector.” She was quite calm now. “Won’t you sit down? Would you like tea?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am.” As he waited for her to be seated, with a tiny jerk of the head he sent Tom out of the room. Fingerprints could wait till Gower came home. “Tell me again, please, just what you did and who you saw in the soloists’ room at the Albert Hall yesterday. We realize everyone was in a state of shock and we’re not holding it against them if they remember things today that they forgot last night.”

  “I told you everything. No one was in the sitting room. I didn’t want to disturb Gilbert if he was resting, so I waited a minute or two and then left.”

  “Perhaps you helped yourself to a cup of tea while you waited? A very natural thing to do, and no one would have minded.”

  “No, I didn’t go near the table. Gilbert always said the refreshments at the Albert Hall were the worst anywhere.” Her hands twisted in her lap. “Was that where … where the poison was put in Mrs. Abernathy’s drink?”

  “So it seems. You knew about her decanter of ratafia, of course. Everyone did.”

  “I didn’t go anywhere near it, truly. Ratafia, is that what it was? Gilbert mentioned some liqueur. He said she was a fool to let everyone know she drank, as it didn’t do her career any good. She was ruining her own chances with her temperamental outbursts anyway,” Mrs. Gower added with a touch of grim complacency.