by Barbara Paul
His reddened eyes looked at me in surprise. “Wh-what?”
“Are you going to let Mr. Springer go to prison for something you did?”
There was this deathly silence for about three seconds, and then everyone started talking. “What he did?” Lieutenant O’Halloran said in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“Gerry, are you feeling all right?” asked Emmy, always practical.
“Do I hear you right?” Scotti asked. “Jimmy?”
“Che cosa dite?” Toscanini wondered.
“Che dite?” Gatti-Casazza echoed.
“You do not understand, Gerry,” Caruso explained patiently. “It is Mr. Springer who is guilty, not Jimmy.”
“Quiet!” Amato roared, fortissimo. When everyone obeyed, he said, “Gerry—an explanation, please?”
Springer broke away from Lieutenant O’Halloran and headed straight for me. “Keep out of this,” he hissed.
I turned on him. “Mr. Springer, you just said you’d do anything to assure Jimmy’s success. Does that include taking the blame for a crime you didn’t commit? Do you know what will happen to you?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Springer said angrily.
Jimmy looked at me, his anguish evident to everyone. “Gerry—I’m no criminal!”
I put my hands on his shoulders. “I know you’re no criminal, Jimmy. But even the best of people can slip when the temptation is too great. The temptation and the opportunity.” Be a man, Jimmy, I prayed silently. “Remember when you told me how much you owed Mr. Springer? How he did everything for you, how he gave up all his other students for you? Are you going to let him give up his freedom too?”
“Don’t listen to her, James,” Springer snapped.
“I think you had better listen to her, James,” Lieutenant O’Halloran said, coming up to us. “If I’ve got the wrong man, I want to know it. Do you have something to tell me?”
Guilt, fear, remorse, anxiety, uncertainty—Jimmy’s face reflected each of them in turn. By then almost everyone on the stage understood what had really happened; it only remained for Jimmy to admit it. Finally he crumpled into a chair and buried his face in his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at anybody. He mumbled, “Mr. Springer didn’t do it. I did.”
“James!” Springer’s cry held all the heartbreak in the world; with Jimmy’s admission of guilt, the vocal coach saw the dreams of a lifetime crumbling before his very eyes.
“No no no no no no,” Caruso instructed Jimmy. “You do not do it. It is Mr. Springer.”
O’Halloran waved him away. “All right, Freeman, let’s hear the rest of it. It was the medicine bag that gave you the idea?” Jimmy nodded. “So you saw the chance to get rid of Duchon for good—”
“No!” Jimmy cried. “It wasn’t like that! I thought it would just make him sick for a while. Once when I was singing in Chicago, one of the other singers got sick from breathing ammonia fumes. He missed two performances. So I thought if Duchon sprayed the ammonia directly into his throat he might, oh, he might be out for the rest of the season. Just long enough to give me a decent chance. I thought everyone would believe it was just another one of those accidents that kept happening to him … I didn’t know it would destroy his voice! I never dreamed that would happen!”
I for one believed him; it was just the sort of mistake Jimmy would make. Lieutenant O’Halloran seemed to believe him too. “So where does Mr. Springer come in? Why was he taking the bottle into Duchon’s dressing room?” Jimmy just shook his head; he couldn’t say any more. O’Halloran turned to Springer. “Mr. Springer? You might as well tell me. It’s all up now anyway.”
Springer smiled sadly. “Yes, it is, isn’t it? Very well, what does it matter? I came upon James holding the spray bottle. He’d already put the ammonia in, but I didn’t know that yet. James told me Duchon had forgotten his spray bottle, so I said I’d take it to him. Since I didn’t know what was in the bottle, I didn’t take any particular pains to avoid being seen—I was just returning a spray bottle, that was all. That was when the old man must have seen me.”
“But later?” O’Halloran prompted. “Later you figured out what had happened—after Duchon was taken to the hospital and Dr. Curtis said it was ammonia in the spray.”
Springer grunted. “It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it?”
“So you went to Freeman and you told him—”
“No. We never spoke of it. Not once.”
Murmurs of surprise ran across the stage. “Non credo niente,” Toscanini muttered. Gatti sank silently onto the nearest chair.
“It’s true,” Springer said. “I think James knew all along that I knew, but there was a sort of tacit understanding between us. We would proceed as usual, and not make trouble for ourselves if we could avoid it.”
I cleared my throat. “Mr. Springer, you didn’t tell Jimmy to get into costume early, did you? That was his own idea.”
Springer nodded. “I wondered at the time why he was getting dressed—but of course that made sense later too. It was his eagerness. He knew he’d be singing in Duchon’s place.”
“When we were in the museum,” I went on, “you told me you saw Duchon spitting blood before the performance began. Was that true?”
Springer gave a loud snort. “No, it wasn’t true. Duchon was healthy as a horse. He would have lived to be a hundred.”
“So our talk in the museum was—”
“Lies, Miss Farrar. Lies to protect other lies. By then the question of why James had gotten into costume early had become something of an issue. I had to provide a believable reason for his doing so.”
“You did,” I said wryly. “I believed you. Didn’t it bother you, Mr. Springer, how quick Jimmy was to put the blame on you? When he said you had told him to lie about getting into costume?”
“That was a temporizing measure. He told me about it immediately.”
O’Halloran said, “I thought you never talked about it.”
“We never talked about the act itself,” Springer explained. “We did talk about protecting ourselves.”
“You’re making excuses for him,” I murmured. Springer didn’t answer.
“This makes you an accomplice, you know,” O’Halloran said to Springer.
“I know. What does it matter now?”
“Only one thing left,” O’Halloran growled. “Miss Farrar—how in the world did you know it was Freeman instead of Springer?”
“Yes, Gerry,” Scotti said, “how do you know?”
“I didn’t know,” I protested. “It just seemed to me all along that what happened to Duchon was mostly a nasty trick that got out of hand, something that was far more serious in its consequences than was intended. Mr. Springer has been in the business of training the voice for—how long, Mr. Springer? Twenty years?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Twenty-four years—that’s a long time. It seemed inconceivable that a man so experienced in matters concerning the human vocal mechanism wouldn’t know the effects on the voice box of something as strong as ammonia.” I paused. “So many things can damage the vocal cords—we have to be careful all the time. Mr. Springer just isn’t naïve enough to think there’d be no permanent damage.”
“And I am,” Jimmy said bitterly. “I see.”
“Lieutenant O’Halloran,” Springer spoke quickly, “James made a mistake—a stupid mistake, granted, but it was a mistake. He did not intend to ruin a man’s career. He certainly did not intend that man’s death. There was no murder in his heart. Will this be taken into consideration?”
“I’m fairly sure it will,” O’Halloran said. “I’ll say so myself, at the trial.”
Jimmy stood up slowly and sort of gave himself a little shake. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I’ll appreciate your help, although I’m not certain I deserve such consideration. I am responsible for Philippe Duchon’s death. No one else. Just me.”
So there it was. Jimmy Freeman was a decent young man who had done one
indecent thing in his life. And now he was going to pay for it.
It had finally begun to sink in on Caruso what had happened. “It is Jimmy?” he asked disbelievingly. “It is not Mr. Springer?”
Lieutenant O’Halloran gestured to a couple of his men, who each took Jimmy and Springer by an arm and started leading them off the stage. Jimmy stopped and turned to me. “I’m sorry, Gerry,” he said. And then they were gone.
“Not the man I came here to arrest,” O’Halloran said, looking after Jimmy. “That was a close one. If there weren’t so many meddlers muddying the waters …” he trailed off. The lieutenant stared a moment first at me and then at Caruso and then at me again. “Oh, what’s the use!” he muttered, and stalked off.
“It is not Mr. Springer?” Caruso asked me.
“Interesting,” Scotti said. “You send Jimmy to jail and he apologizes to you. What does he apologize for?”
“I think for not being the sort of person I wanted him to be,” I said. “But if I hadn’t said anything, he would have spoken up on his own, eventually. He couldn’t let Mr. Springer take his punishment for him.”
“It is not Mr. Springer?” Caruso asked Gatti-Casazza.
Emmy had a funny look in her eye. “You surprise me, Gerry. Jimmy has always been such a favorite of yours, I would have thought—well, I’d have thought you’d be more likely to help conceal what he did than reveal it.”
That hurt my feelings. “Really? Do you really think I’d do that?”
“The thought occurred to me. You’ve been championing his career for so long—why did you do it?”
“Because,” I sputtered, “because it was the right thing to do!”
“Well, good for you,” she smiled. “You do surprise me—but good for you.”
Now that was grossly unfair of her; I frequently do things because they are right. “I didn’t like doing it, you know.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically. Scotti gave me a little hug.
“Such a waste,” Toscanini murmured, shaking his head. “That fine voice—locked up in a prison. A great waste, no?” We all agreed it was indeed a great waste.
Gatti-Casazza got up heavily from the chair where he’d been sitting silently for so long. “A member of the Metropolitan Opera Company in prison! I do not think … it does not … ah, such a promising young singer, lost, lost! Cielo! What a pity.”
“A great pity,” Toscanini agreed.
Gatti and Toscanini looked at each other quickly. People draw together in times of misfortune, I reminded myself and held my breath. Toscanini raised one hand a little, Gatti opened his mouth as if to speak—and for a moment I thought they were going to make up their differences then and there. But both men abruptly turned on their heels and marched off in opposite directions.
“No reconciliation,” Scotti moaned. “Mi rincresce.” I was sorry too.
“It is not Mr. Springer?” Caruso asked Amato.
“No, Rico, it is not Mr. Springer.”
“It is not Mr. Springer,” the tenor said leadenly, accepting Amato’s word for it. “All the time—all the time, I think it is Mr. Springer.”
“We know, Rico,” Amato smiled.
“But it is Jimmy!” Caruso threw up his hands. “Per dio! Who would think young Jimmy can do such a terrible thing?” He turned and glared at me. “You think so! You think so, and you do not tell me!”
“Oh, Rico, I suspected almost everybody at one time or another,” I said lightly. “I was even wondering about myself at one point. The one person I never suspected was you.”
That made him feel better, a little. Amato said, “You know what you need, Rico? You need a nice dish of pasta. With clam sauce, perhaps?”
Caruso grinned his old familiar wicked grin and wagged one finger under his friend’s nose. “Eh, you think I do not know what you do, yes? You try to distract me with talk of food. But I am too clever for you, Pasquale—I understand you! Besides, I have pasta and clam sauce last night.”
Amato laughed and said, “What about the rest of you? We go to the Café Martin, yes?”
“Hungry?” Scotti asked me. “Emmy, the Café Martin?” She didn’t hear him; she appeared abstracted.
How the men could think of restaurants at a time like this was beyond me. “I couldn’t eat anything, Toto,” I said. “In fact, I feel a little sick. I think I’ll just go on home.”
He smiled in a kindly manner, understanding. “Gerry. It is not good, being alone right now. You go home, you brood, you make yourself more unhappy. No, you come with us. You eat a little something, you feel better, yes? You come.”
Food, the universal solace. Maybe he was right; anything to put off thinking about Jimmy Freeman a little longer. “You go on with the others,” I told Scotti. “Emmy and I’ll catch up with you in a moment.” The three men sauntered off the stage, the grim little scene we’d just witnessed already behind them.
I had to say her name twice before she heard me. “Sorry,” Emmy said, “I was thinking about something else.”
“You were right all along,” I told her. “About Jimmy Freeman.”
She waved a hand. “A guess. The same way Rico guessed Mr. Springer.”
“But your guess was right.” We were both silent a moment, and then I roused myself and said, “The men seem to have decided on the Café Martin. Is that all right with you?”
“I think I’ll go home.”
That surprised me. “You don’t want something to eat after all?”
“No, I mean all the way home. Home to Prague, when the season’s over.”
I was appalled. “Oh, Emmy, you can’t mean that! You can’t travel through a war zone!”
“Prague is home. My house is there, and my friends.” She sighed. “I miss my cats. It is home.”
I stared. “You’re willing to get shot at because you miss your cats?”
She sniffed. “It’s more than that. What if it was your country that was a battleground? Wouldn’t you worry about it?”
“Of course I’d worry about it. But I don’t know that I’d go there.”
She shook her head. “I have to see for myself. I’ll stay only a month, maybe less. Nothing will happen to me—you’ll see.”
I thought she was crazy and said so. But then, it was just one more evidence of the difference between us; she had her way, I had mine. “Emmy—shake hands.”
She looked surprised. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like shaking hands.”
She shrugged and indulged me. We shook hands, and then went our separate ways.
Epilogue
Toscanini left the Metropolitan Opera in 1915 and never went back; he and Gatti-Casazza did not speak for seventeen years. Caruso married and settled down. Geraldine Farrar also tried matrimony but didn’t like it much; she divorced her actor husband after a couple of years. Emmy Destinn spent the war years a virtual house-prisoner in Prague; the Austrians would not allow her to return to America. Pasquale Amato eventually turned his talents to teaching, joining the music faculty of Tulane University. Antonio Scotti continued the perennial bachelor, amiable, charming, and always in love—with Geraldine Farrar most of the time, with somebody or other the rest of the time.
But when they were all together, they made glorious music.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Opera Mysteries
1
Giulio Gatti-Casazza, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, was not in the habit of taking orders from scrubladies. But this time he thought he’d better make an exception.
“You come!” The woman was wild-eyed and distraught, motioning with both arms to compensate for her imperfect grasp of the English language. “Evil thing. Come now!”
Evil thing? Gatti-Casazza gestured to her to lead the way. A big, lumbering man now with gray in his beard, Gatti did not normally move quickly; he had to exert himself to keep up with the woman.
The scrublady led him to the chorus dressing room on the fourth floor
but stopped at the doorway. “Inside. You go!” she commanded imperiously, and refused to budge.
With a shrug Gatti stepped into the dressing room—and gasped. There, dangling from an overhead water pipe, the body of a man rotated slowly back and forth, his eyes bulging in death. Gatti covered his own eyes with one hand; the poor man had hanged himself with his own suspenders.
Evil thing. When Gatti could stand to look again, he recognized the dead man as one of the tenors in the chorus. A new man, hadn’t been with the Met long. With heavy step Gatti moved over to stop the obscene rotation of the body. The corpse was still warm.
The general manager edged back out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He hurried downstairs and rounded up three stagehands to take down the body. After explaining their unpleasant chore, he swore them to secrecy. “The other choristers, they must not know of their comrade’s sad end until after the performance tonight,” he insisted. “It is hard enough even then!”
The stagehands gave their word. “But won’t they miss him?” one of them asked.
Gatti pulled nervously at his beard. “Perhaps they think he is ill. I myself tell them afterward.” He took out his watch and checked the time. “Please! The others, they start to arrive any moment now. You must make haste.”
Without another word the stagehands hurried up the stairs. That evening’s opera was Mefistofele, a work that kept the chorus fairly busy; perhaps they would not have time to worry about the missing tenor. Belatedly, Gatti remembered the scrublady and looked around for her.
She had disappeared.
“The poor man,” soprano Geraldine Farrar said the next day. “What could have gone so wrong in his life that he’d do such a thing? He wasn’t very old, was he?”
“A mere boy,” Antonio Scotti replied, “only twenty-nine, Gatti says.” He adjusted the limousine’s lap rug. “Are you warm enough, cara mia?”
“I’m fine,” she murmured absently. “That’s two members of the chorus who’ve died—and within four days of each other.”
