by Robert Thier
Damn! Why did she have to offer me a free drink? It was practically guaranteed we’d be friends after that. And now I was worried sick for the woman. Damn her and her delicious bottle.
Calm down! It’s not Claudette. It can’t be.
Even from a distance, it had been pretty clear the victim was a man—or at least had dressed like one. Unless she’d taken a leaf out of my book and taken up cross-dressing, Claudette was perfectly safe. But if it hadn’t been her they were after, then who? There couldn’t be this many intrigues and unscripted murder plots in this opera house, could there?
Shouts and curses came from up ahead.
Or maybe there could.
‘Faster, Mr Linton. Faster!’
‘Coming, Sir!’
This was beginning to look more like something other than a simple rivalry. Something much more sinister. Had we misjudged the situation from the start? What the heck was going on?
We rushed around another corner, and finally stood in front of a large door marked STAGE. Well, actually it was marked SCÈNE. I just hoped that was French for ‘stage’, and not ‘gentleman’s lavatory’.
Without hesitation, Mr Ambrose shoved open the door. Thank God the curtain was already closed again, or Monsieur Berlioz would have gotten another unscheduled addition to his latest opera. A group of people in colourful costumes was standing in a circle, whispering to each other, a motionless leg sticking out from their midst.
‘What,’ Mr Ambrose demanded, his voice as cold as a glacier having a good time in the middle of the ice age[24], ‘is going on here?’
Everyone whirled to face him. The moment she caught sight of him, the mezzo-soprano’s eyes flashed, and she stormed towards him.
‘I quit!’ she declared, waving her fingers in her face. ‘No good pay? Fine! Philistine patron who understand nothing of opera? Fine! But dead cadavre interrupting my scene? Non, merci beaucoup!’
Slamming her feathery hat into Mr Ambrose’s face, she marched off stage, muttering under her breath.
With two fingers, Mr Ambrose picked the offending object off his stony visage.
‘Well?’ he enquired, staring at the wide-eyed remaining staff. ‘I am waiting for an explanation.’
Instinctively, everyone took a step back. Not one of them said a word.
Stepping closer, I pushed them aside to look at the unfortunate victim—and sucked in a breath. ‘Mr Ambrose, you need to come and look at this!’
Instantly, he was by my side. There was a moment of silence, then… ‘Hm. I see what you mean, Mr Linton.’
‘He must have been dead for a while. Look at his face!’
‘Definitely not well-preserved.’ He sniffed. ‘To judge by the smell, the flies have been at him.’
One of the remaining ladies gave a dramatic sigh and collapsed into a well-practiced decorative faint with no risk of injury. This was the opera, after all.
I frowned down at the red stain spreading on the stage. ‘But if the corpse is that old, why is he still bleeding?’
Instead of answering my question, Mr Ambrose bent and, with the careless attitude of a man who’d lived off dead rats and dry bread crusts for several years of his life, dipped a finger into the red liquid and tasted it.
‘Tomato juice,’ he stated.
Another lady fainted in a decorative manner.
‘Tomato juice?’ Claudette, who had been silently watching so far, strode forward, pushing through the other onlookers. ‘Moi, I do not understand sis! What kind of maniac would use a tomato juice to make a fake corpse bleed?’
‘Se prop master?’ suggested someone.
‘Except for him, you idiot!’
Mr Ambrose’s eyes met with mine, and silent agreement travelled between us.
‘I don’t think this corpse was the work of the prop master,’ I told the assembled singers.
‘No indeed.’ Mr Ambrose looked grim. ‘This was the work of someone who wanted to cause a scandal with minimal danger to themselves. Nobody could convict someone of murder for leaving a body that had been killed weeks ago, and probably dug up from a vagrant graveyard.’
‘But for the opera house…’ I continued his thought, and he nodded.
‘For the opera house, it would have been another matter entirely. A dead body on the stage? That’s the stuff that scandals are made of. Scandals the like of which could break this place.’
‘Kind of like a deadly snake in the prima donna’s changing room?’
‘Exactly like that.’
‘But w’o?’ Claudette demanded. ‘W’o could want to ruin sis entire opera house? We shust sing ‘ere! We are no danger to anyone!’
‘Hm…’ I stroked my chin, pretending to think. ‘Who do we know that would love to ruin each and every business venture of Mr Rikkard Ambrose…let me think…do we know such a person?’
‘I told you, it’s not Dalgliesh.’ Mr Ambrose gave an aggravated headshake. ‘He wouldn’t concern himself with a little matter like a single opera house, unless—’
Suddenly, he cut off.
‘Guizot!’ he hissed.
‘Whatever kind of curse that is,’ I told him, ‘I’m sure it’s not fit for ladies’ ears. What does it mean?’
‘It’s not a curse, Mr Linton. It’s a man.’
‘Oh.’
‘François Guizot, the French foreign minister.’
My brow furrowed. ‘I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Dalgliesh?’
‘I think we’d better discuss that elsewhere, Mr Linton.’
It was only then I realized that everyone around us was listening intently. Even several people who I—up to that point—had believed didn’t speak a word of English seemed to be quite interested in our discussion. A cold shiver went down my spine.
‘You there! You! And you!’ Mr Ambrose pointed at a few of the male singers. ‘Grab this—’ He jabbed the corpse with a boot, ‘—and dispose of it. Quietly. You, Mr Linton, come with me.’
He strode away and left Claudette to translate to her colleagues that they had just been promoted from famous singers to corpse-removers.
Mr Ambrose marched me off the stage and to the closest door, which he immediately pulled open.
‘Inside!’
‘That’s a broom closet!’
‘Which means nobody will find it worthwhile to listen at the door. Inside. Now.’
I did as he ordered, and Mr Ambrose stepped in after me, closing the door behind us. I had to silently congratulate him on originality. I had envisioned quite a few scenarios that could motivate Mr Ambrose and me to sneak off into a broom closet—but discussing corpses and French politics had not been one of them.
‘What is this all about?’ I demanded of the darkness. ‘What has this Guizot fellow to do with Lord Dalgliesh?’
Mr Ambrose muttered something else in French which—this time—I was pretty sure was a curse word.
‘I was a fool! I should have seen it sooner. Guizot, as foreign minister, is the driving force between the peaceful coexistence of France and England. It was his appointment that soothed tensions and maybe even averted war in the wake of the Far East Crisis.’
I nodded. ‘Averted war. Sounds good.’
Even in the complete darkness surrounding us, I could feel the tickle of Mr Ambrose’s cool look.
‘Not for someone whose business thrives on war, and on the expansion of the British Empire, Mr Linton.’
Something went click in my head. Mr Ambrose must have felt me stiffening, because I heard him take a small step towards me.
‘Yes, Mr Linton. Dalgliesh is not at all pleased with Monsieur François Guizot. He would love for the man to simply disappear. Or maybe even die.’
I felt a cold shiver travel down my spine.
‘So what? What if he wants that politician gone? This has nothing to do with our dead man on the stage, surely?’
‘Don’t you see, Mr Linton? Guizot is protected. He rarely makes public appearances, and when he does, it is
in heavily guarded, secure government locations. He knows very well there are plenty of people who’d like nothing better than to see him dead. But there are some things a minister cannot avoid. One of them is attending his king at public events—when he holds a parade, visits the theatre, or sometimes…the opera.’
I swallowed.
‘And how many opera houses are there in Paris?’
‘Many. But few of them large and prestigious enough for people like Guizot, let alone the king. Only two come to mind. I own one of them.’
I smiled weakly into the shadows. ‘Do I get three guesses to find out who owns the other?’
‘If you need three guesses for that, Mr Linton, I have considerably overestimated your intelligence.’
I didn’t give him a sharp retort, or even a kick on the shin. My mind was still busy whirling from the implications of what he’d just told me.
‘So…Dalgliesh is trying to bring this opera into disrepute? Why? So next time some government minister watches the opera at his place?’
‘Yes. At his place, with his armed men everywhere, and his hands holding the keys to all the doors. Imagine how many accidents could happen in such an environment.’
‘Holy moly! You don’t mean…?’
Was he honestly suggesting that Lord Dalgliesh was planning to assassinate the minister of a foreign government? And not just any foreign government, but Britain’s bitterest rival, who, just a few decades ago, had nearly brought this country to its knees?
‘Doesn’t he realize what will happen?’ I had to clutch the wall, I felt so dizzy. ‘If the wrong people are suspected of this assassination, the French king will have no choice but to take action! There will be war. Not just a battle here and there, but real, actual, full-out war, all across the continent. It would be Napoleon all over again! He can’t be planning that! He can’t!’
A firm hand landed on my shoulder.
‘As I said,’ Mr Ambrose’s cool voice reached my whirling mind. ‘Lord Dalgliesh does not concern himself with small endeavours.’
A choked sound came out of my mouth. Maybe it was a laugh. Maybe not. I didn’t know.
‘Not that the goings-on on the continent are why he is planning this,’ Mr Ambrose continued.
I blinked. ‘He isn’t?’
‘Of course not. Remember, Mr Linton. What happened the last time Britain and France fought? What happened during the Napoleonic Wars?’
It took a moment for the penny to drop. Probably because it was one of the pennies in Mr Ambrose’s purse, and he was loath to let it go.
‘The English fleet devastated the weaker French fleet, and France was cut off from all its colonies!’
‘Exactly. Imagine a repeat performance of that, all those colonies without supplies, without reinforcements. There will be no other big colonial power to balance Great Britain, and Lord Dalgliesh will be in India, with the largest army of the world not tied down in the continental conflict, free to do as he wishes, the world as his personal plaything.’
I did try to imagine it. But I stopped when I nearly had to hurl.
I had only one question. Grabbing Mr Ambrose by the collar, I pulled him towards me until I knew that, even in the dark, I was staring directly into his eyes.
‘How do we stop him?’
New Arrivals
How do we stop him?
Mr Ambrose had answered the question only with silence. And really…I couldn’t blame him. Morals aside, it was comparatively easy to shoot someone through the head, especially if you had Dalgliesh’s kind of power. It was a lot harder to prevent someone from being shot through the head if you didn’t know when the shot was coming and where it was coming from.
For days and days, while we quietly disposed of the corpse, cleaned the stage and tried to keep rumours to a minimum, we both brooded over this question.
Finally, inspiration hit! I had an idea. A brilliant idea!
Only…I was pretty sure it was one Mr Ambrose was going to detest.
Still, I had to try. We couldn’t be sure that we had guessed Dalgliesh’s plans correctly—but it all fit so horribly well. Mr Ambrose had told me the king and foreign minister were set to return from a trip to Versailles next month and, by all reports, the king liked to show his face in public whenever he came back, to be cheered along and reassure himself another revolution wasn’t just around the corner. And, of course, his favourite minister would be there.
It might be possible that we had misread the situation. That Dalgliesh wasn’t after Guizot at all. But with Lord Daniel Eugene Dalgliesh, it was always wise to assume the worst. I had to tell Mr Ambrose what I’d come up with. If there was only the slightest chance to avert what we feared was coming, I had to let him know.
Marching up to his office door, I knocked.
‘Enter,’ came his commanding voice from inside.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside, finding Mr Ambrose pouring over thick piles of papers. They weren’t bills or sheets of music for the next performance. Oh no. Even upside-down, I could spot words like ‘surveillance’ and ‘report’ before he hurriedly put the papers away.
‘Yes, Mr Linton?’
‘You’re keeping an eye on Dalgliesh, aren’t you?’
The look he gave me was so cold it was almost scary. Only almost, though, because of the words that next came out of his mouth. ‘You stay away from Dalgliesh! He’s dangerous.’
Warmth flooded my heart. He cared. He cared if I was in danger. The arrogant, chauvinistic asshole! He should know that I could very well take care of myself. How could any one person make you feel so mushy and pissed off at the same time?
Concentrate, Lilly!
Clearing my throat, I stepped closer to the desk.
‘I may have an idea of how we can prevent Dalgliesh’s plans, Sir.’
‘Indeed, Mr Linton?’
‘Yes indeed, Sir.’
I explained my idea to him. He listened calmly and patiently until I was finished, and then he nailed me to the wall with his cold gaze. By the looks of him, he was contemplating fixing me in place there permanently, if that could stop my crazy plans.
‘No!’
‘Just think about it!’ I cajoled.
‘You can’t be serious, Mr Linton!’
‘But it would work. I’m sure it would.’
‘Dropping Dalgliesh into a volcano would also work. That does not mean it is a feasible plan.’
‘But it would be a darn interesting one.’ I tugged my ear. ‘Are you sure there aren’t any volcanos around here?’
‘Mr Linton!’
‘All right, all right. Back to my original plan, then.’
He didn’t seem much more pleased about that. His eyes narrowed. ‘Ah yes. Your “original plan”. Correct me if I am mistaken, Mr Linton. Your plan consists of finding the saboteur here in my opera house…’
‘Yes.’
‘…and then,’ he continued, icy derision dripping from his voice, ‘offering His Majesty King Louis Philippe, his entire court and all the cabinet, as a sign of my generosity and love for the French people, free seasonal tickets for my opera?’
‘Err…yes?’
The glower he sent me could have frozen a volcano in mid-eruption.
‘Do you have any idea how much an opera ticket costs, Mr Linton?’
I didn’t, actually—because he had forgotten to charge me for the earlier performance. I decided not to mention that fact at the present moment, however. Better to annoy him with it in a month or so.
‘No, Sir.’
‘And do you have any idea how many members the king’s court has?’
‘Um…a dozen?’ I guessed.
His glower become even frostier.
‘Two dozen?’
I could feel my toes starting to freeze. Swallowing down my misgivings, I raised my chin.
‘Do you have any better ideas?’
Silence.
More silence.
And another teaspoonful of silen
ce.
Finally…
‘No.’
I thought as much.
Accompanied by the noise of grinding teeth, Mr Ambrose reached into his drawer, pulled out some official-looking writing paper with pre-printed letterhead. In his precise, small, and murderously neat handwriting he penned a few quick words, and signed the note with a flick of the wrist. Then he pulled a bellpull, and waited until a messenger boy peeked his head through the door.
‘Oui, Monsieur?’
Mr Ambrose threw him the letter. ‘Pour que Sa Majesté, le roi Louis Philippe, soit livré immédiatement.’[25]
The boy’s eyes went as wide as saucers. ‘Oui, monsieur! Tout de suite, monsieur!’[26]
He shut the door, and I could hear him running down the corridor at breakneck speed.
At the desk, Mr Ambrose sat down heavily in his chair and gave me a stony look.
I sent him back an encouraging smile. ‘It’s to prevent a horrific war and untold amounts of bloodshed.’
By the looks of him, that wasn’t a great consolation.
*~*~**~*~*
While Mr Ambrose brooded over how much money he was going to lose and mobilized his forces to spy on Dalgliesh, I had been ordered to receive my punishment. As vengeance for forcing him to spend money, it was to be my task to interview the opera staff once again, but this time with a new perspective. We weren’t just dealing with some petty rivalry between artists. We were dealing with a traitor—both from Mr Ambrose’s perspective and, if we were right, from the perspective of the King of the French.[27]
And everything depends on detective inspector Lilly Linton. Huzzah!
I didn’t share the new direction of the investigation with my translator, however, when she asked why the heck we were starting the interviews all over again. Considering what we suspected now, it was entirely possible she was the architect of the whole plot, and had placed the snake in her own changing room to throw us off the scent. I didn’t like to think my drinking buddy could be the force of evil we were trying to root out, however, she was definitely sneaky enough. It was the reason why I liked her.
‘Monsieur?’ a boy stuck his head in through the door. I nodded and waved at him.
‘Let them in.’
