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Authors: Carola Dunn

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BOOK: Requiem for a Mezzo
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“Same thing. No one could describe you as haughty, at least.” He grinned. “And I don't suppose Caro Lamb ever had a single freckle on her nose, either.”
“Blast, are they showing?” Whipping out her powder-puff, Daisy sped to the hall mirror and anxiously examined her roundish face. “No. You beast!” She dabbed a little extra powder on her nose anyway. “You haven't said if you like it, Alec.”
He came up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders, gazing at her in the looking glass. “It's utterly enchanting,” he said softly.
Daisy blushed, to her own extreme annoyance—too fearfully Victorian! “Here are my gloves, in my pocket,” she said. “Let's go.”
A few minutes later the massive rotunda of the Royal Albert Hall loomed before them through the rain. The huge auditorium had been planned by Prince Albert as the centrepiece of a corner of Kensington to be dedicated to the arts and sciences. Not completed until a decade after his death, it had for half a century been a major venue for everything from political and religious meetings to concerts and sports events. Colleges and museums clustered around it, and usually the streets were busy.
However, it was a wet Sunday afternoon and they were early so Alec had no difficulty finding a place to leave the Austin quite close to the entrance.
In the lobby he bought a programme, and the usher directed them around the circular passage to the inner entrance nearest their seats.
The seats were perfect, neither too far from the stage nor too close, and a little above its level. Daisy could never understand why anyone would pay the premium prices to be in the front rows. All one could see was the conductor, the soloists, and the first ranks of violins and cellos, and just about all one could hear, too. That was where people sat who cared more for showing off their furs and hats than for the music. Not the place for her green tweed and the Selfridge's Bargain Basement cloche!
Behind her and Alec and to either side, and even behind the stage, the tiers of seats rose towards the distant glass dome, now a dingy grey. A full house was about eight thousand, someone had told her. At the moment the vast hall was thinly populated, but people were gradually filing in through the many doors around the circle.
“Good,” said Alec, “there's a translation in the programme. My Latin isn't up to it, hasn't been for years.”
Together they studied the words of the
Requiem.
“Gosh, look at that,” Daisy exclaimed, and read aloud, “‘
Confutatis maledictis:
When the cursed all are banished, doomed to burn in bitter flames, summon me among the blessed.' Talk about holier-than-thou!”
Alec laughed. “It is rather, isn't it? You have to consider it as opera. The story may be questionable but the music is divine. Listen to this. ‘Day of wrath, day of terror, day of disaster and anguish, that great, hopeless, exceeding bitter day.' Just like one of those operas which ends with bodies strewn all over the stage.”
“Ghastly! I'm not all that keen on opera.”
“Nor am I.”
They finished reading the programme as the orchestra players started to wander in. Odd notes, chords, and twiddles of melody arose in a tantalizing cacophony. A momentary silence fell as the leader came in and bowed to the audience, to a wave of applause. The first oboe sounded an A and the serious tuning of instruments began.
Daisy regarded the leader, Yakov Levich, with interest. A Russian Jew in exile, he was beginning to make a name for himself as a solo violinist—she had read a glowing review of his recent recital at the Wigmore Hall. Tall and almost painfully thin, he had curly black hair greying at the temples and a long, serious face with prominent cheekbones and a high-bridged nose.
An expectant hush fell as the choir filed in. Daisy turned her attention to picking out Muriel and pointing her out to Alec. She had more colour in her face than usual and the severe black of the choir uniform unexpectedly suited her. She opened her music score with a look of joyful anticipation. Obviously singing was one of the few pleasures in her life.
Eric Cochran appeared, baton in hand, his longish hair the only sign of Bohemian proclivity now he was clad in formal tails. He led in the soloists. First came the soprano, Consuela de la Costa, a voluptuous figure in crimson velvet cut dashingly low on the bosom.
“More appropriate to the opera than a requiem mass,” Alec whispered.
“Perhaps she represents one of the temptations which lead the damned to Hell?” Daisy whispered back.
“Or the fiery furnace itself.”
Behind Miss de la Costa, Bettina Westlea was a cool, slender beauty in blue satin with a more respectable neckline. Gilbert
Gower, the tenor, came next. A handsome Welshman, he had been a staple of the English opera stage for years, never quite achieving the summit of the profession, but well respected. Next and last, the bass was another refugee from the Bolshevik Revolution. A Russian bear of a man with a full black beard, Dimitri Marchenko had as yet found only small rôles in England, chiefly in oratorio.
“I've heard him in the
Messiah
,” Daisy muttered to Alec. “His low notes have to be heard to be believed. ‘Why do the nations …'” she hummed.
“‘ … so furiously rage together'? Most appropriate.”
They settled back, clapping, as conductor and soloists bowed. Cochran raised his baton, brought it down with infinite delicacy. The pianissimo first notes of the
Requiem
murmured through the hall.
The music swept Daisy away. She forgot the grim words except to wonder at the brilliant way Verdi illustrated them. After the momentary annoyance of latecomers entering at the end of the
Kyrie,
the
Dies Irae
was gloriously terrifying. Marchenko's
Mors stupebit,
reaching down into the depths of the bass range, sent a shiver down Daisy's spine. Consuela de la Costa's voice was as vivid as her appearance. Mr. Abernathy had given Bettina whatever help she had needed and she sang the
Liber scriptus
with a thrilling intensity. Gower's clear tenor was a touch off-key in the
Quid sum miser,
but his
Ingemisco
was so beautiful it brought tears to Daisy's eyes.
The first half of the concert ended with a hushed “Amen” dying away into slow chords and silence. For a long moment Daisy, along with the rest of the audience, sat in a near trance before a roar of applause burst forth.
Soloists and conductor bowed and departed. The chorus began to file out.
“My hands hurt from clapping,” Daisy said to Alec as they made their way out to the circular passage to stroll about during the interval.
“It was worthy of sore palms,” Alec said, smiling. “Thank you once more for inviting me. I must write a note to your friend Miss Westlea, too.”
“I'm glad you could come.” She linked her arm through his, surely justifiable as the eddying crowd threatened to part them. “You do still mean to take me out to dinner, don't you?”
“Yes, I'm incommunicado as far as the Yard is concerned.”
“Spiffing!” said Daisy.
“Hungry? There's the bar over there. Would you like a drink?” Alec asked. “I expect they have salted almonds or something else to nibble on.”
“No, thanks, I'm not thirsty and I'll save my appetite.”
“Did you notice Bettina Westlea had a glass under her chair she kept sipping at when she wasn't singing?”
“Her throat must get fearfully dry.”
“The others managed without, not to mention the chorus. I wonder if that might annoy conductors enough to explain her lack of success. She has a lovely voice.”
“I suspect she's just generally difficult to work with.” Daisy decided not to describe Bettina's peevish self-importance in case it spoilt his pleasure in her singing.
They completed the circuit of the hall just as the bell sounded for the end of the interval. The second half began with a lengthy section for all four soloists. They sat down; the choir rose. Daisy glanced down at the programme: the
Sanctus
was next.
As she looked up again, she saw Bettina reach beneath her chair for her glass. Thirsty work, singing.
Bettina took a big gulp and choked. Her face turned bright red. With a strangled cry she sprang to her feet, the glass flying from her hand as she clutched her throat. Gasping, she doubled
over, spun around in a grotesque parody of a ballerina's pirouette, and collapsed.
Her sprawling body writhed, jerked convulsively twice. For a moment heels drummed a desperate tattoo on the stage. Then the blue figure lay still.
A
lec leapt up. “Police!” he said sharply, pushing past knees to the aisle.
The trumpets' staccato introduction, the basses' resolute opening
“Sanctus,”
died away. Half the choir sat, the rest remained uneasily standing, except for Daisy's friend Muriel Westlea, who scurried down from the ranks, threading her way between woodwinds and violas.
“Betsy!” she cried, and fell to her knees at her sister's side.
From somewhere in the audience came a belated scream. People started to stand up. Though the hall was still quiet, any minute there would be a hubbub followed by a stampede for the doors, and Alec had no way to stop it.
The conductor still stood on the podium, gaping down at his supine soloist. “Police!” Alec rapped out again as he reached the rapidly emptying front row of seats. “Mr. Cochran, make an announcement, please. No one is to leave.”
Cochran shook his head dazedly, visibly pulled himself together, and swung round to face the audience. “Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a carrying voice. “There has been an accident … .”
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.”
BOOK: Requiem for a Mezzo
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