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Authors: Carola Dunn

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“Who picked her to sing in the Verdi? Who chooses the soloists?”
“Well, I'm consulted, though the conductor has the final say. Something like the
Requiem,
the choir-master's generally asked for suggestions. Roger Abernathy—his ProMusica sings here quite often—he's tried before to talk a conductor into giving his wife a chance. Dotes … doted on her, he did. He's a good chap, mind you, but I've generally managed to put a spoke in his wheel in the interests of peace and harmony.”
“This time you failed.”
“Could have knocked me down with a feather. I'd had a quiet word with Cochran and he agreed absolutely that Bettina Westlea was more trouble than her voice was worth. Next thing I know, he's done an about-face and won't consider any other mezzo.”
Confirmation of Daisy's remark that Cochran had been behaving oddly, Alec thought. “Did he give you any reason?”
“No, just he'd decided her voice was perfect for the part whatever her drawbacks.” The Major sounded resigned. “These artistic types, you simply can't count on 'em, you know. Give me a boxing-wallah any day. Crooked as corkscrews, every one of 'em, but you know where you are. Speaking of which, care for a whisky, Chief Inspector?” He opened a drawer of his desk.
“Thank you, not on duty.” Alec had to assume he was on duty. He hadn't yet heard from either his own or the local division's Superintendent, though the local duty officer had responded with admirable speed to his request for manpower. If the case was later taken out of his hands, at least he could lay a solid foundation for whoever took over.
He asked the manager a few more questions about the organization of the Albert Hall in general and the Verdi concert in particular, then let him go.
“Privilege working with you chaps,” said Major Browne, sketching a military salute. He gestured at Alec's tie. “Royal Flying Corps, were you? They stuck me in the Army Service Corps, worse luck, but I saw a bit of action, all the same.” He hefted his ledger and reached for an appointment book. “I shan't buzz off yet. I'll just take these through to my secretary's room, have another go at the blasted figures and check a few dates, so halloo if there's anything more I can do for you.”
“Not next door, if you don't mind, sir.”
“Oh? Right! Least heard, soonest mended, eh? The ticket office'll be just the ticket then, haw haw.” Pleased with himself, he went off.
“The three doctors next, I think,” Alec said to Piper. “It never does to keep professional men waiting.”
“All together, Chief?”
“Yes. They're not suspects, I just need a written report of their diagnosis. They should be with the rest in the choir room, next door.” He gestured at the wall opposite the door to
Browne's secretary's room. “Oh, but one of them is taking care of Abernathy, I believe.” According to Daisy. “Er … I ought to warn you, Ernie, that Miss Dalrymple has got herself mixed up in this business.”
“Our Miss Dalrymple's a right 'un!” said Piper with enthusiasm.
Alec sighed and sent him to fetch the medical men.
The subsequent talk of hyperpnea, dyspnea, hypopnea, vertigo, convulsions, cyanosis, nausea, hypotension, asphyxia, and syncope strained Piper's shorthand to the utmost. All three doctors admitted to never having seen a death from cyanide poisoning before, but the symptoms were consistent with what they had read. Together with the bitter almond odour, the conclusion was obvious.
“I'll have statements drawn up for you to sign, gentlemen,” Alec said at last, “but I needn't detain you any longer at present—except you, Dr. Woodward, just a moment, if you please. I'd like your advice about Mr. Abernathy.”
There was something slightly odd about Woodward's reaction to his request. However, thanking the other two, Alec failed to analyse it and it had passed by the time he turned to their younger colleague.
“Mr. Abernathy is not officially my patient, Chief Inspector,” Dr. Woodward said at once, “but I can tell you that he is a sick man. The shock of his wife's sudden death has brought on an acute attack of angina, possibly even a mild heart seizure. It would be most remiss of me to allow you to question him without protest.”
“Shall I send for an ambulance?”
“No, he is resting in moderate comfort at present and he is best left thus as long as possible.”
“Would you be kind enough to go and see whether I could have just a word with him in a few minutes? If not, I shall leave
him till last, or even postpone talking to him until another day if you think it absolutely necessary.”
“Probably, but another hour may see him much improved. I'll stay with him.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
The man's gold-rimmed spectacles glinted as he nodded. Piper showed him out.
“Who's next, Chief?”
“The victim's sister, Miss Westlea. She's the one Miss Dalrymple has taken under her wing this time. I don't suppose you'll be able to separate them, but you might try suggesting to Miss Dalrymple that her presence is unneeded.”
Piper grinned. “I'll try, Chief.”
Alec was not at all surprised when Daisy followed Miss Westlea into the office. As he had guessed, her protective instincts had been aroused. Ignoring her for the moment, he concentrated on Muriel Westlea. A slight, brown-haired woman, meek-looking, her eyes red and puffy from crying, she nonetheless seemed quite composed. She had taken charge at once when her brother-in-law had his attack, according to Daisy.
According to Daisy. Sometimes he wondered wryly how the deuce he had managed over the years to solve so many cases without her help! Of course, he hadn't had to contend with her interference, either.
“You don't mind if Miss Dalrymple stays with me, Chief Inspector?” Miss Westlea asked anxiously.
“Not at all,” he said stoically, beetling his eyebrows at Daisy's smile. “Please be seated, ladies.”
They took two chairs facing the manager's desk, and Alec sat down behind it. Piper, notebook at the ready, stationed himself near the door, slightly to Miss Westlea's rear. Daisy turned her head to smile at him—she had more than once acted as Alec's
stenographer when he interviewed a suspect.
“Allow me to express my condolences, Miss Westlea,” Alec said.
“Thank you. It was a great sh-shock.” Her voice wavered but she pulled herself together.
“You must have been close to your sister. I understand you made your home with the Abernathys.”
“Yes, I've lived with Betsy and Roger ever since they were married.”
Jealous? Alec wondered. It wouldn't be the first time a plain spinster had fallen in love with her beautiful sister's husband. Add envy of a voice and career Muriel Westlea could not aspire to, and the victim's reputedly demanding nature, and the result was an explosive mixture.
Nothing could have looked less explosive than the quiet woman sitting opposite him, her earnest eyes fixed on his face.
As often happened, his contemplative silence brought explanations from the other's mouth. “It was convenient for everyone,” Miss Westlea assured him. “Our parents would never have let Betsy marry Roger and leave home if I hadn't promised to look after her. I wanted to come to London as much as she did but I couldn't afford to live alone, and Betsy had no interest in running a household, which I'm quite good at. And then, she likes … liked to have me with her at concerts, rather than her maid, whenever I wasn't at a rehearsal or performance myself.”
“I understand you were helping Mrs. Abernathy in the soloists' room today, although you were also performing.”
“Yes, well, I didn't have anything else to do in the interval.”
“What did you do for her?”
“Nothing much. She just likes me to be there. I brushed her hair, sewed on a loose button, brought her—Oh!” She clapped her hands to her mouth and gazed at him in horror.
“Brought her a drink?” Alec asked. “From the decanter?”
She nodded dumbly.
“It seems probable that anything she drank during the interval was all right—she did drink during the interval?”
“Yes, at least half a glass.”
“Which had no apparent effect on her? No. Most likely the poison in the drink she took on stage was enough to kill her virtually instantly.”
“I poured that, too,” Muriel blurted out. Daisy reached out to take her hand. Alec waited. “Betsy always insisted on having a drink beside her on stage during a performance, to soothe her throat and revive her energy. She had her own glass, matching the decanter. No one else would have used it. No one would have helped themselves from the decanter, either. Everyone knew she liked ratafia, and it's too sweet for most people's taste.”
Ratafia? To Alec the word suggested elegant Regency ladies delicately sipping while the gentlemen downed port and claret by the bucketful. “A liqueur?”
“Yes.”
“Rather old-fashioned,” said Daisy, having held her tongue as long as she could. “I remember my grandmother always having ratafia biscuits for tea. They tasted of almonds, like macaroons.”
“I believe they actually use peach or apricot stones to make the liqueur,” said Miss Westlea, “but yes, the aroma is like almonds.”
“Great Scott, no wonder Mrs. Abernathy didn't notice the smell of cyanide!” Alec exclaimed. “That just about puts paid to any theory the poison might have been meant for someone else. Whoever put it in the decanter knew exactly what they were doing. Miss Westlea, you say ‘everyone' knew. Whom do you mean, exactly?”
“Oh, conductors, other soloists, people who had worked with her. I'm afraid there was sometimes a bit of a fuss about her drinking on stage.”
“Can you give me names, especially any of those present today who had reason to feel enmity towards your sister?”
“Enmity!” Muriel Westlea burst into tears. “Betsy never had any enemies!”
Daisy jumped up, put her arm around her friend's shoulders, and glared at Alec. He shrugged his shoulders. Interrogating a weeping woman made him feel a brute and was usually unproductive besides, especially when she had a resolute protector to hand.
And Daisy was as resolute a protector as anyone could ask for.
O
n his way to find out if Mr. Abernathy was fit to see Alec, D.C. Piper ushered Daisy and Muriel towards the choir room. Alec had said Muriel was free to leave the Albert Hall, as long as she notified the police if she went anywhere other than home.
“But I shan't leave until Roger is well enough to go, too,” she told Daisy, drying her eyes. “Oh Daisy, it's an awful lot to ask, but do you think you could possibly come and spend the night? I … I don't think I can bear to be alone with Roger when he's so utterly devastated, and besides, people will talk.”
“Of course I'll come. It won't take a minute to fetch my things from next door.”
“You're an angel. I feel as if you've been transformed practically instantaneously from a pleasant neighbour into a dear friend.”
Daisy had no answer to that. Fortunately she wasn't required to find one. Piper opened the choir-room door for them and stopped for a word with the uniformed constable on duty there, while Daisy and Muriel went on in.
Intended for several score performers to gather in before proceeding on stage, the long, slightly curved choir room now
held fewer than a dozen people. The Gowers were at one end, the Cochrans at the other, perched uneasily on folding chairs. In between, Olivia Blaise was talking to Yakov Levich, with an impassive Dimitri Marchenko on his own at a distance. Consuela de la Costa stalked up and down, declaiming to herself in passionate Spanish with agitated gestures. Very operatic, Daisy thought.
The organist, John Finch, was there too, a puny man who somehow coaxed magnificent sound from his instrument. Though his long, thin fingers twitched, his faraway look did not suggest disquiet, only that he was lost in a musical daydream.
As Daisy and Muriel entered the room, Mr. Levich came to meet them, his face anxious. He held out both hands to Muriel. “Miss Westlea, you are not harmed?”
“No fear!” said Daisy indignantly. “Mr. Fletcher would never hurt anyone.”
“Excuse, please,” he apologized, clasping Muriel's hands as he turned to Daisy. “In Russia, police are very bad men, cruel, savages. Bolsheviks, Okhrana—Tsar's police—all same. Especially for Jews.”
“Well, you're in England now. Our police are fair whether you're an Englishman, a Chinaman, or a Hindu. Most of them, anyway,” she added in a rush of honesty, recalling a certain inspector whose unfairness had made her call in Scotland Yard, in the person of Alec.
Mr. Levich didn't appear altogether convinced. “You are friend of this Chief Inspector, Miss Dalrymple,” he said forgivingly.
“That doesn't mean I'd stand by and let him harm Muriel.”
“Daisy is my friend, too,” Muriel assured him. “She'll come home with me to stay the night when Roger's well enough.”
“Khorosho.”
He nodded approval. “You always taking care of others, must sometimes let others to take care.”
Muriel blushed, and extracted her hands from his clasp as Piper returned.
“Dr. Woodward says Mr. Abernathy needs to rest a bit longer, miss,” the young detective told Muriel. “He'd like to see you.”
“Poor Roger. I'll go to him.”
“You're Mr. Levich, sir? If you wouldn't mind, sir, Chief Inspector Fletcher will see you now. This way, if you please.”
Such an abundance of courtesy surely ought to reassure the apprehensive Russian Jew, Daisy considered, smiling at Ernie Piper. Not that she blamed Mr. Levich for having the wind up. Though she didn't follow foreign news closely, she had heard of the Bolsheviks' Cheka and OGPU—and that they were worthy successors to the Tsars' brutal and anti-Semitic secret police.
Piper led the reluctant violinist away.
“Shall I go with you?” Daisy asked Muriel.
“No, thanks, but you won't leave, will you?”
“Gosh, no.” With a roomful of suspects quite possibly dying to reveal all to her? Not likely!
She went across to Olivia Blaise.
“Got a fag?” the rival mezzo-soprano asked as Daisy approached. Sitting down beside her, Daisy shook her head. “Oh well. I don't really smoke, it's frightfully bad for the voice, but there are times … . You're Daisy Dalrymple, aren't you? We haven't been properly introduced but I expect you've gathered I'm Olivia Blaise.”
“Yes. I heard you singing a bit of
Carmen
the other day, at the Abernathys'. It sounded simply marvellous.”
“Thank you. I owe an awful lot to Roger—Mr. Abernathy. It's no earthly use having a good voice if you don't train it and I couldn't afford lessons, but he reduced his fees for me. He's a first-rate teacher, you know, as well as the kindest of men.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I was in the ProMusica. I simply had to sing, though I was always pretty tired in the evenings after earning my living as a steno.”
“I hated stenography,” Daisy said with deep sympathy.
“I still do some part time, but I pick up enough in singing fees to make up the difference. The trouble is, to have a chance with the major opera houses one needs someone with influence fighting on one's side, and dear as he is, Roger can't be described as forceful. Anyway, that bitch Bettina would have put paid to any attempt of his to fight on my behalf.”
Bursting with questions, Daisy said cautiously, “She does seem to have been an awkward sort.”
“Awkward! I spent enough time in that house to see that she treated Roger and Muriel like doormats. Maybe Muriel had no way to escape, but Roger was too infatuated with Bettina even to try to break free. Poor old Roger, he looked awfully queer, didn't he? I hope the stupid bitch's getting herself murdered isn't going to do for him.”
“Dr. Woodward said he'll be well enough to see Mr. Fletcher later, or at least tomorrow.”
“Mr. Fletcher? The copper? He's a friend of yours, isn't he? You know, I've never been interrogated by the police before.” Olivia shifted restlessly, her animated, pixyish face irresolute. “Damn, I wish I had a cigarette.”
“Mr. Cochran's smoking. I expect he'd give you one.”
“I wouldn't take a fag from Eric Cochran if I was going to be shot at dawn!”
“I thought he seemed rather keen on you.”
“So did I, until Bettina threatened to tell his wife about us if he didn't give her the Verdi mezzo part. Ursula Cochran holds the purse-strings, you see, and dear Eric's career would be nowhere without her money-bags. But I never cared so much for the money, only his influence. All that time I've wasted on him!”
“You mean you … . Oh dear!”
“A girl with no money and no family does what she must to get by.” Olivia grimaced. “But I'm sorry I've shocked you.”
“Not really,” Daisy lied valiantly. Who was she to cast stones? She claimed to earn her own living, but it was eked out by the small income left her by an aunt. Besides, if things got too ghastly she could always run to her mother at the Dower House, or her married sister, or even the cousin who had inherited Fairacres and her father's title. “I … I'm sorry it didn't work out.”
“I won't pretend it was all work and no play. I was quite keen on Eric. But he
promised
me the part and what use is a man you can't count on? He gave in without a chirrup to Bettina's blackmail. It's not as if Bettina was pure as the driven snow!”
“No?”
“Oh no, I'm not washing other people's dirty linen in public. I do have my standards.” She hesitated. “I suppose you'll tell your Chief Inspector all this.”
“Yes, I can't keep it from him in a murder investigation.”
Olivia shivered. “Never mind. Someone's bound to spill the beans, and I'd rather it was you than Eric, or myself, come to that. Here's that rather sweet little detective back again. Who's for the rack next?”
“Miss Blaise?” said Piper. “May I trouble you?”
With a wry backward glance at Daisy, Olivia departed. Daisy decided she quite liked her in spite of her shocking behaviour. She looked over at Mr. Cochran. He was gazing after Olivia with hopeless longing mingled with dread. That he wanted her was plain, and that he feared what she might tell the police.
The expression vanished in a moment as he turned back to his overdressed wife. Beneath the mask of make-up, her face was unreadable. Whether she had noticed anything amiss, Daisy could not tell.
“¡Señorita!”
Miss de la Costa subsided with dramatic grace onto the folding chair beside Daisy, momentarily lending it the glamour of a royal throne. Her crimson velvet dress seemed an extension of her vivid personality. Glancing at the Gowers—Gilbert Gower studiously avoided looking at her—she spoke in a low voice, throbbing with passion. “To you I will esplain all!”
“All?” said Daisy cautiously. She wasn't quite ready for a confession of murder.
“All!
¡Todo!
I was madly, wildly jealous!
Mi querido Gilberto,
he meet often this Bettina with the golden hair, you understand. How I hate her! With pleasure I escratch out her eyes! When she drop dead I am glad, glad!”
“But if you were glad because you'd have him to yourself …”
“¿Perdóneme?”
“With Bettina dead … Mr. Gower … is … all yours”—except for his wife—“so why did you accuse him of murder?”
“But this is what I come to esplain! When I cry to him,
‘¡Asesino!'
you are near, I know you hear.”
So did anyone else within range of the soprano's powerful voice. “Yes, I heard,” Daisy admitted.
“First I think Gilberto kill her because he not wants to be her lover still, he wants to be all mine, like you say.
Bien enten-dido,
for this I am happy, I protect him with my life, never I cry to him,
‘¡Asesino!'
I look at him to admire and he sees I know. He has fear; he esplain. Is long time he is not Bettina's lover. He sees her often because he made a promise is impossible to keep. Always she asks him, when you do this, when, when?”
“Do what?”
“Is nothing to me.” Miss de la Costa shrugged her superbly eloquent shoulders. “But now I know, is because she is a nuisance he kill her, not for me. So I cry to him,
‘¡Asesino!'
”
Baffled by such convoluted reasoning, Daisy stuck doggedly
to the point. “For whatever reason, you think Mr. Gower killed Bettina?”
“I?” Had she been on stage, the soprano's astonishment would have been clear to the furthest reaches of the gods. “Gilberto did not kill Bettina. This he tell me. So, I have esplain, now you will tell your friend,
el jefe de policía.
”
“Miss de la Costa.” Piper had reappeared. “The Chief Inspector would like a word with you, if you please, ma'am.”
And Miss de la Costa swept out like a heroine going to the scaffold, leaving Daisy thoroughly confused. Perhaps the pride of a Spanish hidalgo—if that was the right word—would not let him disavow a killing, and the Spanish soprano imputed the same sense of honour to the Welsh tenor. Gower denied murdering Bettina, so in Senorita de la Costa's view he had not done it.
Of course, Alec wouldn't swallow it, and Gilbert Gower didn't expect him to, to judge from the nervous look the tenor sent after his current mistress.
The Gowers exchanged a word, and stood up. Mr. Gower headed down the length of the room towards the Cochrans, while his plump, drab wife came over to Daisy.
“I hope you don't mind,” she said apologetically. “We haven't … that is, you must wonder … you don't know me from Adam, but … .”
“Yes, I do. You're Mrs. Gower, aren't you? Mr. Gower's solo nearly made me cry.”
“The
Ingemisco
? He did sing well, didn't he?” Her eagerness to snatch at the compliment to her philandering husband made Daisy nearly cry again.
“Won't you sit down?” she said hastily. “I'm Daisy Dalrymple. The Abernathys and Muriel Westlea are my next-door neighbours.”
“Oh, do you share a house with Miss Fotheringay, the photographer? Mr. Abernathy recommended her to Gilbert for a
publicity shot, and it was so good we took the children to her for a family portrait.”
“Lucy is pretty good, and Mr. Abernathy has been kind enough to recommend her to a number of friends.”
“The poor man! My heart goes out to him. How very fortunate he has no children, but Gilbert says he was very fond of his wife.”
The more shame to Gilbert for his affair with Bettina, Daisy thought indignantly—assuming Miss de la Costa had understood correctly. “So I gather,” she said dryly.

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