Swan Song (6 page)

Meanwhile, in a dressing-room almost directly opposite to Furbelow's open door, Edwin Shorthouse swayed a little in a cold draught. Now and again the rope creaked against the iron hook from which he was suspended, but that was the only sound.

‘
IT ARGUES A
certain poverty of imagination,' said Gervase Fen with profound disgust, ‘that in a world where atom physicists walk the streets unharmed, emitting their habitual wails about the misuse of science by politicians, a murderer can find a no more deserving victim than some unfortunate opera singer . . .'

‘You'd scarcely say that,' Adam answered, ‘if you'd known Shorthouse. He will not be very much mourned.'

The three men paused on the kerb to let a lorry go by before crossing St Giles'. A little whirlwind of snowflakes was swept among them by the wind.

‘All the same,' Fen resumed when they were half-way across, ‘good singers are rare. And as far as I'm able to judge' – his confident manner tended to nullify this reservation – ‘he
was
good.'

‘Certainly he was good. No one would have put up with him for two minutes if he hadn't been . . . Is the snow going to lie, one wonders?'

‘It seems to me you're overhasty in assuming it was murder,' said Sir Richard Freeman, the Chief Constable of Oxford. He walked very upright, with short, rapid, determined steps. ‘Mudge implied that the circumstances suggested suicide.' He frowned severely at this Jamesian hyperbole.

‘
Mudge
,' Fen remarked with emotion. He buffeted his arms across his chest in the manner associated with taxi-drivers. ‘That hurts,' he complained. ‘Anyway, if it was suicide, I scarcely see how it's likely to interest me.'

‘Shorthouse. Any relation of the composer?'

‘Charles Shorthouse?' said Adam. ‘Yes. A brother. Edwin sang in a good many of Charles' operas, though as far as the normal repertory was concerned he specialized in Wagner. Wotan and Sachs. Mark. That chatterbox Gurnemanz. He was the obvious Sachs when they decided to put on
Meistersinger
here.'

They passed a public-house. ‘I should like a Burton.' said Fen, gazing back at it with the lugubrious passion of Orpheus surveying Eurydice at hell-mouth. ‘But I suppose it's too early. Shorthouse was hanged, wasn't he?'

‘So it appears.' Sir Richard Freeman nodded. ‘But not strangled. It seems to have been a kind of judicial hanging.'

‘You mean his neck was broken?'

‘Or dislocated. We shall get the full medical report when we arrive.'

‘It's by no means a common way to commit suicide.' Fen commented. His normally cheerful, ruddy face was thoughtful. ‘In fact, the arranging of it would involve a certain amount of knowledge and finesse.' He buttoned at the neck the enormous raincoat in which he was muffled, and adjusted his extraordinary hat. He was forty-three years old, lean, lanky, with blue eyes and brown hair ineffectually plastered down with water. ‘I gather,' he pursued as they turned up Beaumont Street by the Randolph Hotel, ‘that Shorthouse had been causing trouble at rehearsals.'

‘Trouble,' said Adam grimly, ‘is an understatement. By the way' – he turned to the Chief Constable – ‘I asked my wife along to the theatre this morning. I hope you don't mind. You see, it's rather in her line.'

‘Your
wife,'
said Sir Richard, heavily, like one burdened suddenly with a dangerous secret. ‘I didn't know you were married, Langley.'

‘Adam's wife,' Fen explained, ‘is Elizabeth Harding, who writes books about crime.'

‘Ah,' said Sir Richard. ‘Nasty subject,' he added rather offensively. ‘Yes, of course. By all means. Delighted to meet her.'

‘I rather think she wants to interview you, Gervase,' Adam continued. ‘She's doing a series on famous detectives for one of the papers.'

‘
Famous detectives
,' said Fen with great complacency. ‘Oh, my dear paws. You hear that, Dick?' he went on, banging the Chief Constable suddenly on the chest to make sure of his attention. ‘
Famous detectives
.'

‘Celebrated imbeciles,' said Sir Richard crossly. ‘Ugh.'

‘Anyway,' Adam put in, ‘here we are.'

Crossing the entrance to St John Street, they arrived at the opera-house, and made their way, Fen grumbling in quite a distressing way about the cold, to the stage-door, which they found guarded by a constable. Nearby, a small group of seedy-looking men with instrument cases, their coat collars turned up against the biting wind and their fingers blue and numb, were conversing with a female harpist.

‘Morning, Mr Langley,' said one of them. ‘Queer business, isn't it? Shall we be getting a rehearsal, do you imagine?'

‘Not until the afternoon, anyway,' Adam returned. ‘It depends on the police, I should say.'

‘They won't cancel the production, will they?'

‘No surely not. We'll get a new Sachs. But it'll probably mean postponing the first show.'

‘Well, I'm for the boozer,' said the oboist. ‘Coming, anyone?'

The constable saluted Sir Richard Freeman. He saluted Fen, more dubiously. He did not salute Adam at all. They went inside.

The stage-door led into a small stone vestibule, from which flights of stairs ran up and down. There was a kind of cavity, furnished with a few elementary comforts, where in the daytime the stage-doorkeeper lived, moved, and had his being, but this was at present empty.
They pushed through a padded swing-door into the wings. Semi-darkness greeted them. Moving cautiously among ropes, floodlamps, and scenery poised precariously against the walls, they came within earshot, and soon within sight, of some kind of altercation which was in progress on the stage.

Beneath a single working lamp, high up among the battens, stood Elizabeth and an Inspector of police, both of them very angry indeed. Dimly in the background there were other forms hovering, like wraiths on the threshold of limbo, but these two appeared to be the centre of such activity as was going forward at the moment. The Inspector of police was small, wizened, and malevolent in appearance; and Elizabeth was standing with her hands on her hips, glowering at him.

‘You are an intolerable, pompous ass,' she was informing him in measured, judicial tones. ‘A jack-in-office. A nincompoop. A giddy-brained pigeon.'

‘Listen to me,' said the Inspector with theatrical restraint. ‘Just you listen to me. I've had quite enough of you. You've no right to be here, young woman. And if you don't get out – now:
instantly
– I shall charge you with obstructing me in the performance of my duties.'

‘I'd like to see you try,' Elizabeth replied, in a voice of such intense malignancy that even Fen was startled. She swung round to face the newcomers. ‘And if you think –' She broke off, and her face suddenly brightened. ‘Adam!'

‘Darling, are you being a nuisance?' Adam asked. ‘I want you to meet Sir Richard Freeman, the Chief Constable, and Gervase Fen. Elizabeth, my wife.'

‘Pleasure,' said Sir Richard with manly gruffness. ‘It's all right, Mudge,' he added to the enraged Inspector.

‘As you say, sir,' Mudge answered. ‘As you say, of course. As you say.' He stood back, muttering waspishly.

‘Well, well.' Fen beamed at Elizabeth like an ogre about to gobble up a small boy. ‘I
am
pleased. I could tell
you some things about Adam,' he went on with great amiability.

‘You've only rescued me just in time.' Elizabeth's voice still held a trace of peevishness. ‘Adam darling, you're terribly late.'

‘Yes, dear,' said Adam soothingly. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Now,' said Sir Richard, who was plainly not much interested by this interchange, ‘let's have a few facts, Mudge. Is this where it happened?'

He gazed about him. The light from the stage faintly illuminated the front rows of the stalls. Half-painted flats projected from the wings. Backstage, the electrician's gallery was visible. There was a lot of litter and a lot of dust. There were half-effaced chalk marks scrawled on the floor by the producer, to assist positioning at rehearsals. In the orchestra-pit, a tangle of brass stands could be seen. But there was nothing, apart from a good deal of rope, to suggest suicide or violence.

‘No, sir,' Mudge informed his superior with perhaps more testiness than was altogether wise. ‘Not here. In the dressing-room.'

‘Well, take us there, then,' said Sir Richard. ‘It's absurd to stand about like a set of characters in a melodrama.'

Mudge sighed, and pronounced, as though it were a rune, the word ‘Furbelow'. The stage-door-keeper materialized from among the peripheral wraiths, and stood blinking at them. ‘Good morning, Mr Langley,' he said uncertainly.

‘Furbelow, you'd better come with us.' Mudge was peremptory. ‘Sir Richard will want to hear what you have to say.'

‘Who's this?' Sir Richard demanded with distaste.

‘The stage-doorkeeper, sir. His evidence is important.'

‘Indeed?' said Sir Richard, like one confronted too suddenly with a freak of nature. ‘Important. I see.'

‘Come on, come on,' said Fen impatiently. ‘Or we shall never get started.'

They made their way off the stage. Adam wanted to take the lift, but it appeared that the aspen and decrepit Furbelow went in fear of lifts. The machinery broke, he explained, and one was precipitated with violence to the ground . . . In any case, this particular lift was too small to take all of them, so they walked up, encouraged by some remarks from the Chief Constable on the subject of muscular development – the Inspector first, Sir Richard following, Fen at his heels, then Adam and Elizabeth, and finally Furbelow. Having arrived at the second floor, they made their way in single file round an inconveniently placed iron ladder which led to the roof, and at last came to a door bearing a card with the inscription
EDWIN SHORTHOUSE
on it. The Inspector halted.

‘It's here,' he said.

‘Well,
well
,' said Sir Richard, annoyed at the redundancy of this statement. ‘Let's have a look at it. The – ah – he's been moved, I suppose?'

‘Oh, yes, sir.' Mudge was inserting a key into the lock. ‘In fact the post mortem ought to be over by now. I'm expecting Rashmole back here at any time.'

‘Have you got in touch with the brother?'

Mudge paused in his labours, to everyone's great annoyance; the corridor was undeniably draughty. ‘I wired him earlier this morning, sir,' he said. ‘And the reply came a few minutes before you arrived just now.' He hesitated. ‘Rather an odd reply. Unnatural, to my thinking.'

‘Well, what was it?'

Mudge abandoned the door and groped in his pockets; a telegram was produced; they passed it from hand to hand; it ran:

‘Well, I'm damned.' Sir Richard was indignant. ‘This thing must be a practical joke.'

‘I scarcely think so,' said Adam. ‘Charles Shorthouse is a very eccentric person, you know. And notoriously he loathed his brother. It strikes me as being exactly the kind of wire he would send.'

‘Where does he live, anyway?'

‘Near Amersham, I believe.'

‘Very well . . . Mudge, will you please open that door?'

They got inside at last. It was a large dressing-room – like all dressing-rooms untidy, and like all dressing-rooms dirty. Clothes suspended haphazardly from hooks, or lay in heaps on the chairs. The dressing-table was a litter of grease-paints and photographs. A vocal score of
Die Meistersinger,
tattered and scrawled upon, lay on the floor. There were one or two books, lightly coated with powder; two empty beer-bottles, and one half-full; a wash-basin; a typewriter; some blank sheets of paper. Windows were lacking, so they switched on the frosted bulbs which projected on either side of the mirror; but in one part of the room, where the ceiling was indented, there was a small skylight about three inches square, which could be opened from the roof.

‘He seems to have made himself at home,' Fen commented. ‘Dress rehearsals haven't started yet, have they?'

‘No. But he always spent a good deal of time in his dressing-room,' said Adam. ‘Drinking, mostly. There ought to be a bottle or two of gin somewhere about. He was very addicted to it.'

‘There was,' said Mudge. ‘And it's being analysed at this moment. Here' – Adam was momentarily overwhelmed by the illusion of being on a conducted tour – ‘here is where the body hung. Hang,' Mudge added uncertainly.

‘Hung,' said Fen kindly. ‘Dear me. It hardly looks as if there'd be sufficient drop for him to break his neck.'

‘In the execution shed,' Elizabeth put in briskly, ‘they allow from six to eight feet, according to weight.'

Fen regarded her warily. ‘Yes,' he admitted. ‘You're quite right. But of course, it's all a matter of tensions.
With luck – I don't quite know why I should say luck – you might break your neck dropping just a foot or so.'

They gazed at the stout iron hook from which the rope had hung. It was embedded in the ceiling about a foot from the indentation which contained the skylight, and about seven feet from the skylight itself.

‘What's it there for?' asked Sir Richard, getting out his pipe. ‘Was it there before?'

Furbelow, consulted by Mudge, opined that it had not been there before.

‘And moreover,' said Mudge, ‘there's flakes of plaster on the floor. Evidently a recent job, put there for the purpose. . . . Well, he was hanging from that. There was nothing special about the rope – just a length of ordinary clothes-line –'

‘Was there a knot,' Fen inquired, ‘under the angle of the jaw?' He had sat down, and was fingering his own jaw, meditatively.