Death and the Chaste Apprentice (19 page)

“That was what the row was about in the Green Room, wasn't it?”

“Disagreement . . . Well, yes, row. Except that I did manage not to lose my cool. It would mean changing the whole direction and character of the festival. You probably know what sort of festival Ketterick has had up to now: a festival for families and enthusiasts, with something for everyone. Some of the sillier critics sneer at the operas we do, but they're wonderfully direct and involving—first-rate theater. Gottlieb's is an attempt to change all that and put us in the international league. And, of course, it put us in a cleft stick.”

“How?”

“If we say no and lose him, all the arts establishment and all the newspaper people will say we've opted for safeness and provinciality and second-rateness. If we say yes, we hand the festival to him on a plate, the rest of us become ciphers, and we betray our existing audiences.”

“Yes, I see. An impossible decision. And I take it an impossible gentleman to work with?”

“Bloody impossible, between you and me. I think we'd be justified in turning him down and letting him go if only because he's obviously using us as a stepping-stone to something else and because it will certainly all end in tears, and pretty soon, too.”

“So your view is that he's totally geared to being a success in his professional life and if you hit him there you would really touch him where it hurts? Something along those lines was my conclusion, too. He's a man programmed to succeed. He's to be the next—who's the bee's knees?—Karajan?”

“The comparison has occurred to other people. At the moment, his whole being is intent on two glorious successes: first the opera, then the final concert, where he'll hope to have people standing and cheering, led by his own
groupies. Which he almost certainly will. And to be fair to him, which isn't easy, almost all of it will be deserved.”

“He is good?”

“He is
very
good. He rides roughshod over everyone, but he is almost always right. And yet there is still . . . somehow—I can't put it simply—a lack. An emptiness. . . . And I wonder whether in the long run music lovers aren't going to find this out. . . . Would you like to see him doing a bit of the opera?”

“There can't be any seats, surely?”

“There's mine. I have to go and see to the interval jamboree for nobs and critics. You've no idea how we butter up the critics from the big newspapers. You can have my seat until the break.” He turned to Charlie. “And you can stand at the back, if you don't mind that. It's not usually allowed, but we can explain to the fire people that you're a policeman.”

“I'm used to standing about,” said Charlie. “I was in uniformed branch for a year.”

“I think we'll say yes,” said Dundy. “Though I'm not sure that I'm musical enough to understand this . . . this lack that you talk of.”

They went back to the front of house, down the staircase, and along the corridor that spanned the back of the stalls. The director collected programs for Dundy and Charlie and then, with practiced stealth, opened the door into the stalls. As the music washed over them, he pointed Charlie to a place by the door and then led Dundy down to an aisle seat three rows down. Then he himself evaporated to attend to the wants of the important visitors.

Once settled, Dundy found himself cocooned in a devout attentiveness. This audience was a totally committed one. Onstage, and close to the front of the stage, a very personable tenor was emoting in slow time, sighing his way towards a close. Iain Dundy had only a smattering of
holiday Italian, but he had an awful feeling that the tenor was boasting about how much his love had cost him. The cad, he thought. Then the orchestra hotted things up, and an attendant or junior terrorist rushed onstage to deliver an urgent message, of which the words
Inglese
and
Birckenhead
could be distinguished. At which the tenor leapt to his feet and with a skirl of his (unhistorical) kilt began delivering a martial cabaletta that taxed his sweet voice to the uttermost. When it was over, there was polite applause, the curtain came down, and dimmed lights came up while changes were made to the permanent set.

In the half-light at the back of the theater Charlie read the program. He had got a rough idea of the story from the volume in Des's sitting room: The personable hero, he remembered, would be Robert the Bruce, on the run from the English and about to take refuge, disguised, at
il castello di Birckenhead,
the power base of his rival, who was also the husband of the woman he loved. Well, that was all clear, wasn't it? He turned to the history of the opera and immediately found himself gripped in a way he did not quite understand. He read through the account of the first version of the opera, then the story of the recent rediscovery of the later version. Only when he had finished that did he begin to realize that the break had been rather long. Looking up from his program, he found he was not alone in this feeling. In the Victorian intimacy of the Alhambra Theatre everyone could see everything, and even from the back of the stalls Charlie could see the figure of Gunter Gottlieb, his baton steadily beating on the open pages of his score in patent irritation. No doubt Gottlieb had decreed no more than two minutes for the break, and it had stretched out to four. But then the lights went down, there was a perceptible relaxation of tension in the audience, and Gottlieb raised his baton for the last scene before Interval.

In the previous scene, Charlie, for all his lack of knowledge of opera, had been conscious of a shimmering beauty that Gottlieb extracted from the very simple accompaniment to the tenor aria. Now he began to notice something very different. The curtain had risen on the peasants and retainers of the castle of Birckenhead (all kilted—in defiance not only of historical but also of geographical probability). They were celebrating something or other, probably Hogmanay, in song and dance. The stage picture was supposed to be one of uninhibited revelry, but what Charlie was most conscious of was the
lack
of real spontaneity. What impressed him most was the drilled nature of the performance—the military precision of the drumbeats, the terrified accuracy of the chorus, which at times affected their acting. It was as if—another historical absurdity—the opera was being performed by the soldiers of Frederick the Great for their commander in chief. One might see Gottlieb as the Prussian bandmaster writ large. Charlie did not quite see things in those terms, but he did register to himself: Everyone is bloody terrified.

He stood there, drinking it in, thinking that he might be able to make a habit of this kind of music if he ever got the opportunity. There was a scene for a dreadful comic servant, and then the baritone and soprano arrived to join the merrymaking, exuding manorial graciousness. The baritone found time to snarl something about
“gl'Inglesi”
to a retainer out of the corner of his mouth, in the way baritones have. Then suddenly the sound of merrymaking died away. The tenor had arrived. He stood for some moments at the back of the stage, commented on by everyone in hushed tones. Then he advanced to the front in what Charlie recognized as a clumsy but necessary maneuver. Soon he was launching into the great, swaying tune:

Io son pari ad uom cui scende

Già la scure sulla testa.

This was the moment, Charlie felt sure, that Des had come in on in rehearsal. Standing there in the darkness, letting the music lap over him and swaying in time to its irresistible impulse, Charlie thought that he might have had the glimmerings of an idea.

“ ‘T
HE TRIVIAL ROUND
, the common task, should furnish all we ought to ask,' ” misquoted Dundy under his breath next morning. And in future it bloody well will. Here we go on another load of backstage chitchat, shortly homing in on more accounts of what gives with the Galloways. At least when I rowed with my wife it tore us apart, because we meant it. With these arty people, who knows when they mean
anything
?

And what gives with Peace this morning? His mind isn't on it. And this girl's a perfectly personable little thing. . . . He dragged his mind back to the interview he was conducting.

“As far as the balcony scene is concerned, I inspected them all before they went up the stairs,” Susan Fanshaw was saying. “They were all in night gear, so it was quite straightforward. Then I was off hither and yon doing other things. The apprentices were onstage—onstage and off, because it's a very busy scene, and I have to see whether the costumes have suffered in the horseplay,
whether they've lost anything, and so on. So though normally I might have noticed when Carston at least came back down the stairs, that night I didn't.”

Iain Dundy coughed a dry, diplomatic cough.

“Er, you say normally you might have noticed?”

Susan obviously wanted to get that part of the discussion over with.

“Oh, Carston and I are vaguely sleeping together.”

“I see. I had, actually, some idea of this, but perhaps you could put me into the picture. I gather his wife knows?”

“Oh, yes. Everybody knows. It's no great passionate affair. I mean, Carston is nice—” She pulled herself up. “No, not nice exactly, because he's mean as hell, and vain as well. Still, he
is
a wonderful actor, when he's fully stretched, whereas she will never in essence be more than a rep queen, for all her name. So it
is
rather exciting; it is decidedly a pleasant interlude. . . . Not least because of his vast experience.”

“Ah . . . You don't mean acting? No. Er, you don't mind being one of a long line?”

“Not at all. It's part of the thrill.”

Iain Dundy sighed. He was never going to understand these people, still less like them. His bewilderment was increased when Susan Fanshaw added: “A long, long roster. Both male and female.”

He drew his hand along his forehead. “I see. Then Galloway is—?”

“Predominantly hetero, but he takes it as it comes. He covers the waterfront, like Brad Mallory. It's pretty common in the theater.”

“Oh, then Mr. Mallory—?”

“Must be the same. He doesn't make much secret of being besotted with young Singh—not even from you, I imagine. But I know an actress who had a pretty serious affair with him five or six years ago.” She saw Dundy's face and laughed. “It must make it pretty difficult for you.”

“All in a day's work,” said Dundy bravely. “So you are sleeping with Mr. Galloway, and I gather Mrs. Galloway is sleeping with the producer, and this is all out in the open and talked about quite unashamedly?”

“Yes. What a lovely word: ‘unashamedly'! So you think we should be ashamed? Of course, Clarissa uses the situation to launch lethal little barbs against Carston and me, but that's just her nature.”

“I find it difficult,” said Dundy, trying not to sound prim, “to get a picture of this marriage. Why do they stay together if they're quarreling all the time?”

“Haven't you ever met a soldier who's only happy in action? Or a policeman who couldn't be happy on the beat in a quiet area but is always itching for a bit of action?”

“Frequently.”

“Well, then. ‘Pleased with the danger when the waves went high / He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit . . .' Dryden. It's quite impossible to imagine either of the Galloways having a
calm
relationship with anyone.”

“I see,” said Dundy, sighing. “My point in trying to establish how open all this is, is to make the point that there was very little mileage to be got—by Des Capper, for example—out of threatening to reveal the truth of the situation to any of the people involved.”

“None whatsoever. We all knew. The whole hotel, down to the kitchen skivvies, knew. The room maids probably had a running bet on as to who would be sleeping with who each night.”

“Right . . . Right . . . So if any of you had a grudge against Capper, it would have to be on some other grounds.”

“Oh, certainly. Like that he was the biggest bore, the biggest ignoramus, and the biggest liar in a fifty-mile radius.”

“I doubt whether people get murdered for any of those reasons,” said Iain Dundy. “And I suppose if there were
anything more substantial, you wouldn't tell me. Now, let me get this clear, finally. Your duties in the play never led you to leave the kitchen?”

“Never once. I was there the whole time, even during the interval, checking costumes and props. Jason aims to give the sense of Jacobean bourgeois life, so in the absence of sets, props are very important.”

“And the balcony scene we've mentioned is the only time in the play when the upper stage is used?”

“Yes, the only one.”

“I suppose you checked that the room upstairs that led onto the balcony was in fact unlocked?”

“Oh, yes,” said Susan unsuspectingly. “But well before the performance started. In any case, Carston had a room key in case one of the maids had locked it by mistake.”

Dundy nodded his head and mentally wiped Susan Fanshaw from his list of suspects.

• • •

“Of course, I'm onstage practically the whole evening,” said Ronnie Wimsett, clearly not immune to the same little vanities as Carston Galloway. “Or just off, or just about to go on. So quite apart from the fact that it would be difficult for me to have done it, it's also difficult for me to remember anything that went on backstage.”

“Why? Because if you weren't on, you were hovering about around one of the doors onto the stage?”

“That's right. Whereas someone with a smaller part could certainly spend an hour or more in the kitchen just sitting around and noticing.”

Wimsett was a very different type from most of the actors, Dundy decided. Apparently open, genial, conversational, but with an overriding reticence, particularly about himself. On essentials he presented a bland front to the world. Dundy was willing to bet that his fellow actors
knew little about his character, his private life, his sexual preferences. He kept, in popular parlance, himself to himself. Like many policemen, Dundy thought.