Last Act (15 page)

She had never talked about Robin's death before. She had not believed she could. But when she had finished, still on the floor against his knees, with his comforting arm around her shoulders, she felt amazingly better. “You see how I failed him.” She was surprised to hear herself saying it.

“Failed? How can you tell? But better to think so than that he failed you, in my opinion. Either way, now it is time to forget and forgive, both him and yourself. Let the dead past be dead, Anne. You have the future to think of.”

“My future? A dying woman's?”

“You're not dead yet.” Now he sounded angry. “Can't you fight, girl? Do you
want
to be dead?”

“I think, perhaps, I did.”

“If it was not so serious, I'd be inclined to say, ‘Serve you right.'” But his grip on her shoulder was kind. “I've seen people with so much less to live for than you, Anne Paget, or Anne whatever it is. People with no family, no friends, nothing. Horribly disfigured, wounded … And fighting still, fighting for dear life. It is dear, you know.”

“I've been beginning to think so, since I came here.”

“I should hope so, with your voice.” He looked at his watch. “I have been here quite long enough for a doctor who has been bribed to prescribe absolute rest.”

“Nobody could bribe you.”

“Thank you. But there are bribes and bribes. I care, immensely, for Lissenberg. And for Beethoven. Will you do what I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. You will take the medicine I send you. I am a homaeopathic crank, did you know?” She shook her head. “No matter. Say it's a tranquilliser, but take it. Tranquillisers are respectable. Work yourself to exhaustion; stay home and sleep; worry about nothing; or, if that is too difficult, worry about Lissenberg, not yourself. You are unimportant compared with Lissenberg. Do you know what will happen if the opera fails?”

“No?”

“Young James Frensham will be delighted. In my position one hears things. There's something, in the mountains, under the opera complex, that he wants. Give him an excuse; he'll tear it down.”

“Tear it down! The opera house? What kind of something, Dr Hirsh? It must be very valuable.”

“Yes. A mineral of some kind. Szilenite, they call it. I've heard it's the basis for a particularly powerful new nerve gas. Not something the world needs. And most particularly not in the hands of someone like young James Frensham, who thinks purely in terms of money. And, another thing, quite aside from the results, the development involved would be the end of Lissenberg as we know it. It wouldn't be just the opera complex we'd lose, it would be our whole way of life.” He stood up. “You will work like the brave girl you are to make the opera a success; you will worry as little as possible, eat sensibly, take the pills I send you, and retire to your room after supper. No more parties; no more wining and dining. Not even at the castle.” The uncomfortable smile cracked his face once more, “I might say, particularly not at the castle. And”—he turned back at the door, his face very grave—“I do not think I would go out by myself, if I were you. An accident to you would mean disaster for the opera. If you must walk—you see, I know you English—stay with the other members of the company. Or Michael, of course, but I'm afraid he is going to be busy until they find Mr Marks.”

“Has Michael really joined the police?”

“Joined?” He seemed to find this amusing. “Well, yes I suppose you could say he had.”

“Not such a dropout after all.” Here at last was her chance to ask about him.”

“Dropout? Who told you that?”

“Why, Michael himself.” She had remembered in the night.

“The best authority. Yes, you could call him that. Or dropped. He's always been his own worst enemy. But I wouldn't go round asking questions about him, Anne. It might make trouble for him. If you must ask—ask him.” The telephone rang. “I must go. I've made you late as it is. Tell them it's my fault.
You are suffering from nervous strain, and are under my strict orders. Refer anyone to me. I have a certain standing here in Lissenberg.”

“Thank you.” She smiled a watery farewell and picked up the receiver. “Anne—” Josefs voice. “Falinieri is about to have a fit. You are twenty minutes late.”

In some ways, her late arrival made her explanation easier. Falinieri, who had been angrily rehearsing the chorus while he waited for her, accepted it with a brief nod. “So long as you save your strength for your singing.” He had not asked what was wrong with her. For him, only the opera mattered. He rapped with his baton for silence. “To work, ladies and gentlemen.”

It was good to be working, to let herself think of nothing but the music, and by doing so forget the question that had haunted her since Dr Hirsch had told her about James Frensham and the “something” he wanted from under the opera house. Presumably his father had wanted it too. And been killed for wanting it? So—by whom? Well, by Marks presumably. But who had he been working for? Did Prince Rudolf care enough about Lissenberg? she wondered. But then, the Prince surely knew that young Frensham was an even greater threat to the opera than his father, and the opera was clearly Prince Rudolf's prime consideration. It was all baffling, sinister, frightening.

“Miss Paget!” Falinieri's furious voice roused her. “You have missed your cue again.”

“I'm sorry.” She made herself concentrate, and was amazed when the lunch break was called. Walking along the arcade to the hostel, she regretted having refused Josef's offer of a tray in her room, yet knew she had been right to do so. Part of the rehearsal process was always offstage, as the members of the cast settled down with each other. To isolate herself would be fatal. She was even beginning to wonder whether it had been wise to agree with the doctor's suggestion about her evenings.

She was distracted by a question from Frau Bernz, the plump, competent Austrian singer who took the part of Regulus' wife. “Oh, I'm all right, thanks.” She joined Hilde Bernz in the queue for the light meal that was served for their lunch. “Just a bit tired.”

“And no wonder.” Hilde Bernz helped herself lavishly to cold meat and salad. “All this drama! Sabotage and murder. I don't like it, Miss Paget. We might all have been deathly ill today. What kind of a joker would try to poison us all?”

“Not exactly poison,” said Anne.

“We'd not have got much work done today. Somebody sure has it in for this opera.” She spoke amazingly good English, with a strong American accent. “A little bird told me you had some trouble on the way here. Lost your purse; got misdirected? Did it strike you that if you'd not been here for that first audition, Signor Falinieri might have gone straight back to Italy?”

“No.” Anne picked up her tray and followed Frau Bernz to a table for four. “I hadn't thought.” It was true. So much had happened in the few days since her arrival that she had almost forgotten about the odd business of the wrong train. Could kind Herr Schann, the computer trouble shooter, actually have been part of the plot against the opera? It was true enough that if she had found herself on the wrong train, and without money, it might easily have taken her a couple of fatal extra days to get to Lissenberg. And, now that she was thinking about Herr Schann at last, she remembered how hard he had tried to persuade her that she was not well enough to travel. Having failed in that, had he intentionally given her first brandy and then champagne on an empty stomach, warded off the coffee that might have cleared her head, and then neatly removed her purse and directed her to the wrong train? She looked unhappily at Frau Bernz. “I believe you're right. I'd just assumed it was a series of accidents, but in the light of what has happened since …”

“Precisely,” said Hilde Bernz. “I think you're a very sensible girl to be too tired to go out at night. Only, lock your door, eh? There's things go on in this place, too, and that odd character Michael thick as thieves with the old man who runs it. I wouldn't make any late-night dates with
him,
if I were you. We can't spare you, my dear, and don't you forget it. All the rest of us are replaceable. Not you.”

“Oh well … There's Lotte, and, surely, Alix?”

“You didn't hear about Lotte?”

“No?”

“Course. You left early last night. When the floor show started, Lotte chose to delight us with a selection of songs from
Regulus.
”

“
No!
”

“Yes. Comic, really, when you think how we've been rehearsing behind locked doors, to keep the element of surprise. She didn't get far, I can tell you. Meyer and Falinieri advanced on her like a pair of male Valkyries. I imagine she's over the border by now.”

“She'll be lucky,” said Anne. “They closed it after Mr Frensham was found.”

“Murdered!” Hilde Bernz shivered dramatically. “Honey, sometimes I wish I were safe back in Vienna, singing light opera. I know
Regulus
might make all our names, but what's a name if you're dead? I tell you, you're not the only one who's going to stay home at night. It's so
dark
here in Lissenberg. I wish they'd get the lights fixed along the arcade.”

“The lights?”

“Didn't you notice? You
must
have been tired! They blew while we were at dinner last night. Black as pitch coming home, and me in my high-heeled slippers. I asked that sinister old Josef about it on the way in to lunch. They can't find what's wrong, he says. So—stay home, my dear, stay home tonight. Alix's throat is worse, I hear. She's not going out tonight either. Well, what would you do if you were her? Invitations from James Frensham
and
Adolf Stern. So—her throat's worse. Let me get you some coffee—you do look tired. What did the doctor think was the matter?”

“Oh, nothing much. Yes, I'd love some coffee, thanks.” Glad to be alone for a moment, Anne resolved to be careful what she said to Frau Bernz, who showed every sign of being the cast's gossip, and a malicious one at that. It was a comfort when Gertrud Stock joined them over coffee and firmly changed the subject from last night's dinner to the absorbing one of the opera, and her part in it. It suited Anne very well, and she sat silent, half listening to the other two, sipping strong coffee and trying not to wonder about Michael.

“—Heard about the opera house?”

She realised that Gertrud's question was addressed to her and pulled herself together. “No? What about it?”

“The lights have gone there, too,” Gertrud told her. “No rehearsals there until they're fixed, and it seems to be taking long enough. They've had every electrician in town up there this morning and none of them can find the fault. If we don't start rehearsing in there soon we're going to be in real trouble.”

“Yes,” agreed Hilde. “For the principals' movements the rehearsal room's fine, but what's going to happen to the chorus? All those comings and goings and only two exits.”

“Only two?” asked Anne.

“You've not been in to look?”

Anne laughed. “No time.”

“Of course. You weren't here for the first conducted tour. Well—it's built right into the rock, see, like the Felsenreitschule at Salzburg. Brilliant bit of design, but damned awkward. All your management from above and the side, and only the two exits, right and left. Even principals are going to have to hurry like hell to get off in time. We ought to have been in there from the start. Besides, I'd like to be singing when a helicopter lands on the roof and find out just how good the sound-proofing really is. Mad idea, if you ask me.”

“James Frensham's,” said Gertrud Stock, as if that explained everything. “But of course the landing strip is above the audience, not the stage.”

“So they'll get the noise, if any. Much comfort that would be.” She sighed, looked at her watch and finished her coffee. “Back to the treadmill.”

Emerging into the arcade, they were confronted by a high double ladder, on which a man in overalls was perched, working on one of the lights. “I'm not going under that,” said Hilde. “This opera's had enough jinxes without asking for them.” She walked across to the steps below the cloisters.

“Sorry!” The man had heard her and turned to look down and smile at Anne. “I promise I won't drop anything.”

“Michael! What in the world?”

“Jack of all trades, that's me. But this is one problem that's going to take a bit of solving. Ask Signor Falinieri not to keep you
after dark, there's good girls. There'll be no lights in this arcade tonight, I'm afraid.”

“We can ask,” said Gertrud, “but will he take any notice?”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “Well, then. Wait for me, when he does let you go, and I'll see you home. All of you.”

“It's only a few steps,” protested Anne.

“A few steps are enough to break a leg.” He looked up the arcade. “Falinieri's just gone in. Off with you, ladies, and watch how you go.”

Falinieri had heard about the light failure in the opera house and was beside himself with rage. “
Not
the moment,” whispered Hilde to Anne, “to make any suggestions about when we stop.”

“I should rather think not.”

The rehearsal did not go well. Falinieri's obvious bad temper communicated itself to the singers, who were tired anyway, many of them having stayed up late at the hotel the night before. And, behind all this, loomed the fact of the murders. Over and over again Falinieri brought his baton down with a crash to rebuke whisperers at the back of the small auditorium. “Is this an opera we are working on,” he asked at last, between gritted teeth, “or a disaster? I can tell you which it will be if you do not pull yourselves together and stop gossiping. We have sixteen days until the opening night; God knows when we will be able to get into the opera house for full rehearsals, and all you can do is chatter and giggle in the back there. You, the chorus, go away, for God's sake, and think about your movements, if you can't make them. I will spend the rest of the afternoon with my principals.”