Prima Donna at Large (34 page)

“Lieutenant O'Halloran seems satisfied it is.”

Toscanini drew up a chair and sat down. Nobody wanted to miss the finale.

“Lieutenant O'Halloran, I understand you're looking for me?” Osgood Springer came on the stage, followed by Jimmy Freeman and one of O'Halloran's men.

Instead of answering him, O'Halloran turned to Uncle Hummy. “Is that the one?”

Uncle Hummy nodded uneasily. “Go now?”

O'Halloran gestured to his man. “Take him back to the station house. Keep him there till I get back.” The man took Uncle Hummy by the arm and led him away.

“Lieutenant, what's going on?” Jimmy Freeman asked. “Is something the matter?”

“Something is very much the matter,” O'Halloran said. “Mr. Springer, Uncle Hummy saw you taking the spray bottle into Duchon's dressing room.”

Jimmy gasped, and Springer turned ghost-white. The latter recovered quickly, though. “He's mistaken.”

“Is he?” O'Halloran asked.

“I tell you he is. Are you going to take that old man's word against mine?”

“I think he's telling the truth, yes. You put the ammonia in that spray bottle, and you did it because you thought your pupil here would never get his chance as long as Duchon was around. You did it—you're the one who put Duchon out of commission. That makes you responsible for his death. You're under arrest, Mr. Springer.”

Jimmy immediately started protesting—loudly, angrily; he looked terribly frightened. Springer was weaving unsteadily on his feet, and Amato rushed over with a chair. The accused man sank down, looking as if he were going to pass out.

I didn't like this. I didn't like anything about it.

“You rummaged through the medicine bag Miss Destinn had put down somewhere looking for whatever was there, and you found the ammonia,” O'Halloran went on. “Then you waited until no one was looking and took Duchon's spray bottle, emptied out the contents and poured in the ammonia, and put the bottle back in Duchon's dressing room. Then you told Freeman here to get into costume. You knew he'd be going on that night. Nobody else knew yet—but you knew. Isn't that the way it happened?”

“You're wrong, Lieutenant!” Jimmy cried hotly, his voice higher than I'd ever heard it. “You've made a mistake, a terrible mistake! He couldn't—”

“He could, and he did. What was it, Mr. Springer? Were you hoping to have the career through Freeman that you never had for yourself? You've made Freeman your surrogate, your substitute in your search for success—and you'd do anything to make sure he got ahead, wouldn't you?
Wouldn't you?
”

“This is insane!” Jimmy shouted. “Mr. Springer has never hurt anyone! Oh, Lieutenant, you're wrong, wrong!”

“James.” Springer laid a restraining hand on his protégé's arm. “It's no use. Don't say any more. Yes, Lieutenant, I would do anything to assure James's success.
Anything
.”

“Mr. Springer!” Jimmy cried.

“Hush, James, say no more. Accept it.” Jimmy turned away in anguish, and for a long time no one said anything.

Scotti whispered, “That is easy. I do not think evildoers confess so quickly.”

“There's something not quite right here,” I whispered back.

“We should not be here. It is … too personal, yes?”

“I, too, wish to be elsewhere,” Toscanini whispered. But not one of us could get up and leave.

Caruso, however, was not in the least intimidated by the anguish we'd just witnessed. He walked over and planted himself squarely in front of Springer. “Mr. Springer, you do a shameful thing! Shameful, shameful! A great singer is dead because of what you do.”

“Yes,” Springer said tonelessly. “I … I never intended that to happen.”

Lieutenant O'Halloran said, “Did you plan it ahead of time, or what?”

“Ah, no, no I didn't. I acted on impulse. Yes. Impulse.”

“Shameful!” Caruso repeated. “You know, Mr. Springer, I suspect you all along!”

“Did you really, Mr. Caruso,” Springer said dryly.

“Ask anyone! Ask Gerry, ask Amato—”

Gatti-Casazza interrupted. “Congratulations, Lieutenant O'Halloran, and my sincerest thanks. You do a fine job. We are all grateful to you, I am sure.”

O'Halloran shrugged. “Thank Miss Farrar. She found the eyewitness I needed.”

Springer turned in his chair and looked at me. He looked me straight in the eye, without flinching; it was very disconcerting. Scotti put an arm around my shoulders.

O'Halloran tapped Springer on the shoulder. “Come along—we're finished here.”

“Wait.” I stood up. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I did know this wasn't right and I had to do something. Take the bull by the horns? I went over to Jimmy Freeman, who was sobbing silently, his back turned to Springer. “Jimmy? Jimmy, are you going to let this happen?”

His reddened eyes looked at me in surprise. “Wh-what?”

“Are you going to let Mr. Springer go to prison for something you did?”

There was this deathly silence for about three seconds, and then
everyone
started talking. “What
he
did?” Lieutenant O'Halloran said in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Gerry, are you feeling all right?” asked Emmy, always practical.

“Do I hear you right?” Scotti asked. “
Jimmy?
”

“
Che cosa dite?
” Toscanini wondered.

“Che dite?”
Gatti-Casazza echoed.

“You do not understand, Gerry,” Caruso explained patiently. “It is Mr. Springer who is guilty, not Jimmy.”

“Quiet!”
Amato roared,
fortissimo
. When everyone obeyed, he said, “Gerry—an explanation, please?”

Springer broke away from Lieutenant O'Halloran and headed straight for me. “Keep out of this,” he hissed.

I turned on him. “Mr. Springer, you just said you'd do
anything
to assure Jimmy's success. Does that include taking the blame for a crime you didn't commit? Do you know what will happen to you?”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Springer said angrily.

Jimmy looked at me, his anguish evident to everyone. “Gerry—I'm no criminal!”

I put my hands on his shoulders. “I know you're no criminal, Jimmy. But even the best of people can slip when the temptation is too great. The temptation
and
the opportunity.”
Be a man, Jimmy
, I prayed silently. “Remember when you told me how much you owed Mr. Springer? How he did everything for you, how he gave up all his other students for you? Are you going to let him give up his freedom too?”

“Don't listen to her, James,” Springer snapped.

“I think you had better listen to her, James,” Lieutenant O'Halloran said, coming up to us. “If I've got the wrong man, I want to know it. Do you have something to tell me?”

Guilt, fear, remorse, anxiety, uncertainty—Jimmy's face reflected each of them in turn. By then almost everyone on the stage understood what had really happened; it only remained for Jimmy to admit it. Finally he crumpled into a chair and buried his face in his hands so he wouldn't have to look at anybody. He mumbled, “Mr. Springer didn't do it. I did.”

“James!” Springer's cry held all the heartbreak in the world; with Jimmy's admission of guilt, the vocal coach saw the dreams of a lifetime crumbling before his very eyes.

“No no no no no no,” Caruso instructed Jimmy. “
You
do not do it. It is Mr. Springer.”

O'Halloran waved him away. “All right, Freeman, let's hear the rest of it. It was the medicine bag that gave you the idea?” Jimmy nodded. “So you saw the chance to get rid of Duchon for good—”

“No!” Jimmy cried. “It wasn't like that! I thought it would just make him sick for a while. Once when I was singing in Chicago, one of the other singers got sick from breathing ammonia fumes. He missed two performances. So I thought if Duchon sprayed the ammonia directly into his throat he might, oh, he might be out for the rest of the season. Just long enough to give me a decent chance. I thought everyone would believe it was just another one of those accidents that kept happening to him … I didn't know it would destroy his voice! I never dreamed that would happen!”

I for one believed him; it was just the sort of mistake Jimmy would make. Lieutenant O'Halloran seemed to believe him too. “So where does Mr. Springer come in? Why was he taking the bottle into Duchon's dressing room?” Jimmy just shook his head; he couldn't say any more. O'Halloran turned to Springer. “Mr. Springer? You might as well tell me. It's all up now anyway.”

Springer smiled sadly. “Yes, it is, isn't it? Very well, what does it matter? I came upon James holding the spray bottle. He'd already put the ammonia in, but I didn't know that yet. James told me Duchon had forgotten his spray bottle, so I said I'd take it to him. Since I didn't know what was in the bottle, I didn't take any particular pains to avoid being seen—I was just returning a spray bottle, that was all. That was when the old man must have seen me.”

“But later?” O'Halloran prompted. “Later you figured out what had happened—after Duchon was taken to the hospital and Dr. Curtis said it was ammonia in the spray.”

Springer grunted. “It was pretty obvious, wasn't it?”

“So you went to Freeman and you told him—”

“No. We never spoke of it. Not once.”

Murmurs of surprise ran across the stage. “
Non credo niente
,” Toscanini muttered. Gatti sank silently onto the nearest chair.

“It's true,” Springer said. “I think James knew all along that I knew, but there was a sort of tacit understanding between us. We would proceed as usual, and not make trouble for ourselves if we could avoid it.”

I cleared my throat. “Mr. Springer, you didn't tell Jimmy to get into costume early, did you? That was his own idea.”

Springer nodded. “I wondered at the time why he was getting dressed—but of course that made sense later too. It was his eagerness. He knew he'd be singing in Duchon's place.”

“When we were in the museum,” I went on, “you told me you saw Duchon spitting blood before the performance began. Was that true?”

Springer gave a loud snort. “No, it wasn't true. Duchon was healthy as a horse. He would have lived to be a hundred.”

“So our talk in the museum was—”

“Lies, Miss Farrar. Lies to protect other lies. By then the question of why James had gotten into costume early had become something of an issue. I had to provide a believable reason for his doing so.”

“You did,” I said wryly. “I believed you. Didn't it bother you, Mr. Springer, how quick Jimmy was to put the blame on you? When he said
you
had told him to lie about getting into costume?”

“That was a temporizing measure. He told me about it immediately.”

O'Halloran said, “I thought you never talked about it.”

“We never talked about the act itself,” Springer explained. “We did talk about protecting ourselves.”

“You're making excuses for him,” I murmured. Springer didn't answer.

“This makes you an accomplice, you know,” O'Halloran said to Springer.

“I know. What does it matter now?”

“Only one thing left,” O'Halloran growled. “Miss Farrar—how in the world did you know it was Freeman instead of Springer?”

“Yes, Gerry,” Scotti said, “how do you know?”

“I didn't
know
,” I protested. “It just seemed to me all along that what happened to Duchon was mostly a nasty trick that got out of hand, something that was far more serious in its consequences than was intended. Mr. Springer has been in the business of training the voice for—how long, Mr. Springer? Twenty years?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four years—that's a long time. It seemed inconceivable that a man so experienced in matters concerning the human vocal mechanism wouldn't know the effects on the voice box of something as strong as ammonia.” I paused. “So many things can damage the vocal cords—we have to be careful all the time. Mr. Springer just isn't naïve enough to think there'd be no permanent damage.”

“And I am,” Jimmy said bitterly. “I see.”

“Lieutenant O'Halloran,” Springer spoke quickly, “James made a mistake—a stupid mistake, granted, but it was a mistake. He did not intend to ruin a man's career. He certainly did not intend that man's death. There was no murder in his heart. Will this be taken into consideration?”

“I'm fairly sure it will,” O'Halloran said. “I'll say so myself, at the trial.”

Jimmy stood up slowly and sort of gave himself a little shake. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I'll appreciate your help, although I'm not certain I deserve such consideration. I am responsible for Philippe Duchon's death. No one else. Just me.”

So there it was. Jimmy Freeman was a decent young man who had done one indecent thing in his life. And now he was going to pay for it.

It had finally begun to sink in on Caruso what had happened. “It is Jimmy?” he asked disbelievingly. “It is not Mr. Springer?”

Lieutenant O'Halloran gestured to a couple of his men, who each took Jimmy and Springer by an arm and started leading them off the stage. Jimmy stopped and turned to me. “I'm sorry, Gerry,” he said. And then they were gone.

“Not the man I came here to arrest,” O'Halloran said, looking after Jimmy. “That was a close one. If there weren't so many meddlers muddying the waters …” he trailed off. The lieutenant stared a moment first at me and then at Caruso and then at me again. “Oh, what's the use!” he muttered, and stalked off.

“It is not Mr. Springer?” Caruso asked me.

“Interesting,” Scotti said. “You send Jimmy to jail and he apologizes to
you
. What does he apologize for?”