Swan Song (19 page)

The old man was relaxing momentarily from his labours, which were naturally becoming more exigent and various as the day of the performance drew nearer. He wore a pair of disreputable flannel trousers and a leather jacket, from the breast pocket of which drooped a large red silk handkerchief. His gnome-like face was brown, eager, heavily lined, with a greying stubble about the chin, and he was absorbed in the rehearsal even though at present he was taking no active part in it.

‘That Peacock,' he said, ‘is a true Wagnerian conductor. He has the –
wie ists genannt?
– the flexibility which the
Meister
craved for and which Richter never had. I have seen or worked with them all, you understand – Toscanini, Bülow, Richter, Nikisch, Mottl, Barbirolli, Beecham . . . All of them. I know the real thing when I see it,
glauben Sie mir.
This Peacock is good.'

Fen regarded him with interest. ‘You're a very fanatical Wagnerian,' he said.

‘
Aber natürlich
.' ‘Karl always relapsed a little into his native language when he was talking to someone who could understand it. ‘My whole life has been opera – and Wagner in particular,
selbstverständlich.
If my father
had afforded to give me the musical education I should myself have been a conductor. But I began to learn too late. So I have always been régisseur, or producer, or call-boy. At the Weimar opera, when I was sixteen, I was call-boy . . . After that I was in many of the German opera-houses, and for a time in America. When the Nazis came I was too old for their ideas, and I hated that such fools should worship the
Meister.
I had preferred that they banned his performances. So I worked here, and then there was the war, and fools said: “Because Hitler is fond of Wagner we will not have Wagner in England”. Hitler was also fond of your Edgar Wallace, with his stories of violence, but no one said that they were not to be read . . . Now it is better, and soon I shall return to my own country. But there is no Wagner there, and before I die I must hear the seven great operas once again. So at present I stay in England.' For a long time he meditated, then he said, in a slightly altered tone of voice: ‘You, sir, you are investigating the death of this man?'

Fen shrugged. ‘I was.'

‘
Wäre es nicht besser
–'

‘That the murderer should remain undiscovered? On the face of it, yes. But none of us has the right to assess the value of a human existence. All must be held valuable, or none. The death of Christ and the death of Socrates,' Fen added dryly, ‘suggest that our judgements are scarcely infallible . . . And the evil of Nazism lay precisely in this, that a group of men began to differentiate between the value of their fellow-beings, and to act on their conclusions. It isn't a habit which I, for one, would like to encourage.'

Karl was silent for some moments before replying.

‘Veilleicht haben Sie recht,'
he said at last. ‘But I am glad he is dead.' His voice sank to a whisper. ‘I am glad this man is dead.'

The dress-rehearsal of act one was on the Saturday; of
acts two and three on the Sunday. Marvels of artistry and effort had been performed in the meantime, and any anxiety which may have been aroused by the belated substitution of a new Sachs was now dispelled. Fen attended the rehearsal of act two with Elizabeth. When it was over, at half past six in the evening, Adam joined them.

‘We progress,' he said cheerfully. ‘It should be all right tomorrow.'

‘You'll get a good house,' said Fen amiably, ‘if only because of poor Joan's notoriety.'

‘We're booked out for the whole run,' Adam told him. ‘Sensation-seekers are hardly the kind of audience we want, but no doubt their money will please Levi as much as anybody else's.'

‘How is Joan taking it?' Fen asked. ‘I haven't spoken to her for a day or two.'

‘Stoically enough, I think. It hasn't been so bad recently . . . I suppose the police aren't going to charge her?'

‘They haven't enough evidence – though I believe they still regard the dope and the hanging as unconnected.'

‘Aren't they unconnected?'

‘I think not – the anonymous letter to the foreman of the jury suggests as much – but I've no means of proving it, unfortunately. It may be, of course, that that anonymous letter was prompted by simple malice, but I've not yet succeeded in discovering anyone who dislikes Joan . . . By the way, what happens next?'

‘Scene one of the last act,' said Adam. ‘Since we're behind schedule, we're leaving scene two till tomorrow morning. The chorus has been told it can go home.'

‘I wonder,' said Fen pensively, ‘if a drink –'

‘I'll tell you what.' Elizabeth was groping in her bag for a notebook and pencil. ‘We can take this opportunity of getting my interview done. All right?'

‘Decidedly all right,' said Fen, pleased. He reflected briefly. ‘The era of my greatest successes,' he began, ‘may be said, roughly speaking, to extend from the time
when I first became interested in detection to the present moment, which sees me engaged on a case as baffling and complex as any I ever –'

But here, to his annoyance, he was interrupted by Judith Haynes, who came rapidly up the gangway and said:

‘You haven't seen Boris anywhere, have you?'

Evidently the girl was worried. They could hardly make out her expression in the semi-darkness, but her voice was urgent, and the hand which she laid on the back of one of the seats trembled perceptibly.

‘I haven't,' said Elizabeth. ‘That's to say, not for the last half-hour. I thought he was with you.'

‘He was until a few minutes ago. But now I can't find him anywhere.'

‘Perhaps he's gone home.'

‘He wouldn't have done that,' said Judith. Floodlights were turned on and threw a halo about her fair hair. ‘At least, not without telling me.'

‘But surely' – Elizabeth spoke gently – ‘there's nothing to worry about?'

‘He wasn't feeling at all well. It's been getting worse all afternoon . . . Please help me.'

She was so near to tears that there was no possibility of rejecting the appeal. Fen and Adam separated to search the theatre. Ten minutes later, they met at the foot of the iron ladder which led from the top corridor of dressing-rooms through a trap-door on to the flat roof. Adam by now was wearing a great-coat over the green doublet and hose in which he had been impersonating a sixteenth-century knight of Franconia.

‘Who are you?' said Fen. ‘I don't know you from Adam.' He laughed very merrily at this; Adam did not join him.

‘There's no sign,' he reported instead. ‘I think the man must have left. Obviously that's what he'd do if he were feeling ill.'

‘Yes, possibly.' Fen was grave again. ‘But at the same
time, I agree with the girl that he'd almost certainly have told her if he intended to do that.'

‘Well, you don't think he's been kidnapped, do you?'

‘I wouldn't know at all . . . It's simply that I don't like the sound of this “illness”, particularly as there seems to be someone running around with a whole pharmacopoeia of poisons in his pocket . . . Come and help me look on the roof.'

‘Have you got a torch? It must be quite dark now, and one doesn't want to topple over the edge.'

Fen felt in the pocket of his raincoat, and after bringing to light successively a grubby handkerchief, a half-empty packet of cigarettes, a copy of the
Imitation of Christ,
and a small woolly bear named Thomas Shadwell, found his torch.

Outside it was bitterly cold; Adam shivered and turned up the collar of his coat. No stars were visible, and the moon had not yet risen, but beneath a street lamp they could see the front of the Playhouse in Beaumont Street, and farther to the left the light from the foyer of the Randolph Hotel winked rapidly and was again still as someone pushed in through the revolving doors. The footsteps of a single wayfarer passing along St John Street were preternaturally clear and sharp. Adam, who disliked heights, felt a mild but decided nausea; the discovery which they shortly made, however, was sufficient to drive other considerations from his mind.

Boris Stapleton lay prone, about half-way between the skylight which penetrated the ceiling of Edwin Shorthouse's dressing-room and the little hut (its door now creaking lugubriously in the wind) which housed the machinery of the lift. Adam hardly needed to be told that he was dead, though there were no marks of violence on the body, except for the bruises occasioned by its fall. Traces of vomit were nearby. The good-looking young face, when they turned it over, betrayed nothing but a faint astonishment.

AS WELL AS
possible, they lowered Stapleton's body down the ladder and carried it to Shorthouse's dressing-room, which had remained unoccupied since his death. It was a peculiarly exhausting task, which left them panting and unsteady. Fortunately they met no one.

‘Well,' Adam gulped as he straightened himself, ‘what do we do now?'

‘Telephone Mudge, will you, and tell him what's happened.' Fen was smoothing back his unruly hair. ‘But don't breathe a word to anyone else – particularly Judith.'

‘Surely she ought to be –'

‘I'm afraid,' said Fen grimly, ‘that when she gets the news she'll break down. And there are some things I must ask her before that happens.'

‘How did he die?'

‘Arsenic, I fancy.'

Adam went to the telephone. Downstairs, the orchestra was tuning up for the third act; the oboe A droned out, encircled by bare fifths; the flutes were indulging in bravura displays; the tuba honked despondently. Fen bent down again to examine Stapleton's body. Despite the temperature of the roof, there was still a little warmth in it; but the man was thin, wasted, almost skeletal. The skin disease on his cheeks, throat, and chin resembled eczema. There was a strange, very faint odour resembling that of garlic. Repressing a slight shudder of disgust, Fen opened the mouth and felt for the tongue; it
was much furred. The eyelids were red and puffy. Fen examined the finger-nails, noticed that there was a white band running across them, and turned his attention to the hair, and afterwards to the palms of the hands, which were hard and horny. Then he went to the wash-basin, and was soaping himself industriously when Adam returned.

‘Mudge,' said Adam gloomily, ‘was very much upset. I suppose he's beginning to realize that what with this and the attack on Elizabeth his suicide theory's suffering a lot of shocks . . . Anyway, he's coming here immediately. Have you discovered anything?'

Fen was drying his hands with a handkerchief; there appeared to be no towel in the room. ‘I was right about the arsenic. And it's chronic – it must have been going on for some weeks.'

Adam kept his eyes averted from the face of the corpse; Fen had left the mouth open, and it gaped disagreeably. ‘No wonder,' said Adam with an effort, ‘that he was ill. I suppose if he'd only had the sense to see a doctor –'

‘Exactly. He needn't have died.' Fen, about to return the damp handkerchief to his pocket, thought better of it, and put it instead on the dressing-table. ‘That skin disease is a normal symptom of arsenical poisoning. But the fact that he'd suffered from eczema on some previous occasion made him unsuspicious.'

They both lit cigarettes. ‘What makes it so unpleasant,' said Adam bitterly, ‘is that whoever was poisoning him must have been aware that he'd rather die than stay out of the production, and have traded on it . . . And now Judith is a widow, after two days of marriage, and – oh, it's damnable.' After a pause he went on: ‘And I can't see the motive for it, unless he knew something about Edwin's death . . . Could it be suicide?'

‘Unheard-of,' said Fen without hesitation. ‘If he'd wanted to commit suicide he'd have given himself one good dose, not a series. And anyway, why
should
he
commit suicide? He'd just got married. To all appearance he was exceedingly happy.'

Adam nodded sombrely. ‘How can arsenic be got?' he inquired. ‘That is, without openly buying it?'

‘In all sorts of ways. It can be extracted from fly-papers, and weed killers and rat poisons, and sheep dip and God knows what else . . . However,' Fen added, ‘I'd better go and see Judith. It looks at present as if she'll be our sole witness. Will you wait here until I get back? Repel all boarders – except, of course, the police.'

On his way down the stairs he came upon Furbelow, and was reminded by the encounter of a problem which for some days he had been intending to clear up.

‘Furbelow,' he said, ‘did you have instructions from Mr Shorthouse not to disturb him when he was in his dressing-room?'

The question evidently stirred latent fires of resentment. Furbelow even forgot himself so far as to spit, though in rather a dry-mouthed ineffectual fashion.

‘Ah, that he did,' he burst out. ‘Some o' these theatre folk, they fancy they're God Almighty ‘Isself. The first night 'e was 'ere I went into 'is dressing-room quite 'armless-like, to look if I might 'ave dropped something, an' what does 'is 'ighness do but tell me 'e'll wring my neck if I ever as much as put me nose inside again. Called me a thief, 'e did.' Ecstatic with rage, Furbelow hissed at Fen, like a goose. ‘I wouldn't ‘a' gorn in there again, not if the devil 'ad bin after me with 'is flesh-'ooks.'

Being unable to conceive any reliable method of putting a stop to this homiletics, Fen pursued his way, leaving Furbelow yelping indignantly behind him. It was unlikely, he thought, that the personnel of the opera were unaware of this incident; Furbelow was not the man to return contumely with silence. And that suggested that Edwin Shorthouse had been responsible for at least one circumstance which might have facilitated his own death.