Murder at the Castle (10 page)

‘That's what it amounted to, but cash, not musical pull. Apparently she realized even he couldn't force anyone to hire her.'

‘And did the poor man agree to her terms?'

‘If we are to believe him, he did. With extreme reluctance, but he felt he had no choice. In their brief marriage, he'd learned how rapacious she could be, and how single-minded in pursuit of her ends. He didn't quite say that. I'm reading between the lines.'

‘I'd wager he's telling you the truth,' said Inga. ‘About promising to give her what she demanded, I mean. In the morning, she was exactly like a cat who'd been out in the rain: spitting and furious. And yet an hour or so later she was licking her lips over cream. Oh, yes, she'd got what she wanted.'

‘Pity she had so little time to enjoy it,' said Alan, and there was an undertone in his voice I didn't quite understand.

‘What?' I asked.

‘It's only that . . . if Sir John was in any doubt about the legal ramifications of Delia's reappearance, he had to consider his wife and family. Three excellent reasons to . . . well, to want her to disappear again.'

We all protested. Nigel was the loudest. ‘It's impossible! He's a truly good person. Everyone who's ever had anything to do with him knows that. He wouldn't even think of it.'

‘And Alan!' I broke in. ‘Even if he were capable of such a thing, in theory, he was nowhere near her when she fell. Something like two hundred people can testify to that!'

‘Yes, of course. I'm only . . . Ignore me.'

‘What I want to know,' I persisted, ‘is why Sir John hired her. Yes, she was an excellent singer, but there are lots of excellent singers in the world. I know the auditions were blind, and ten years is a long time, but wouldn't he have recognized her voice, anyway? He'd been married to her, for Pete's sake. Why did he bring her here?'

‘I have no idea,' said Alan. He stood. ‘I'm past the point of thinking logically, in any case. And you, Nigel, have a good deal of singing to do tomorrow. We'd all best get to bed.'

The first of the concerts, the Opera Scenes, was scheduled for two in the afternoon. Nigel, however, disappeared immediately after breakfast. ‘I don't know if we're ready for this,' he had kept saying nervously as he toyed with his breakfast. ‘We've been through this only once with what's-her-name, and the chorus hasn't worked with her at all. Some of the entrances are tricky . . .'

‘Nigel,' said Inga calmly. ‘You know every note by heart, and so do the others. It'll be splendid. Calm down.'

‘I'm going over early,' he said, not having heard a word she said. ‘I don't care if the others are there or not. I just want to . . . I don't know what I want to do, but I can't simply sit and wait.'

‘Is Nigel thinking about taking up music professionally?' I asked Inga after he'd left for the castle. We were sitting with Alan in the lounge, and I was trying, not very successfully, to knit a scarf. ‘He's being very intense about this.'

‘Heavens, no! He's more realistic than that. The world of professional music is as cut-throat as they come, and he wants no part of it, not to mention the insecurity of music as a career. He makes a good living as a techie, and he quite enjoys what he does, so he'd never give it up, even if it weren't for his responsibilities.'

‘You and Nigel Peter,' I said, nodding. ‘How is the imp today?'

‘Splendid, I gather, but oh, I do miss him.' She sighed and returned to the subject of Nigel and music. ‘It's just that . . . oh, well, he's a perfectionist, and he puts his heart and soul into his music, just as he does with everything else. As you see. This is his first important set of concerts since he left King's, and he wants it to be perfect.' She sighed. ‘Poor darling. I do hope it comes off well, for his sake.'

I shot a glance at Alan, who was apparently absorbed in a book about medieval architecture. ‘And for Sir John's sake,' I said quietly. ‘I wonder if he feels better now that he's bared his soul to Alan, or worse.'

Inga shrugged. ‘Will Alan tell the police the whole story, do you think?'

‘There doesn't seem to be much point, does there? If the official police decide Delia's death was an accident, that's the end of it, and if they decide otherwise, there's no way Sir John can have been involved. He was nowhere near her, not to mention that he was conducting a complex piece of music and had no attention to spare for anything else.'

‘But they'll want to know her real identity, won't they?'

‘Well, yes, there is that. Oh, dear, what do you suppose I've done now? The pattern isn't coming out right.'

Inga, who was an expert knitter, leaned over my chair to inspect my work. ‘I think,' she said tactfully, ‘you dropped a stitch or two several rows back. I could try to pick them up for you, but it would be better if you just ripped it out to there and started again.'

I sighed. ‘I'm hopeless at ripping out. At least I'm very good at ripping out, because I have to do it so often, but I'm no good at picking up the stitches afterwards. Would you mind?'

I handed the whole mess to her, the trailing yarn brushing against my face as I reached up. ‘Ugh! I hate things touching my face like that. Gives me the shivers.'

Rapidly, expertly, Inga repaired my mistakes while I pondered. ‘I wonder if there's a way to let the police know about her real name without telling the whole story? Well, no,' I answered myself, ‘of course there isn't, because her last name was Warner, and they're bound to make the connection. Oh, why couldn't the miserable woman just stay lost?'

‘I imagine,' said Alan, ‘that Sir John is having precisely those thoughts.'

‘I thought you were immersed in that book!'

‘I was. Using my eyes and mind does not shut my ears. And yes, my dear, of course I'll have to tell the police. Or rather, I shall ask Sir John to do so.'

‘After today's concert!' Inga and I said in unison.

‘Of course. The matter is of no great urgency, after all. The woman died an accidental death.'

I looked at him sharply. His face was absolutely bland. I know that expression. It means that behind it, he is ‘given furiously to think', as Hercule Poirot used to say. But I had no idea what he was thinking.

W
e took Inga out for a pub lunch, but none of us ate much. Nigel's nerves, and the whole upsetting situation, had taken away our appetites, and for me, that takes some doing. We got to the castle far too early for the concert, but there was already a good crowd waiting to get in.

‘I wonder how many of them are music-lovers, and how many sensation-seekers?' I asked,
sotto voce
.

Alan made that waggling motion with his hand that meant something like ‘six of one, half-a-dozen of the other'.

‘I think you're giving them the benefit of the doubt,' I said cynically.

‘I think you should have eaten a better lunch,' said Alan, with his usual infuriating assumption that my spirits are dependent upon my stomach. Infuriating, because he's so often right.

‘Alan Nesbitt, if you offer me a chocolate bar, I swear I'll . . .'

‘Eat it?' he suggested while I struggled for the right word.

My only reply was a dignified silence. I thought I heard Inga giggle, but when I looked at her, her face was completely sober.

Well, I thought with an inner sigh, if I'd relieved her nerves a bit, my little snit had done some good.

The gates were opened at last, and the queue began to move. Our comp tickets allowed us admission to the choice seating, not in the front rows, where the sun was slanting in under the tent, but a few rows back, in the shade and, Inga explained, in the area where the acoustics worked best.

Whatever the other omens for the day, the weather was at least cooperating magnificently. The sky held those little puffy white clouds that make the blue even bluer by contrast – what my father used to call ‘fair weather clouds'. The air was balmy, with just enough breeze to make sitting in the shade perfectly comfortable. We found our seats, and I began to relax, though I kept my eyes firmly away from the balcony.

Nigel had told us that for this concert, since the soloists were the focus of almost every piece, the balcony wouldn't be used. A stage had been erected, a couple of feet above ground level, with a podium at the front for Sir John, mikes for the soloists, and risers at the back for the chorus. The orchestra's chairs ranged around the stage on a tarp that had been laid on the stones of the courtyard. The audience, besides those under the tent, were seated wherever there was room – in the anterooms off the forecourt, in any room that had a window giving on the action, and even on the walkway atop the walls. I shuddered at the sight of those fearless souls and hoped, first, that they had a good sense of balance and no acrophobia, and second, that they'd brought lots of sunscreen. My American friends laugh at the idea of getting a sunburn on this island of mists and rain, but it's just as possible here as in, say, southern California. It simply takes a little longer.

Glancing down at the programme, I found that the
Carmen
scenes had been omitted. Poor Delia. The ‘Habanera' had been her showpiece, her great triumph at the rehearsal. Or at least Graciosa's triumph. I had, I realized, no idea whether young Delia had been a singer, back before she was lost at sea and became Graciosa and . . . and what? Where had she been all those years? What had she been doing? Studying music somewhere, one assumed. A voice like hers didn't develop all by itself. She'd had training, had acquired experience, had learned roles. Where? In America, where she'd apparently acquired citizenship? But how on earth had she ended up there? Why had she made no attempt to be reunited with her husband?

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn't notice Sir John's entrance until Alan nudged me to applaud. Sir John bowed, and then turned to the microphone.

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I'm delighted to welcome you to the first concert of what we hope will be the first annual Music Festival in Wales. I am aware that bringing choral and vocal music to Wales is in the nature of bringing coals to Newcastle.' Laughter from both audience and musicians. ‘I'm therefore especially gratified by your large attendance this afternoon.

‘As you know, the proceeds of this festival will go to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a cause that you may know is dear to my heart, as I nearly lost my life in a shipwreck some years ago.'

I held my breath, but, apart from a pause to clear his throat, he went ahead smoothly.

‘I hope that, in addition to your contribution in the form of your attendance, you will be generous with your donations to the collection jars set about the castle. Thank you. And now, ladies and gentlemen, let us welcome our soloists.'

The soloists filed on, to more applause, and the magic began.

They started off with several scenes from
Barber of Seville
, that perennial comic favourite, and went on from there to
Madama Butterfly
, for me the best of them all. Puccini just wrote one matchless tune after another. Sir John had chosen the gorgeous love duet between Butterfly and Pinkerton, the famous ‘Un bel dì'
,
and the hauntingly lovely, infinitely sad Humming Chorus. I got tears in my eyes, and even Alan found he had to blow his nose.

‘Pinkerton is such a rat!' said Inga, when they had finished the set. ‘I wanted to slap him silly, and then I remembered that's Nigel up there.'

‘He's a different person when he's singing, isn't he? He's really, really good, Inga.'

I would have said more, but Sir John gave the downbeat, and the orchestra struck up the aptly named Grand March from
Aïda
to give the first half of the concert a rousing finish.

The audience was appreciative in that restrained, well-mannered way I have come to learn is typical of Britain. No roars of ‘bravo', no standing ovation such as one might have expected in Milan – or, for that matter, New York.

‘They're really enjoying themselves, aren't they?' said Inga, a sparkle in her eyes as she looked around at the concert-goers standing, stretching, chatting. ‘It's going frightfully well.'

Ah, well, if I found the audience response a bit tepid, obviously that was my faulty perception. ‘I, personally, thought it was glorious. But I do need to find something in the way of a loo. I hope they've laid on extra ones.'

They had. I'm not fond of portaloos, but I'll use them in case of dire necessity. These weren't too bad, as such things go, and I emerged feeling much better. Inga found me. ‘Do you want to go back and talk to Nigel?'

‘No, I don't want to break the spell. Anyway, that isn't Nigel just now. It's Count Almaviva, and Pinkerton, and next Alfredo and Edgar. I don't want to distract any of them!'

So we took our seats and chatted until Sir John re-entered and began with the overture to
The Marriage of Figaro
, which he had substituted for the
Carmen
scenes. It was a brilliant piece of programming. Lively, a tie-in to
Barber
in the first half, and something most of the orchestra could probably play in their sleep, with no rehearsal. The audience loved it. Then the chorus sang the ‘Va pensiero', the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, and sang it so beautifully that the audience, now getting into the spirit of the thing, insisted it be repeated.

Then on to
Traviata
and more tears, and finally
Lucia,
culminating in the renowned Sextet, with two of the singers from the chorus taking the other two parts. The audience demanded an encore of that, too, and applauded for more. Sir John finally had to go to a microphone.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are gratified that you enjoyed this performance so much. Forgive us for ending such a pleasant afternoon, but remember that we have a great deal more music to perform this week. We hope to see you back here tomorrow afternoon. Thank you!' And he dismissed the orchestra and singers with a nod, and the audience began to come down from their euphoria and drag themselves back to everyday life.