Murder at the Castle (11 page)

I didn't want to do that. I'd been quite literally ‘carried away' by the music. Not physically, of course, but my mind and soul had been, not in a castle where I had watched a young woman die, but in another world, a world where tragedy was cloaked in melody and where, in any case, everyone would be alive again once the curtain came down.

I became aware that Alan was watching me. ‘Earth to Dorothy,' he said with a grin. ‘Ready for your tea, love, or are you still “out there” somewhere?'

I gave a deep sigh. ‘Returning, I guess, but oh so slowly and reluctantly. As for tea, what I actually want is nectar. Ambrosia. Whatever one drinks in the Elysian Fields. But I suppose tea will do.'

I found my handbag and got myself organized, and Nigel strolled over to meet us.

‘Well?' he said. He stood in the standard opera ‘heroic' pose, shoulders back, head erect, and the cocky Welshman was all on top.

‘Very nice, Nigel,' I said in a saccharine nanny voice. ‘You all really did quite well, and I'm sure it'll go better tomorrow.' And then at the expression on his face, ‘Gotcha! You were looking so smug, I couldn't resist. You know perfectly well it was splendid. Alan, shall we . . . Alan?'

My husband, at my side only moments before, had vanished.

‘I think,' said Inga quietly, ‘he's gone to talk to Sir John.'

Well, that, as the English used to say a couple of generations ago, rather took the gilt off the gingerbread.

‘I'd forgotten, for a while,' I admitted. ‘I suppose it's terrible. A woman died, only a few days ago and a few feet away, and for a time I forgot all about her. The music . . .'

‘It isn't terrible,' said Inga firmly. ‘None of us really knew the woman, and from all accounts, she wasn't very nice to know anyway. It's silly to think you should grieve for her just because you witnessed her death.'

Any man's death diminishes me
, I thought, but Inga was right. I couldn't drum up any real grief for Delia, only a kind of pity, sorrow for the waste of a life that could have been so rich. ‘Are they going to give her any sort of tribute during the festival?'

‘That's still under discussion. I think Sir John is of two minds about it, and a few of the musicians are dead set against it.'

‘But why? It would seem to be the decent thing to do.'

Nigel squirmed a bit. ‘A few guys in the orchestra used to know her, and I think maybe one or two in the chorus. The world of really excellent musicians is a small one, you know, and she's . . . she wasn't exactly popular. One gathers she didn't mind who she trampled on, if they got in the way of her career. And you have to remember . . .' Nigel looked around and lowered his voice. ‘Nobody else knows who she was. That she was married to Sir John back when, I mean.'

‘Well, I still think . . . Oh, Alan. All right?'

‘Sir John is feeling a good deal better about it today,' said Alan as we made our way with the crowd out of the castle precinct. ‘A wildly successful concert has something to do with it, I suspect. He's also talked to his solicitor, who thinks, I gather, that the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. He's going to speak to the police, but I doubt they'll take it any further. Now, where shall we have tea?'

W
e ended up opting for beer instead. The afternoon was hot, and the selection of pubs nearby seemed better than the selection of cafés. Nigel was in tearing high spirits. The music, which had lulled me into almost a dream state, had energized him like a drug. He was full of stories. The baritone had suffered a bad attack of hiccups just before going on, and Nigel was hilarious about the various remedies that had been pressed on the poor man. ‘Somebody tried scaring him with a grass snake they found somewhere, but it only succeeded in causing hysterics among some of the women in the chorus. Then they wanted to make him breathe into a paper bag, but they could only find a plastic carrier bag . . .'

‘But that's dangerous!' I said, eyes wide. ‘They could have . . .'

‘And very nearly did,' Nigel agreed. ‘I'm sure he saw his life flash before his eyes. Probably the fright was what actually cured him.

‘Then there was,' he went on, ‘the panic when one of the altos in the chorus couldn't find her music, and the percussionist lost the rabbit's foot he always carried for luck, and one of the violinists broke a string and didn't have a spare.'

‘Goodness,' I said, fascinated at this glimpse backstage. ‘I never thought about how many things could go wrong at a concert. It looks so flawless and easy from out front. And I never thought of musicians as being superstitious.'

‘Oh, Dorothy!' said Inga, rolling her eyes. ‘You have
no
idea! And the higher they climb in the ranks, the worse they are. Nigel's not professional, so he's escaped most of the idiocies, but . . .'

‘We're nothing like as bad as actors!' Nigel protested. ‘They've made a religion of their fetishes.'

‘I've heard about some of the
Macbeth
ones,' I said. ‘Is it true some actors won't even speak the name of the play?'

‘Not in a theatre, they won't. It's supposed to be the most frightfully bad luck. And heaven forbid you should quote from it, especially in a dressing room.'

‘“Double, double, toil and trouble”,' Inga and I recited in unison.

Nigel held up his hands in mock horror. ‘Cease your incantation!' he cried dramatically.

‘No, really though, how on earth do they manage ever to put on a production of the play? I mean, one has to speak the lines.'

‘Don't ask me. I'm not an actor.' Nigel addressed himself to his pint, and Inga added, ‘Thank God.'

Our pub crawl turned eventually into an early dinner, which became ever more hilarious as several other musicians drifted in, saw us, and joined the party.

They were an extraordinarily diverse group. They all spoke English, but a lot of other languages were mixing in as well, and accents I couldn't even begin to identify.

A few I was certain of, though. Or at least almost certain.

‘Are you two American or Canadian?' I asked a young couple. ‘After living over here for several years, I can't tell any more, and people can get annoyed if I get it wrong.'

‘American,' they answered with a grin. ‘And which are you? Actually, you sound English, but you said . . .'

Alan and I both laughed at that. ‘You think I sound English. The English think I sound American. I sometimes think I'm the man without a country.'

They looked blank at that, and I chuckled again. ‘Sorry. An old story. Very old, come to think about it. Anyway, I was born in southern Indiana, but I've lived in England for quite a while now. You sound more or less midwest – am I right?'

‘Right on the nail-head. Springfield, Illinois, but we went to the IU School of Music, so we were almost your neighbours for a while.'

‘Well, I'm impressed! The School of Music turns out some fine musicians. Are you singers or instrumentalists?'

‘Oh, I'm so glad you didn't say “singers or musicians”,' said the young woman. ‘We've had a lot of battles about that over the years, because we're one of each. I play the violin, and my brother's a singer, a bass.'

‘That's
basso profundo
, kid,' said the young man. ‘I'm Larry Andrews,' he added, putting out a hand, ‘and this is my twin, Laurie. This is the first chance we've had to work together since college.'

The four of us introduced ourselves. ‘So what have you been doing since college?' I asked.

‘Oh, you know, the usual,' said Larry. ‘We both auditioned all over the place, and we got lucky. I'm with the San Francisco Opera chorus, and Laurie, our virtuoso, plays with the CSO.'

‘The Chicago Symphony?' said Alan, with something like awe in his voice.

‘I'm only a ringer,' Laurie hastened to explain. ‘They're on tour right now and didn't need me, and when Larry told me the SFO didn't need him for a month either, we decided to try out for this, and we got lucky again!'

‘I don't imagine,' said Alan, ‘luck had a great deal to do with it.'

‘Oh, but some of the people here are really good. Nigel, you were fantastic in the opera scenes today.'

‘Thanks,' said Nigel, trying with little success to look modest, ‘but the chorus and orchestra really tied it together.'

‘Well, I very nearly came untied, I can tell you,' said Laurie.

‘Or unstrung,' put in her brother.

‘Oh, you're the one with the broken e-string!' said Nigel.

‘And no replacement, like an idiot,' said Larry casually.

She punched him on the arm. ‘I did too have replacements. I always carry them. I told you! Somebody swiped them, not just the e-string, but the whole kit and caboodle. And they were good ones, too, and they don't come cheap!'

‘Hey, admit it, kid, they just fell out someplace. Nobody'd steal 'em.'

Laurie was getting annoyed. I stepped in hastily. ‘Well, the orchestra sounded wonderful, so you must have managed. With a borrowed string, I suppose?'

‘Yes, and now I have to find another set someplace so I can replace the one I used. And I don't know my way around over here well enough to have any idea where . . .'

Her voice was rising, and Larry draped a casual arm around her shoulders. ‘Relax, kid. It ain't the end of the world. You did a great job, with a string that wasn't what you're used to, and not even broken in or anything. We'll find you some strings someplace. You probably won't even have to use them.'

Laurie leaned back against her brother. ‘Sorry. Didn't mean to fall apart. It's just . . . with everything happening . . .'

‘What you need is another drink,' said Larry. ‘And just you listen to big brother. Yeah, I'm sorry the woman died that way. But mostly because she made trouble even by dying. I can't pretend I'm sorry she's gone, and this festival's going to work one whole hell of a lot better without her, so buck up.' He stood. ‘Who else wants another beer?'

Laurie rolled her eyes at his departing back. ‘He loves to play the big brother and boss me around, just because he's twenty minutes older.'

‘There was certainly no love lost between him and Delia!' I said.

‘Who?' Laurie looked puzzled, and Alan shot me a warning look.

‘Sorry. Grace – the woman who died, whatever her name was. I'm bad at names.'

‘Graciosa. That wasn't her real name, though. I don't know what her real name was, but she was a real pain. Larry was a little out of line just now, but he was right about one thing. Nobody liked her very much.'

‘Nobody here at the festival, you mean?'

‘Nobody in the known world of music,' said Larry, returning. ‘Or at least opera. I only met her once before, in San Francisco, and she nearly killed the production. She's famous – well, she was famous – for causing trouble wherever she went.'

‘She had a beautiful voice,' I said tentatively.

‘There are lots of beautiful voices out there,' said Laurie, with a little of the instrumentalist's arrogance she didn't know she had. ‘It's nice when they're attached to decent human beings.'

‘But what did she
do
, to make everyone hate her so? I mean, Nigel here told us she was pretty unprofessional in rehearsal, and that's certainly enough to get everyone miffed. And I saw her . . . well, I guess you'd call it “temperament” that morning at the castle, when the weather was so awful. But I wouldn't call any of that “causing trouble”, exactly.'

‘Oh, no,' said Larry. ‘That sort of thing was just her warm-up routine. The main act was destroying other people's careers.'

Larry had maybe had one beer too many, or else his singer's voice was easily audible by nature and training. At any rate, he'd been getting louder and louder, and we'd gathered a small crowd of the other musicians.

Now one of them joined in. ‘You've got it in one, lad,' he said. ‘She tried it with me. Nearly pulled it off, too.'

That started the chorus. The first man who spoke was a singer who'd been trashed by Gracie's antics in quartet auditions for an opera production in Prague. ‘She'd give me the wrong cue, or come in a half-beat too soon, so my entrance sounded late. And when I lost my temper, she screamed in the middle of my tirade and claimed I'd hit her. She actually gave her own arm a nasty pinch to leave a bruise. Where it didn't show, of course.'

I had no chance to express indignation, for the cellist was eager to tell about the time Gracie broke her bow. ‘I was playing in a pick-up orchestra in Strasbourg, and I said something about her to the conductor while we were taking a rehearsal break. Well, he didn't like her either, and he laughed, and Gracie heard us. She just happened to be standing next to my desk, and she . . . I'm not quite sure what she did, but somehow my bow ended up on the floor in pieces.'

‘But that's—'

‘Fortunately it wasn't my good bow. I was using a cheap one, because the best one was being re-haired and the music wasn't all that demanding. But I had to rent another one, which cost just about what I was being paid for the concert.'

Some of the stories involved people who weren't there. And the reason they weren't there was always the same: Gracie had managed not just to damage their careers, but to put an end to them entirely. She had spread rumours, had given misinformation about audition dates and places, had in at least one case caused physical injury to keep someone out of a performance. ‘My wife,' said the man telling that story. ‘She used a throat spray, and Gracie, who was the understudy, substituted shampoo. She just wanted to make Sue sick, but there was an allergic reaction, and she'll never sing again.'

That one quieted the crowd enough that Alan could ask, ‘But why did no one ever sue her, or charge her with criminal conduct? These stories are appalling!'