Murder to Music

by Margaret Newman

  ‘He won’t come for that.’ Owen spoke brusquely. ‘You people seem to think that just because a man’s a musician, he can’t have any common sense. Cassati’s the greatest tenor in the world and he’s over forty. He’s got his old age to think of. “Reasonable” doesn’t mean “ludicrous”.’

  ‘Even with the broadcast fee coming in, fifty guineas would have to be our top offer, and that’s dangerous,’ said the treasurer firmly.

  ‘God!’ muttered Owen, hunching himself back once more into his armchair by the fire.

  ‘Can we,’ asked Shirley, ‘instruct the secretary to engage Signor Cassati if he will come for fifty guineas or less? If not, I suppose it will have to be Davidson again.’

  ‘That seems a very reasonable solution.’ Mrs Cuthbertson looked jerkily round the room. ‘Mrs Bainsbury, will you…’

  ‘Of course.’ Mrs Bainsbury was more efficient than her dowdy housewifeliness would suggest; she was writing too busily to return the chairwoman’s nervous smile. ‘And for the pianist?’

  Everyone looked at John Southerley, a pleasant, shy young man who flushed scarlet and studied his toes.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Cuthbertson, beaming. ‘I would like to propose that we invite our accompanist, Mr Southerley, to play the part. He gives us so much of his time and skill at our practices that I do think…’

  Her voice tailed away into uncertainty once more, but she was reassured by a general murmur of agreement from the little group. Only Owen scowled, then spoke abruptly.

  ‘It’s out of the question. The part’s a difficult one and we must have a professional. I suggest Bretherton.’

  ‘But, my dear Mr Burr, Mr Southerley is a professional. We have all admired his recitals at the Wigmore Hall. I feel it would be ungrateful of us not to forward his career, if we can do so in a way so pleasant for ourselves.’

  John rose abruptly.

  ‘Perhaps you’d prefer me to wait outside while you discuss this.’

  ‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ Owen interrupted sharply. ‘It’s quite out of the question. Although I may not be trusted even to buy a stamp on behalf of the choir, I presume you’re not going to deny that I have the right to make decisions on artistic matters.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t really, you know, Owen,’ said Mackenzie Mortimer. ‘I don’t want to be difficult, but that right belongs to the Old Man. The fact that you’re his assistant doesn’t automatically give you all his privileges. This is something that I feel is important. The choir would like to see John’s name on our posters, I know, and if we can’t agree on it here, then I think we ought to put it up to the Old Man himself.’

  The door opened gently and Roger Bainsbury’s head appeared.

  ‘The Old Man’s just arrived,’ he announced quietly, and there followed an exchange of raised eyebrows and shakes of the head with his mother which Delia sadly interpreted as meaning that refreshments were being offered and rejected until later. He withdrew with a smile, and his place in the doorway was taken by Evan Tredegar, conductor-in-chief of the Metropolitana.

  At the sight of the bowed white head, the heavy body, the men of the Committee rose to their feet and there ensued several minutes of bobbing up and down, of proffered arms and chairs, until the Old Man was seated. But he’s as fit as any of them, thought Delia to herself indignantly, seventy-nine though he may be.

  A man who could look so clumsy and dull, even apathetic, and yet could talk like a leprechaun and conduct like a child’s vigorous caricature of a conductor was not a man who would win Delia’s pity for senility. On the contrary, it annoyed her that he should foster the reputation of his age and should leave so much to be done by the young assistant he had appointed. She did not realise that he was in fact as lazy as he pretended to be, that his only real interest was in the composition of the large-scale works which he produced at the end of each decade. He took pleasure in conducting concert performances, but he had never been able to understand why an amateur choir should need more than the couple of rehearsals which normally sufficed for a professional orchestra, and it had been a landmark in his career when his increasing age and reputation had enabled him, eight years before, to hand the work of battering the music into the choir over to Owen Burr.

  ‘Sorry to be late,’ he muttered as he lowered himself weightily into the most comfortable chair, opposite to Owen’s. ‘Knew you were going to discuss the Mass; thought I’d better give you the chance to turn it down before I turned up to make it embarrassing for you.’

  The Committee produced a selection of deprecatory noises. Only Delia and John smiled across the room to each other their appreciation of the new excuse. Evan Tredegar, when he came at all to the Metro’s Committee meetings, came late; it was popularly supposed that he was interested only in the beer with which the session usually ended.

  ‘We were just discussing the question of the pianist, Mr Tredegar,’ Mackenzie Mortimer said respectfully. ‘Of course, the decision is entirely yours, but most of us feel that we would like John to be considered.’

  Owen interrupted hurriedly before Tredegar could finish clearing his throat.

  ‘Of course, sir, I pointed out that it would be impossible.’

  ‘Impossible? Nothing is impossible, Owen my lad. Why should this be?’

  ‘Obviously a more experienced player will be needed—someone like Bretherton.’

  Tredegar grunted, sitting back in his chair and crossing his thick legs in front of him.

  ‘Nonsense, my boy. Absolute nonsense. If I’d wanted Bretherton, I should have scored the part for harpsichord; fellow’s no good on a modern piano. Wrote the part for John; thought it was time the Metro gave him something better to do than thump out the soprano part on two fingers. Sure he’ll do it very well—eh, John?’

  Delia watched the young man’s face flush once more with pleasure as, with a rustle of agenda papers, the Committee moved on to the next business. But there was resentment in his eyes as well, and it’s not surprising, she thought, when Owen’s done his best to humiliate him. She moved her eyes to Owen himself, and at the glance she shivered. Resentment was too mild a word for the expression in those dark Welsh eyes. They were fixed intently on Evan Tredegar, and every flicker was impregnated with hate.

  Chapter Two

  Simon watched from the car as Delia stood for a moment on Mrs Bainsbury’s doorstep and smiled at a young man—a very young man, he noticed bitterly. They chatted briefly together; then Delia shook her head in reply to some question of her companion’s and, glancing towards the road, recognised Simon’s car and waved.

  ‘Still alive, then?’ said Simon as he opened the car door for her, repressing with some difficulty the question he would really have liked to ask.

  ‘Just about. Tired, though.’ Delia flopped heavily into the seat and slammed the door. ‘Why didn’t you come in and fetch me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to spoil the fun. There’s nothing like the arrival of a policeman for drying up all the really spiteful conversation and producing on every face that “all friends together and I was only doing twenty-nine-and-a-half, officer” sort of smirk.’

  He began to drive at a leisurely pace towards Delia’s suburban home. Delia was genuinely tired and sat silently; Simon glanced sideways at her and smiled.

  ‘Come along, tell me all. You know how I love your gossip. Who is Owen’s great enemy today?’

  ‘Oh, it varies from moment to moment. I think he managed to be rude to everyone except Shirley and me tonight.’

  ‘Well, at least that shows some sense of discrimination. You don’t mean to say that even your Old Man came under fire, though?’

  Delia considered for a moment.

  ‘No, I don’t think Owen actually said anything to him, although there was one moment when looks were trying very hard to kill. On the whole, Mrs Bainsbury came off worst—it seemed rather hard when we were all guests in her house.’

  ‘Mrs Bainsbury? I always get these women mixed up. Is she the
chairman or the secretary?’

  ‘Secretary. She’s quite pleasant though I find her a little dull—one of these fiftyish women who devote their lives to their sons. Mind you, I think she’s quite sensible about it. Roger’s really rather a man’s man; he likes playing team games and drinking at the local and making furniture and television sets and gadgets, but whenever he gets interested in a girl, she makes him bring her home to hear a little speech about wanting to see her dear boy settled down. She’ll always have the choir business to fall back on, of course; it must be very nearly a full-time job.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Simon carefully.

  ‘Oh I was one of Roger’s girls for about three months. That was how I got on to the Committee. The members’ representatives are supposed to be chosen by the singers in the choir just to put their point of view without holding any office, but in fact, of course, nobody ever knows anyone else’s name or anything about them, so usually the secretary puts a couple of people up and the choir votes for them like a string of obedient sausages. Roger saw me at a concert one day and saw to it that I was one of the names for the next year. That’s all.’

  ‘I see,’ said Simon coldly. Delia glanced across at him, startled.

  ‘Oh, Simon, don’t be silly. That was three years ago, and anyway he gave me up after a couple of months. I believe he always does. He had a bad war, and he was too young when it started to have made much of a life for himself; now he seems too frightened of responsibility to try. I felt rather sorry for him really. He was wanting so hard to fall in love and he simply couldn’t manage it. Sometimes I used to be naughty and just stand while he tried to persuade himself to kiss me goodnight. But he never did.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never ever.’ She put her hand on his knee and squeezed it gently. ‘I think you’d be surprised if you knew how very few people have ever been allowed to kiss me goodnight, Simon.’

  He gave her a quick smile. ‘Sorry, Delia. Sometimes it really hurts to think that I’ve missed twenty-nine years of your life. I would so much have liked to know you while I was still young.’

  ‘You are young,’ said Delia emphatically. ‘If anyone tells me that I’m not young when I’m only thirty-eight, there’ll be plenty of trouble.’

  Swaying gently from one side of the road to the other, Simon found a hand to enclose hers, and they smiled into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘Tell me more about your Mrs Bainsbury. Is she a good secretary?’

  ‘Absolutely terrific. She never seems to put a foot wrong. It’s quite a job, you know, keeping two hundred singers happy and getting the right number of highly unbusinesslike musicians to turn up at the right concert-hall on the right day with more than a vague idea of the work they are due to perform. Not to mention dealing with printers, agencies, advertising, copyright holders and all the rest of it. All the Committee does is to mention a few names and then say: “And everything else as usual, Mrs Bainsbury; it seemed most satisfactory last time.” And the next time it seems equally satisfactory, but I’m sure an immense amount of work must go into it. She does it all for love—and yet Owen treats her like a junior shorthand-typist. It makes my blood boil sometimes.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she resign, just to show him?’

  ‘Strictly confidentially, I think she’s got a bit of a thing about the Old Man. In fact, I did once hear a bit of gossip about them in their younger days, but it was too vague to be worth repeating. Anyhow, she certainly hero-worships him now—can hardly keep her eyes off him. We even get such gems in the Minutes as: “Following an inspired suggestion by the conductor-in-chief, the Committee agreed that…”.’ They laughed together.

  ‘And is the adoration reciprocated?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Oh, far from it. He’s rather testy with her, in fact—gives the impression that he hasn’t any use for her. That’s what makes Owen feel that he can be as rude as he likes. But the Old Man knows her value as a secretary, he never goes too far.’

  ‘Unlike Owen? You haven’t told me about their row yet.’

  ‘Yes, it was a real blaze-up. To look at her, you’d never think she had a temper, but it came out tonight all right. For two hours she just sat there, making notes, looking efficient, nodding her head, and then suddenly she was spitting like a cat. It was about the Old Man’s Mass; we’d discussed it at the beginning of the meeting and then we came back to it at the end, because she wanted to check one or two details for the publicity.’

  ‘By the Old Man’s Mass do you mean the quantity of flesh which is his habitual companion? It seems to me rather a delicate subject for a Committee.’

  ‘Silly! He’s written a Mass. A choral work. In C minor.’

  ‘I see—but you could hardly expect me to know that by instinct. Is he a Catholic, then?’

  Delia looked surprised. ‘I don’t think so. I imagine he just wanted to challenge the great composers on their own ground. It’s designed for the concert-hall rather than the church, I gather—massed voices and quite a big orchestra. You know, under all his laziness, I think the Old Man cares quite a lot about his reputation. Not as a conductor so much, but as a composer.’

  ‘Well, his reputation is fairly high, isn’t it? I should have thought he came into the category of household names.’

  ‘I suspect that he wants the household name to have a handle. I may be quite wrong, of course, but there’s been a rumour going round for some weeks that he’s under consideration for a knighthood in the New Year Honours. Mind you, he deserves it all right, but I wouldn’t be too greatly surprised to learn that he’d started the rumour himself in the hope that its foundation might come later. And he’s chosen a good time. He’ll be eighty next March, and if there’s one thing the British public likes to give honours for, it’s survival into old age. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hasn’t held up the Mass just so that he can make a splash at exactly the right time. The whole thing would appeal to his sense of humour.’

  ‘Has he got one of those? The last time I saw him, he looked half dead.’

  ‘He’s very much alive, as a matter of fact. I like him. I only wish he wouldn’t leave so much to that beast Owen. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with Owen as a conductor, not technically, but he does put people’s backs up so, and it’s awfully difficult to sing well when you’re annoyed. Of course, it must be very frustrating for him, too. He has to do all the work at practices and then the Old Man steps in and collects all the Press raves on the night. Still, I refuse to be sorry for him. He is a beast.’

  ‘And has friend Owen ever taken you home so that his mother can tell you how much she wants him to settle down?’

  The smile faded from Delia’s face as she looked across at her companion.

  ‘Darling, is that still rankling? Please forget it.’ There was a moment’s silence before she went on to answer his question. ‘No. He hasn’t got a mother, and he has got Shirley. I’m no more to him than a soprano occasionally suspected of sharpness—musically, I mean.’

  ‘And what is Shirley to him?’

  ‘Now you’re leaving the field of gossip and starting on scandal. I have no idea, and I don’t particularly want to find out. If you don’t slow down, you’ll be halfway to Scotland in a minute.’

  ‘Good heavens, is this your place already?’ Simon stopped with a jerk which rocked them both forwards. He turned off the engine and put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Am I being invited in?’

  ‘No, I don’t think you are. It’s after midnight already and we both have to get up tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, stay here a little, then.’

  She glanced at the glowing upper window of the house.

  ‘I’d better not, Simon. I see Dad’s awake, and he’ll know it’s us.’

  ‘I don’t see how that matters.’

  ‘Don’t you just? He read one of the Kinsey reports last year, and ever since he has regarded any parked automobile with the grea
test suspicion. Say goodnight nicely.’

  He kissed her tightly. Simon had become a widower at the age of twenty-two, only four months after his marriage. Since then he had lost the habit of taking happiness lightly. He hated each parting from Delia, feeling that one day he might find he would never see her again. Something of this she understood, and she was gentle with him, but at last she put his hands aside and slipped out of the car. As she stood for a second with the door open, touching her lips with her fingers, he made a last appeal for her company.

  ‘But you can’t go yet, Delia. You never told me in the end what Owen and Mrs Bainsbury were quarrelling about.’

  ‘So now you’ll never know—unless you use your detective training to deduce it all from nothing. It won’t really keep you awake at nights though, will it?’

  ‘Not that, perhaps,’ he said miserably, and then the door of the car slammed, echoing down the wet and empty street.

  Chapter Three

  ‘But I think it’s wonderful, quite wonderful, my dear. How could you have kept it to yourself for six weeks? Another work by Evan Tredegar, and the Metro to sing it. Aren’t you all just too thrilled?’

  Mrs Bainsbury smiled her agreement and poured another cup of tea for her friend.

  ‘Yes, we’re very pleased. I do wish you were still in the choir to sing it with us, Janet. It was quite unnecessary of Owen to push you out when you’d been a member for such a long time. There aren’t many founder-members left now—in fact, I think that Mrs Cuthbertson must be almost the only one. That boy has no sense of respect.’

  Mrs Sheraton-Smith sighed a little. ‘Yes, it would have been nice. But you know, dear Maude, you mustn’t get too angry with young Owen on my behalf. He’s quite right from his point of view. He wants to give pleasure to the people who come to hear the concerts, not to the members of the choir, and it’s quite a reasonable way of looking at it. And there’s no doubt about it, I’m afraid; I’ve found it increasingly difficult to hear properly since that horrible bomb. I’m not very much use as a singer anymore.’