Murder to Music

by Margaret Newman

  She handed them over, looked mournfully round the ownerless room and left. Simon remained; for ten minutes he stood without moving as he thought, then, until it was time for him to meet Delia, he began to re-read the papers which Shirley had set aside. The musical efficiency of her notes and the passionate language of her letters impressed him equally: they revealed the two sides of Owen’s character as well as of Shirley’s. And there was one side which Simon found himself increasingly forced to admire; admiration came more easily, he suspected, now that death had removed the other, more infuriating, characteristics. Who else could it be, he wondered, who might also have hated the man too deeply to allow the musician to survive?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Simon ordered coffee and passed Mary Smith’s letter across the table.

  ‘What do you make of this?’ he asked.

  Delia read it with a frown.

  ‘It’s a queer sort of letter, isn’t it? Is it true?’

  ‘You know as much about that as I do. What would you say?’

  She considered it again before answering.

  ‘I don’t think it is. I think Owen was too fastidious to have anything to do with anyone he would describe as a trollop—it was a word he did use, as a matter of fact. I imagine he’d got Shirley or could have her if he wanted to. And there’s something phoney about the letter—as if it were by someone who normally writes good English but is deliberately trying to sound common and only succeeding in patches.’ She read it through again. ‘There’s one other slightly odd thing as well. Most people talk about the Festival Hall; the only people who would say RFH would be those who are in the habit of mentioning it in correspondence.’

  ‘Such as.’

  ‘Well, such as Shirley, or Mrs Bainsbury, or the Old Man.’

  ‘Or John Southerley?’

  ‘Perhaps. Not so likely.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. I was wondering about Shirley myself. I’ve just been talking to her and it seemed to me that she had good reason to be jealous of music; she might have been angry because she wasn’t expecting a baby.’

  ‘Shirley would never be jealous of music,’ Delia said confidently. ‘And I’m sure she really was in love with Owen. She wouldn’t break her own heart by killing him. Surely the Old Man is the most likely of those three. After all, I presume there’s a good chance, isn’t there, that this letter was written either by the murderer or by someone who knew he was suspected of murder and wanted to get you on to a different track?’

  ‘I don’t think it could have been posted by the Old Man. I’ve checked at the airport and none of the staff admits to having taken it for him. And there wasn’t anyone else who need have felt himself dangerously under suspicion.’

  ‘Oh.’ Delia was silent for a moment, while Simon waited for her to produce one of her bright ideas. It came as he had hoped.

  ‘Look, suppose the murderer was a rather squeamish, scrupulous sort of murderer. He found out that the Old Man was going to get the blame and so he felt he must divert you but daren’t do it, of course, with the truth. In other words, perhaps the spirit of the letter is genuine, although none of the facts are.’

  ‘That theory would appear to leave us with Mrs Bainsbury as the murderer. You’d be prepared to accept that, would you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t really. After all, I was standing next to her. I can’t believe that a pistol could be fired so near to me without my knowing about it.’

  ‘There was a lot of noise going on at the time, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but even so, murder isn’t a thing one does casually, I imagine. As soon as our actual singing part was over that evening, we all relaxed, even while the orchestra was still playing. If the person next to me had still been tense instead of relaxing, I’m sure I should have been aware of it. One tends to be sensitive at a time like that. But of course, Mary Smith may not be anything to do with the Metro; she certainly doesn’t have to be one of those three.’

  ‘How depressingly right you are. All the same, you haven’t a specimen of Mrs Bainsbury’s typewriting anywhere, have you?’

  ‘I expect I’ve got an old agenda at home somewhere. I usually make notes on them, so I keep them for a bit. I’ll put it in the post this afternoon if you like.’

  ‘Do. Because although it doesn’t have to be anyone we know about already, who but the people who heard you phone last Tuesday would know that the Old Man—or anyone else—was under suspicion?’

  ‘Is he still, by the way?’

  Simon shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I’m just as I was. I do know that he wasn’t directly connected with Cassati’s disappearance, though, because I’ve had a man on his tail ever since he returned to England. That’s another queer thing—Cassati. Whose idea was it that you should have him?’

  ‘Shirley’s, I think. Mrs Bainsbury would tell you for certain from the Minutes. Shirley was the only one who knew in advance that he was coming to England.’

  ‘How did she find out that, do you think?’

  ‘One of the Covent Garden tenors is a friend of her family. I expect he told them. It wouldn’t be a secret.’

  ‘I suppose not. Well, I must go and pay a call on your treasurer. I’ve had an accountant working on his books and checking them with the bank’s figures and he says that all is not completely well with them.’

  ‘I hope you have an appointment, then. He’s terribly fussy about being disturbed at work.’

  Simon did have an appointment. This did not save him from a ten-minute wait in a secretary’s office, but he passed the time profitably in persuading her to give him a sample of typewriting done on her machine. When he was at last admitted to the insurance agent’s room, he noticed at once the extreme nervousness of Robert Stanley, who lost no time in making clear his resentment of this intrusion.

  ‘I hope you will be able to dispose of your business quickly, Superintendent. I do not normally approve of devoting my office hours to the affairs of the Metro. However, I presume that you are still investigating Owen’s death.’

  ‘Indirectly, yes. I’m also trying to find out something more about Cassati. I’ve been looking through your accounts and I see that his fee is down as fifty guineas, paid. There isn’t any possibility of a mistake there, by any chance?’

  ‘No. What sort of a mistake?’

  ‘Well, Cassati’s agent says he has received a hundred guineas—the usual fee, apparently. It’s only a minor point, but surprising, so I thought I’d check it.’

  ‘No one has ever mentioned the figure of a hundred to me: if that had been his fee, we should have been unable to book him. I should hardly be likely to make a mistake of that sort in my entry.’

  Simon smiled blandly.

  ‘Of course not. Any mistakes you make are more likely to be on the other side, aren’t they, Mr Stanley?’

  The other man’s face first whitened and then flushed.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about. You sound as if your intention is to be insulting.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Stanley. But you do seem to have had trouble once or twice with the Metro’s accounts, don’t you—surprising, really, for a man in your position who must be used to dealing with figures. There was that business eight years ago, for example. It was getting very complicated, wasn’t it, until you managed to pay £800 into the Metro’s account. Yet at that time your own account had been overdrawn consistently for almost a year. Where did the money come from, Mr Stanley?’ He added, as he saw the other’s eyes desperately searching: ‘You might as well tell me the truth, you know. It saves so much misunderstanding in the end.’

  The answer came grudgingly, but Simon accepted it as true.

  ‘It came from Evan Tredegar.’

  ‘Why should he go to that expense?’

  ‘He was a friend of mine, he was a friend of the choir’s, and he was rich.’

  ‘He must have been a very good friend of yours. Was the money a gift or a loan?’

 
‘A gift. I was in a difficult situation just then. There would have been no hope of my repaying a loan.’

  ‘And Owen knew about it?’

  ‘It was he who brought it all up. I’d hoped that I should be able to straighten things up before the audit, but then Owen arrived on the scene and wanted the books before he started, to see how things stood. I didn’t have time to do anything about them and he soon noticed what was wrong and told Evan.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Stanley, did he ever try to blackmail you?’

  ‘Not that time. Evan wouldn’t have let him.’

  ‘Not that time! But perhaps the next time—that was two years ago, wasn’t it? I’m surprised that Mr Tredegar hadn’t suggested that you should resign before that.’

  ‘He did, but I was ashamed and wanted to make amends by doing the job properly. And the second time wasn’t so serious. I’d only borrowed a little money to pay for a summer holiday. I paid it back within two months.’

  ‘But in that two months Owen discovered it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he do? Use threats to get money out of you?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Stanley looked genuinely shocked. ‘No, he didn’t blackmail me in any criminal sense—he never said anything openly. He just let me know that he knew, and, then whenever he wanted something, he would mention it indirectly, as if he were teasing me, to make sure that I didn’t stop him.’

  ‘What sort of thing do you mean that he wanted?’

  ‘Well, it usually happened at Metro committee meetings—for example, if he wanted to book a particular soloist for a concert and he could see that I was just going to say that we couldn’t afford it.’

  Simon stared in surprise.

  ‘Do you mean to say that he only used this discovery of his to get what he wanted musically—never for his own advantage?’

  ‘That is correct. If he had asked for money, of course I should have had to come out with the whole business. But the things he wanted—two extra trumpets or a top-rank soprano or whatever it was—always seemed so reasonable that I never thought it worthwhile to make a fuss.’

  Simon looked squarely across the table.

  ‘Would you be prepared, Mr Stanley, to repeat everything that you have told me here on oath, as being nothing but the truth?’

  ‘I would.’

  Still staring, Simon felt inclined to believe him. The treasurer was clearly much more at ease now that he had relieved his mind of its fretting anxiety. Moreover, unlikely though the story might sound at first hearing, it fitted in with the picture of Owen on which everyone seemed to agree—that of the monomaniac, the fanatical musician. He wondered whether there was anything more to be said and as he sat in silence his fingers played with a leaflet arranged on the edge of the table in a position where it was obviously meant to attract the attention of visitors. It showed pictorially the advantages to be gained (by one’s widow) of insuring one’s life. Fleetingly, as he stood up to go, Simon wondered whether Delia would appreciate such a gesture if…Then his mind gave a jerk and his wandering eyes steadied.

  ‘I suppose that as a friend of Mr Tredegar’s who deals in insurance, you’d be given any business of that sort to do for him?’

  Robert Stanley stood up also, smiling in his relief that the interview was ending.

  ‘I don’t think that sort of thing has ever attracted him. He has no dependants, and quite enough money to last his own lifetime.’

  ‘I was thinking actually of the policy he took out on Owen Burr’s life. You did that for him, did you?’

  A shutter came down. Stanley stopped dead with his hand on the door. Then he smiled with polite vagueness.

  ‘On Owen’s life? That does not sound very likely. I think you must have made a mistake there, Superintendent.’

  ‘I will ask you a direct question. Were you aware that such a policy existed?’

  ‘It seems to me most unlikely. In a case like that, where there is no relationship, a reason would have to be given for such an action.’

  ‘That is exactly why it occurred to me that a friend in the insurance world might be useful, Mr Stanley. I’m sorry you don’t feel able to be frank. Mr Tredegar told me about the existence of the policy himself, so I am sure he will be quite ready to give me further details.’

  He could see as he watched that his guess had been correct. He was hardly sure why he had bothered to make it until he heard himself make one parting, unanswered remark.

  ‘Shielding Mr Tredegar is a very dangerous hobby, Mr Stanley—and not least, of course, for Mr Tredegar.’

  As he hurried down the stairs and along the street, he was pleased with his exit line but not sure, on reflection, that it had been of any constructive value. It was difficult to credit Robert Stanley with the imagination to become Mary Smith. Simon hailed a bus and found himself after a snail’s progress down Oxford Street outside the office of Jack Higgins, musical agent.

  Mr Higgins had been educated past his name. Opulence gleamed from the polish of his bald head to that of his handmade shoes. He spoke smoothly, if over-ornately, and his welcome to Simon left nothing to be desired.

  ‘Come in, Superintendent. What will you have to drink? I know I needn’t ask whether you’ve found my client yet. I’ve had one of your pals in an hour ago and he knows as much about it as I do.’

  ‘Does that distress you, Mr Higgins?’

  The agent threw two fleshy hands outwards.

  ‘I met Cassati for the first time ten days ago. I’m only acting as a sub-agent for his Rome manager. This is the first time he’s visited England professionally.’

  ‘That’s surprising, since I understand he speaks English perfectly. How did he pick it up?’

  ‘I said professionally. He was at school here for five years as a boy. Hated every minute of it, he told me. His father was a rich silver merchant, but he never got further here than being called a dirty little Italian. Mind you, he wanted to come over in 1948 for a tour but I advised against it. Too soon after the war, I told him, and he was mixed up in it. Might have caused feeling.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Simon. ‘You’re not going to tell me that with a figure like that Cassati was in the Army!’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it. To look at him you’d think he’d devote all his energy to finding some nice soft corner. Good excuse, a voice like that, too. But not a bit of it. He was one of the real Fascists—a personal pal of some of the high-ups. He volunteered as soon as the war started for Italy—wouldn’t be kept out. Mind you, I don’t think he ever did any actual fighting. But for a couple of years he was on the staff of a POW camp in North Italy—run by Germans, with a lot of British prisoners there. And he made some pretty hot speeches too, especially just before the war began. People don’t remember, though. No complaints at all this year, not even letters, and you’d be surprised at what I get with some of these foreign singers. You have to prove that they spent the war in Belsen before some people will be satisfied. However, I suppose you’ve got something to ask me, haven’t just come for the pleasure of my company.’

  ‘It’s a small point, Mr Higgins, but it’s been puzzling me. When I came in last week your young lady told me that the Metro had paid a hundred guineas for that concert, but they seem to think they only paid fifty. Can you straighten it out?’

  Mr. Higgins swung in his chair towards a green steel cabinet and pulled out a drawer. From the file he extracted he chose a bundle of letters pinned together and studied them.

  ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘It was a bit queer. I thought they wouldn’t have him, and then they booked him after all, but Mrs Bainsbury—that’s their secretary—asked me to send two bills to her, each for fifty guineas and each made out as if it were the only one. I thought it was a bit odd, but the Metro are good customers of mine, so I did it and the whole lot was paid all right. One cheque was signed by Stanley and Bainsbury as usual and the other by J. Sheraton-Smith. Who he is you’d have to find out from Mrs Bainsbury.’

  ‘May
I do that now, on your telephone?’

  ‘Certainly, Superintendent, certainly.’

  He pushed the telephone across his desk and tactfully engrossed himself in a sheaf of press-cuttings while Simon elicited from a doubtful Mrs Bainsbury the address of Mrs Sheraton-Smith.

  To this address, in a massive Kensington Crescent, Simon made his way at once and was shown by a young maid into a drawing-room furnished almost entirely, it seemed, with unsteady occasional tables and silver-framed photographs. In the middle of this gallery Mrs Sheraton-Smith was pouring herself tea from a silver teapot. She received the announcement of Simon’s name and business with a smoothly vague politeness that had doubtless been perfected in many decades of At Homes. Simon came quickly to the point of his visit.

  ‘Would you mind telling me what is your special interest in Signor Cassati, Mrs Sheraton-Smith?’

  ‘Could you speak a little louder, Superintendent?’

  Simon repeated his enquiry.

  ‘I understand that he is a very fine tenor. Will you help yourself to sugar?’

  ‘Thank you. But there must have been some more cogent reason that would persuade you to contribute such a large sum in order to bring him to England. You must have wanted him to come very badly.’

  ‘It was not too large a sum to me. And of course he was coming to England anyway; I was not interested in arranging that. My only wish was to help the Metro to make the Mass a really great occasion. And so they would have done, had it not been for poor Owen’s death. But do you know, I understand that now they are being flooded with applications to join the choir, and I very much fear it is because of the newspaper reports of the murder. It is pathetic, is it not, that people should be so anxious to associate themselves with a sensation?’

  ‘Have you ever given money to the Metro before, Mrs Sheraton-Smith?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I have. It is very difficult for a choir of this sort, which feels some sense of duty to living composers, to survive in the musical world of today. Everything is so expensive; although the choir itself is amateur—no choir of that size could hope to be anything else—yet the orchestra, the soloists, the management of the hall, the printers, all expect very large sums of money and few concert-goers seem prepared to pay the economic price for their seats—or indeed, in the case of the more modern composers, to pay any price at all. Bach and Handel are always financially sound, of course, but I am glad to say that Mr Tredegar has never allowed the choir to limit its repertory merely to the safe works. So on many occasions there have been considerable financial losses. I am by no means the only person to have come to the rescue at such a time, and it has never occurred to me before that any reason was necessary apart from the facts of the case.’