Death and the Chaste Apprentice

by Robert Barnard

  “At the end. So the applause could go on.”

  “I see. So that would mean you were singing from just before eight, maybe, till about—what?—ten past?”

  Singh shrugged. “Probably.”

  “What were you doing for the rest of the time?”

  “I was sitting in the room for the artists. All the time. They were asking me about my voice, my technique. It is very extraordinary. And at Interval there were impresarios and theater directors talking about possible offers of engagements. I was never alone.”

  He smiled a catlike smile. The pleasure seemed not in having an alibi but in being so sought after. If what he said was true, and it seemed likely, Dundy thought he would not need to interest himself very much in Singh. It would in any case be impossible to be as interested in him as he was himself.

  • • •

  “Darling, it would be totally irresponsible of me to say anything,” said Connie Geary. She smiled at him with the art of one who had once cared if she pleased men. “I am a totally reliable actress: I get on and off the stage when I should, and I never slur my lines. But apart from that I live in a haze. If you ask me ‘Was he or she around at such and such a time?’ I can only give you an impression. If that.”

  “I see.” Dundy sighed.

  “And that wouldn’t be fair.”

  “No. It’s a pity, because you were around in the kitchen most of the time.”

  “Yes, I was. I only have three scenes, though very meaty ones. But I can’t tell you anything definite about what went on backstage because it wouldn’t be right.”

  “Do you remember sending Mr. Fortnum for more gin?”

  “Oh, yes, though I don’t remember when.”

  “Do you remember whether he took a long time?”

  “Darling, it seemed an age!”

  • • •

  “Sure I took a long time,” said Peter Fortnum.

  He was firm spoken and fresh faced, and all Iain Dundy’s experience told him he was about to tell lies. The same half look that had passed between him and his men when Gunter Gottlieb was talking now passed again.

  “Why should it take so long? The maids say you ran through the kitchens and dining room.”

  “Superintendent, would you like to try an experiment? Send one of your policemen here to find room 146 and see how long he takes.”

  Dundy smiled. “I may do that. But it wouldn’t be quite the same thing, would it? My men have probably never been in the residential part of the hotel. You have been here nearly a fortnight.”

  “It doesn’t help,” protested Peter. “You never get used to it. You think you’ve got it taped, and then it throws down a nifty one and you’re lost again. And anyway, my room is on the second floor, and Connie’s is on the first. I just got lost looking for it.”

  “Miss Geary’s room is, as you say, on the first floor. It is also not that far from the door into Des Capper’s flat. Did you go anywhere near that door?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be so sure if you were lost?”

  An expression of irritation crossed Peter’s face. “Not knowingly, I mean.”

  “Did you see anyone while you were searching for room 146?”

  Slight but perceptible pause.

  “No.”

  “Well, well.” Iain Dundy shifted in his chair. There were lies being told here, but for the moment they were not nailable lies. “Let’s get on to something else. I believe you’ve been helping a bit as translator for the Russian lady.”

  Another tiny pause.

  “That’s right.”

  “Including at rehearsals for the opera—whatever it’s called?”

  “Adelaide di Birckenhead.” Peter pronounced the name with relish. “Yes, I went along there when I could.”

  “Tell me, can you give me any reason why Des Capper should feel particularly bitter about Herr Gottlieb?”

  Peter settled back more easily in his chair. “Oh, yes. Yes, I can. It was just a few days ago, actually. I was in the wings, and there had been one of Gottlieb’s scenes. You’ve talked to Gottlieb?” Dundy nodded. “Then you can probably guess what they’re like. Icy, premeditated murder. I don’t think Des Capper saw the scene; otherwise he might have been more careful. Most of the cast were onstage, and Mallory and Singh had gone up, too. Capper came up behind me, saw Singh onstage, and made some remark about not realizing there were Indians in medieval Birckenhead. ‘Running the corner shops, I suppose.’ ” Peter’s imitation, like Gillian’s earlier, brought the dreadful Des momentarily but vividly to life. “Typical barroom joke, and just the sort of thing that Des would think was clever.”

  “Just one moment. What was Capper doing backstage?”

  “Exercising his right as a member of the festival committee to go anywhere and watch anything. I gather this is a right nobody else exercises. Anyway, eventually there was a break—God, we needed it!—and when I got to the Green Room, there was Des already there, irritating the hell out of everyone, particularly the poor American tenor who had been the mainvictim of Gottlieb’s scene. . . . That’s when it happened.”

  “The incident?”

  “Yes, the row. Gottlieb was having a discussion— No, Gottlieb was telling the director of the festival that he intended changing the opera scheduled for the next festival to Fidelio. It was typical Gottlieb unreasonableness. The director was beginning to get a bit heated when Des stepped forward. Trying to mediate, so he said.”

  “Ah, and Gottlieb—?”

  “Bawled him out. Sheer barrack-room stuff. Get out, don’t come near my rehearsals again, that kind of thing. If it had been anyone else, there’d have been applause.”

  “And how did Des Capper take it?”

  “With Gottlieb you don’t have much choice. He slunk out.”

  “Meditating revenge, do you think?”

  “I know so. He practically said so later, said he’d learned all he needed to know about revenge in India in 1947. Des tended to go on about India.”

  Iain Dundy sat considering. Then he threw a bouncer.

  “Tell me, sir, why have you been making so many expensive phone calls since you came here?”

  Peter Fortnum blinked at the change of subject but had his answer—Dundy could have sworn to it—prepared.

  “My girlfriend is in Germany. She is with a theater company in Stuttgart.”

  “She must have very good German.”

  “She is advising on costumes. For a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

  “It’s remarkable that you can afford all these calls. You’re a young actor, and I believe you have quite a small role.”

  “Is it so remarkable?” Peter asked. “With a name like Fortnum?”

  Superintendent Dundy reminded himself that from one point of view all an actor’s performing life is living a lie.

  • • •

  “You’re damned right I wasn’t going to tell you,” said Jason Thark. “And don’t, for God’s sake, ask why not, because it’s bloody obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Well, let’s get the facts clear first, shall we, sir? You went upstairs with the three actors who were about to appear in the balcony scene.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you never followed them into the bedroom?”

  “No, because I saw Des Capper coming along the corridor. There was something about him—something pushy and self-satisfied—and so I lingered by the door. I’d heard about a set-to between him and Gottlieb at the Alhambra. He had the cheek to say, ‘After you,’ and make to go into the bedroom as well.”

  “Which in a way you might say he had a right to do,” said Iain Dundy in fairness to the dead Des.

  “In a way. With any other manager I might have admitted the right: it was his place, as the Alhambra wasn’t. But give Capper an inch and he took a mile. He’d been barging in everywhere pretending he had a right as a member of the festival committee. Next thing would be he’d demand to sit onstage, as the no
blemen used to. So I gave him the rounds of the kitchen and told him to stick to his quarters.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “How do you think? He bridled, muttered, threatened, but in the end he trotted off.”

  “And you, sir? What did you do?”

  “I was rather pleased with the whole affair, quite frankly. It made a good addition to the ‘grand remonstrance’ that the cast and I were going to address to the festival committee when the festival was over.”

  “Grand what, sir?”

  “A sort of general complaint by the actors and the other people staying here. A letter to the powers that be in the Beaumont hotel chain and to the festival committee as well. So I went away to one of those little alcoves the place abounds in, one where there was a writing desk, and wrote down the threats that Capper had made and the ridiculous rights he claimed.”

  “I see, sir. Do you still have this memorandum?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact I’ve got it on me.”

  As he took it, Dundy was under no illusions. The memorandum could have been written ten minutes ago.

  • • •

  “Any thoughts?” Dundy asked his men when at last they were alone.

  They looked at each other.

  “On the face of it, Mallory seems the best bet,” said Charlie Peace slowly. “Alone in his hotel room from around eight-fifteen till Interval time and after. If we take it Capper was killed by Interval, that gives him a quarter of an hour to do it in.”

  “Oh, and by the way, he poked his head in at the Shakespeare Bar on the way up,” said Nettles. “Dawn told me that. Perhaps he wasn’t just exhausted by Singh’s performance, after all.”

  “Looking for someone?”

  “Dawn couldn’t say, of course. He said nothing. But maybe he was looking for Des.”

  “And maybe he found him,” said Dundy.

  “I’m not sure, on thinking about it, why I picked on Mallory as the best bet,” said Charlie. “After all, there are at least three others who had good opportunities to get at Des as well. Carston Galloway after the balcony scene—and didn’t the Galloways chuck around innuendos about the other actors? Then there’s Fortnum, of course, when he went to get the gin. And Gunter Gottlieb any time after his girl left. He, in a way, had the most opportunity and was the least accounted for.”

  “Yes, but can you see anyone arranging an assignation like his was just before committing a murder? If, of course, he did intend committing it. The trouble is, we know of no reason for Gottlieb to kill Capper. He’d seen him off. It would make more sense the other way round: Gottlieb as victim.”

  “A highly popular corpse,” commented Nettles.

  “One thing, though,” said Charlie thoughtfully. “If the key to all this is in Des’s determination to ‘Get Gottlieb,’ then it may be we’re paying too much attention to the play and not enough to the opera. Perhaps we should forget the actors for a bit and take a look at the singers.”

  Chapter 13

  The Director’s Office

  “ANYONE for the opera?” asked Dundy.

  Evening had come, and weariness set in.

  “Er, my wife has just had a baby,” said Nettles.

  “Of course. I’d forgotten.”

  “It is the fourth, but I’d quite like to see it.”

  “Oh, Lord. Haven’t you seen it yet?”

  “Only got the message as I was coming in this morning.” Nettles shrugged. “Policeman’s lot. Policeman’s wife’s lot.”

  “What about you, Peace?”

  “Try anything once. But we’re not going to get seats, are we?”

  “We’ll try to get them to slot us in somehow.”

  Dundy had begun to feel that the line of interviewees would stretch out to the crack of doom. It was all too much. There were others to interview, but they could wait: One of them needed a Russian interpreter. Ronnie Wimsett seemed to have been onstage much of the evening, and never on the upper stage. Gunter Gottlieb’s heavy would at least have made a change after all the arty people, a reversion to familiar territory after uncharted shores. But he couldn’t see that Gunter’s girl was of much significance. She had apparently come and gone well before the earliest time the murder could have been committed. And it hadn’t been anything more than a quick dip, for either of them, so far as he could see.

  Sitting for a moment in the little manager’s office, Nettles having scurried off, Charlie standing waiting for some action, Dundy meditated on the unattractive figure of the world’s next “great conductor.” He realized that all such figures had two sides, the artist and the private man, and that with Gottlieb the private man trailed badly last. He wondered briefly at such an unadulterated swine being the mediator between great composers and the ordinary man. He seemed to remember that a lot of musicians had behaved very badly in Nazi Germany. Then he shook himself and put aside the thoughts as unprofitable.

  “I’ll ring the festival office,” he said. “See if something can be arranged.”

  “Well, of course,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “the director of the festival is very busy, because it is the first night of the opera. That’s what he’s doing at the moment. He’s down at the Alhambra seeing that the critics get their creature comforts and welcoming distinguished guests: Lord Harewood is coming, and Lord Goodman, and all sorts of people like that. On the other hand, I do know that he’s very concerned about this murder, concerned that it shouldn’t cast a cloud over the festival. . . .”

  “Ha!” said Dundy to Charlie as they collected together their notebooks and got ready to leave the Saracen for the first time that day. “Cast a cloud over the festival! Murder never casts a cloud over anything! As far as the mob coming here is concerned, it’ll be a great bonus. Murder is the great British spectator sport, the ultimate in good clean fun.”

  Walking past the copper on the door and out into the pale evening sunlight, they found they had to cope with cameras and media persons stationed outside. One reporter looked pointedly and hopefully at their wrists (“Black held in Aussie slaying”), while another pursued them along High Street with questions. “Wrong man, sorry,” lied Dundy, and they managed the rest of the five-minute walk in peace.

  By now it was nearly seven o’clock, and the audience was flocking around and into the blue-and-maroon little theater, splendid, yet slightly dotty. Charlie looked at the audience curiously. It was certainly not like the Covent Garden audience—not dressy and ignorant. Charlie had got the measure of a Covent Garden audience in his younger days, when he had done duty for a ticket tout in Floral Street on a Pavarotti night. This audience was very different. There was the odd sprinkling of black-tie-and-long-skirt couples, but in general this was a young people’s festival and a mecca for enthusiasts and cranks. Dress was casual, even colorful. Dundy, too, watched them for a moment; then they both slipped through into the foyer. Here Dundy gave a discreet message to one of the attendants, to be passed on to the director. Then they made for a deserted corner to wait for the rush to subside.

  “My mother used to play Bingo in a place like this,” said Charlie cheerfully. “This one’s gone uphill.”

  The director Dundy could point out to Charlie, having seen his picture in the Ketterick Evening Post. He was a comfortable, candid-looking man, with just a hint of being worried out of his life, which Iain Dundy could quite understand, granted what much of his life must be like. He was standing by the stairs welcoming faces in the audience that he recognized. There were many of these, for the festival thrived on its regulars, and they seemed as pleased to see him as he apparently was to see them. The audience was as comfortable looking as the director. They were mostly discussing the singers and waxing lyrical about the particular canary they fancied.

  “It’s a bit like a sports meeting,” said Charlie. “People comparing Cram with Coe.”

  “And going all the way back to Bannister,” agreed Dundy. “Some of these people sound like canary fanciers from wa
y back, or gramophone freaks who collect seventy-eights. It wasn’t like this in the old days. They’ve built up these audiences, just as the Saracen has.”

  For Dundy had been to the festival opera years before, when he had had a wife to buy tickets and the tickets had miraculously coincided with an evening off. The opera had been Donizetti then, too—Don Sébastien, Roi de Portugal (“like listening to a mouse trying to roar”—The Observer). Dundy had rather enjoyed it, but he remembered the audience’s commentary as being more bemused than informed.

  Eventually the forward-moving stream thinned, the director’s genial greetings became fewer, and the noise of the orchestra’s tuning up penetrated through the doors into the auditorium. Last-minute arrivals, scuttling through, managed no more than a smile and a nod at the director. He looked towards Dundy, raised his eyebrows, then nodded up the stairs. Dundy and Charlie went over, and all three went on thick red pile up to the circle, then through a door that led them into a maze of corridors out of bounds to the general public. Eventually they came to a door labeled “Festival Director,” and Charlie and Dundy were ushered into a tiny but cozy office with a desk piled with reference books and telephone directories and with room in front of the desk for only a couple of chairs. The walls were decorated, like London Italian restaurants, with publicity photographs of opera singers.

  “I have a little office at the Saracen as well,” explained the director, making them comfortable and pouring them both neat whiskeys from a bottle in the filing cabinet. “But somehow it’s been less pleasant working there since poor old Arthur died.”

  Dundy was willing to hear just one more verdict on the unlovable Des.

  “The new manager?” he asked. “Our popular corpse?”

  “Exactly. I’m sure you’ve got the general idea by now. An appalling know-all, a peddler of folk wisdom and quack remedies, a one-man popular informer.”

  “And a great collector of inconvenient information about people,” added Dundy.

  “Yes, I—” The director hesitated, looked at Dundy, and then plunged in. “I suppose you remember the case earlier this year when my daughter was accused of shoplifting?”