Bantam of the Opera

by Mary Daheim

  “This ordeal isn’t over yet?” Plunkett asked, more of the room in general than of anyone in particular.

  “No, sir,” said Doyle.

  “Nein,” growled Schutzendorf.

  “I’m afraid not,” replied Judith.

  Plunkett waited for Schutzendorf to make the next turn in his pacing, then sat down in the rocking chair. “The nurse has given Mrs. Pacetti a sedative. Poor thing, it’s been one tragic blow after another.”

  Before anyone could respond, the phone rang. Judith considered picking up the receiver in the living room, but decided to take it in the kitchen instead. Just before it switched to the answering machine on the fourth ring, she said hello. An unfamiliar, but lilting voice came on the line.

  “Judith Flynn? This is Melissa Bargroom of the Times. I understand we’re having lunch tomorrow. Is it true that Mario Pacetti was poisoned? I just got the word from one of our police reporters.”

  “You got it right,” said Judith, perching on the stool next to the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room. “The police are here now. Did you talk to my cousin, Serena?”

  “Not since this afternoon,” said Melissa. “I figured I’d go straight to the horse’s…uh, mouth.” She gave a throaty little laugh.

  “As well you might,” chuckled Judith, understanding why Renie and Melissa were friends. “Don’t tell me you’re doing the story on Pacetti? Isn’t that an odd assignment for a music critic?”

  “I’m doing it with one of our regular police beat people,” answered Melissa. “How is Mrs. Pacetti taking all this? Are the police there now? Shall I come over?”

  Judith bit her lip. If she let Melissa come, it would open up a field day for the rest of the media. Judith had already been through that once, when the fortune-teller was murdered in her dining room. It was almost 10:00 P.M. Of course there was no way to keep Melissa away from Hillside Manor, nor did Judith want to put her off completely.

  “You don’t have a deadline until tomorrow, right?”

  “Right,” said Melissa. “Eleven o’clock. But that’s before we do lunch.”

  Inspiration struck Judith. “Then how about breakfast? Say around eight-thirty?” By then, she would have her guests taken care of, or so she hoped.

  Melissa turned dubious. “Wel…what about Serena? She’s never conscious before ten.”

  “I’ll get Mrs. Pacetti’s nurse to run a caffeine IV into her,” said Judith breezily. “Cheers To You Cafe, eight-thirty?”

  “Got it,” said Melissa, and rang off. Hurriedly, Judith dialed Renie’s number. Renie groaned at the change in plans. Judith reminded her that they were involved in a murder case. Renie groaned some more. But she gave in, sort of.

  “I’ll never forgive either of you two jerks for this,” she fumed. “I’ll have to get up at seven-fifteen! I don’t even know what it’s like at that time of day! Are there people around or what?”

  Judith chortled and hung up. Out in the living room, Schutzendorf had finally sat down on the piano bench, but he was still in a state of upheaval. Plunkett, meanwhile, was drumming his thin fingers on his trousers. Only Ted Doyle looked at ease, though Judith guessed it was part of his professional stance. Certainly the tension in the room was palpable.

  “So you are saying someone poisoned the great Pacetti?” Schutzendorf appeared to be grilling Officer Doyle instead of the other way around.

  “That’s right,” said Doyle, his expression revealing nothing.

  “When? How? Explain, bitte.” Half a room away, Schutzendorf glared from under his heavy eyebrows.

  “You’ll hear the details soon enough from Lieutenant Price,” said Doyle. He folded his arms across his chest, as if to ward off further questions.

  Judith had resumed her place on the sofa, across from Doyle. “You were backstage before the performance, weren’t you, Mr. Plunkett?” she asked, trying to sound casual. “How did Mr. Pacetti seem before he made his entrance?”

  The business manager’s fingers paused just above the fine wool that covered his knees. Carefully, Plunkett considered the question. “He performed his rituals, warming up his vocal cords, holding the relic of St. Cecelia, the patroness of musicians, against his throat, invoking Beniamino Gigli’s ghost, reciting Giuseppe Verdi’s name backwards and forwards seven times, all of his regular habits. He was as usual, drinking hot tea and being on edge. That is, he was having his customary case of nerves, what outsiders might, I suppose, mistakenly call having a fit. There was a row with Dunkowitz, some sort of heated exchange with Inez Garcia-Green, a snubbing of Creighton Layton, a stern warning for the prompter, some words with the stage director, the chorus master, the choreographer—as I said, the usual.” Plunkett concluded his recital with a slight shrug.

  The catalog of Pacetti’s extreme rituals and excessive behavior caused Judith to grimace, but only one phrase stuck in her mind. “Mr. Pacetti always drank hot tea before a performance, isn’t that so?”

  Plunkett nodded. “It somehow soothed him while also invigorating him. Mrs. Pacetti brought it in a big thermos.”

  An idea was igniting in Judith’s brain. “She made the tea here, in the kitchen?”

  Plunkett was looking a bit puzzled by Judith’s question. “I believe so. That’s what she usually does.”

  Ted Doyle was obviously following Judith’s train of thought. “Where was the thermos kept? That is, was it left in the dressing room?”

  “Oh, no,” said Plunkett. “Mrs. Pacetti carried it with her at all times. Mr. Pacetti drank out of the plastic cover. You know, a cuplike thing that’s made for drinking but fits on top of the thermos.”

  Schutzendorf also had apparently caught on to what Judith was thinking. “There might be poison in the tea? Vat an idea! It’s too terrible!”

  Ted Doyle made no comment. Judith figured he wasn’t going to give anything away until Woody had spoken privately with the others. But it wouldn’t hurt for her to do a little more probing of her own.

  “Did you see Mario Pacetti before the performance, Mr. Schutzendorf?”

  With a sad shake of his head, Schutzendorf leaned against the piano, the keys jangling unharmoniously. “Nein, I saw him last under this very roof when he and Frau Pacetti were going out to their limousine. I went later to the opera house, where I sat in the front row center. Too close, some would say, but fine for me. I like to see as well as hear. I am next to music critic, Frau Barfly.”

  “Bargroom,” corrected Judith, but Schutzendorf didn’t seem to hear her.

  The door to the front parlor opened and a much subdued Tippy de Caro appeared. “Golly,” she said in a travesty of her usual exuberant voice, “this is serious! It’s like…death!”

  Woody appeared, beckoning to Schutzendorf. The German pulled himself up from the piano bench and tromped across the living room. “The interrogation,” he muttered, “like Nazis. It is a good thing that I am merely…innocent!” He banged the door behind him, rattling the china on Judith’s plate rail.

  Tippy, meanwhile, made as if to join the others, then abruptly swung around and headed toward the stairway off the entry hall. “I’m beat. G’night, all.”

  Judith noticed that Winston Plunkett didn’t even bother to look up. “Ms. de Caro seems a bit shaken,” Judith remarked, her eyes on Plunkett. “Is she the type who has a delayed reaction?”

  Plunkett moved slowly back and forth in the rocker as he considered the question. “Possibly. I don’t know her very well. She’s only worked for me since July. Some would think her a trifle flighty, but that’s merely a mannerism. She’s actually quite efficient.”

  Judith tried to conceal her surprise. “Then she must have come with excellent references.”

  Plunkett nodded. “Very much so. She worked for the Boston Pops previously. Ms. de Caro has quite a solid background in classical music. I suspect that she sometimes pretends otherwise because as a child she was afraid of having her peers make fun of her.”

  The explanation made some se
nse to Judith, but she didn’t understand why Tippy would deliberately adopt such a lamebrained image as a professional. Judith also wondered if her surmise about a romantic link between Tippy and Plunkett had been wrong from the start.

  Schutzendorf reappeared, mopping his brow. “Mein Gott! Such questions! My heart is pounding like the whumpa-whumpa machine! Now I must postpone my departure for at least three days. My business affairs will turn into a shambles!” He, too, headed upstairs.

  Winston Plunkett went off to the front parlor with the air of a man headed for a root canal. Judith was left alone with Ted Doyle.

  “How much is Woody telling them?” she asked the young policeman.

  “Not much at this point,” said Doyle who apparently had been skimming through a travel magazine, but in fact had never diverted his attention from the others in the living room. “Lieutenant Price has to reveal that Pacetti was poisoned, but other than that, he’ll let them do all the talking.”

  Her brain already off on another tangent, Judith gave a faint nod. “Look, Ted—may I call you that?—it seems crucial to me to figure out how Pacetti ingested the poison. Or maybe I should say where, because I’d feel a lot better if I knew that my guests weren’t serious suspects. Call me selfish, but I’ve already had one murderer staying under my roof.”

  Ted Doyle gave Judith a rather shy, boyish smile. “I remember that case. I had only been on the force a year when it happened. Lieutenant Flynn and Lieutenant Price sure wrapped that one up fast. They’re both really sharp cops.”

  Judith tried not to make a face. As far as she was concerned, Joe and Woody might still be combing the Rankers’s hedge for clues if she and Renie hadn’t done some deep digging into the suspects’ backgrounds. But her husband and his partner were pros, she was merely the owner of a B&B, and she supposed that in the long run, it was a good thing that credit hadn’t been given where credit was due. But it was still annoying. She would remember to mention it to Joe one of these days.

  “Yes, right, sure,” she agreed, picturing Joe and Woody with their chests puffed up, accepting congratulations from the police chief on down to the lowliest panhandler informant. “Let’s get back to the poison. If it was in the tea, probably only Mrs. Pacetti could have put it there. Did you get a chance to analyze the contents of the thermos?”

  Ted gave Judith an embarrassed look. “We couldn’t find it. And Mrs. Pacetti hasn’t been in very good shape to ask what happened to it after the curtain went up.”

  It occurred to Judith that Amina Pacetti had been coping remarkably well, at least up until Woody had informed her that Mario Pacetti had been poisoned. “Okay, then there’s the champagne glass which was cleaned. That would be tricky to poison, but not impossible.”

  “It makes sense,” said Doyle, tossing the magazine back onto the coffee table. “That’s where the empty vial was found, next to the centerpiece. The glasses were lined up in front of the flowers. I call that suggestive.”

  “So would I,” remarked Judith, though she realized that something was bothering her. “Almost too suggestive, maybe. How big was that vial?”

  Ted Doyle held his thumb and index finger about an inch and a half apart. “It was small. Are you thinking it could have been easily concealed?”

  “Yes—unless you had no place to put it.” She pictured Inez Garcia-Green’s white tulle ball gown. Tippy’s costume as a maid. The men in their frock coats and ruffled shirts. Did anyone have real pockets? Certainly not Inez, who had also plied a huge fan. “It’d be risky to carry the vial around in your hand after the fact, I suppose.”

  “But you could,” Ted Doyle pointed out. “You wouldn’t have to go very far backstage to ditch it.”

  “Except that it was ditched onstage.” Judith grimaced. “I hate things that don’t make sense. There’s no logic to this case. And how does anybody get hold of Strophanthin in the first place?”

  “It’s used widely in Europe,” said Doyle. “At least that’s what the medical examiner told us. I’m afraid I don’t know much about how tight the laws are over there concerning medical drugs. I imagine it varies from country to country. The label was scratched off, so we couldn’t tell where the stuff came from.”

  Judith heaved a big sigh. “It sounds impossible to track down. All of these people have been in Europe recently, I’d guess. At least within the last few months.”

  “We’ve checked on that,” said Doyle. “They’ve all spent quite a bit of time abroad. Even Ms. de Caro was in Austria this summer. Pacetti sang at some festival, I guess.”

  “Probably Salzburg,” said Judith, staring at the fireplace where the pumpkin lights gleamed and two pots of China chrysanthemums anchored each end of the mantel. “Say,” Judith said suddenly as the mums evoked a new idea. “I just realized something. When Inez and Justin came to pay their respects, they brought a huge bouquet. The blooms were really unusual. Now that I think about it, I could swear they were pulled right out of the centerpiece from Act I.”

  Doyle’s mouth worked in the effort of deduction. “Meaning…what?”

  But Judith wasn’t sure. “Meaning there were no florists open that late on a Saturday night, so Inez and Justin were forced to swipe the props. I guess I’m reaching a bit,” she added in apology as Winston Plunkett emerged from the front parlor.

  “Why,” he asked as if Judith and Doyle should know the answer, “do the police want to know if Mr. Pacetti had heart trouble? He’d just had a physical last December. All his vital signs were excellent, except for a bit of hypertension. I should have such a strong constitution!” Plunkett spoke with unusual force, then grew more pale than ever. “That is, he had a strong…Dear me, how callous. Here I am, complaining about my weaknesses when poor Mr. Pacetti is dead. I do believe I’ll turn in. Good night.” He made a stiff little bow to both Judith and Officer Doyle.

  A moment later, Woody Price and Corazon Perez came back into the living room. Woody was stifling a yawn, while Corazon had lost the spring in her step.

  “That session wasn’t a lot of help, I’m afraid,” said Woody, declining Judith’s offer to sit.

  “They must have said something,” remarked Judith with a touch of impatience. It was almost eleven, and she, too, was tired. “People always do.” She fixed inquiring black eyes on Woody’s face.

  “Well…” Woody shifted his stance, clearly torn between official procedure and the demands of his partner’s wife. “Ms. de Caro did rinse out Pacetti’s glass. She said Mr. Plunkett asked her to do that. Schutzendorf didn’t go backstage until after Pacetti collapsed. He’s a pretty conspicuous type, so if he had been there, somebody would have seen him. Plunkett was the one who actually set the glass on the table before the opera started. It contained mineral water. Garcia-Green, by the way, always drinks cognac, but insists she only sips a bit. However, she admitted to downing the whole thing after Pacetti passed out. For medicinal purposes, of course. She had to have Schutzendorf assist her to her dressing room. And nobody noticed any tampering with glasses or placing of objects on the table.” Woody lifted his palms. “That’s what I mean, not much help. I wish we could find that thermos. We’ve got men crawling all over the opera house, but nobody’s called to say it turned up.”

  Judith, along with Doyle, had also risen. “Woody, what else had Pacetti eaten or drunk in those last few hours?”

  Woody fingered his thick black mustache. “Let me think—I don’t have the report with me—some sort of salad, cheese, sausage, bread, orange juice, chocolate, throat lozenges, mineral water. There may be more on the list, but those were the main things he ingested in the last twelve hours.”

  The items were consistent with Judith’s refrigerator contents. She recalled the ironic thought that had passed through her mind as she’d watched her guests thrashing about the kitchen Saturday afternoon: It was dangerous in there. A sudden sense of sadness overcame her as she walked the police trio to the door. On Saturday morning, Mario Pacetti had awakened to what was for him an ordinary d
ay. Breakfast, lunch, and preperformance meals, the prospect of an enthusiastic audience, the beautiful music of Verdi, the satisfaction of another role sung to the hilt. His was a rich, rewarding life. And then it had ended on the sourest note of all—murder.

  The rain had stopped, the clouds were drifting off to the west, and a sprinkling of stars dappled the night sky. The air smelled fresh and clean, with just a hint of autumn’s decay. Judith waited for the police car to pull away. The neighborhood was quiet, the only sounds coming from traffic navigating the steep hill that made up the Counterbalance two blocks away. With unaccustomed reluctance, Judith went back inside, closed and $$$$latched the door, then wryly smiled to herself. What was the point of safeguards? Who was she trying to keep out? Judith was well aware that she could be locked inside her house with a killer.

  ELEVEN

  “PHILISTINES,” MUTTERED RENIE, whose only consolation for being up so early was the sight of a menu. Cheers To You was a no-nonsense eatery near the university campus with ample portions of hearty American food. The cousins had been fans of the cafe since their college days. “This is a conspiracy, just to ruin my day. Do you two twits know it was still dark when I got up this morning?”

  Judith glanced at Melissa Bargroom. The music critic was fortyish, with a cascade of auburn hair and a lively expression. She was almost as tall as Judith, but the dancing eyes and the pretty face lent her a pixielike quality. Melissa tried to keep a straight face. “You know, Serena—yoo-hoo, Earth to Serena, Earth to Serena!” She pulled the menu away from Renie’s eyes which had begun to glaze over. “Really, my dear, there are often literally hundreds, nay, thousands of people in this city fully conscious and at work by 9:00 A.M. Honest.”

  “They’re certifiable, every one of them,” asserted Renie, trying to refocus. “What’s the point?”

  Judith knew that arguing with Renie, especially before ten o’clock in the morning, was a lost cause. The three women gave their orders to the waitress, who had already brought them coffee. Renie dumped lots of sugar into her cup but both Judith and Melissa took theirs black.