Masques and Murder — Death at the Opera 2-Book Bundle

by Blechta, Rick

  Lili’s knuckles pounding on the door felt like a physical assault on my aching head.

  When I opened it, the small, grey-haired woman stood there, inspecting me from top to bottom, wrinkling her nose at what she no doubt smelled.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me in, Marta?”

  I stood aside for her to pass.

  She stopped in the middle of the room. “Your apartment is a sty not fit for pigs! You should be ashamed.”

  Even though I was expecting a harsh comment, her words stung.

  Lili came back to the door where I was still standing dumbly, took my hand off the knob and led me to the sofa. She had to move several unread magazines, junk mail, and a pizza box to clear enough space for both of us.

  “You are not doing well, dear Marta. We are all concerned about you.”

  Averting my eyes, I lied. “I’ll come around eventually.”

  Lili reached out and gently took my chin, forcing me to look at her. “You need to deal with this. You have had a very big shock.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Maybe so, but in life we must take the bad with the good.”

  “Oh, spare me the facile platitudes.”

  “Platitude or not, that is the only way. You still have your friends, the people who love you. You cannot push them away. Let us help.”

  “What are you going to do? Tell me that life must go on? Oh, that’s a really big help. I feel like someone stuck a knife in my chest and cut out a huge chunk of who I am ... was. Maybe I don’t want to go on.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I sighed as she released my chin. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “You need help, Marta. You are suffering from severe depression and you need professional counselling.”

  “No! I’m not going to lay on some couch and pour my guts out to someone I don’t know.”

  “Marta, be reasonable. There is nothing dishonorable in that.”

  “That’s hardly the word I’d use. I just can’t deal with strangers right now. Maybe later.” I got to my feet. “Now, Lili, it was very nice of you to drop by. I’m just feeling a little low at the moment, but I’ll snap out of it. Don’t worry.”

  She looked around the room again. “You should see this apartment with my eyes. Don’t forget I know you well. You have never been the neatest of people, but this place is like a garbage dump.” Lili motioned with her head toward a sideboard that must have had fifteen or twenty empty wine bottles on it. “How many days does that represent? You have already been drinking today.”

  “Oh, come on! I’m not turning into an alcoholic.”

  “But you have never been much of a drinker. This is not good. You cannot medicate away your pain. When did you last sing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a week ago.”

  “You are lying to me. I can tell from the way you are speaking. This is not good. You must seek help.”

  “I’ll pull myself together. Now, I think you should leave before I start getting angry.”

  Lili stayed put, her overcoat buttoned, her hat and scarf still on, her purse and gloves clutched in her lap. “You will not listen to your friend who cares about you very much?”

  “No.”

  She went on as if I hadn’t answered. “Marta, you are going through hell, I know, but you cannot continue like this. You need professional help.”

  “I don’t need professional help. I’ll be okay. Just give me time. I’m not going to pour out my guts to a stranger, and that’s final!”

  Lili looked pensive. “What if you could speak to a friend, a good friend?”

  “I’m not friends with any shrinks.”

  “But you are.”

  “Who?” I demanded, feeling the leading edge of a slippery slope under my feet.

  “Me. That was my training, as a psychiatrist, and that is what I did for many years in Czecho before I came to this country.”

  I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if she said she’d been a fighter pilot or an Olympic wrestler.

  “The reason I came to Canada was so I could return to my original love, and that is music.” Lili got to her feet and began putting her gloves back on. “Now, it is all settled. I will come back tonight at 9:00 p.m. and we will begin. Please have this apartment clean by then. It stinks of old wine, body odor, and rotting food.”

  She let herself out, slamming the door as punctuation, while I stood mutely in the middle of the room, watching. Lili and bulldogs did have a lot in common.

  Several minutes later, I un-stalled myself, turned to the buried coffee table, and began picking up empty takeout boxes.

  That evening, we did indeed begin. And it was a long, agonizing way back up to the surface.

  Two years and countless painful therapy sessions later, I found myself in Paris, City of Light, ready to pick up the pieces of my shattered opera career.

  Rehearsals for Traviata had gone well, considering I’d replaced someone halfway through the rehearsal stage. The cast they’d assembled for the season-opening performance was one of the best I’d ever had the pleasure of working with, the director had some marvellously refreshing ideas on staging this old chestnut, and I was sincerely looking forward to once again taking on the role of Violetta, the tragic courtesan in Verdi’s most enduring opera. To finally be performing it in the city of the opera’s setting was simply icing on a mile-high cake.

  Lili hadn’t been sure I was psychologically whole enough to take on doing Traviata so soon, certainly not as my first major role since Marc died. The only thing I’d sung was the Countess in Le Nozze di Figaro for an outdoor concert performance by the Canadian Opera in Toronto the previous summer, when someone had taken sick at the very last moment. I found out afterwards that they tried everyone else before reluctantly calling me in. My manager was as astonished as anyone when the Paris Opera offered me Violetta three weeks later. For two days after signing the contract, as Lili and I rehearsed the part around the clock, I kept wondering — out loud — how many people turned them down before they called for me. Lili, fed up at last, yelled at me for being so negative.

  We both knew I was considered damaged goods. Singers who cannot be relied upon don’t get a lot of work. I had just begun to be seriously noticed in the opera world when I’d had my meltdown on the Met stage. Even though people might have been sympathetic to my situation at the time, Laliberté never publicly spoke about what he did to me on that awful night. I’d like to think it was because he felt ashamed. Regardless, the result was no one knew how badly he’d screwed me.

  Lili and I had been speaking every evening since I’d arrived in Paris. She’d grill me on how I was feeling inside and out, the state of my nerves, how I was eating, sleeping, even how my bowels were behaving. It got to the point where it began irritating me, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to her. I knew quite well that the only reason I wasn’t dead was her intervention.

  Accompanist, vocal coach, and finally my therapist, this unassuming woman had indeed been my angel at the time when I most needed something approaching divine intervention.

  I couldn’t help but ruminate on the past as I stood backstage at one of the world’s greatest opera houses.

  The company still performs a couple of operas a season at the original nineteenth-century theatre, and luckily for me, Traviata was one of them. The historic auditorium was packed, and the orchestra, backstage crew, and cast were ready.

  As the brief opening prelude — lovely in its delicacy and overwhelming in its sadness — segued into the opera proper, the curtain rose, and the chorus began. I forcefully purged everything from my head except for the glorious music I was about to sing. By sheer luck, I’d been handed a brilliant opportunity to restart my career. I could not expect another. Tonight, it was swim or sink into operatic oblivion, becoming, at best, a mere footnote for the rest of time.

  Nobody in that audience cared a jot about what I’d been through the past two years. For the
m, it was whether I gave a good performance or not, nothing else.

  Lili and I both worked hard to get me to this point, and now my future lay completely in my own hands, which was as it should be.

  There was my cue. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, then strode onto the stage, already in full voice.

  Even though it had been a late night with a small reception for the mucky-mucks backstage after the opera, I woke up rather early the next morning feeling refreshed and with my motor still cranked from what I believed was a damn good performance.

  Lying on my back, hands behind my head, I savoured a moment I thought — as recently as a few months ago — I’d never experience again. Regardless of what the usually harsh Parisian press thought of it, the four curtain calls had told me the audience considered my Violetta a triumph.

  On the edge of my thoughts, however, stood Marc’s shade, always there, always smiling his easy smile, head back, looking at the world as a big joke. My bubbling happiness immediately went flat.

  I threw back the covers with a muttered “Damn!”

  Even opera singers enjoy singing in the shower, but that morning there was no song in my heart as I tried to scrub away more than just dirt and sweat.

  With Pelléas et Mélisande scheduled for performance at the Opera Bastille that evening, I had the whole blessed day to myself — no rehearsals, no demands on my time. With a decisiveness Lili would have approved of, I decided I’d be damned if I’d spend it moping around my hotel room.

  I love walking in Paris. Like Vienna, it’s a city made for feet. Slipping on jeans, runners, and a shockingly plain blouse, I planned the day in my head: poking around in my favourite shops along the Rive Gauche, perhaps lunch in a small café or bistro along the Rue Mouffetard, and then I’d catch a movie or visit some art galleries in Le Marais.

  After a quick ride on the Métro to Saint-Michel, I walked along the Seine for a bit with Notre Dame just ahead. I really felt the need to stretch my legs, as I’d been spending far too much time indoors. On all three off-days I’d had since arriving in Paris, it had positively bucketed.

  The sky that day was bright and clear with just a few puffy clouds. The temperature had edged up enough that I threw my jacket over my shoulders, knotting the sleeves underneath my chin. Autumn was the perfect season to wander this wonderful city.

  Parisians have the reputation of being brusque and rude, and it’s certainly justified in some cases. Maybe it was a reflection of the way I was feeling, but more often than not, folks would return my smiles.

  I’d gone without breakfast (even the skimpy Parisian version), so my stomach was rumbling pretty early on. Dropping into a friendly-looking bistro on Rue St-Jacques, I was a good girl, ordering consommé and a salade Niçoise with a glass of Chablis. A demitasse of espresso finished off my meal, as I kept firmly to my resolution that, despite how good the pastries looked, I would keep away.

  The person at the next table had left behind his copy of Le Monde, and it was open to the review of the previous night’s performance at the opera. What caught my eye was the colour photo, obviously taken during our dress rehearsal. It was very flattering to me and François Gutterand, the young Alsatian tenor who was my Alfredo and currently enjoying a meteoric rise on the opera scene. We made a handsome couple, as the caption pointed out. I wondered if François would feel the same way, because the review below had not been as kind to him as it had been to me.

  The afternoon was spent ducking in and out of small shops. I bought a new handbag I didn’t need and a present for Lili. Then it was on to a small café where I ordered another espresso, which came with two small ginger cookies.

  Deciding that I preferred the open air to some stuffy gallery or other, I gave my legs a good stretching out and soon found myself again walking along the banks of the Seine. Notre Dame was now behind me, on its magnificent haunches, and tour boats and barges plied their watery way just below. Cars careened by in the street, and people occasionally jostled for space on the sidewalks. Ah, Paris!

  A chill wind had sprung up and clouds were rolling in from the northeast — I hadn’t bothered to check the weather report before leaving the hotel. The warm sunlight had long ago faded, so I decided it was high time to head back to my hotel, thrusting my arms into my Ottawa Senators jacket and zipping it up tightly.

  Not having paid any attention to where I’d wandered, I had to stop to get my bearings. Up ahead, I spotted the Pont de Sully crossing the river, and while it was a bit out of my way, it would get me to the opposite side, where my hotel was located.

  People around me were hurrying with more purpose now, and a storm seemed to be blowing in fast. The wind pushed hard against me as I crossed the Seine. I was thinking now only of the danger of getting caught in a downpour. The very last thing I needed was to have to bow out of a performance because of ill health.

  Dredging through my mind for a hazy memory of the Paris Métro, I realized that the Sully–Morland station was not far from the bridge’s end.

  Somewhere near the middle of the long bridge, the rising wind began lifting bits of paper, and dead leaves into rustling eddies. Startling me with its force, a heavy raindrop bounced off the end of my nose, followed by a couple on my head. Around me rain began hitting the pavement with audible splats. The tangy smell of street grime moistened by the rain brought me back to the dirt road on which my old farmhouse stood, reminding me how much I used to enjoy the smell and feel of the first drops of a storm at the end of a hot, dusty summer day. A cold Parisian rain was a different matter altogether.

  Slinging my bags over my shoulder, I began to jog with a purpose.

  The heavens opened up before I made it, and every single cab in Paris seemed to have magically vanished. With no way to keep from getting drenched, I searched for a store awning or phone booth, some kind of shelter until the downpour slackened. Leaping over a fast-filling gutter, I ran alongside a small park. Through the sheets of rain, diagonally across the next intersection, I could just make out the stairs leading down into the Métro. Keeping my eye on the traffic, I waited for a break in the flow so I could race across. Would the bloody light at the corner behind me never change?

  Finally, the traffic parted and I saw my chance.

  The next moment, I stopped dead in the middle of the street, frozen in my tracks, not even daring to breathe. The world around me seemed to shudder to a halt, and I could feel bile burning at the back of my throat as my stomach heaved.

  My eyes were locked on a person hurrying from the opposite direction. With one hand, he held a drenched newspaper over the soggy black beret on his head. The other supported a large item wrapped in soaked brown paper, balancing it on his shoulder.

  He arrived at the stairs leading down to the Métro just as a pretty young woman approached from the opposite direction. Dropping his newspaper, he rested the heavy package on the ground, then ushered her down the stairs with a comical bow.

  Even though the man had a neatly trimmed beard and moustache instead of the smooth face I was used to, his smile, his nose and his laughing carefree eyes, everything about him, convinced me that, impossibly, I was staring at my late husband, Marc.

  Laughing, he looked up into the rain, letting it wash over his face for a moment before he heaved the package onto his shoulder again and disappeared down the stairs.

  Chapter Two

  In the middle of the southbound lane of a busy Paris street, I collapsed to my knees, cold rain streaming down my body as I fought to hold back the darkness.

  It registered distantly that a taxi had screamed to a halt mere inches from my right shoulder.

  Car doors opening and slamming. Excited rapid-fire French. Hands helping me to my feet, handing me my purse and packages where they’d dropped from my hands. Shock. Numbness. Impossibility. My brain simply shut down, unable to process what had just happened. I bent over and vomited the remains of my lunch.

  Someone moved in front of me, putting his hands on my shoulders. His m
outh was moving, but my overwhelmed brain refused to process his words.

  “What?” I managed to croak at last, then remembering I was in Paris, I tried to think of the word in French.

  Probably assuming I was an imbecile, the man repeated slowly, in English, “Is madame all right? Do you require a physician?”

  I was already soaked to the skin and getting wetter by the moment, and that realization made it through my muddled thoughts. I got as far as saying, “Please,” before my brain failed me again. I’d made the mistake of glancing at the Métro entrance. Somehow, my saviours understood what I was asking for and helped me to the taxi, just about lifting me onto the back seat. I started shaking uncontrollably.

  The small group of people were discussing taking me to the nearest hospital, thinking that I had suffered a seizure. Perhaps I had. As the lineup of cars behind us grew, horns began honking. Parisians love their horns.

  I blinked a few times, trying to clear the way for even one cogent thought. Assembling the necessary words into intelligible form, I told them in French that I wished to return to my hotel. “It was only a moment of lightheadedness.”

  The man who’d helped me to my feet shook his head. “I assure madame that I believe you are not well.”

  “I am fine,” I said firmly, but smiled. “I simply need to get out of my wet clothes and into a warm bath.”

  A further discussion followed. It was almost comical. With only a few umbrellas between them, the crowd, which had grown to about a dozen people, was getting soaked as they argued over my medical condition.

  The tremors were getting worse. “Please. Just take me back to my hotel. Please.”

  After a few generous Gallic shrugs from the assembly, the cab driver jumped behind the wheel with a purpose. As he did, one person was tapping the side of his skull knowingly.

  “Votre hôtel, madame?” the driver prompted.