Dead, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  ‘Are the dangers not greater now?’ I asked respectfully.

  ‘I do not see that they are,’ said Lord Hertford, his brow furrowed. ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because there has been a death,’ I said. ‘Before if Miss Ackroyd’s impersonation was found out, Jenny Bowles could have been produced. Whether her story would have been believed after the imposture is another matter, but she could have been produced. Now she cannot, and if the imposture is discovered then questions are going to be asked as to what has happened to her.’

  Lord Hertford hummed and hawed. Finally, after some thought, he raised his head.

  ‘That is true, but I do not think it is conclusive against the scheme. There is no reaason to believe the impersonation will be discovered. Who could discover it? That would demand that a member of Alderman Wood’s staff actually be at the trial. That is unthinkable, with the press of persons of rank for seats. Secondly, if a kitchen-maid goes missing who is to be surprised or suspicious at that?’ He looked at Mr de Fries. ‘Surely domestic staff move on, get new places, find themselves in an interesting condition or whatever, all the time?’

  ‘Particularly the lower servants,’ murmured the steward.

  ‘Exactly. So if we are unable to produce Jenny we simply say we found her a position in one of Mr Popper’s other theatres – where shall we say?—’

  ‘Deptford, perhaps,’ suggested that artistic luminary. ‘A lot of rough types in Deptford.’

  ‘Brilliant suggestion,’ said his lordship perfunctorily. ‘And we say she simply disappeared, probably took up with some seaman or other, and that should be the end of the matter. No, Mr Mozart, my feeling is that, as soon as the Queen’s Defence have produced their last witness, which will probably be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, we should immediately summon our additional witness – Miss Ackroyd here, doing her very remarkable impersonation of Jenny Bowles.’

  There seemed to be in the room the silence of consent. There very often is, when an aristocrat has spoken.

  ‘Would you permit me, My Lord, to act as advocatus diaboli in this matter?’ I asked, conscious I was risking the loss of his favour, but knowing that something had to be done to counter his cavalier dismissal of danger to anyone except himself. ‘A thankless position but a useful one when one is considering a course of action.’

  ‘By all means, Mr Mozart,’ said Lord Hertford, impeccably courteous.

  ‘I think we are forgetting one or two things. First there is Jenny’s sweetheart, Davy House. The boy is naturally concerned about her, but I believe he is unsuspicious – unsuspicious about her actual fate, that is. That is only my judgment, since of course only I have talked to him. On the other hand the boy failed to keep his appointment with me.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ asked Lord Hertford, with a touch of steel in his voice. He had not forgotten, clearly, my assumption that he would like to have him murdered.

  ‘I am suggesting nothing, My Lord, merely considering possibilities. And one possibility is that, even if he is unsuspicious himself, he has confided his worries about Jenny to someone higher than himself in Alderman Wood’s household. Perhaps even to the Alderman himself.’

  ‘That rascal!’

  I bowed my agreement. Certainly Alderman Wood was a rascal, but I was not at all sure that Lord Hertford was not, in his more refined way, his equal in rascality. Only of course one suppresses such thoughts about a brother Mason.

  ‘A rascal with a keen brain, My Lord, and a vast deal of cunning. Let us put Davy’s knowledge at its lowest; let us say that he went along to Alderman Wood, or to someone close to him, with the story that his sweetheart had overheard something detrimental to the Queen and her interests—’

  ‘Do we know that he knows that?’

  ‘No, My Lord. But we don’t know that he doesn’t. Let’s conjecture that he knows Jenny’s story, that he tells Alderman Wood that she took it to you, My Lord, and was then concealed at the Queen’s Theatre. The Alderman hardly needs to put two and two together to decide that you intended making good use of Jenny’s revelations.’

  ‘Hmmm …’ said Lord Hertford. ‘You make a good devil’s advocate, Mr Mozart. You missed your vocation.’

  ‘I hope not, My Lord. Now say Davy, pressed to tell all he knows, goes on to narrate the scene he witnessed close to midnight in the Haymarket with you, me and the box. Davy himself is rustic, unsuspicious. The Alderman and his associates are neither of these things. They might well conjecture a death and the concealment of that death.

  This would no doubt confuse them. Frankly it confuses us, does it not? But what a weapon their mere suspicion gives them!’

  There was a lot of uneasy shifting in chairs at this (helped by the fact that the chairs, like so many in stately surroundings, were not very comfortable). Even Betty now seemed to realise that, like most of us, she was further into dubious transactions than was good for her. We all knew that we were so because of Lord Hertford. And we all suspected that, should things go wrong, it would not be he who shouldered the blame.

  ‘You give us pause for thought,’ admitted Mr de Fries.

  ‘One point more – my last,’ I went on. ‘You said, My Lord, that all those who knew of Jenny Bowles and her story are in this room.’ I purposely did not look at Betty Ackroyd. I had no intention of revealing Bradley Hartshead’s knowledge of the substitution plot. ‘But is this so? I fear I shall have to be particular, My Lord. Does Lady Hertford know?’

  ‘Well, yes, she—’

  ‘Does the King now?’

  ‘Oh, but of course inevitably he—’

  ‘I yield to no one in my admiration for the King’s charm, courtesy and exquisite taste,’ I said, excepting in my mind his rotten taste in operatic composers, ‘but one of the qualities he is not known for is discretion. We must speak bluntly, My Lord, or this matter will not have been considered thoroughly.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘Has the Prime Minister been told? Any member of his government? The law officers?’

  ‘That I really can’t say.’

  ‘Then I come back to the fact that we cannot ignore about Jenny: someone knew about her and her story, because someone killed her. If we try to say knowledge of her was confined to the people in this room, we are almost saying one of us killed her. And I do not for one moment think that was the case.’

  ‘No, no, of course not. That’s unthinkable. Goes without saying …’ Lord Hertford remained for a minute or two in a profound reverie. Even when he spoke he clearly had not come to any conclusion. ‘I have put someone on to pumping Alderman Wood’s servants in their off-duty time. They say that the boy Davy House is no longer there. That proves nothing, of course.’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I agreed. ‘You spirited Jenny away as soon as you heard her tale. They may have done the same, and they may be preparing to spring him on us, as we were preparing to spring her on them.’

  These ‘we’s were used with great reluctance, but it seemed politic to associate myself with My Lord and his party, since I had so much to gain from him. Still, I wished I’d been given a choice …

  Lord Hertford shook his head in frustration.

  ‘It goes against the grain. We had the crowning piece in the King’s case against the Princess. We still have it – we know of her appalling and degrading tastes and habits. And yet it seems that we can’t use it.’

  ‘Could you not use the information in another way?’ suggested Mr Popper timidly. ‘Set people to spread rumours …’

  ‘My dear sir, rumours about the Queen’s conduct are legion. Every day brings fresh ones. What we had was evidence.’

  ‘There is the possibility of finding the watermen concerned,’ said Mr de Fries, without great conviction. ‘There is no guarantee that they would be willing to give testimony, but we are making efforts in that direction.’

  ‘Wouldn’t any waterman do?’ asked Betty Ackroyd. ‘Surely most of them would lie for a consideration – as apparently t
hey were willing to lie with her for one?’

  There was a small titter at this. It was Mr Popper. Lord Hertford looked disapproving.

  ‘Yes, they would lie,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that. That’s why I am not hopeful, even if we found the ones who serviced the Queen, that their evidence would be believed.’

  Depression hung over the room like the smoke on a Northern factory town. Lord Hertford’s exasperation and frustration were almost palpable. We all sat watching him, uncertain. Finally he rose in a gesture of dismissal.

  ‘We seem hemmed in at every turn. We cannot make a decision here today. Leave it with me, gentlemen, Miss Ackroyd. I am grateful to you for your time …’

  Mr de Fries summoned a footman from the uncompanionable vastnesses of Hertford House, and we were ushered down that splendid staircase and out into Manchester Square. I was thoughtful. I had by implication lied about Davy House, since I knew perfectly well why he had disappeared. That was something for my next visit to the Confessional. Again I had been unusually vocal and unusually forceful during the meeting, and it looked as if my arguments would be influential in a decision to abandon the plan. It seems to me now that that is one of the most satisfactory aspects to my involvement in the sorry business. Then I was more dubious, and hoped it would not lead to Lord Hertford feeling less obliged to me – in particular interesting himself less in the performance of my operas.

  Betty Ackroyd noticed my thoughtfulness and came up behind me as we began the long walk to the Haymarket.

  ‘You spoke very well, Mr Mozart.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’

  ‘You were obviously eager to see the plan abandoned.’

  ‘I was, I was.’

  ‘Why? Was it chivalry towards the Queen?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Hardly. Or only to a very small degree. I fear the lady herself somewhat repels the whole notion of chivalry … No, my main concern was that you should not ruin the wonderful career that awaits you even before it has begun.’

  I was surprised that she bridled somewhat at that.

  ‘Would it not have been courtesy, Mr Mozart, to consult me, who am most concerned in the matter, before you ruined my chance in this way? A woman does not get many such chances.’ She looked up at me with an expression that was almost hostile. Oh dear! Surely Betty Ackroyd was not going to prove one of these ‘burden of womanhood’ girls – another Mary Woolston-whatever-it-was? But she added a complaint that was more practical than theoretical. ‘I had been promised a very substantial gift by Lord Hertford.’

  I looked at her pityingly.

  ‘My dear, you cannot base your life on gifts from noblemen. There is more to be made from a career as a great singer than is ever likely to be wrung from such as Lord Hertford.’

  ‘Oh? And ’ave you made so much from a career in the theatre that you can spurn gifts from the nobs?’ she asked, with a strong touch of Bradford back in her voice. I could have told her that prima donnas made infinitely more than mere composers, but her mood suddenly changed. ‘But let’s not quarrel, Mr Mozart. You didn’t tell about Bradley, and I’m grateful to you for that. If you had, the fat would really have been in the fire!’

  I would have liked to ask her why. I felt a great deal of curiosity – or different curiosities – about her origins and private life, but I was prevented by feelings of delicacy from straying into that territory. Instead I said:

  ‘On the day Jenny died I seem to remember she’d failed to do something – was it iron your second act costume?’

  ‘Yes. I was very annoyed. Awful to think of now.’

  ‘But she was there in the dressing-room at interval time?’

  ‘Oh yes – that’s why it’s awful to think of now. I wish I had been nicer to her.’

  ‘Was she pretty much as usual?’

  Betty shook her head.

  ‘No, not exactly. Usually she was sort of inert, just went on doing things without any emotion. That night she was flurried, red-faced, and I thought she’d been crying.’

  ‘As if something had happened during the first act?’

  Betty grimaced.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. That does seem likely. I just didn’t think at the time, and I snapped at her. She’d been happier before that, at the thought of not having to give evidence. Then she started going weepy again. Of course I should have asked her what was the matter, but things were getting exciting in the theatre and … well, I just didn’t. I regret it now.’

  ‘Did she normally come to the wings, for if she was needed?’

  ‘If she was needed for a costume change she did, but she wasn’t for A Call to Arms. She may have been there at some stage, but I can’t recall seeing her. The theatre was a great mystery to Jenny – some kind of secular ritual she despaired of penetrating. I don’t think she’d quite fathomed that we were different people in the play to ourselves off stage.’ She was silent for a moment, then she threw a look in my direction. ‘I’m not thinking about her death. There’s nothing I can do now, and I think it’s … safer.’

  It was a clear warning, or at least a piece of advice. I thought over both the warning and the information she’d given me during the rest of our walk to the Queen’s Theatre. That night we were performing Arthur and Antoinette, an old piece set at the time of the French Revolution. It was already a dated piece, now that the pendulum has swung back towards the old regimes and conservative ways. Odd that people think it is back there permanently, forgetting it is in the nature of pendula to swing. The riots in favour of the Queen will have reminded the wise of this. Anyway the piece is full of noble-minded aristocrats and villainous French townsmen. The Antoinette of the title is not the sweet, tragic Austrian princess for whom and with whom I played in my childhood but a sugar-stick of an aristocrat in peril of decapitation on the guillotine, rescued by the impeccably tedious English hero Arthur. I had only decided to direct the piece from the fortepiano in order to talk to people about events on the evening of the first night of A Call to Arms. It must be said I got nothing of value. Actors remember who upstaged them, who ruined their best lines or made them miss a top note, but otherwise of things connected with other people they are largely unconscious.

  After the performance, played to a lethargic audience of shopkeepers and bank clerks, I walked home as usual. The nights were getting chilly (chillier, I should say – they are always chilly in this god-forsaken country). As I negotiated the usual perils of drunkards, whores, beggars, and people sleeping in doorways and huddled in crates I pondered my day’s work. I really had been rather cunning. The scheming that I had undertaken in the course of my life had mostly been connected (of absolute necessity) with financial matters, but that day I had used my cunning for higher ends: I prided myself that I had effectively scuppered Lord Hertford’s plan to involve Betty still further in his plot. I promised myself that as soon as I found out that this was indeed so, I would reward myself with a visit to my dear son Charles Thomas in Wakefield. My family are very dear to me and all doing very respectably (though of course lacking the honoured places in Society that would be theirs as the children of a great composer in dear, dear Austria).

  I reached Henrietta Street and opened the outside door, shutting and locking it against the city’s vagabonds. I walked up the stairs to my apartment and was just inserting the key in the door when I was startled by a form emerging from the gloom of the landing behind me. I swung round and was confronted by a stocky shape.

  ‘Mr Mozart, will you let me come in? I’m frightened and I don’t know what to do.’

  It was the voice of Davy House.

  12. Mann und Weib,

  und Weib und Mann

  I pulled Davy into my apartment, then closed and locked the door. I went round as calmly as I could lighting candles and lamps, but thinking furiously the while. I had to consider not just his situation, but my own. Then I looked at him, standing uncertainly by the door, his hands still shaking.

  ‘Come and sit down
,’ I said. ‘You look exhausted.’

  He looked nervously round the room, as if afraid to come away from the door.

  ‘I live alone,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else here. Come along, and I’ll give you something to warm you up.’

  He came further into the room, still hesitant, and I gestured towards my comfortable old sofa. He sat nervously on the edge of it. I went and poured a glass of my second-best cognac.

  ‘Drink this,’ I said. ‘It will do you good.’ He drained the glass, then coughed and spluttered, drawing his sleeve over his mouth. ‘Feel better now?’

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s powerful stuff.’

  ‘Powerful and good for you,’ I said, taking a glass.

  ‘What’s made you so frightened?’

  ‘Your note. And other things.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, trying to keep my voice low and calm. ‘My note wasn’t meant to frighten you, just to make you more careful. I wanted to put you on your guard. I thought that if you stayed within Alderman Wood’s house grounds—’

  ‘I don’t live at Alderman Wood’s house,’ said Davy, looking up at me. ‘I’m just one of the gardening boys. I got a bed at Old Simon Mullins’s house in Dover Street.’

  ‘I see. So you had to go back and forth.’

  ‘Aye.’ He hesitated. ‘And anyway it wasn’t comfortable for me at Alderman Wood’s any more.’

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  ‘They’d begun to talk. At first when Jenny disappeared they didn’t reckon nothing to it – just thought she’d found a new boyfriend and gone off with him. But then these rumours started going round—’

  Still keeping my voice level and unfrightening I asked: ‘Rumours? What exactly were the rumours?’

  ‘Wasn’t no “exactly” to them. All kinds of rumours. But what they come down to seemed to be that the Queen’s enemies had something up their sleeves. And people seemed to be saying it had something to do with goings-on while she was staying at our house. Hers – the Queen’s goings-on. And then they connected up with Jenny suddenly going missing, there was talk in the servants’ hall which must have been taken above stairs, and they started looking at me curious-like, and then asking questions.’