Anatomy of Murder

by Imogen Robertson

  Harriet considered the picture he had drawn for a moment. “I have heard questions as to their temperament,” she said, making Crowther consider his fingernails.

  “It would be a foolish man who would venture a concrete opinion on the results the procedure has on the character of a growing boy. We are formed, I think, by a mixture of many factors, though such a violent operation and its aftereffects are likely to have complex consequences.”

  At that moment, Graves stood and began to prepare to leave for the shop in Tichfield Street, gathering up the sheaf of papers that had been his study over breakfast.

  “I have met a number of castrati in my time in music,” he told them, “and have found them as mixed in character, I think, as any group of men. Some have been all that is good and generous; others have been like violent children and thoroughly unpleasant to deal with, vain and demanding and very tiresome.” He shrugged. “But whether that is because of some physical effect of the operation, or because their fame and talents tend to mean they are so thoroughly indulged . . .”

  Crowther was still watching his fingertips as he replied, “I suppose these beings are kept by the operation in a sort of half childhood, never allowed to mature physically along the path nature intended for them, never forced into adulthood by having children of their own—though they can still enjoy intimate relations. Perhaps it is to be expected they can remind us of infants at times.”

  Harriet shuddered. “It is a monstrous practice.”

  Graves was still juggling his pile of papers. Some slipped onto the floor, as many objects that Graves tried to carry tended to do. He bent to pick them up then became very still and looked up at his companions.

  “I would agree. But those voices, Mrs. Westerman—the voices of the best of them, at any rate. They are a blend of boy, man and woman. I do not think there has ever been a sound on earth quite like it. When I heard Manzerotti sing on Saturday evening, I was sure that such is the voice an angel might have.”

  Harriet watched him quizzically, his young face still lit by the memory. It was an expression she associated normally with those of a religious bent. “It is strange you mention angels, Graves. The only time I thought of angels in the opera house was when we glanced in at the scene room and saw that strange gentleman dressed in brown.”

  Graves at last had control of his belongings and stood again with a jerk. “You mean Johannes? The new genius of the stage machinery! The man who makes yellow roses bloom, water turn to gold dust and the Furies to fly. He is a castrato too, you know, and a particular companion of Manzerotti: they always travel together. Every production where Manzerotti has been primo umo, Johannes has been in charge of the scenery.”

  Harriet’s toast paused halfway to her mouth. “But he does not sing,” she said.

  Graves shrugged. “Not every boy who has the operation develops a voice like Manzerotti’s, Mrs. Westerman. Many become shrill and unpleasant. It is a horror, I think. To make that sacrifice, or have it forced upon them, then to discover it was for nothing.” He rubbed his chin. “They are often given other musical training; in Johannes’s case, he simply turned his hand to the trade of theatrical illusion. It is making him almost as famous as a voice might have done. He does not like to speak, however; he communicates in whispers where possible, so the oddity of his voice is less noticeable.”

  His papers assembled, Graves began to look for his gloves. Worried that the search might dislodge his load again, Harriet picked them up from the side table and handed them to him.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then: “Who can say? I think there is a growing fashion against the use of castrati in the current age. We are beginning to prefer it when our romantic heroes look and sound a little more like real men. Perhaps in time Johannes will be the most gainfully employed of the two.”

  2

  It was a little early to call on a gentleman. Harriet and Crowther were forced to wait in Lord Carmichael’s drawing room for almost half an hour before Manzerotti made his appearance. If the home that Graves had leased for the children in Berkeley Square was rather more opulent than he might have wished, it still looked no more than quietly genteel in comparison with Lord Carmichael’s home.

  This was designed as a place to entertain and impress. No surface was without a display of elegant china, no niche without some antique head or fragment of some ancient Colossus. There was a profusion of molding. Above each door hung golden festoons of plaster fruits and above them, oils of Gods and Monsters. Each room therefore had its crowds of the celebrated and worshipped sneering at each other before any living beings entered. Harriet peered at the marble head of a young woman caught, her lips slightly open and now shyly turning her face away from Lord Carmichael’s guests for as many years as he chose.

  “Our host appears to be a collector,” she said, straightening again. “Do you think that is why he invited Manzerotti to reside here?”

  “Undoubtedly,” Crowther replied. He was standing in the middle of the room and looking down at the top of his cane. It was as if, Harriet thought, he would refuse Lord Carmichael the compliment of even seeing his collection of treasures.

  She tried to think clearly about the room in which she found herself. Many of the pieces were very good, even beautiful. There was a sense of harmony and balance in the decoration of the room, yet the overall effect was subtly disturbing. She made a swift inventory of the artworks in front of her. There was a small sculpture of a Spartan, lying dead on his shield; above the door was an image of Paris choosing to whom of the three goddesses he would hand his apple. In the alcove that twinned the one with the girl with her lips parted and face turned away, was a larger piece. A young god held a woman in his arms: tears were visible on her face, and her hands were in the process of transforming into leaves. With a shock, Harriet realized that the large oil opposite the fireplace, which at first glance she had taken to be a standard rendering of a great crowd jostling in the middle of some scene of classical antiquity, was in fact a depiction of the Rape of the Sabine Women. She shivered, and found she had no desire to examine the elegant paintings on the various amphorae that the room offered up for her inspection.

  There was a movement in the corridor outside. Harriet expected him to fling open the door, one foot forward and his free hand raised, but Manzerotti entered quietly and bowed to them both with grace, but without great show. She looked up at him from under her lashes as she made her curtsy. He was beautiful. He had looked so on the stage of His Majesty’s but, having been tricked by other performers, Harriet had assumed the effect was one of lighting and paint. However, Manzerotti was more lovely in person than she could have imagined. He looked like a great romantic’s conception of what a human being should be—the pattern, rather than the faulty and various copies that stumbled about the earth calling themselves the children of God. His face was, like Johannes’, entirely smooth, softly rounded and perfectly white. His lips were full and dark, though the mouth through which the miracle of his voice was gifted to the world was small. It was a bud at first light in the rose garden. His eyes, though, were large, and a deep brown that blurred into darkness. They seemed to pull the light of the room into their depths and give nothing back, oddly passive like black, polished marble.

  Harriet felt she must fight the impulse to stare at him as she would a creature set up for display at Smithfield’s Fair. There was something unsettling in his physical proximity. He seemed in the drawing room—and, she imagined, in any company of ordinary men and women—a beautiful but alien bloom. It was as if in her walks around her estate in Sussex she had found an orchid from the West Indies planted among the flowering grasses at the edge of the lawn, or in the shade of her oak tree. His presence had something of the fever dream about it.

  “Forgive me for keeping you, madam, sir. We performers are not the earliest of risers. I hope that Lord Carmichael’s collection has been entertainment enough in my absence.”

  His voice was unnerving. A falsetto almost, high but
gentle, and without the shrillness of a child. His English was perfection, nothing but a trace of an Italian accent.

  Harriet said, “The room is full of many treasures, though their subject matter seems uniformly dark.”

  Manzerotti smiled. “Do you not think, madam, that the greatest art is inspired by tragedy? The most beautiful songs I sing are of loss and grief. Joy leaves no lasting impression on the world.”

  “That seems a rather depressing philosophy.”

  He was watching her as she spoke and Harriet found the completeness of his attention settled on her like sable, and made her long for luxury. “I do not mean to suggest there is no place for joy in life, Mrs. Westerman. Only that as life reveals its true self only in death, and that as love shows itself most fully in its loss, it is perhaps no surprise that the glories of great art often treat with subjects of suffering.”

  Crowther spoke: “Our apologies, sir, for calling on you so early. You know the reason for our visit.”

  Manzerotti with a gesture invited them to take their seats and nodded, suddenly practical.

  “You wish to know of my dealings with Fitzraven. It is simply stated. I was pleased and flattered to be offered the opportunity of singing here. I know I have been spoken of in London, and I wished very much to give substance to the kind words of praise that have been carried across the Channel to this place. A successful season in London is an important thing.”

  Harriet looked directly at him. “Did Fitzraven expect you to pay him for the opportunity?”

  Manzerotti smiled at her again and she thought briefly of the woman who had thrown herself in front of his coach.

  “He did, madam. I found on my arrival here that it had been an unnecessary expense. Mr. Harwood told me he had expressly instructed Fitzraven to secure my services, and those of Johannes, if he could.”

  Crowther examined his cuffs. “That must have been an annoyance, sir.”

  “It was. I was angry. But not enough to kill him, if that is your implication, Mr. Crowther.”

  The two men looked at each other for several silent moments. Harriet’s eyes rested on a small painting of a slave market that hung to the left of the doorway.

  “Bribery seems common practice in opera,” she remarked.

  Manzerotti stood and crossed to the fire and held his hands out toward the flames.

  “I am glad to be singing in London, but I miss the warmer weather of my own city,” he remarked. There was a strange muscled grace apparent even in his most ordinary movements. “It is perhaps more common than one would like, Mrs. Westerman. But the arts require the patronage of the rich and influential. A recommendation here, an introduction there, the chance to sing for an emperor or some lady of taste and influence—on such things we poor servants of music must build the fragile structure of a career. Where such things matter, you will always find people looking to make a little profit of their own. I myself am ready to tip the gatekeepers to gain an audience.” He looked back into the flames. “Sometimes I make an introduction or recommendation of my own. Sometimes it becomes necessary to use more blunt forms of payment.”

  Manzerotti had a trick of coloring the pitch and timbre of his speaking voice so that each phrase left the outline of music in the air. Harriet had the impression of being rocked to and fro as he spoke in oily waters.

  Crowther looked at him and said with a slow blink, “But surely your talent speaks for itself, Mr. Manzerotti?”

  The castrato nodded in return, as if acknowledging a compliment, though the slight twist of his lips suggested he recognized the satirical edge to Crowther’s question. “Thank you, Mr. Crowther. But a man may be talented indeed, and gain no foothold in these arts. We must also be fashionable to receive our opportunity to perform. To be a romantic artist, slave only to the music, might sound very fine, but it is uncomfortable and does the music no service if it is heard by only its singer. I flatter, I practice, I perform. This is my trade, just as Dr. Gregson’s trade is his secret recipe for pills against gout. He takes an inch or two in the London Advertiser, I make influential friends and celebrate their taste.”

  “Such as Lord Carmichael,” Crowther said.

  “Indeed. My lord is a gracious host and I met him first many years ago in Milan, so he invited me to make his home my residence during the season. Though I must sing for my supper here also. I am part of the collection, albeit on a—let me remember the phrase—a temporary footing. Lord Carmichael is entertaining the better people in Town at a reception here tomorrow evening. Miss Marin will sing also. I hope you shall attend?”

  “Was Fitzraven also to be part of the collection here? He seems to have been made of less fine stuff than yourself, yet we know he boasted of being admitted here after his return from the continent.”

  Manzerotti lifted his shoulders. “There are many people in Milan through whom he might have gained that introduction. I did not put their hands together, nor was I here when he visited Lord Carmichael.” He shrugged again and the silk of his coat rippled up and down his back. “Perhaps my lord found him amusing.” He continued in a brisker tone. “But I am not being very helpful to you—perhaps I can be more so. When I first met Fitzraven I was pleased to be his friend for the opportunities he offered. But since I arrived in London to take up my appointment at your opera house, that liking for him has diminished. I believe I observed him following me not less than three times since I arrived, and I think he did the same to others in the employ of the opera house.”

  “Indeed?” Harriet said with calm interest, pleased to note her voice did not flutter when she spoke to him. “And why should he do such a thing, do you think?”

  Manzerotti picked a scrap of lint from his left sleeve. “I think he had long made it his business to know a great deal about the people of distinction with whom he came in contact. He liked to come up to me in the opera and say, ‘Did you dine well at such and such a place? Did such and such a tailor please you? If not, I can recommend for you another place, another tailor.’ I believe that in doing such things, he hoped he was gaining my friendship.”

  Crowther placed his long hands in his lap and felt the glow from the fire on his gray skin. “It seemed he failed,” he observed.

  “He did. And if his aim was to find out something to embarrass me into further gifts of money, he failed in that also. My life here is . . .” he lifted his hands, his palms raised and open “. . . blameless.”

  “And, of course, you no longer require his friendship?” Harriet said.

  Manzerotti turned his eyes on her again. “Dear Mrs. Westerman, you make me sound very brutal . . .” Harriet opened her mouth to apologize and say she meant nothing of the sort, but Manzerotti spoke on. “Remember, I had cause to cut him. Had he been honest in his friendship with me, I would have been loyal to him. But he stole from me more than was polite.”

  “Has your work taken you to Paris of late, Mr. Manzerotti?” Crowther asked the question in a rather bored tone and examined his fingertips.

  Manzerotti frowned. It was the first time Harriet had seen that perfect brow furrowed in any way and she felt a sudden impulse to smooth it clear again with the tip of her glove. “Not of late, Mr. Crowther. Why do you ask?”

  Crowther did not take his eyes from his cuffs. “I am fascinated by the glamour of a life so much unlike my own, perhaps. No matter. But what is more germane, who else in the company do you think found themselves with Fitzraven playing their shadow?”

  Manzerotti continued to watch the older man carefully. “I observed him following Bywater. Perhaps he found more than matters of tailoring and dining on those expeditions.”

  “You suspect Mr. Bywater of something, sir?” Crowther’s voice by comparison with the avian coo of Manzerotti seemed like wheels on gravel.

  “Of nothing—but he is very much in love with Mademoiselle Marin, Mr. Crowther. And the duet . . .”

  “What of the duet, Signor?” Harriet asked. She was sorry to note that her voice did sound a little breat
hy, even if it did not flutter, as if she were in the presence of a holy relic. This man seemed to make any space he occupied like a church or a theater.

  Manzerotti shrugged again and said with a smile, “It is too good, Signora. Bywater is a man of at best moderate talent, but the duet is the work of a master.”

  3

  Jocasta didn’t go to see Kate buried, guessing that if Fred and Mrs. Mitchell caught sight of her, she’d be up in front of the magistrate before the grave was full and that he’d impose more “fines” on her than the constable had. She sent Sam and the two boys he’d fetched along with him though to keep an eye on them, and gave him some scraps of copper and a few words before he went. He’d taken Boyo with him too. The terrier liked him, and she knew he’d get fretful, shut in with her all morning.

  Her time between readings she spent in contemplation, thinking over the years of her childhood between the death of the baron and her coming away. There had been a fuss about his death, and much was left to lie, that even as a child she thought should have been dug up and shook about in the air. The bad feelings, the bitterness at being ignored had rotted and poisoned a place she loved. She’d escaped as far as Kendal by means of an early hopeless marriage, then abandoned that as no way near far enough, and made her way to London. It had taken four weeks of walking, and when she set her bundle down in Charing Cross, she’d sworn never to go back up north, and never to marry again either. Marriage seemed to her just a way to find someone to lie to every day.

  Sam came trotting in eventually with a pair of pies and plenty of news.

  “Don’t think they noticed me at all, Mrs. Bligh.” He wiped the crumbs off his face. “Milky Boy’s twice given me money now to run about with his messages, and he still wouldn’t know me if I kicked him. For all his reading and writing, I think the fellow is daft.”