Funeral of Figaro

by Ellis Peters

  Musgrave’s right hand was busily drawing and writing all the time he questioned; she could see the layout of the last act briefly sketched upon the page, and a lot of dots distributed about it. A dot which must be Tonda in mid-stage. A dot which could only be Inga in the dimness of the trees close to the right-hand arbour. An X which was the dead man, here where he had fallen. Hero looked down at the empty place on the boards from which they had removed the body after the photographers and the surgeon had done with it. There was a small, irregularly-shaped stain of blood there now to mark the spot. But so little! Who would think a man could die and leave so little trace?

  ‘And you were supposed to be wearing it as part of your costume,’ said Musgrave. ‘I saw it of course. You had it on when you ran through the hall with Barbarina in the third act. Then you made your next appearance with a dress over your uniform. Did you wear the sword then?’

  ‘No,’ said Hero. ‘It’s a nuisance under the petticoats, you know.’

  He placed a tiny circle carefully in the wings on his plan, and wrote two names against it: Max Forrester and Ralph Howell. Together, so they said, at the moment when the alarm was given. And in the wings on the other side, ready for his impending entrance, the Count, this young Austrian Selverer. And here, close to Forrester and Howell, the girl, just tripping forward on to the stage, a shade flushed, a shade flustered – and without her pretty little smallsword.

  ‘I see. And when did you last see it, then? You didn’t have it during the fourth act, did you?’

  ‘Well – I did. But then I …’ She drew breath and swallowed the unsatisfactory opening to start again. ‘I meant to wear it again in the fourth act, and I actually put it on. But then I – the baldric broke. While I was still off-stage, that is. I … it was broken in an altercation.’ The word had a triumphantly legal sound about it, she didn’t know from what recess of her mind she’d dredged it in this emergency.

  ‘Oh?’ said Musgrave mildly. ‘An altercation with whom?’

  ‘With Mr Chatrier,’ she said in a hurried gasp.

  Young Hans Selverer had been slowly and stealthily inching his way round the circle of tense and watchful people towards her, but at this he stood frozen, watching her across the few yards of intervening air with a heavy, anxious frown.

  Musgrave had looked up from his labours sharply. Points of light gleamed behind his disguising glasses, and made him look less mild.

  ‘You mean you were actually involved in some sort of struggle with him?’ He had the scabbard across his knees, he handled it delicately through a handkerchief, lifting the frayed end of the rainbow ribbon. It had broken, apparently, in front, where it would cross her breast, and what was particularly notable about it was that the shorter end thus left, perhaps eight inches of it, had been torn away from its moorings. Only a few floating threads coiled and fluttered round the silver trappings of the scabbard at the front fastening. The length of ribbon was clean gone. The other end, long enough to span her slender back and reach down to her breast, was still firmly anchored to its silver buckle.

  ‘This wouldn’t take much force to break it, I realise that. But it can’t have been ready to part of itself, all the same. What happened to break it? Were you struggling with him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hero faintly.

  ‘Please,’ said Hans, reaching her half a second ahead of Johnny, and supporting her with a large young arm, ‘do not make her—’

  ‘Butch,’ said Johnny anxiously, hemming her in on the other side, ‘do you know what you’re saying? If he accosted you, why didn’t you come to me? I …’

  She shook them both off gently but firmly, and stepped a pace nearer to Musgrave, who had waited and watched with interest during this brief interlude. ‘I’m all right, really I am. Why shouldn’t I be? And I want to tell him.’

  ‘A very sensible attitude,’ said Musgrave, inserting the dot which represented Marcellina, cosily in the left-hand arbour with the young one, that Nan child who played Barbarina. Two together again, lucky for them. He cast one glance at Gisela, who sat with folded hands on the property marble bench at the edge of the circle, patient and self-contained, her dark eyes ranging with quick intelligence from face to face.

  ‘What was this altercation of yours about?’ he asked, flashing back to Hero. ‘A commonplace amorous assault?’ In a brief interval in her father’s theatre it seemed hardly likely. He said so. Hero hesitated, her pallor suddenly flushed.

  ‘Well, it’s partly my fault. To some extent I – I suppose I’d been leading him on.’

  ‘Butch,’ said Johnny hastily, ‘that’s making too much of it. You know there was nothing to it. You haven’t, I suppose,’ he said hopefully, turning upon Musgrave, ‘got any just-grown-up daughters, have you? Pity! You’d know what it’s like if you had. All she did to encourage him was have lunch with him a couple of times, and accept one dinner invitation. If I hadn’t been a shade over-anxious she wouldn’t even have thought of it as leading him on. Ridiculous phrase to use!’

  ‘I see. You just had dinner with him once.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t, actually. I meant to, but …’

  She didn’t know how to get round that incident, and before she knew where she was it was out. Better from her, perhaps, than from the staff of the Grand Eden. She thought of that, and took heart to tell almost the whole of it; and probably what she didn’t tell Musgrave guessed for himself.

  ‘Mr Selverer happened to have to telephone my father over something, and he mentioned that I was there in the hotel, and my father asked him to drive me home at once. And he did,’ said Hero, simplifying somewhat drastically.

  He didn’t question it. He looked down critically at his drawing, and said mildly: ‘So Chatrier had some grounds for feeling encouraged. And to-day he presumed a little too far on your goodwill. When did this scuffle take place, and where?’

  ‘It was in the corridor outside my dressing-room, not long before – before he was killed. It was while Gisela was singing that aria of Marcellina’s. You know, when Figaro has rushed off threatening vengeance, and his mother says she’ll warn Susanna, because women must stick together – and then she has that quite long aria—’

  ‘I’m very well acquainted with the opera, thank you. I know the place you mean. So he had only just come off-stage, and you were coming from your dressing-room, all ready for your entrance in the middle of the act.’

  ‘Yes, but I had loads of time. I met him in the corridor, and he – he wanted me to stop and talk to him, and I didn’t want to. And – I pushed him off and broke away, and he grabbed the baldric and it broke. So I just ran back into my dressing-room and left him holding it. I locked the door, because I knew he had to go on again in a few minutes, before I did, so I only had to wait. He tried to coax me out, and then I heard him drop the rapier outside my door and go away.’

  ‘Did you open the door and take in the sword?’

  ‘No, I waited several minutes to make sure he’d gone. I wasn’t in any hurry. And when I did open the door there wasn’t any rapier or baldric there, it was clean gone.’

  ‘Had you heard anyone pass during the interval? Anyone who might have taken it?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. There are often people about, naturally, but I wasn’t paying any special attention. I wasn’t listening, if that’s what you mean, because I knew he had to go on, it was only a matter of waiting a few minutes. I …’ This time she flushed darkly. ‘I had another go at my make-up, it was slightly mussed.’

  ‘So the sword was gone. And you didn’t see it again? Not until it turned up in these – peculiar circumstances?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘And you haven’t any idea who could have taken it from outside your door?’

  ‘No, not the least idea.’

  Musgrave carefully spiced his plan with a few question marks which indicated the probable positions of supenumeraries like Sam Priddy. He looked up at Johnny with a strictly controlled smile.

  �
��It seems you were wise to feel some misgivings about your daughter’s association with the dead man, Mr Truscott. May I take it that you didn’t like Chatrier? Or was it merely a matter of his age? I quite understand that Miss Truscott may attract admirers who are not invariably – disinterested, shall we say?’

  ‘I didn’t like him,’ said Johnny firmly. It would appear in any case, better from him than from others. ‘I had reason to think that he saw my girl as a fortune, and my attitude towards him was what you surely might expect it to be. Professionally I had no quarrel with him. He was a splendid artist.’

  Undoubtedly, thought Musgrave, eyeing him steadily, this was not a man who would need any help in managing his own affairs in the ordinary way, without resorting to such extremes as murder. The young fellow was more likely to be pushed hard by his jealousy of an older man who had apparently been shown some favours. All the same, daughters can be the devil, and it was always possible …

  Musgrave added a small, neat mark of interrogation to the wandering dot representing Johnny, an infinitesimal drawing of a man in orbit between his stage box and the wings. Hans Selverer already had his own question mark. The waiters at the Grand Eden would be able to fill in some necessary details.

  ‘Well, I think I now have an idea of everybody’s movements during the material time. What’s remarkable is that we have such a short period to fill in. The last time anyone can be certain they saw or heard Chatrier alive was when he sang the final: “Il fresco – il fresco!” during Susanna’s short dialogue with the Countess before “Deh vieni”. By the time Susanna withdrew into the trees at the end of that aria he was dead – or at least the attack that killed him had already been made. A matter of no more than ten minutes. With a brisker tempo it wouldn’t have been so long.’

  ‘You found my tempo too slow?’ said Franz, bristling. ‘You want Susanna should gallop through “Deh vieni”, and there should be no sudden catch in the breath in the middle of all the horse-play? You will teach me to conduct Figaro like I could teach you to catch murderers.’

  ‘I don’t wish to be unduly critical. I could quote excellent authorities.’ For the first time the mild eyes really took fire; it seemed the man had a passion, and his ticket hadn’t been a gift from a missionary friend, or a concession to an aspiring wife. ‘I may say I was very surprised,’ he said belligerently, ‘to see that a cut version of Figaro was being used in this theatre.’

  ‘Cut,’ said Johnny, catching the spark, ‘at my wish, and not to save time, either. Cut, and all the better for it.’ His voice said plainly: ‘Want to make something of it?’

  ‘To take out the “ass’s skin” aria – a very fine aria—’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ murmured Ralph Howell tenderly from the background. ‘And the only one Basilio has to himself, mind you, bach!’

  ‘A very fine aria,’ snapped Johnny, ‘and nothing whatever to do with the business of the act. We axe it because I prefer it that way dramatically, and transpose Barbarina’s recitative to that spot because it makes the timing smoother. We never cut anything for any reason except to get a heightened tension.’

  ‘We’ve got that, all right,’ said Forrester dryly, shooting a modern wrist-watch from under Doctor Bartolo’s great laced cuff. ‘Two in the morning, and we have to go from murder to musical criticism. What I want to know is, when can we at least send these girls off home to bed?’

  ‘Very shortly now.’ Musgrave recovered the thread of business hastily. What would the local inspector think of him? And after accepting his prior presence so mildly and amenably, too. ‘If no one has anything to add to these provisional statements, I think we might let the ladies go.’

  He looked round the circle of feminine faces, brightening with the hope of release, losing the betraying lines of tiredness. The local man, who had said little during the interrogation, had fixed a thoughtful stare on the Countess, in whose pale blue Scandinavian eyes showed a gleam of purpose which held a certain promise.

  ‘Miss Iversen, you wanted to add something?’

  The sergeant poised his pencil hopefully. Inga looked out of the corner of her eye at Hero. Cherubino’s sky-blue sleeve nestled gratefully into Hans Selverer’s glittering brocade side, and his fingers clasped the boy-girl’s elbow firmly and protectively. There had been a little too much of the boy-girl, but Inga was no longer deceived.

  ‘I wait,’ she announced clearly, ‘for Miss Truscott to correct her statement, but she does not do so. I am a truthful person. I ask myself, what must I do?’

  Herself, apparently, was ready and waiting with the answer.

  ‘This I do not mention earlier, because I do not at first realise it is important. But I was a witness of this – altercation between Miss Truscott and another person. I regret, I much regret, she makes it necessary for me to tell it, but it was not Marc Chatrier who broke the ribbon of her sword.’

  She savoured her moment, the dismay in the grey eyes that were alone eloquent in Hero’s wooden face, the flare of anxiety and apprehension in Johnny’s.

  ‘It was Mr Selverer,’ said Inga with intense satisfaction.

  The hum and vibration of suppressed excitement, shaking them all, sent the blood coursing up into the Count’s ingenuous face, and tightened his fingers upon Hero’s trembling arm.

  ‘You saw them?’ said Johnny, bristling. ‘Where were you, then?’

  ‘I happened to cross the corridor, coming from my dressing-room …’

  Tonda emitted an explosive snort of laughter. ‘Do not believe her. She is jealous because the little one here puts her nose out of joint with him. She will say anything, that one.’

  ‘You are calling me a liar, madam?’ Inga’s icy claws came out; the northern lights spat and flickered in her eyes.

  Tonda bounced up from her chair joyfully. ‘Yes, I say it! Worse than that you would do to pay her for being so young, after all the fury you have put into chasing him all in vain—’

  ‘And you?’ shrieked Inga. ‘You Italian washer-woman with skirts kilted up to run after him faster – you dare talk of chasing him? You?’

  ‘Me, I do not pretend. I amuse myself, but if I lose I lose, there are plenty of men. For you perhaps he was the last hope.’

  Johnny took Tonda about the waist just in time, Ralph Howell and Max Forrester closed in from either side upon Inga, and bloodshed was averted by the length of a finger-nail. The Countess, freezing into dignity again, brushed off the restraining hands, composed her maid’s muslin skirts about her, and said with deadly simplicity:

  ‘Ask her.’

  All eyes came back to Hero, who had grown paler by fierce degrees as Hans Selverer had grown redder.

  ‘All right,’ said Hero with resignation, ‘it was Hans. But all the rest of it was true. I only altered the identity of the man.’

  ‘Only!’ said Johnny in a frantic whisper meant for the ears of a higher providence. ‘My God, women!’

  ‘Well, what’s so surprising about that?’ said Hero, goaded. ‘What harm could it do Marc Chatrier now, my saying it was him? After all, we’re a company, we don’t go round throwing suspicion on one another—’

  ‘Some of us do not,’ snorted Tonda.

  ‘—and it couldn’t hurt him, so I made it him.’

  ‘So you thought,’ said Musgrave, ‘that Mr Selverer might have made use of your sword, once he had it, to kill Chatrier, and you set out to divert suspicion from him.’

  ‘Of course not! I knew he didn’t. In the first place he wouldn’t, and in the second place I keep telling you he didn’t take the thing away with him, he left it outside my door. But I thought you’d start thinking he’d done it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you trust the police not to jump to conclusions quite so easily?’

  ‘No,’ said Hero simply.

  She caught her father’s speaking eye, and protested indignantly: ‘Well, do people? Ever? You don’t suppose he’s got as far as being an inspector without knowing that, do you?’

  Musgrave crosse
d out the two question marks with which he had flanked the dot which was Cherubino. They were no longer appropriate; she was too devastatingly reasonable to be associated with such equivocal symbols.

  ‘Then I’m to take it, am I, that you would always lie for your friends if you thought it necessary? Even on oath?’

  That made her face solemn for a moment. She thought about it, pulling at the curls of her wig, and then she said: “That would make it a bit dicey. But yes, I suppose so. If I was sure they hadn’t done anything wrong. Wouldn’t you?’

  Don’t answer that, Musgrave! Plead the fifth amendment if necessary, but don’t answer it.

  ‘Then how am I supposed ever to trust anything you say? How am I to tell the difference when you tell me something true?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she owned. ‘That’s a sort of occupational hazard, isn’t it? Maybe I might look less sure of myself when I wasn’t telling the truth – or maybe more, to compensate? It’s hard to say.’

  He resisted the temptation to pursue this unexpected philosophical by-way, and got back to the matter in hand. ‘Well, suppose you tell me the truth now, and see if I recognise it.’

  ‘It happened just like I’ve told you, and just at the time I told you, only it was Hans. We’d been quarrelling, rather – most of the evening. About my being spoiled and selfish, and his being bossy and priggish. We were still at it then, and I’d had enough, and he wanted to make me listen to him, that’s all. He grabbed the baldric, and it broke, and I ran off and locked myself in. He tried to get me to talk to him, and when I wouldn’t he said, oh, very well, he’d leave the rapier propped up in the doorway for me. And he did.’

  She was emphatic on that point; she wanted him to have no doubts of her truthfulness this time. But there remained the doubt which she herself had raised: when lying, would she be more or less convincing?

  ‘How do you know he didn’t take it away with him, after all?’

  ‘Because if fell down after he’d gone. I heard the point of the scabbard slither on the polished floor, and then the hilt clattered on the boards. It must have rolled half across the corridor.’