by Janet Neel
A large and sumptuously attired lady had joined Tristram on the stage and McLeish slowly recalled that this was the plump, frumpily dressed, middle-aged lady he had seen at the understudy rehearsal. Well, she was still a big girl – and giving away twenty years to Tristram – but, got up to kill and superbly lit, you could believe in her as a successful beauty and an inspiration for artists. And she was, he realised, being the greatest possible support to her young cavalier; Tristram had relaxed a bit and the superb voice could be heard again, at least in several passages. The general easing among the audience, particularly the bit of it with which he was walled up, reassured him that he was right. And then the duet was over; Tristram was gone, and the Rumanian Scarpia with his henchmen – including the Tristram-substitute who was singing Spoletta – were on, and then they were gone and the lights went up to polite applause.
He turned cautiously to look at the Wilson siblings, but they were deaf and blind to everything but each other.
‘One of us had better go round.’ Francesca was very pale.
‘We never do before the end. It could rattle him worse.’
They gazed at each other, and McLeish cleared his throat, hoping to attract his wife’s attention.
His mother-in-law leant forward. ‘Darlings, we should leave him alone. He’s got all his friends there, they’re all experienced. He’ll settle down in the next act.’
Her children gazed at her, obedient but stricken, and totally unconvinced by this eminently practical view, and Matt Sutherland decided to take a hand.
‘Look, I’m invited round to Anna – this girl I know in the chorus. I could tell him we all think he’s doing great.’
‘He knows you don’t know.’ The normally tactful Perry was too distressed for his sibling to be careful, and McLeish grinned inwardly. Welcome to the club, Mr Sutherland, of those whose opinion on anything musical is simply not worth having.
‘I think we should all go and have a nice drink,’ Mrs Wilson said, firmly, catching his eye, and between them they levered Francesca and Perry out of their seats and into the bar, where Perry was instantly restored by approaches from a couple of awe-inspired and smitten young women. Francesca, however, a picture of misery, was backed into a corner refusing to be diverted.
‘Francesca?’
He looked round, startled, prepared if need be to get rid of the intruder before his wife could bite them, but Judith Delves had outflanked him, and was kissing her. ‘A wonderful voice. He was terrific in the duet.’
‘Well, he was better,’ Francesca allowed. She lowered her voice, looking round for enemies. ‘He’ll have to relax.’
‘He will surely? Now he’s got the first act behind him. The second act is much easier because it’s so dramatic.’
‘That’s perfectly true,’ Francesca agreed, and John McLeish silently blessed Judith Delves as he handed his wife the drink she had been furiously refusing. ‘And he does get over stage fright, it’s just always been a problem for him.’ She downed half her drink and looked round her, colour returning to her face. ‘Is that your young man?’
‘Yes, it is.’ She looked over the bar and Michael Owens came reluctantly towards them. He was looking irritable and was very tense, the big hands clenched and the shoulders set. Not surprising, McLeish thought, you don’t expect to meet the Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of investigating the deaths of two of your associates when you’re trying to have a night out at the opera.
‘Came to hear my brother-in-law,’ he said, easily, extending a hand, and introducing Francesca.
‘Of course.’ Michael Owens’ face cleared. ‘I’d forgotten the connection.’ He hesitated, obviously searching for words. ‘He’s doing well.’
Michael Owens possibly did know what he was talking about musically, he decided, and saw from Francesca’s look that she had reached the same view.
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But he will.’
‘It’s a great voice,’ Michael Owens said, and they smiled at each other.
‘Three-minute bell.’ Perry reappeared from behind a wall of admirers, trailing his bodyguard. ‘Let’s get there.’
And the second act, he could see, was indeed better. Everyone seemed to have relaxed. Tristram didn’t seem to him to have all that much to do, but he was doing it very well; something had released him from care and the superb voice was back in full working order. He was removed, bloodstained, hurling defiance. Tosca settled down to bargain for his life and to murder Scarpia, and the curtain came down again, to real applause this time. Disconcertingly, it went up again, and the bloodstained Tristram, Tosca and the murdered Scarpia appeared hand in hand to take a series of bows. Only Scarpia got to bow on his own, but Tristram was standing relaxed and smiling.
‘I know that’s not the end, don’t I?’ McLeish asked, puzzled, under cover of the applause.
‘That’s right,’ Perry said, across Francesca. ‘Continental habit of having soloists take a bow after Act Two. I always find it confusing, but in this case it has a bit of sense in it. Scarpia can bugger off home rather than kicking his heels through Act Three to take a bow.’
‘Ah.’ He caught Matthew Sutherland’s sympathetic look and loyally refused to return it.
‘OK. I can face the bar,’ Francesca said, blithely, and he stood to let her and Matthew go past him. He waited for his mother-in-law and made sure she had a drink and a chair, and that Perry was at hand before looking round him. A familiar face, looking amazed, swam into his view and he nodded to Brian Rubin.
Instead of disappearing down the stairs, as he had rather expected, Rubin came over towing a pretty blonde woman.
‘Chief Superintendent?’
‘My brother-in-law is Tristram Wilson.’
‘I just remembered, after I saw you. My wife Janice.’
Ah yes, McLeish thought, considering the strong jaw and bright eyes, and the firm grip on Brian Rubin’s hand. Yes, I do see.
‘He’s wonderful. Your brother-in-law,’ she said, earnestly.
‘He’s relaxed a bit.’ McLeish thought it safer to adopt his in-laws’ careful and grudging approach.
‘I can’t wait for Act Three.’ Janice Rubin was saying, undiscouraged, and just as the five-minute bell went, he saw, over her head, Michael Owens and Judith Delves; some kind of argument was going on, and Judith was near tears. She looked up and caught his eye, and he looked away, embarrassed, but she came over to the group, greeting the Rubins briefly.
‘Tristram very nicely asked us to come round afterwards. Michael’s got rather a headache, so we may not make it. Will you tell him it wasn’t rudeness, if that happens?’ She glanced over to Owens, who was watching her moodily. ‘Or I might just come by myself, just for a few minutes.’
Several bells rang and the bar cleared, and McLeish only just made it back to his seat. The curtain went up and a pure high treble voice sang from the battlements, then Tosca came on. Tristram was brought out from his cell and the two of them sang of love and freedom. It was, this time, unquestionably superb, you really did not have to be musical, or sitting in a box with two singers, to understand that. He looked sideways, cautiously; there were tears rolling unregarded down Francesca’s cheeks, and Perry, hand locked over hers, was weeping gently as well. It was, of course, a silly plot, he thought, crossly, tears in his own eyes as the firing squad filed out and Tosca tried, disbelieving, to get a dead man up and on his way to freedom.
‘Music critic of The Times,’ Perry said, sotto voce, blowing his nose as Tosca disappeared over the battlements. ‘Down there, running for the exit.’
‘How do you know?’ McLeish asked, over the torrential applause as the curtain went down.
‘It’s been the same man for yonks. He was doing it when I was the treble here opening Act Three, what – fifteen years ago.’
One forgot, McLeish thought, that this peacock star had once been a serious classical singer, and had abandoned it for a life of public adulation and knicker flinging teenagers.
>
‘Means Tris will get a review – doesn’t always happen with an understudy.’
He was looking just perceptibly smug, and McLeish raised an eyebrow at him.
‘My agent had a word,’ Perry confirmed. ‘Mind you, he deserves it.’ He sighed, looking suddenly ten years older and a stone heavier, then peered downwards and rose to his feet, shouting as the curtain went up and the chorus took a bow, then all the minor parts, then Tristram and Tosca together, at which point the applause became deafening. Other boxes, emboldened by Perry, were on their feet, and the stalls limbered up patchily. Tosca received, graciously, a vast bouquet of flowers, and Tristram another. There was a pause, then Tosca gave Tristram a firm, motherly shove between the shoulder blades and he shot forwards, startled, to take an individual bow, to dense, generous applause. He stepped back, kissed Tosca and she went forward graciously so that, as was her right, she took the last call in a storm of applause and shouts and flying flowers.
They sat in the box while the theatre cleared, giving Francesca time to get her face back in order. Matt Sutherland was fidgeting, so they let him out to see his girl in the chorus, then finally they made a dignified exit and fought their way – Perry, Biff the bodyguard and McLeish in the lead – into the madhouse that was the stage door.
Amid the weeping, champagne-drinking, rejoicing throng in Tristram’s crowded dressing-room, Perry formed a second centre of attention, ignoring Francesca’s reproachful scowl. They all had a drink and embraced Tristram, collecting a generous supply of stage make-up as they did so, and Francesca was just scolding him into dry clothes – he was pouring sweat and high on relief and exhaustion – when McLeish noticed Judith Delves peep in, looking stricken.
He got over to her on Matt Sutherland’s heels, sharing exactly the same thought.
‘Is it Tony?’
‘Oh, Matt. What are you doing here? No, no, no, nothing like that. I rang the hospital just before I came and they said he was going on nicely. I’m a bit tired.’ She turned to greet Francesca who had followed her men.
‘Where’s your Michael?’ she asked, looking round.
‘He’s gone home. He had a splitting headache. He wanted me to come here.’
A quarrel, McLeish thought, and saw his conviction echoed in Francesca’s over-expressive face.
‘Oh dear. I’m sorry. Come and have a drink. Tris is just changing in someone else’s dressing-room.’
It might have been better, McLeish thought, if his wife could avoid sweeping into her sympathetic wake one of the principals in a current, live case, but it was evidently not to be. He saw Brian Rubin, his wife’s hand firmly clasped, hovering hopefully and decided that at the moment there was no way of getting this party back on the rails of orthodox investigative procedure. He would just have to wait his chance, and scoop Francesca up and take her home as soon as she felt able to leave her brother.
He allowed her another twenty minutes and half a glass of champagne in Tristram’s crowded dressing-room before declaring that he needed to take her home, and was gratified when she disentangled herself immediately from a knot of brothers and Matthew Sutherland. He was a good deal less pleased to find that she had offered Judith Delves a ride home. Uncharacteristically his face must have reflected his views, and he found that Judith was firmly rejecting the idea and saying she would get a taxi, good heavens, there were plenty of them and Francesca needed to get home to bed. So he took Francesca away, feeling mildly curmudgeonly, but after all Judith Delves was still a suspect in a murder case and moreover it was not his fault that Michael Owens had found it necessary to go home early. He peered anxiously at his wife; she was very quiet and rather pale and he resolved to get her home quickly and prevent her going to work too early the next day.
Judith Delves watched them go, giving them a few minutes to get away in order that they might not be embarrassed by her inability to find a taxi straightaway; it was never that easy late at night. Her fears were justified; there were no taxis and in the rush she had left her mobile phone in the flat. She looked round for a public phone and saw that there was a queue for it, in which Matthew Sutherland and his girl were prominent. Brian Rubin and his wife had gone, not that she would have been happy about asking them for a lift, but there was a simple answer: she could go up to the Caff and use a phone there to call out Radio Taxis to come and take her home on the restaurant account.
McLeish, three miles away, gently patted his wife’s knee. ‘We’re nearly there.’
‘I wasn’t really asleep, I just had my eyes closed.’
‘Like your Mum, listening to opera.’
She grinned in the dark. ‘I know. She’s not exactly unmusical and she knows a lot. She just, well, she can do without it. Any of it. I can’t imagine how she produced us all, or lived with Dad in perfect amity. Anyway, I was actually thinking about Judith.’
‘I’m sorry I was less than forthcoming about taking her home.’
‘Well, I was a bit embarrassed and I’ll tell you why. That relationship is coming unstuck under the strain; I was next to them at the bar at the second interval. He was absolutely pissed off, and picked a quarrel with her – I don’t think he even stayed for Act Three. So she was left like a lemon. That’s why I wanted to rescue her.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘How could you? And you’d had enough for one day, anyhow.’
Judith Delves shivered. It had been such a perfect day she had not bothered with a coat, assuming Michael would drive her home, but it was now cold, and her light wool short-sleeved dress was not warm enough. She would not have been surprised to find some of the workmen still in the Caff, since they were all on piecework, but the whole building was dark. Even the outside light by the basement entrance, which was always left on to discourage derelicts camping there, was off. She approached cautiously, checking that no one was huddled in the doorway, but it was clear and she felt for her keys, using the light of a street lamp to penetrate to the bottom of an awkwardly shaped evening bag. She went down the steps, making a mental note that the empty paint pots, blackened pieces of pine and twisted pipes piled in the rubbish cage must be removed on Monday before they caused complaint, and stopped, three steps from the bottom. She was on a level with the neat metal covering of the ventilation outlet and she could smell smoke and hear the fan.
‘Oh no, no, no,’ she heard herself moan aloud, as she forced the key into the lock. ‘Not again, please God.’ It was dark and she felt for the light switch to the right of the door, hand trembling. But there was nothing to see, and only a very faint, acrid smell of smoke. A wire burning through somewhere, she thought wildly; the kitchen perhaps. She went up the shallow stairs two at a time, the smell in her nostrils stronger now, and she could see a faint flicker of light. She banged on all the light switches she could see and rushed through the door. Flames flickered on the big grill beneath the hood and she gaped at it, trying to understand what she was seeing. Blackened paper was scattered around and more was burning merrily, fluttering on the metal bars above the hot gas jets. Some fool must have left papers on the grill and they had caught fire, she thought, furiously, and then she heard the lift move, passing behind the panelling and ducked instinctively behind the big central counter listening to the descending whine and the jolt as it reached the floor below her.
‘Please go away, please, please …’ she found herself whispering on an indrawn breath. ‘Just go away …’
The door below banged and she held her breath, praying, but there was no sound at all and she leant back, shaking, against the solid central counter. Her legs were suddenly cramping painfully, and she stretched them out in front of her, bracing the muscles. She could hear the hiss of the grill and told herself she must get up and switch it off and call the police, but her heart was still hammering and the central counter gratefully cool, so she waited to get her breath and picked up a piece of the debris as it came past her.
The writing was familiar, she realised, she knew who
formed an ‘m’ like that. Another piece fluttered by her and she reached for it; it fell apart into black flakes except for one corner, and she felt her face turn scarlet as she read what was written. She got to her feet, clinging to the counter, and held on to it as she moved slowly down and turned off the gas. She was going to be sick, she realised, and lurched towards the basin and threw up comprehensively. She retched again, miserably, resting her head on the cool tiles and suddenly understood her danger. She turned, still swallowing, towards the kitchen phone which was by the door, barely able to breathe from fright. The door was half open and she stood, frozen, watching it, but a change in the light made her half turn. Behind her stood a figure in a white chef’s jacket, features unrecognisable under a black Balaclava, holding something white in its hands, then a band was tightening round her throat and she was fighting for her life.
*
‘Darling? Lights gone green.’
‘Fuck. Oh, fuck.’ He very rarely swore, and Francesca gaped at him, but he was wrenching the wheel round, tyres crunching. The big car bumped off the pavement opposite and he pushed it through the gears and through an amber light.
‘Phone. Red button, and say it’s me.’
He did not see her, Francesca knew, she was just a more or less competent body to be instructed, so she did precisely as she was asked. He snatched the phone from her, using the other hand to get round a corner, and she closed her eyes in prayer, knowing that the duty of a policeman’s wife was not to distract her man in times of trouble. It was medieval, or at best mid- Victorian, she thought, clinging to the bar above the passenger window and checking her safety belt, but there it was. She listened uncomprehendingly to her husband ordering units into place as they screamed up the Edgware Road, headlights flashing. The phone, which he had dropped into her lap, rang and she seized it up, trying to work out what to press.