by Barbara Paul
“But why would he have gone backstage then?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. And why would he lie about it?”
“To avoid being suspected? To keep me from finding out? Lord knows what he was up to.”
I sighed. “I’m going to have to ask him about it.”
Belasco smiled—rather wickedly, I thought. “Let me take care of that for you.”
“Gladly. You’ll call me?”
“As soon as I find out something.”
I let him go back to his rehearsal then. I went out and stood in front of the theatre entrance, waiting for my chauffeur. Jimmy Freeman had lied about when he put on his costume, and now it looked as if Morris Gest had lied about going backstage before the opera. Who else had lied? Scotti?
The chauffeur pulled up to the curb, and I sank gratefully into the back seat. I could feel the weariness working its way through my bones; who would have thought detective work was so exhausting? Scotti and I had planned to go to the theatre that evening—Ethel Barrymore in The Shadow at the Empire—but I was going to beg off. When I got home I wanted a bath, food, and sleep, in that order.
But what I wanted was going to have to wait. I was just taking off my shoes when Bella came in to say Lieutenant O’Halloran had just arrived.
Back on with the shoes. I found O’Halloran standing at the window, gazing down on the darkening street. “Good evening, Lieutenant,” I said, and waited.
He took his time about turning to face me, and when he did I didn’t like what I saw. His face was dark and drawn, angry. He spoke two words: “Philippe Duchon.”
“You’ve talked to him? He’s able to communicate?”
“No, Miss Farrar, he is not able to communicate. He never will communicate. Not ever. Duchon is dead.”
The floor gave a sudden lurch beneath my feet. “Dead? But Dr. Curtis said—”
“He killed himself. He opened a vein in each wrist and bled to death. One of the hospital nurses found him this morning.”
Something happened to my knees just then: they stopped working. I felt myself sinking toward the floor when O’Halloran grabbed my arm and got me seated on the sofa. Phillipe Duchon had killed himself. That’s what he’d said.
“Do you have any smelling salts?” O’Halloran asked. “Shall I call the maid?”
“I’m not feeling faint, Lieutenant,” I said as steadily as I could. “It’s just that my legs suddenly turned to jelly.”
He looked me straight in the eye, satisfied himself I wasn’t going to have hysterics or pass out, and pulled up a chair to sit opposite me. “He left a note. Just one line, in French, and his signature. It translates, ‘My life is already ended.’ That’s all.”
“He didn’t mention …?”
“Any names? Your name? No. Only ‘My life is already ended.’ You know what struck me about that? You said just about the same thing, the last time I talked to you. You said whoever put the ammonia in the throat spray had virtually killed Duchon. You said his life was over.”
I dropped my forehead into my hands. “Any singer would have told you the same thing, Lieutenant,” I muttered.
“Ah, but any singer didn’t. You did. Well, you were right. Did you know he would commit suicide? Or were you just hoping he would?”
If he’d thrown a bucket of ice water in my face, he couldn’t have shocked me more. When I was sure my voice was under control, I stood up and said, “Get out of my home, Lieutenant O’Halloran. Get out right now.”
He gave me a sarcastic smile and headed toward the door. But when he had the door open, he turned for one departing shot. “By the way, I spent an hour in the district attorney’s office this afternoon. They were arguing about whether this was a case of manslaughter or not. Do you know what manslaughter is, Miss Farrar?”
What was he talking about? “What?”
“Manslaughter is causing someone else’s death without meaning to. An accident, say, or simple negligence, or the result of some act committed without malice. Involuntary killing. One of our prosecutors is saying whoever doped the throat spray didn’t intend for Duchon to die, and that makes it manslaughter.”
“But … but Duchon’s suicide was the direct result of his using that spray!”
“Exactly. And there was malice in the act of tampering with the spray—malice of the nastiest sort. There’s no doubt in my own mind what we’ve got here. It’s murder, Miss Farrar. Now I’m looking for a murderer.”
He closed the door behind him. I went over to the window and watched until he left the building and got into a waiting motor car. He was barely visible in the near-dark, that bearer of tragic news. Philippe Duchon was dead—by his own hand, but another hand had helped.
Duchon was dead, and he’d gone to his death thinking I was responsible.
12
I lay with my head back and my feet up on the sofa (not my sofa) and listened to my partner in detection, advisory capacity only, ranting and raving. I’d told Caruso about O’Halloran’s visit the night before a good ten minutes ago and he hadn’t stopped yelling yet.
“Non posso capirlo—I do not understand!” he protested for about the hundredth time. “Lieutenant O’Halloran is not that kind of man—he does not bully. He hints, he insinuates, but he does not bully.”
“Well, he gave a good imitation of a bully last night,” I said wearily. “He served warning on me, Rico. He thinks I did it.”
“Ridicolo.”
We were in Caruso’s apartment in the Hotel Knickerbocker. I’d gone there to keep him from coming to my place; I had a performance that night and needed most of the day to myself, and here I could just get up and leave whenever I wanted. Caruso never took hints about leaving.
He’d already known about Duchon’s suicide when I arrived that morning. The police had notified Gatti-Casazza, who’d taken on the chore of telephoning everyone else. He’d even called me, after Lieutenant O’Halloran had left. Caruso had been as shocked as I was, but not really surprised. The suicide was as understandable as it was deplorable; we could all imagine what Duchon must have been going through these last few days, knowing he would never sing or even talk again. Now when it was too late I regretted every harsh word I’d ever spoken to him.
Finally Caruso’s indignation sputtered itself out. “Mario!” he bellowed. “Bring us coffee, please.”
Mario, the perfect valet, had anticipated his employer and had the coffee pot and cups already set out on a tray. Mario was a nice-looking young man with a shock of thick black hair that kept falling into his eyes. As he poured out the coffee and handed me my cup, he murmured, “Do not worry, Signorina Geraldine. Lieutenant O’Halloran, he never puts so great a lady as you in the jail-house.”
So he’d been listening; I smiled at him anyway. “Thank you, Mario.”
Caruso gulped his coffee and then sat down briskly at his writing table and took out some paper, all business. “Now, tell me what you learn yesterday.”
I tried to get my thoughts in order. “The most important thing was that Jimmy Freeman lied about not getting into costume early,” I said reluctantly. “Gatti-Casazza thinks he did not get into costume before the first act started, but he’s the only one who says so. Three other people, including myself, saw him dressed before the performance began.”
Caruso was busy scribbling away. “Mmm. That does not look good, no?”
“The fact that he got into costume so early might not mean anything in itself. But the fact that he lied about it—well, you’re right, that does not look good.”
“Do you talk to Jimmy?”
“Not yet. I want to wait until after tonight.” Tonight was the performance of Madame Sans-Gêne that Jimmy was scheduled to sing.
“So. What else?”
“Well, Morris Gest may have lied about where he was right before the opera started. David Belasco is going to try to find out the truth—Rico, what are you writing?”
“Notes. A good detective always makes notes. So we wait
to hear from Mr. Belasco? Bene. Now—do you ask Emmy Destinn about the note from Duchon?”
“She said she thought she gave it back to me, and I’m sure she was telling the truth. Neither of us was paying much attention at the time.”
“Eh, Lieutenant O’Halloran probably just picks it up from your dressing table.”
“Probably. But Rico, how did he get into my dressing room? I have the only key.”
“Ahhhhh, that is right! I forget about that. You must ask the lieutenant how the note comes into his possession.”
“I did ask him. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Ask him again.”
“Rico, you’re just beginning to sound bossy.”
He was busy reading through his “notes” and didn’t hear. “Mr. Gatti. I think I see him go into Duchon’s dressing room, but—”
“But he denies it,” I said. “Without even being asked, he denies it. He made a point of telling me twice he was never on the dressing-room level at all. How sure are you?”
“Not very. Backstage—so much confusion! I wish someone else is there to see also!”
“Yes, that would simplify matters considerably. Perhaps I should go back and ask everyone whether—Rico, doesn’t all this strike you as slightly redundant? Surely Lieutenant O’Halloran is asking these same questions!”
“Of course he is asking these same questions,” Caruso said smugly. “But is he getting the same answers? People do not talk to the police as openly as they talk to a friend.”
“That makes me feel like a traitor,” I complained.
“No, no—you must not feel that way,” he told me in a surprisingly serious voice. “You must persevere—we must find the truth!” Then he switched back from that high-minded tone to his usual little-boy eagerness. “So, what else do you find out?”
I hesitated. “It’s what I didn’t find out,” I finally said. “It’s Scotti. Was he backstage between Acts I and II or not? He said no, Belasco said yes. But Belasco became uncertain when faced with an absolute denial, the way you are no longer sure about Gatti’s going into Duchon’s dressing room.”
“It cannot be Scotti.”
“Of course it can’t.”
We both sat in gloomy silence for a few moments. “So, then,” Caruso asked, “what do we do?”
I made up my mind. “We ask him. Between the two of us, we ought to be able to convince him how important it is to tell the truth.”
“Eccellente! I call him.” He reached for the telephone.
“No, wait—let me.” Scotti’s apartment was directly under Caruso’s, so I stood in the middle of the room and “called” the baritone. I began to sing, full voice, Vissi d’arte from Tosca.
I was only halfway through the aria when the knocking started; Mario opened the door and Scotti rushed in. “Gerry! You do not tell me you are coming here! Good morning, Rico. Do I interrupt, cara mia?”
“No, Toto, you do not interrupt,” I smiled. “In fact, we wanted you up here.”
“Bene! Is that coffee? Mario, one more cup, please!” But the valet as usual had known what would be wanted and was even then bringing in another cup.
When Scotti had poured his coffee and seated himself, Caruso and I exchanged an uneasy look; neither one of us wanted to broach the subject. Finally I did. I told Scotti as simply and as earnestly as I could how necessary it was for us to know where he had spent the interval between the first and second acts of last Friday’s Carmen.
He stuttered and stammered a bit, but with Caruso’s encouragement he eventually admitted that he had indeed come backstage after Act I. “But I do not put ammonia in the spray! Surely you do not think I do such a thing!”
“No, no—but what are you doing backstage, Toto?” Caruso asked. “Where do you go? Do you see anything?”
But instead of answering Caruso, Scotti turned his face to me. And suddenly I understood. I knew that look—oh, how I knew that look! I grabbed a silk cushion from the sofa and hurled it at his head. “Who was she, Toto?” I screamed. “Some little girl from the chorus? Who was she?”
Scotti was stammering something and Caruso started talking loudly in an attempt to play peacemaker and I was still screaming and Mario came running in to see what was the matter—so of course we all turned on poor Mario. The valet scuttled back out again, and the rest of us settled down some.
It had been a chorus singer after all. Scotti had been on his way to see me right after Act I but had been diverted—“only a little conversation, yes?” He wasn’t even aware that at that very time I was throwing my castanets at Philippe Duchon and drawing blood; he learned of that only afterward. And no, he hadn’t noticed anything else in particular going on. Some “little conversation” that must have been.
It wasn’t the explanation I would have chosen, but it did account for Scotti’s movements during a rather crucial period during Friday evening. Not that I ever suspected him of being the one who’d contaminated the throat spray, but it was one loose end that was now tied up. I believed Scotti’s story; whenever he was engaged in one of his little “flirts,” as the Italians call them, he was deaf and dumb and blind to everything else going on around him.
“If we could only pin down the time more precisely,” I complained, “we might get a better idea of who could have done it. As it is now, the ammonia could have been put in the spray bottle any time after Emmy Destinn showed up backstage carrying her saddlebag with the ammonia in it. That was ten or fifteen minutes before Act I started, and Duchon didn’t actually use the spray until right before his entrance during Act II. That’s a big stretch of time.”
“It sounds unplanned, does it not?” Scotti offered. “Who would know ahead of time Emmy so conveniently brings a bottle of ammonia with her that night?”
“Yes, it must have been a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I agreed. “Emmy probably just dumped the bag somewhere while she was talking and someone saw it and thought, ‘Well, it won’t hurt to look.’ And found the ammonia.”
Caruso was back at his writing table, shuffling through his papers. “So. Now we remove one name from the list—Antonio Scotti.”
“What list is that?” Scotti asked.
“Our list of suspects.”
“You put my name on your list of suspects?”
“And my own,” said Caruso. “And Gerry’s.”
Scotti held out a hand. “Let me see.” He glanced at the piece of paper Caruso gave him. “Eh, we know we three are not guilty. Let us see, that leaves—Gatti-Casazza, Toscanini, Amato, Destinn, Gest, Freeman, Springer, Dr. Curtis, and Uncle Hummy.” He lowered the paper. “Uncle Hummy?”
I shrugged. “He was there.”
“Emmy and Pasquale,” Caruso said decisively. “We remove their names too.”
“Is that the way a good detective works, Rico?” I asked, amazed. “First, eliminate one’s friends from the list of suspects?”
“You do not seriously suspect Emmy and Pasquale,” Caruso said reprovingly. “You know you do not.”
“Of course I don’t, but that’s no way to go about it—we wouldn’t have any suspects left that way. Look, Rico,” I said sarcastically, “there’s only one person on that list who’s not a close friend of ours. That’s Osgood Springer. So why don’t we just save time and decide he’s the culprit and go after him?”
“Morris Gest is not my friend,” Scotti said. “Not particularly.”
“Well, he’s mine, and if we’re eliminating suspects on the basis of friendship, his name goes too.” Then I noticed Caruso; he was sitting up straight, his face was lighted up. “Rico?”
He turned his beaming face toward me and said, “Osgood Springer!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rico!” I exploded. “Couldn’t you tell I was being sarcastic?” Scotti just laughed.
Caruso brushed my objection aside. “Gerry, I think you are right! Osgood Springer did it!”
“I didn’t say Osgood Springer did it!” I cried in exasperation. “Oh, Rico—why don’
t you listen!”
Scotti was looking at the list again. “Jimmy Freeman is not my friend either. We leave his name on.”
Scotti was being facetious, but his mention of Jimmy Freeman reminded me that the young singer was our prime suspect. Oh, how I hated that thought! Caruso explained to Scotti that Jimmy had lied about when he got into costume, and then said to me, “You are going to have to meet with him, Gerry. Find out the truth. He tells you if you ask him right, yes?”
“Why do I not meet with him instead?” Scotti asked in an over-casual manner. “We have man-to-man talk.”
I had to smile at that. “Toto, do you really think Jimmy would confide in you? You know he wouldn’t.”
“But he tells Gerry,” Caruso added. “If there is anybody in the whole big world he tells, it is Gerry.”
Scotti glared at him, jumped to his feet, and announced, “Gerry, you do not meet with Jimmy Freeman. I do.”
I went over to him. “Now, Toto—as long as you indulge in little tête-à-têtes with chorus singers, you have nothing to say about whom I choose to meet.” He had no say in the matter under any circumstances, but why rub it in? “Tonight at Madame Sans-Gêne I’ll arrange to meet Jimmy tomorrow. It’s best this way, Toto.”
“In a public place!” Scotti shouted. “You meet him in a public place! With hundreds and thousands of people around you! This Freeman, he may be dangerous!”
Why, he was worried about me! That was his objection to my meeting Jimmy! Without any preamble I put my arms around his neck and pulled his face down for a long, intense kiss that reassured both of us. I didn’t want to worry Toto; he was too dear. We rested our heads on each other’s shoulders and just stood there a while, feeling good.
But then I noticed Caruso was sketching away like a madman; nothing can kill a romantic moment faster than discovering Enrico Caruso is drawing a caricature of you. It wasn’t his usual kind of caricature, it turned out. Our faces were recognizable without any exaggerations being drawn in. Scotti’s nose was not elongated, and my teeth weren’t showing at all. He’d caught our postures perfectly, with our heads on each other’s shoulders. But—he’d drawn us both without any clothes on.