Prima Donna at Large

by Barbara Paul

  “Uncle Hummy?” I said. “Why are you watching for him?”

  “He’s dropped out of sight, Miss Farrar. Nobody’s seen him since the night Mr. Duchon used that ammonia spray on his throat.”

  I thought back. It was true; I hadn’t seen Uncle Hummy since the Carmen performance. Since he was always careful to stay out of the way when he was there, I hadn’t even missed him. “Are you sure?” I asked Sergeant Whatsisname. “He could be here now, out of sight somewhere. I know he sometimes spends the night here.”

  “No, ma’am, he’s not here now. We found the place he sleeps when he stays overnight—upstairs in the wardrobe department. He hasn’t been here once since Carmen, we’re sure of that. And nobody knows where he lives.”

  “Surely Lieutenant O’Halloran doesn’t suspect Uncle Hummy?”

  “He just wants to ask him some questions, ma’am.”

  Oh my—I wondered what all that meant. Uncle Hummy? I hurried up to my dressing room, where Bella was waiting for me to unlock the door. Inside, I’d barely had time to get my hat and coat off before who should come bursting in but my least favorite tenor of the moment.

  “Gerry!” Caruso cried. “You hear? Uncle Hummy, he is missing!”

  “I heard.”

  “Do you not see what this means? Uncle Hummy did it! And now he goes into hiding!”

  “It doesn’t mean anything of the sort,” I snapped. “Maybe he’s ill. Maybe he’s been here without the police’s knowing.”

  Caruso shook his head vehemently. “Uncle Hummy never gets ill. And the police, they watch for him every night since Carmen. He must be guilty—why else does he hide?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said irritably, “perhaps he saw something and he’s afraid. Get out, Rico—I have to warm up.”

  “Plenty of time for the warming up. We never suspect Uncle Hummy before—”

  “And we’re not going to suspect him now. Rico, you’re making a pest of yourself! I’ve had enough of your badgering me! I want you out of here—now.”

  “But—”

  “Out! Out, out, OUT!”

  He got out. I did some deep-breathing exercises to calm myself down. If ever I went into the detective business again, it would not be with Enrico Caruso as my partner.

  The truth was, I wished I’d never started this. After all my prying and asking of impertinent questions, I was right back where I’d started. I had no proof of anything, just suspicions—and they weren’t any too reliable. And Caruso had lost what little perspective he’d had; look how quick he’d been to suspect poor old Uncle Hummy, just because we didn’t know whom else to point the finger at!

  Scotti stuck his head through the open door. “Dinner afterwards, carissima?”

  “Sorry, Toto,” I answered absently, “I have a prior engagement.”

  He stepped into the dressing room, glowering so darkly that Bella actually shrank back from him a little. “A prior engagement?” he roared. “With little Jimmy Freeman, no doubt!”

  Oh, I didn’t have time for this! “No, with Gatti-Casazza, if you must know.”

  That stopped him. “Gatti? Now I must worry about Gatti too?”

  “Worry about whomever you want, but please do it in your own dressing room, Toto.” He was gone before I’d finished the sentence.

  Toscanini was next. I’d just finished putting on my costume when he waltzed in and demanded to know what I’d said to Scotti. “He is in bad mood and it is your fault.”

  “Oh, go away,” I said crossly. “Everybody’s pestering me to death today.”

  Toscanini gave me an elaborately sarcastic bow. “But certo, Miss High-and-Mighty Prima Donna. One must do nothing to disturb the star.” He left before I could throw something at him.

  The omens were not favorable for a great matinee.

  But as I stood in the wings waiting to make my entrance, I put all those other matters out of my mind. I listened to Scotti singing, and became aware once more of how likable the man was on stage. He had the capacity to make audiences love him no matter what character he was singing. That was why he made such a compelling Scarpia in Tosca. Scarpia is one of the blackest villains ever to tread the operatic boards, but Scotti always made him evilly attractive—much more exciting than the one-dimensional interpretation usually given the part. Scotti’s role in Butterfly was a sympathetic one; so by the time he’d finished his scene, I’d completely forgiven him for acting like a jealous lover.

  It was time. Butterfly’s entrance is a difficult one; I have to go on followed by a women’s chorus and cross a narrow little arched bridge, singing away all the while. All of us have to look like delicate, fragile porcelain dolls, taking these tiny little steps, moving in graceful unison. We all mentally hold our breath until the bridge is successfully negotiated, and that day it went flawlessly. I’ve sung Butterfly about fifty times so far, and I’ve never been able to figure out why the entrance goes perfectly one performance and then falls to pieces the next. It’s a mystery.

  Since this was one of Toscanini’s sarcastic days, I half expected some hanky-panky from the Maestro; but he did his job with his usual professional verve. I finished the love duet with the tenor, and the Act I curtain closed to enthusiastic applause as well as squeals and screams from the gerryflappers.

  I headed straight for Scotti’s dressing room. He was sitting at his dressing table, staring glumly into the mirror. I went up behind him and put my hands on his shoulders. “It’s a business dinner, Toto,” I said. “There’s something I must talk to Gatti about.”

  His slow, big smile filled the mirror; he placed his hands over mine, not doubting my word at all. That was all right, then.

  In my own dressing room I was refreshing my make-up when Caruso popped in again, grinning from ear to ear. “A beautiful Butterfly, Gerry—exquisite! Simply exquisite! And you are right about Uncle Hummy. I am foolish man to suspect Uncle Hummy.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you agree,” I said in relief. “We must be careful not to jump to conclusions.”

  He nodded. “It has to be Osgood Springer after all,” he said as he left. I’d rejoiced too soon.

  Back downstairs and into Act II. That afternoon was one of those performances that just kept getting better as we went along. By the time of Butterfly’s suicide at the end of the opera, I could swear I heard a few people sobbing in the audience. I just love it when that happens!

  Gatti-Casazza loved it too, as he told me over dinner at the Ritz. “Not a single empty seat today!” he exulted. “In spite of the weather, everyone shows up.”

  It had been raining all day, the gray gloomy kind of rain that makes people want to stay in bed and sleep until it goes away. I waited until Gatti started to get that drowsy look that comes whenever he’s had enough to eat; I’d decided my best approach was a nice, straightforward lie. “The night Duchon was injured,” I said, “remember that? You did go into his dressing room. Caruso wasn’t the only one to see you.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask who else had been watching.

  It took him a moment to realize what I was saying. “Che dice?”

  “I said you were seen. Going into Duchon’s dressing room. Two witnesses, Gatti. Yet over and over again you’ve denied being there.”

  “You are accusing me …?”

  “Only of not telling the whole truth. I’m trying to find out what happened. You were there, weren’t you? You might as well tell me why.”

  He looked at me a long time and then sighed. “I go to see Duchon because he asked me to. No, Duchon did not ask—he summoned. Then when I hear what happens later, I think it is best not to involve myself. I lie, and now you find me out. I am sorry, Gerry.”

  “Why be sorry?” I muttered. “Everybody else lied too. What did Duchon want to see you about?”

  “Toscanini. Duchon claimed he was not satisfied with, ah, the quality of conducting at the Metropolitan. Cielo! He said Toscanini is careless and imprecise, and he wanted me to watch him carefully that night.”

&nbs
p; “Careless? Imprecise?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Toscanini?!”

  “Absurd, of course. It was just more trouble-making—the Frenchman thrived on it, I do believe.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Gatti pulled at his beard. “I fear I lost my temper. We had an argument—no shouting, but some unpleasant name-calling on both sides. You see why I do not want anyone to know I was there? If the police know …”

  “Yes, I see. Does Toscanini know Duchon was complaining about his conducting?”

  Gatti frowned. “I think he must. Toscanini—eh, he is not acting like himself. You know he wants me to resign with him? He says we leave La Scala together, and now we must leave the Metropolitan together.”

  “I know he’s been thinking of leaving, but he’s threatened to walk out before. He’s serious about wanting you to go with him?”

  “As a protest to the Metropolitan’s board of directors,” he nodded. “It is their policy of retrenchment, you see. Toscanini thinks if we both resign, the board will come to its senses.”

  “And hire you both back?”

  Gatti threw up his hands. “Who knows? But I cannot resign! My duty is to the opera house, not to one man—even if that man is Toscanini. He is angry with the board, he was angry with Duchon, and now he is angry with me.”

  “Then it really is serious.”

  “Very serious. He is violently angry, Gerry. It shames me to say this, but I have even wondered if it was not he who put the ammonia in Duchon’s spray bottle.”

  There it was—that ugly suspiciousness that kept creeping in no matter how much you wanted to keep it away. Emmy Destinn suspected Jimmy Freeman. Caruso suspected Osgood Springer. I tended to suspect Morris Gest. And now here was Gatti-Casazza suspecting his old friend Toscanini. “Did you know Duchon was spitting up blood before the performance started?”

  “No!”

  “While he was warming up. You didn’t see any signs?”

  “He had not yet started warming up when I was there. Oh, if I had known—if I had known, I would have substituted Freeman immediately and none of this would have happened! Duchon would still be alive!”

  “Would you have taken Duchon out?” I asked. “If you’d known about the blood, I mean. Would you really?”

  He stared at me. “Of course I would! You think I let a singer go on who is spitting blood? Is that what you think?”

  “Well, uh …”

  He threw his napkin down on the table in disgust. “You are like all the rest! None of you, you never credit me with any decent behavior! Everything that goes wrong, you blame me! You make me into a monster. Gerry, listen to me—I am not a monster. I resent this. I resent it very much.”

  A strange feeling crept over me that took me a moment to identify because I feel it so seldom. Then I had it: It was guilt. Gatti-Casazza was absolutely right; we did all tend to blame him for everything that happened, and to ascribe base motives to everything he did. The man in charge is such a convenient scapegoat. I felt like an idiot.

  “I feel like an idiot,” I told him. “I didn’t think, Gatti, and I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t have let Duchon sing if you’d known—and it was wrong of me to imply that you would have. I apologize, and I’ll never say or even think a thing like that again.”

  Gatti stared at me absolutely dumbfounded, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. It was the first time in our long association that I had ever apologized to him for anything.

  We’d finished our dinner, and Gatti had to get back to the opera house. It was The Magic Flute that night, and something was always going wrong with that one, he said. Gatti and I parted friends, better friends than we were before, I think.

  When I got home, Bella met me at the door. “Mr. Caruso was here,” she whispered uneasily, “but I wouldn’t let him in. Then Mr. Scotti came, and I did let him in. He’s here now. Did I do right?”

  “You did exactly right,” I told her, and sent her to bed, where she’d be out of the way.

  15

  At the crack of dawn the next day, Caruso showed up in the hallway outside my apartment door with his valet, Mario. Mario was loaded down with a collapsible chair, an ashtray, a thermos jug of coffee, one pillow, and three newspapers. Once he had the tenor settled comfortably, Mario rang the bell and told the startled maid that Signor Caruso was fully prepared to camp in the hallway indefinitely, until Miss Farrar saw fit to grant him entrance. He, Mario, would keep his employer supplied with all the necessities of life for as long as was necessary.

  I kept him waiting an hour, while I bathed and had breakfast. Then, when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I let him in.

  First he grumbled at me for keeping him waiting so long. Next he sent Mario into the kitchen with instructions to flirt with whomever he found there. Then he seated himself in the middle of my best sofa and demanded that I “report.”

  “Rico, it’s a good thing we’re friends,” I told him. “Otherwise I would probably have killed you by now. I can’t stop everything and ‘report’ whenever you get fidgety. Wait for me to contact you.”

  “But you are so slow, Gerry,” Caruso complained. “The killer, he gets farther away every day, no? We must move with dispatch!”

  “I haven’t been idling away my time, you know,” I snapped. Who was he to call me slow? But I did make an effort to remember what I’d learned since the last time I talked to him.

  I told Caruso that Morris Gest had indeed gone backstage before Carmen and he’d found Duchon embroiled in an argument with Dr. Curtis. I told him Osgood Springer had given up all his other students to concentrate on Jimmy Freeman’s career. I told him Gatti-Casazza had also been backstage during the crucial time, and that he too had quarreled with Duchon. I told him Toscanini might not be back next season.

  That last piece of information Caruso dealt with by refusing to believe it. “Never!” he said emphatically. “Toscanini never leaves the Metropolitan. He is part of the institution, no? The Metropolitan is home. Toscanini stays here forever.”

  “Gatti doesn’t think so. And I’m afraid he might be right.”

  Just then we had a visitor. Bella showed in Pasquale Amato, who wasted no time on amenities. “They tell me at the Knickerbocker that you come here,” he said to Caruso accusingly. “I know what you two are up to! Gerry, you should know better.”

  I agreed. “But sometimes circumstances force you to do what you’d rather not do. Sit down, Pasquale. Have you had breakfast?”

  But he wouldn’t be diverted. “Rico, you are impossible—I wash my hands of you. But Gerry, the man you seek—he is dangerous, no? What if he begins to think you suspect him?”

  “I’ve been very careful always to leave the impression that I did not suspect anyone.” That was true.

  “Nevertheless, you should not go hunting a criminal.” He looked exasperated with both of us. “Per giunta, what do you learn? Do you now know who hated Philippe Duchon enough to destroy him? Of course not! What do you know?”

  “Well,” I sighed, “not a whole lot. It all seems to come down to Uncle Hummy.”

  “It does?” Caruso asked wonderingly.

  “Of course it does. The old man must have seen something that frightened him off. Why else would he stay away from the opera house so long?”

  “He might be dead,” Amato said heavily.

  Caruso and I exchanged an anguished look; neither of us had thought of that. I asked, “Would an accidental killer kill again, this time deliberately, to hide his first crime? I know nothing about these things. But until and unless Uncle Hummy turns up dead, we have to go on the assumption that he is alive somewhere and can tell us something we don’t know.”

  “Alive somewhere,” Amato stressed.

  “Lieutenant O’Halloran,” Caruso said, “he looks high and low, and he cannot find one person who has even heard of Uncle Hummy.”

  “How did you know that?” I said. “O’Halloran surely didn’t tell you.”

 
Caruso grinned smugly. “I ask the sergeant who waits backstage.”

  Amato got a strange look on his face. “I just think of something. Does anyone call him Uncle Hummy besides us? ‘Uncle Hummy,’ it is our nickname for him at the opera house, yes? But when the police ask about Uncle Hummy outside the opera house—”

  “Nobody knows whom they’re talking about!” I cried. “No wonder they couldn’t find him!”

  “Pasquale, you are good detective,” Caruso said admiringly. “That name ‘Uncle Hummy’—where does it come from?”

  No one knew; both the nickname and the man who bore it antedated all three of us. I’d never once heard the old man humming, so it couldn’t be that. “This makes a difference,” I said excitedly. “Now we know what to do!”

  “We do?” the two men said together.

  “We do,” I repeated firmly, reaching for the telephone. “What we do is mobilize the gerryflappers.”

  “The gerryflappers?” two voices said.

  “Don’t you see, they can find Uncle Hummy for us.”

  Caruso and Amato exchanged a look. “Gerry,” said the latter, “how can the girls find him when the police cannot?”

  “You’ll see. Just wait a minute.” I got the leader of the gerryflappers on the telephone and asked her to come over immediately. Then I called downstairs and instructed the doorman to let them in when they got there. They, plural, because Mildred never went anywhere without Phoebe.

  “I repeat,” Amato said patiently, “how can the girls succeed where the police fail?”

  “Because the girls are going to have something to help them the police don’t have,” I told him. I went over to my writing desk and took out a couple of dozen sheets of foolscap. “Come here, Rico.” He came. “Sit down. Now draw.”

  Caruso’s face lit up like a spotlight when he understood. “Pictures! Pictures of Uncle Hummy—that is what the girls have! Ella mi confonde, Gerry! What a good idea!”

  Even Amato was nodding in reluctant approval. Caruso fell to sketching with enthusiasm. No two of his drawings were exactly alike, but all were recognizably Uncle Hummy. He’d finished thirteen by the time Mildredandphoebe got there.