Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 11: Photo-Finish, Light Thickens, Black Beech and Honeydew - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 20

When Alleyn went up to their room in search of Troy he found her fast asleep on their enormous bed. At a loose end, and worried about Rupert Bartholomew’s sudden capitulation, Alleyn returned downstairs. He could hear voices in the drawing room and concert chamber. Outside the house, a stronger wind had got up.

Midway down the hall, opposite the dining room, there was a door which Mr Reece had indicated as opening into the library. Alleyn thought he would find himself something to read and went in.

It might have been created by a meticulous scene-painter for an Edwardian drama. Uniform editions rose in irremovable tiers from floor to ceiling, the result, Alleyn supposed, of some mass-ordering process; classics, biographies and travel. There was a section devoted to contemporary novels each a virgin in its unmolested jacket. There was an assembly of ‘quality’ productions that would have broken the backs of elephantine coffee tables and there were orderly stacks of the most popular weeklies.

He wandered along the ranks at a loss for a good read and high up in an ill-lit corner came upon a book that actually bore signs of usage. It was unjacketed and the spine was rubbed. He drew it out and opened it at the title page.

Il Mistero di Bianca Rossi by Pietro Lamparelli. Alleyn didn’t read Italian with the complete fluency that alone gives easy pleasure but the title was an intriguing surprise. He allowed the verso to flip over and there on the flyleaf in sharp irregular characters was the owner’s name M. V. Rossi.

He settled down to read it.

An hour later he went upstairs and found Troy awake and refreshed.

The opera, a one-acter which lasted only an hour, was to begin at eight o’clock. It would be prefaced by light snacks with drinks and followed by a grand dinner party.

‘Do you suppose,’ Troy wondered, as they dressed, ‘that a reconciliation has taken place?’

‘I’ve no idea. She may go for a magnificent acceptance of his surrender or she may not be able to do herself out of the passionate rapture bit. My bet would be that she’s too professional to allow herself to be upset before a performance.’

‘I wish he hadn’t given in.’

‘He’s made the harder choice, darling.’

‘I suppose so. But if she does take him back – it’s not a pretty thought.’

‘I don’t think he’ll go. I think he’ll pack his bags and go back to teaching the piano and playing with his small Sydney group and doing a little typing on the side.’

‘Signor Lattienzo did say there were two or three signs of promise in the opera.’

‘Did he? If he’s right, the more shame on that termagant for what she’s done to the boy.’

They were silent for a little while after this and then Troy said: ‘Is there a window open? It’s turned chilly, hasn’t it?’

‘I’ll look.’

The curtains had been closed for the night. Alleyn parted them, and discovered an open window. It was still light outside. The wind had got up strongly now, there was a great pother of hurrying clouds in the sky and a wide vague sound abroad in the evening.

‘It’s brewing up out there,’ Alleyn said. ‘The lake’s quite rough.’ He shut the window.

‘Not much fun for the guests going home,’ said Troy, and then: ‘I’ll be glad, won’t you, when this party’s over?’

‘Devoutly glad.’

‘Watching that wretched boy’s ordeal, it’ll be like sitting out an auto-da-fé,’ she said.

‘Would you like to have a migraine? I’d make it sound convincing.’

‘No. He’d guess. So, oh Lord, would she.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right. Should we go down now, darling, to our champagne and snacks?’

‘I expect so. Rory, your peculiar mission seems to have got mislaid, doesn’t it? I’d almost forgotten about it. Do you by any chance suppose Mr Reece to be a “Godfather” with an infamous Sicilian “Family” background?’

‘He’s a cold enough fish to be anything, but –’ Alleyn hesitated for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘So far there’s been nothing to report. I shall continue to accept his hospitality and will no doubt return empty-handed to my blasted boss. I’ve little stomach for the job, and that’s a fact. If it wasn’t for you, my particular dish, and your work in hand, I’d have even less. Come on.’

Notwithstanding the absence of Rupert and all the performers, the drawing room was crowded. About thirty guests had arrived by devious means and were being introduced to each other by Mr Reece and his secretary. There were top people from the Arts Council, various conductors and a selection of indigenous critics, notably a prestigious authority from the New Zealand Listener. Conspicuous among the distinguished guests from abroad was a large rubicund man with drooping eyelids and a dictatorial nose: Sir David Baumgartner, the celebrated critic and musicologist. He was in close conversation with Signor Lattienzo who, seeing the Alleyns, gave them one of his exuberant bows, obviously told Sir David who they were and propelled him towards them.

Sir David told Troy that it really was a great honour and a delightful surprise to meet her and asked if it could be true that she was going to paint the Great Lady. He chaffed Alleyn along predictable lines, saying that they would all have to keep their noses clean, wouldn’t they? He spoke gravely of the discomforts of his journey. It had come upon him, to put it bluntly, at a most inconvenient time and if it had been anybody else – here he gave them a roguish glance – he wouldn’t have dreamt of – he need say no more. The implication clearly was that The Alien Corn had better be good.

Lobster sandwiches, pâté, and miniature concoctions of the kind known to Mr Justice Shallow as ‘pretty little tiny kickshaws’ were handed round and champagne galore. Sir David sipped, raised his eyebrows and was quickly ready for a refill. So were all the new arrivals. Conversation grew noisy.

‘Softening-up process,’ Alleyn muttered.

And indeed by ten minutes to eight all signs of travel fatigue had evaporated and when Marco, who had been much in evidence, tinkled up and down on a little xylophone, he was obliged to do so for some time like a ship’s steward walking down corridors with a summons to dinner.

Ben Ruby and Mr Reece began a tactful herding towards the concert chamber.

The doors were open. The audience assembled itself.

The chairs in the front rows were ticketed with the names of the house guests and some of the new arrivals who evidently qualified as VIPs. Troy and Alleyn were placed on the left of Mr Reece’s empty chair, Sir David and Signor Lattienzo on its right with Ben Ruby beyond them. The rest of the élite comprised the conductor of the New Zealand Philharmonic Orchestra and his wife, three professors of music from as many universities, an Australian newspaper magnate and four representatives of the press – which press exactly had not been defined. The remainder of an audience of about fifty chose their own seats while at the back the household staff was feudally accommodated.

The collective voice was loud and animated and the atmosphere of expectancy fully established. ‘If only they keep it up,’ Troy whispered to Alleyn. She glanced along the row to Signor Lattienzo. His arms were folded and his head inclined towards Sir David who was full of animation and bonhomie. Lattienzo looked up from under his brows, saw Troy and crossed the fingers of his right hand.

The players came in and tuned their instruments, a sound that always caught Troy under the diaphragm. The lights in the auditorium went out. The stage curtain glowed. Mr Reece slipped into his seat beside Troy. Rupert Bartholomew came in from behind the stage so inconspicuously that he had raised his baton before he had been noticed. The overture began.

Troy always wished she knew more about music and could understand why one sound moved her and another left her disengaged. Tonight she was too apprehensive to listen properly. She tried to catch the response of the audience, watched Rupert’s back and wondered if he was able to distil any magic from his players, wondered, even, how long the ephemeral good nature induced by champagne could be expected to last with listeners who knew what music was about. She was so distracted by these speculations that the opening of the curtain caught her by surprise.

She had dreamt up all sorts of awful possibilities: Rupert breaking down and walking out, leaving the show to crawl to disaster; Rupert stopping the proceedings and addressing the audience; or the audience itself growing more and more restless or apathetic and the performance ending on the scantiest show of applause and the audience being harangued by an infuriated Sommita.

None of these things took place. True, as the opera developed the boisterous good humour of the audience seemed to grow tepid but the shock of that Golden Voice, the astonishment it engendered note by note, was so extraordinary that no room was left for criticism. And there was, or so it seemed to Troy, a passage in the duet with Hilda Dancy – ‘Whither thou goest’ – when suddenly the music came true. She thought: That’s one of the bits Signor Lattienzo meant. She looked along the row and he caught her glance and nodded.

Sir David Baumgartner, whose chin was sunk in his shirt frill in what passed for profound absorption, raised his head. Mr Reece, sitting bolt upright in his chair, inconspicuously consulted his watch.

The duet came to its end and Troy’s attention wandered. The show was well-dressed, the supporting artistes being clad in low-profile biblical gear hired from a New Zealand company who had recently revived the York Cycle. The Sommita’s costume, created for the occasion, was white and virginal and if it was designed to make Ruth look like a startling social misfit amidst the alien corn, succeeded wonderfully in achieving this end.

The quartet came and went and left no mark. Sir David looked irritated. The Sommita, alone on stage, sailed into a recitative and thence to her big aria. Troy now saw her purely in terms of paint, fixing her in the memory, translating her into a new idiom. The diva had arrived at the concluding fioritura, she moved towards her audience, she lifted her head, she spread her arms and rewarded them with her trump card – A above high C.

No doubt she would have been very cross if they had observed the rule about not applauding until the final curtain. They did not observe it. They broke into a little storm of clapping. She raised a monitory hand. The performance entered into its penultimate phase: a lachrymose parting between Ruth and Signor Romano, plump in kilted smock and leg strappings and looking like a late photograph of Caruso. Enter Boaz, discovering them and ordering the gleaner to be beaten. Ruth and Naomi pleading with Boaz to relent, which he did, and the opera ended with a rather cursory reconciliation of all hands in chorus.

The sense of relief when the curtains closed was so overwhelming that Troy found herself clapping wildly. After all, it had not been so bad. None of the horrors she had imagined had come to pass, it was over and they were in the clear.

Afterwards, she wondered if the obligatory response from the audience could have been evoked by the same emotion.

Three rapid curtain calls were taken. The first by the company, the second by the Sommita who was thinly cheered by backbenchers, and the third again by the Sommita who went through her customary routine of extended arms, kissed hands and deep curtsies.

And then she turned to the orchestra, advanced upon it with outstretched hand and beckoning smile only to find that her quarry had vanished. Rupert Bartholomew was gone. The violinist stood up and said something inaudible but seemed to suggest that Rupert was backstage. The Sommita’s smile had become fixed. She swept to an upstage entrance and vanished through it. The audience, nonplussed, kept up a desultory clapping which had all but died out when she reentered, bringing, almost dragging, Rupert after her.

He was sheet-white and dishevelled. When she exhibited him, retaining her grasp of his hand, he made no acknowledgement of the applause she exacted. It petered out into a dead silence. She whispered something and the sound was caught up in a giant enlargement: the north-west wind sighing round the island.

The discomfiture of the audience was extreme. Someone, a woman, behind Troy said: ‘He’s not well. He’s going to faint,’ and there was a murmur of agreement. But Rupert did not faint. He stood bolt upright, looked at nothing, and suddenly freed his hand.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he said loudly.

Mr Reece began to clap and was followed by the audience. Rupert shouted: ‘Don’t do that,’ and they stopped. He then made his curtain speech.

‘I expect I ought to thank you. Your applause is for a Voice. It’s a wonderful Voice, insulted by the stuff it has been given to sing tonight. For that I am responsible. I should have withdrawn it at the beginning when I realized – when I first realized – when I knew –’

He swayed a little and raised his hand to his forehead.

‘When I knew,’ he said. And then he did faint. The curtains closed.