Death and the Chaste Apprentice Page 14

  “Yes, I was sorry you got all that publicity. I wasn’t involved.”

  “Of course not. I don’t blame the police. But she’d just lost a baby, had postnatal depression— Anyway, it made a good story for the local papers, and damn the consequences for her. It was all perfectly public, but what made it worse was Des coming up at the first committee meeting after the magistrates’ hearing. ‘Terribly sorry to hear about your little family trouble. As a father myself I can sympathize.’ All done in a nicely raised voice. I could have—Well, no, I couldn’t. But I felt like it then.”

  “I had no idea Capper had children.”

  “Nor had anyone. Maybe it was just a fiction to justify the sympathy. If he has, he seems conveniently to have cast them off, or it off, somewhere along the line.”

  Dundy looked at Charlie. He knew that both of them were toying with the entrancing notion of Des having fathered Singh during his time in India. Dundy shook his head and put the notion from him. Singh was about twenty years too young.

  “You have no idea how he came to be appointed?” he asked.

  “None. It’s something all of us on the committee have discussed, I can tell you. We could only assume some . . . hold on the chairman or managing director of the Beaumont chain.”

  “Blackmail, you mean?”

  The director looked mildly horrified, as if such a thought had at least not been put into words hitherto.

  “Oh, come, come,” he said. “It didn’t have to be anything so dramatic. He could have done somebody some . . . service.”

  “Saved his son and heir from drowning?” said Dundy cynically.

  “That sort of thing. Saved his life in the disturbances at the time of Indian independence. He waxed very eloquent about his experiences at Mountbatten’s right hand.”

  “Hmmm,” said Dundy. “Very Jewel in the Crown. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind betting Capper got his notions of what happened at independence time from that TV series. He wasn’t in India at the time; he’d gone on to Hong Kong. You mentioned his characteristic as almighty know-all and crushing bore. But it wasn’t those in particular that annoyed the festival committee, was it?”

  “No, though it was embarrassing, because he was pig ignorant, and we had to find ways of listening to him pontificating about things he knew bugger-all about. No, it was his pushiness and his prying that touched us on the raw. He took it as his right to go everywhere, poke his nose in everything.”

  “Did he have such a right?”

  The director shrugged. “In theory, maybe. No other member of the committee would have thought of exercising it. But Des went everywhere, got to know everything, and gave his advice.”

  Dundy waved his hand in the direction of the auditorium, whence pale echoes of vocal glory penetrated even to the director’s office.

  “I gather on occasion he poked his nose into rehearsals of the opera we can hear now.”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t know how often. I was down here one day watching rehearsals and waiting to see that swine Gottlieb afterwards. There was a nasty moment, with Gottlieb humiliating the tenor, who had to be brought to the front of the stage if he was to be heard, and Mallory having to placate the soprano. The producer was rearranging positions, and suddenly I saw Des was there in the wings. I remember my heart sinking and thinking: Des is all we need at this stage.”

  “We’ve heard about this little episode,” said Dundy. “And about what happened afterwards in the Green Room.”

  “Do you remember exactly what Gottlieb said to Capper?” asked Charlie.

  “Pretty well. ‘I do not take advice from taverners’—I remember that. ‘You come near one of my rehearsals ever again and I have you . . . thrown out on your fat bottom.’ He has the men who could have done it, too.”

  “Did Capper say anything?”

  “Nothing to the purpose. ‘Sorry, I’m sure,’ or ‘No offense’—something like that. He just slunk away.”

  “But hoping to get his revenge,” said Dundy. “We’ve evidence of that. He didn’t like public humiliation.”

  “Who does? But with Capper it would have been a strong emotion, I’m sure. He nursed grudges.”

  “Yes.” Dundy looked at him straight. “Tell me, if you were out to ‘get’ Gunter Gottlieb—”

  “As, God help me, I may be yet.”

  “—how would you do it?”

  The festival director considered. “I think my first reaction would be to say: hit him professionally.”

  “Ah! That’s what I wondered. Because he is, shall we say, vulnerable, on his personal side, too, isn’t he?”

  “Girlies,” said the director, shaking his head. “I know. It’s something I’ve had to be very aware of. It’s the popular press I fear: Royals and vicars and people in the arts world—those are the ones the tabloids have a particular down on. He seems impregnable, but that could be his Achilles heel. That’s why I had a word about it with his minder—”

  “Ah! You did that?”

  “It seemed the sensible thing. I discovered that he was thick as two planks, but he had learned enough about the law to know how to keep on the right side of it when he had a mind. So I made it clear to him: nobody underage. And preferably nobody local. I think he’s been recruiting from the groupies who followed him from Coventry and from people here for the festival. Gottlieb’s needs are occasional and brief.”

  “So that’s made him pretty near impregnable on the personal side, you think? That’s why you’d go for him on the professional side if you had to?”

  “Yes, because odd though it may seem, the festival is important to him. It’s part of his overall strategy, and he wants to be a success here, make it his festival.”

  “How did you come to appoint him?”

  “That’s easily explained. It seemed such a coup! He came with the Midlands Orchestra last year and gave a quite wonderful concert. Mahler and Beethoven—the most thrilling Seventh you can imagine. Our regulars were over the moon: It was the sort of glorious music making they heard in their dreams, one of them said. Our regular opera conductor was off to be resident chief of one of the state orchestras in Australia, so there was a vacancy to be filled. Not expecting him to accept, we approached Gunter Gottlieb.”

  “And he accepted?”

  “Not immediately. He thought for three days, then accepted provided he had charge of all the musical side of the festival. That seemed like a wonderful bonus to all the committee. We couldn’t believe our luck.”

  “I take it you’ve learned better since?”

  The director thought a bit, trying to be fair. “It would be wrong to say that. I think this festival will probably be a great success from a musical point of view. The opera will, too: He makes Donizetti sound as good as mature Verdi. But it will all be a personal success for himself, and to some extent it will be manufactured.”

  “You mean he brings his own fans, and so on?”

  “Well, yes, he does, but I didn’t mean that. There are four orchestral concerts, and the third will be given by the Welsh Symphony Orchestra. At the planning stage he insisted that they give Death and Transfiguration and insisted, too, that we engage Ernest Petheridge to conduct. Between ourselves, never the brightest conductor, and now, at seventy-five . . . Well, he can be relied on to endow the idea of eternity with new degrees of tedium. They’ll be snoring in the aisles. Then, two nights later, the final concert, with Gunter Gottlieb conducting Also Sprach Zarathustra—surefire popular success, brilliant orchestral showpiece, and of course brilliantly conducted. And don’t get me wrong—it will be. But it will seem that bit more brilliant by comparison. You get me?”

  “Oh, I get you.”

  “And then, of course, there’s the business of next year.”

  “That was what the row was about in the Green Room, wasn’t it?”

  “Disagreement . . . Well, yes, row. Except that I did manage not to lose my cool. It would mean changing the whole direction and character of the festival. You
probably know what sort of festival Ketterick has had up to now: a festival for families and enthusiasts, with something for everyone. Some of the sillier critics sneer at the operas we do, but they’re wonderfully direct and involving—first-rate theater. Gottlieb’s is an attempt to change all that and put us in the international league. And, of course, it put us in a cleft stick.”

  “How?”

  “If we say no and lose him, all the arts establishment and all the newspaper people will say we’ve opted for safeness and provinciality and second-rateness. If we say yes, we hand the festival to him on a plate, the rest of us become ciphers, and we betray our existing audiences.”

  “Yes, I see. An impossible decision. And I take it an impossible gentleman to work with?”

  “Bloody impossible, between you and me. I think we’d be justified in turning him down and letting him go if only because he’s obviously using us as a stepping-stone to something else and because it will certainly all end in tears, and pretty soon, too.”

  “So your view is that he’s totally geared to being a success in his professional life and if you hit him there you would really touch him where it hurts? Something along those lines was my conclusion, too. He’s a man programmed to succeed. He’s to be the next—who’s the bee’s knees?—Karajan?”

  “The comparison has occurred to other people. At the moment, his whole being is intent on two glorious successes: first the opera, then the final concert, where he’ll hope to have people standing and cheering, led by his own groupies. Which he almost certainly will. And to be fair to him, which isn’t easy, almost all of it will be deserved.”

  “He is good?”

  “He is very good. He rides roughshod over everyone, but he is almost always right. And yet there is still . . . somehow—I can’t put it simply—a lack. An emptiness. . . . And I wonder whether in the long run music lovers aren’t going to find this out. . . . Would you like to see him doing a bit of the opera?”

  “There can’t be any seats, surely?”

  “There’s mine. I have to go and see to the interval jamboree for nobs and critics. You’ve no idea how we butter up the critics from the big newspapers. You can have my seat until the break.” He turned to Charlie. “And you can stand at the back, if you don’t mind that. It’s not usually allowed, but we can explain to the fire people that you’re a policeman.”

  “I’m used to standing about,” said Charlie. “I was in uniformed branch for a year.”

  “I think we’ll say yes,” said Dundy. “Though I’m not sure that I’m musical enough to understand this . . . this lack that you talk of.”

  They went back to the front of house, down the staircase, and along the corridor that spanned the back of the stalls. The director collected programs for Dundy and Charlie and then, with practiced stealth, opened the door into the stalls. As the music washed over them, he pointed Charlie to a place by the door and then led Dundy down to an aisle seat three rows down. Then he himself evaporated to attend to the wants of the important visitors.

  Once settled, Dundy found himself cocooned in a devout attentiveness. This audience was a totally committed one. Onstage, and close to the front of the stage, a very personable tenor was emoting in slow time, sighing his way towards a close. Iain Dundy had only a smattering of holiday Italian, but he had an awful feeling that the tenor was boasting about how much his love had cost him. The cad, he thought. Then the orchestra hotted things up, and an attendant or junior terrorist rushed onstage to deliver an urgent message, of which the words Inglese and Birckenhead could be distinguished. At which the tenor leapt to his feet and with a skirl of his (unhistorical) kilt began delivering a martial cabaletta that taxed his sweet voice to the uttermost. When it was over, there was polite applause, the curtain came down, and dimmed lights came up while changes were made to the permanent set.

  In the half-light at the back of the theater Charlie read the program. He had got a rough idea of the story from the volume in Des’s sitting room: The personable hero, he remembered, would be Robert the Bruce, on the run from the English and about to take refuge, disguised, at il castello di Birckenhead, the power base of his rival, who was also the husband of the woman he loved. Well, that was all clear, wasn’t it? He turned to the history of the opera and immediately found himself gripped in a way he did not quite understand. He read through the account of the first version of the opera, then the story of the recent rediscovery of the later version. Only when he had finished that did he begin to realize that the break had been rather long. Looking up from his program, he found he was not alone in this feeling. In the Victorian intimacy of the Alhambra Theatre everyone could see everything, and even from the back of the stalls Charlie could see the figure of Gunter Gottlieb, his baton steadily beating on the open pages of his score in patent irritation. No doubt Gottlieb had decreed no more than two minutes for the break, and it had stretched out to four. But then the lights went down, there was a perceptible relaxation of tension in the audience, and Gottlieb raised his baton for the last scene before Interval.

  In the previous scene, Charlie, for all his lack of knowledge of opera, had been conscious of a shimmering beauty that Gottlieb extracted from the very simple accompaniment to the tenor aria. Now he began to notice something very different. The curtain had risen on the peasants and retainers of the castle of Birckenhead (all kilted—in defiance not only of historical but also of geographical probability). They were celebrating something or other, probably Hogmanay, in song and dance. The stage picture was supposed to be one of uninhibited revelry, but what Charlie was most conscious of was the lack of real spontaneity. What impressed him most was the drilled nature of the performance—the military precision of the drumbeats, the terrified accuracy of the chorus, which at times affected their acting. It was as if—another historical absurdity—the opera was being performed by the soldiers of Frederick the Great for their commander in chief. One might see Gottlieb as the Prussian bandmaster writ large. Charlie did not quite see things in those terms, but he did register to himself: Everyone is bloody terrified.

  He stood there, drinking it in, thinking that he might be able to make a habit of this kind of music if he ever got the opportunity. There was a scene for a dreadful comic servant, and then the baritone and soprano arrived to join the merrymaking, exuding manorial graciousness. The baritone found time to snarl something about “gl’Inglesi” to a retainer out of the corner of his mouth, in the way baritones have. Then suddenly the sound of merrymaking died away. The tenor had arrived. He stood for some moments at the back of the stage, commented on by everyone in hushed tones. Then he advanced to the front in what Charlie recognized as a clumsy but necessary maneuver. Soon he was launching into the great, swaying tune:

  Io son pari ad uom cui scende

  Già la scure sulla testa.

  This was the moment, Charlie felt sure, that Des had come in on in rehearsal. Standing there in the darkness, letting the music lap over him and swaying in time to its irresistible impulse, Charlie thought that he might have had the glimmerings of an idea.

  Chapter 14

  The Corridors

  “ ‘THE TRIVIAL ROUND, the common task, should furnish all we ought to ask,’ ” misquoted Dundy under his breath next morning. And in future it bloody well will. Here we go on another load of backstage chitchat, shortly homing in on more accounts of what gives with the Galloways. At least when I rowed with my wife it tore us apart, because we meant it. With these arty people, who knows when they mean anything?

  And what gives with Peace this morning? His mind isn’t on it. And this girl’s a perfectly personable little thing. . . . He dragged his mind back to the interview he was conducting.

  “As far as the balcony scene is concerned, I inspected them all before they went up the stairs,” Susan Fanshaw was saying. “They were all in night gear, so it was quite straightforward. Then I was off hither and yon doing other things. The apprentices were onstage—onstage and off, because it’s a very busy sc
ene, and I have to see whether the costumes have suffered in the horseplay, whether they’ve lost anything, and so on. So though normally I might have noticed when Carston at least came back down the stairs, that night I didn’t.”

  Iain Dundy coughed a dry, diplomatic cough.

  “Er, you say normally you might have noticed?”

  Susan obviously wanted to get that part of the discussion over with.

  “Oh, Carston and I are vaguely sleeping together.”

  “I see. I had, actually, some idea of this, but perhaps you could put me into the picture. I gather his wife knows?”

  “Oh, yes. Everybody knows. It’s no great passionate affair. I mean, Carston is nice—” She pulled herself up. “No, not nice exactly, because he’s mean as hell, and vain as well. Still, he is a wonderful actor, when he’s fully stretched, whereas she will never in essence be more than a rep queen, for all her name. So it is rather exciting; it is decidedly a pleasant interlude. . . . Not least because of his vast experience.”

  “Ah . . . You don’t mean acting? No. Er, you don’t mind being one of a long line?”

  “Not at all. It’s part of the thrill.”

  Iain Dundy sighed. He was never going to understand these people, still less like them. His bewilderment was increased when Susan Fanshaw added: “A long, long roster. Both male and female.”

  He drew his hand along his forehead. “I see. Then Galloway is—?”

  “Predominantly hetero, but he takes it as it comes. He covers the waterfront, like Brad Mallory. It’s pretty common in the theater.”

  “Oh, then Mr. Mallory—?”

  “Must be the same. He doesn’t make much secret of being besotted with young Singh—not even from you, I imagine. But I know an actress who had a pretty serious affair with him five or six years ago.” She saw Dundy’s face and laughed. “It must make it pretty difficult for you.”

  “All in a day’s work,” said Dundy bravely. “So you are sleeping with Mr. Galloway, and I gather Mrs. Galloway is sleeping with the producer, and this is all out in the open and talked about quite unashamedly?”