Death and the Chaste Apprentice Page 16

Peter Fortnum seemed to lose several degrees of confidence and looked distinctly uneasy.

  “Come, come,” said Dundy. “You know, I know, everybody knows, that you didn’t spend all that time lost in the corridors.”

  “No,” admitted Peter. “Though one can. It wasn’t a bad story, and you couldn’t have disproved it. Only in fact Connie Geary’s room is very close to the main stairwell, so it was comparatively easy to find. I went through the dining room, through the Shakespeare—”

  “And Mrs. Capper was there?”

  “Oh, yes. Then I went upstairs and fetched the gin. . . . I’d already decided to phone Stuttgart then rather than after the end of the play. Then I could give the news to Natalya as soon as I came off. . . . They put an appalling extra cost on all the calls you make from your rooms here—”

  “English hotels are scandalous at that,” agreed Dundy.

  “—so I went to the pay phone in one of the little alcoves. I am not one of the Piccadilly Fortnums, by the way, if they exist, and money is always scarce. That alcove—you can go and look—is a dark little place, and anyone phoning there is not conspicuous. I dialed and then waited while it rang and rang. . . .”

  “Yes, go on.”

  “While I was standing there, someone went past. He didn’t see me. He went on—didn’t go down the stairs, but went past. You’re familiar with the geography up there, are you?”

  “As familiar as a day or two’s acquaintance can make me.”

  “The first door after the stairwell is the first-floor door to the Cappers’ flat. I’m sure it was there that he knocked. It was not more than a few steps after the stairwell, though I couldn’t actually see the door.”

  “Knocked—and went in?”

  “Yes. There was a call; then I heard the door open. Then they answered in Stuttgart, and I didn’t pay any more attention.”

  “You haven’t told me yet,” said Dundy, “who it was who went past.”

  “No, I know. I wish I didn’t have to. I’ve nothing against him. But it was Brad Mallory.”

  Dundy looked at Charlie, then down at the books, and in the crowded little room there was silence.

  Chapter 15

  En Suite

  WHEN THE LITTLE OFFICE was cleared and the Russian interpreter had gone off to hobnob with Peter and Natalya Radilova in the Shakespeare Bar, the three policemen who were left sat for some moments in thought.

  “Brad Mallory is one of the ones I wondered about,” said Dundy at last.

  “Me, too,” said Charlie. “To be honest, there were others, too: I wondered why this American was so often around the Saracen if he loathed Capper’s guts. I wondered why Mrs. Capper didn’t ring up to the flat to find out what had happened to Des after the interval . . .”

  “But both those oddities were probably explicable in terms of character,” said Dundy. “The tenor is naturally gregarious. Mrs. Capper is a natural doormat.”

  “Right. But you can’t say the same for Brad Mallory. His actions make no sense in terms of character or of anything else. First of all, he leaves the concert halfway through to flap his way to the hotel, and then he expects us to believe that he was so affected by dear Singh’s performance that he had to come back to his room to recover himself. The man’s an agent, after all!”

  “Wouldn’t seem to be much future for him in his own profession,” commented Nettles.

  “Right,” agreed Dundy. “There is Singh enjoying a fabulous success, apparently, with critics and opera directors there to hear him—pressured to come by Mallory himself. And we know for a fact—Singh told us—that offers were made to him of work, future engagements, during Interval and later. But what had Mallory done? Sloped off and left Singh to receive all the plaudits and offers of engagements on his own, holding court in the backstage rooms in the Town Hall. What’s an agent for if not to take care of things like that?”

  “And it wasn’t only Singh,” chipped in Charlie. “He was also agent, at least in the West, for Natalya Whatsername. She was a great success in the first half, and she was singing again in the second. He didn’t even bother to stay and hear her but left her in the lurch, without translator or any sort of intermediary. If she was any ordinary singer in the West, surely she’d have given him the old heave-ho and got herself an agent that didn’t go down with palpitations every time his pet protégé sang.”

  “One other thing,” put in Nettles. “He looked in at the Shakespeare on the way up to his room. If he was wanting peace and quiet to recover in, why would he do that? He was looking for someone, and it’s a fair bet it was Des Capper.”

  “It is,” agreed Dundy. “Because look at the sequence of events earlier in the evening when he left the Saracen. He’d been in the Shakespeare, and he came out of the main entrance to go to the Town Hall, immediately followed by Des Capper. Now, let’s conjecture that precisely then, on the way out of the Shakespeare and through the foyer, Des came up to him—timing it purposely, Mallory being on his way to Singh’s triumph—and said something that showed him his secret had been guessed.”

  Nettles looked ahead of him, hoping to hide the fact that he was not too sure he understood what the secret in question was. Charlie nodded vigorously, knowing all too well.

  “That all makes sense,” he said with an enthusiasm born of a love of the chase. “But did you get why he thought he could use Mallory and Singh to ‘Get Gottlieb’?”

  “I think so. I think I sorted it out,” said Dundy. “Let’s get it clear in our minds. Let’s go back to that rehearsal we’ve heard about from more than one witness. It was a rehearsal with full cast and orchestra, but it wasn’t a dress rehearsal. I checked that this morning, by the way, with the director. The tenor, Krister Kroll, was in stage costume. That was because he has to wear that rather camp number in furs and tartan. The rest were in mufti.”

  “I don’t get the point,” said Nettles. “Remember I haven’t seen the show.”

  “But you read the program. Anyway, as far as I can reconstruct it, this is what happened. The tenor entered at the back of the stage and launched into his big tune. He’s got quite a nice voice, but small, and it was quite ineffective—wouldn’t have penetrated beyond the third row of the stalls, even I could hear that. So Gottlieb made him come to the front of the stage, and that totally upset the production. Natalya Whatsit got upset, and Brad went up onstage to calm her down, accompanied by Singh—Brad Mallory being the solicitous singers’ agent at this point, you notice. How much he could do to calm her down without a common language I don’t know, but he certainly tried. Now, at this point Des Capper arrived backstage to assert his right to go everywhere and poke his finger in everything.”

  “Yes,” said Nettles, still puzzled. “He spoke to Peter Fortnum.”

  “That’s right. Then the staging was altered, the scene played through to the end, then a break was called. We needn’t go into that. But what would someone arriving at that point in the rehearsal think?”

  “That the Third World War was about to start and the Germans were on the other side as usual?” suggested Nettles.

  Charlie jumped up and down excitedly. “No! He’d see Singh up there onstage, in civvies like the rest, and he’d assume that he had a part in the opera. Remember that he made that endearing little joke to Fortnum about the Indians running the corner shops?”

  “And not only that,” insisted Dundy. “Remember that when Fortnum and Gillian Soames first arrived at the Saracen, he thought they were ‘the operatic lady and gentleman.’ He not only got the wrong people, but he was wrong about Singh, too. He wasn’t singing in the opera, only in a concert.”

  “I still don’t quite see—” began Nettles.

  “It means,” said Charlie, bubbling on, “that if he wanted to get even with Gottlieb, the best way to do it was through the opera—prestige affair, second big event of the festival, the stepping-stone for Gottlieb taking over the festival as a whole. And Des, getting it wrong as usual, thought he could get at the opera vi
a Singh, who he thought was in it.”

  “What he thought, I’m sure,” agreed Dundy, “was that he could bring the whole thing down around Gottlieb’s head by going to the tabloids with a really grubby little story that they’d love. The fact that he’d also destroy Singh’s career—and probably Mallory’s, too, in the process—wouldn’t have worried him. Why would it? He had no reason to love them.” He got up and looked at the other two. “Come on. I think it’s time that we talked to him.”

  They got together their things and went out of the office. As they passed the reception desk in the foyer, Iain Dundy pulled out the guest book and found Mallory’s rooms. They constituted the Grand Suite—rooms 116 and 117. As they went up the staircase, they threw a glance into the Shakespeare. The new manager, a fair-haired, efficient-looking young man, was coping with the help of Dawn. It was getting on for two, but the bar was very full.

  “Ghouls,” said Dundy.

  Once up on the first floor, the policemen began to have a renewed sympathy with Peter Fortnum’s point about the geography of the place. Yes, this was a hotel that you wouldn’t necessarily get the hang of in a few days. After a few abortive sallies up dead-end corridors and down stunted flights of stairs that led nowhere, they finally came, almost by accident, it seemed, upon room 116. It was next to room 145. Dundy listened outside the door of room 116, then room 117, and finally knocked on the latter door. There was a moment’s pause and then a reasonably confident sounding “Come in.”

  They went in to what was obviously one of the best rooms in the hotel. It was, in fact, a sitting room with bedrooms leading off from either end and a gleaming bathroom visible through a half-open door. In the sitting room there was a large television and radio, a dining table and chairs, and coffee tables dotted here and there. The furniture was either old or new-old, Dundy couldn’t decide which. On one of the coffee tables was a tray with plates and glasses on it. Brad and Singh had obviously just lunched on something sent up from the kitchens. Dundy wondered whether Mallory was becoming embarrassed by Singh or fearful for his discovery. A half bottle of German wine stood on the dining table, and beside it a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  Singh was sitting in an armchair on one side of a little table, reading Uomo, or perhaps just studying the fashion plates. He looked chubby and satisfied, and Dundy thought there might be a suspicion of makeup on his face. Brad Mallory was sitting on the other side, a cravat tucked airily into his open shirt, suede shoes on his feet. In spite of such old-fashioned dash in his attire, it struck Dundy that he looked very small. As he put his book down hurriedly on the table and bustled to welcome them all in, he looked apprehensive, almost frightened. He was not a good dissembler of fear. Dundy bent down and took up the book.

  “Ah, press-cuttings,” he said. “I hear you had a great success at the concert, sir.” Singh, who had watched the bustle as a disinterested observer, allowed his sallow cheeks to crease into a smile but then let them sink back into handsome repose. “I haven’t had time to read the reviews myself, but I hear you gave a very remarkable performance.”

  “The reviews are very good, very gratifying,” said Brad with a nervous, jerky intensity. “It’s the beginning of a brilliant career for Singh. But I don’t suppose all three of you will have come to talk about music, Superintendent?”

  “No, indeed, sir. I wonder if we could speak to you alone? No reason for bothering Mr. Singh in this instance.”

  Brad Mallory seemed both nervous and yet glad. “Of course, yes. Do you mind, dear boy? The video is in your bedroom. You seem to have been up half the night with it. I’m sure you have something you’d like to play over again.”

  Singh smiled again and got up gracefully. He moved as if he had studied deportment with some very aged teacher, possibly with Mr. Turveydrop himself. As soon as he had shut the door, the policemen heard a click, then the opening music of Mary Poppins.

  When he heard it, Brad Mallory flinched, as if this were a masterpiece with which he was all too familiar. Then his face dissolved into a smile.

  “The dear boy,” he said, looking round at them. “So faithful to his old favorites.”

  He waved Dundy and the other policemen to seats, but Dundy waited before he accepted.

  “The dear boy seems to have pleased the critics as much as he affected you,” he said, tapping the collection of pasted-in reviews. “It must be a disadvantage to you in your job to be so easily incapacitated emotionally.”

  Brad Mallory looked disconcerted. “It is,” he said. “But that’s one of the penalties one pays for the artistic temperament.”

  Iain Dundy sat down and gave him a hard look. “Mr. Mallory,” he said. “I’m not going to beat about the bush or get into little sparring bouts with you. And I wish you’d drop this performance.”

  “Performance?”

  “It seems to me you’re giving a performance as an aesthete, practically a parody of one. You remind me of a character in a not very good detective story from the twenties. You also seem to me to be giving a parody performance of a homosexual.”

  “Like the chaste apprentice in the play,” put in Charlie. “He’s doing a parody of the Carry On homosexual, and you’re doing the quivering aesthete one.”

  “I really don’t think you understand the feelings of someone who—”

  Iain Dundy leaned forward in his chair. “Come off it, old cock. You’re a bloody singers’ agent. If Singh was such a triumph at the concert the other night, your job was to remain there and talk to the important people you’d invited to hear him. Natalya Radilova was something of a hit, too, and she couldn’t rub more than two words of English together. Your job was to stay down there, and you’d have to be a bloody bad agent not to do it. I don’t believe you’re that. Why did you come away?”

  Brad’s voice came feebly, hardly penetrating the pepped-up jollities of Mary Poppins from the next room.

  “I’ve told you: Singh is something very special to me. His singing affected me profoundly.”

  “Codswallop! If you were that knocked all of a heap emotionally, why did you look in at the Shakespeare before you went up to your room? You were looking for someone. And I may as well tell you that you were seen knocking on Des Capper’s door at twenty past eight.”

  Brad Mallory’s jaw dropped, and he gave out a little squawk, like a strangled chicken.

  “No! No!”

  “Oh, yes. I tell you, you were seen. And I’ve thought all along your story wasn’t worth a bean. I think you came back because of something Des Capper said to you as you left the Saracen on your way to the Town Hall.”

  Again there was this little squawk, and Brad Mallory writhed in his chair as if he were sitting on hot coals. Then quite suddenly he went still, sagging down into the chair like a half-empty sack of potatoes—small, pathetic, tired. He had dropped the mannerisms, but it was as if the mannerisms had become his self and there was nothing remaining. His eyes stared ahead, the most lively things about him. He was calculating how much he could tell.

  “Since you know . . .” he said in a low voice, hesitating as he chose his revelations with care. “Yes, he did say something to me as I was leaving to go to the concert. . . . He’d already said something loaded in the bar about always meaning what he said. Then when I left he caught up with me in the foyer. . . . I won’t say what he said. It’s not relevant. . . . By the time I got to the concert, my mind was in turmoil! Absolute turmoil!” He caught Dundy’s eye and dropped the mannerism. “I was greeting everyone I knew, everyone I’d asked there, and I was casting around in my mind what I could do. I tried to phone him before the concert started, but there was no answer. . . . He was in the courtyard, watching the play, I believe. . . . I went in for the first half of the concert. Luckily I had an aisle seat at the back. I couldn’t settle, couldn’t concentrate on anything. . . . During the letter scene, Natalya’s aria, just before Singh’s pieces, I slipped out and rang him again. This time he was in. I said I had to see him, and at once. I said ther
e was an interval coming up in the concert and that I’d come up to the Saracen at about a quarter or twenty past eight.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Very genial . . . in his dreadful way. . . . Gloating, really. But before he rang off, he said: ‘Not that it will do you any good, Mr. Mallory, but I’m quite happy to have a natter about it.’ ”

  “Right,” said Dundy, stretching his legs. “Well, that’s clear enough so far. Except, of course, that you’ve skated over the little matter of what Capper was threatening you with.”

  “It’s not rele—”

  Dundy held up his hand. There was no reason why Mallory should be allowed to get off this particular hook.

  “There’s no way this discussion is going to make any sense unless the whole thing is brought into the open. For the moment, this will be among ourselves. What would need to come out at any future trial I can’t possibly say as yet. May I suggest that what Des said to you as you were leaving for the Town Hall—”

  “No! Please, no!”

  “—was something like: ‘So you’re off to see your little castrato performing, are you, Mr. Mallory?’ ”

  Nettles blinked. So that was it! The little bundle in the chair, after a brief spasm of life, collapsed again. He looked like Grandmother Smallweed, needing to be shaken up. At last he said:

  “Actually what he said was ‘Give my best wishes to your pet castrato.’ ”

  “Right,” said Dundy, still refusing to let Mallory off the hook. “I’m sure we’re all better off for having that out in the open. Now, I think you’d better explain to us all exactly what a castrato was—is—don’t you?”

  Brad Mallory swallowed and thought. When he spoke, it was very low, as if he were reading to himself from a dictionary of music.

  “It was a man who had been castrated just before puberty to preserve his high singing voice. They chose boys with beautiful voices, of course, and as it developed, it became something quite unique—full, brilliant, agile. They used the castrati in the papal choir right up to the end of the nineteenth century, but in opera they more or less died out early in the nineteenth century. The practice had become . . . unacceptable. The castrati were very spoiled, demanding, capricious, vain, and people got tired of their whims. They also became very fat, so they became ridiculous in heroic parts. But a lot of operas need that kind of voice: Handel, Gluck, early Mozart, early Rossini. Nowadays they use women for the parts, or countertenors, but it’s not right.”