Requiem for a Mezzo Read online

  “But really, darling, a bobby! Too, too déclassé, even if he is a Detective Chief Inspector. A policeman simply cannot be quite … well, quite. And when Phillip’s dying to marry you!”

  “He’s not dying to marry me, he simply feels duty-bound to take care of me because of Gervaise,” Daisy said crossly. Her brother, Phillip Petrie’s closest chum, had been killed in the Great War and she didn’t appreciate the reminder every time she had this argument with Lucy. “Just because you think Binkie’s blood-lines are reason enough to encourage him although he’s a complete fathead …”

  “Phillip’s not the brightest star in the firmament,” Lucy retorted.

  “So why are you pushing me at him?”

  Lucy sighed. “It’s not so much pushing you at Phillip as trying to wean you from your ’tec. Lady Dalrymple would have forty fits if she knew you were seeing a common copper.”

  “Mother has forty fits whatever I do. She needs something to carp at. It’s what keeps her going.”

  “True,” Lucy said ruefully. “Well, I won’t carp at you any longer just now. I’ve got someone coming for a sitting—if you’ve unearthed my appointments book, you might look it up and tell me if they’re due at quarter past or half past.”

  “Quarter past. I’ll get out of your way. Don’t despair, darling. Remember Alec’s a widower who lives with his mother and daughter, both of whom may hate me on sight.”

  “No one ever hates you on sight, darling. They’re more likely to pour their troubles into your ears as you step over the threshold.”

  Laughing, Daisy returned to the house. It was true people tended to confide in her, though she wasn’t sure why. Alec, who had twice revealed to her more details of a current case than his superiors or he himself thought quite proper, muttered accusing reproaches about guileless blue eyes. She protested that her eyes were no more guileless—less guileful? —than anyone else’s, and besides it made her sound like a halfwit.

  Be that as it might, people told her things, and whatever Alec said, she had helped him solve both cases.

  She was dying to ring him up about the concert, but she didn’t want to disturb him at Scotland Yard. Didn’t quite dare, actually. Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher could be quite formidable when annoyed.

  It was a pity she and Lucy really couldn’t afford to have a ’phone installed in the house. That evening, after an early supper of toasted cheese, Daisy nipped out to the telephone kiosk on the corner and asked the operator to put her through to Alec’s home number.

  A young girl’s voice answered with a conscientious repetition of the number.

  “This is Daisy Dalrymple. May I speak to Mr. Fletcher, please, if he’s at home?”

  “Gran, it’s Miss Dalrymple!” The voice was muffled, as if the speaker had turned away from the mouthpiece. “You know, Daddy’s friend. I can’t remember, should I call her ‘Honourable’ or what?”

  So Alec had talked about her at home. At least Belinda hadn’t slammed the receiver into its hook on hearing her name.

  “Miss Dalrymple.” The girl sounded breathless now. “This is Belinda Fletcher speaking. Daddy … my father’s just come home and gone upstairs. If you don’t mind waiting just a minute, I’ll run and fetch him.”

  Daisy contemplated the six minutes’ worth of pennies lined up on the little shelf by the apparatus. “Could you ask him to ring me back right away, please? I’m in a public booth. If you have a pencil, here’s the number.”

  “We always have a pencil and pad by the telephone in case there’s an urgent message from Scotland Yard,” Belinda said proudly. “Daddy says I’m very good at taking messages.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Daisy read off the number. “Thank you, Miss Fletcher. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, even if at a distance.”

  “Me too. I mean, I want awfully to meet you properly. I’ll go and tell Daddy right away.”

  She rang off, leaving Daisy to wonder whether such enthusiasm wasn’t worse than outright hostility. How on earth was she to live up to whatever exaggerated idea of her charms Belinda had got into her head?

  Fortunately no one came to use the telephone booth before the bell shrilled. In fact, Alec rang back very quickly.

  “Daisy! Don’t tell me you’ve fallen over another dead body?”

  “Certainly not. When I do, I’ll ’phone up the Yard.”

  “I trust that won’t be necessary. What’s up?”

  Daisy had sudden qualms. Among close friends in her set, it was perfectly acceptable for a girl to ask a man to escort her to an event if she was given free tickets, but perhaps middle-class mores were different. Could Lucy be right that it was a mistake for her to have made friends with Alec?

  No, though he might laugh at her, he wouldn’t think her forward or pert or any of those ghastly Victorian notions. At least, not more forward or pert than he already considered her, and he seemed to like her anyway.

  “I’ve got free tickets to the Albert Hall,” she said tentatively. “On Sunday afternoon, three o’clock. Would you like to go with me?”

  “What’s on? A boxing match?” His grin came down the wire as clearly as if she could see it.

  “Don’t be a chump, it’s a concert. Verdi’s Requiem. My neighbour’s singing the mezzo solo.”

  “I’d love to go, Daisy, and I’ll do my utmost to keep the afternoon free, but though things are quietish at present you know I can’t give you an absolute promise.”

  “I know, you might be called out to a murder in Northumberland. I’ll keep the ticket for you. If you can’t make it, I can always rope in Phillip at the last minute.”

  “I’ll make it,” Alec said grimly. He still wasn’t convinced Phillip was no more to her than a childhood friend. “By hook or by crook.”

  “What an unsuitable phrase for a policeman!” Daisy teased. “Phillip’ll be very relieved if you do. He’d hate it.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for his agonies. May I take you out to dinner afterwards?”

  “I’d like that, if you swear you won’t leave for Northumberland between the soup and the fish.”

  “I swear. Even if it’s John o’ Groats I’m called to, I shan’t desert you till after dessert. I’ll pick you up at two.”

  “Spiffing.” Daisy would have liked to go on chatting but if he had just come in from work he must be tired and hungry. Complimenting him on his daughter’s telephone manners, she said cheerio.

  On Sunday, Alec’s small yellow Austin Seven, its hood raised against a wintry downpour, pulled up outside the house promptly at two. Daisy saw it from the window of the front parlour, where she was pretending to read The Observer. She dashed into the hall and jammed her emerald green cloche hat onto her head, tugging it down as far over her ears as she could, practically down to her nose. Then, in more leisurely fashion, she put on her green tweed coat.

  The doorbell rang. She opened the door and Alec smiled at her from beneath a huge black, dripping umbrella.

  “You’re all ready to go?” he said, raising dark, impressive eyebrows. “No hurry, we’ve plenty of time.”

  “Yes. No.” Flustered, she hoped he didn’t think she wanted to avoid introducing him to Lucy, who was out anyway. “Come in a minute while I find my gloves. Shall I take an umbrella?”

  “Mine is plenty big enough for two. And there’s no wind, you don’t need to pull your hat so low. I can scarcely see your face. Or is that the latest style?”

  “No.” In fact, now that he was close she couldn’t see his face at all, nothing above the Royal Flying Corps tie in the open neck of his overcoat. She pushed the cloche up a bit. “Oh Alec, I had almost all my hair cut off—I promised Lucy—and it feels so peculiar and draughty. My ears feel positively naked. I don’t know what you’ll think … .”

  “Nor do I, since I can’t see a single lock. The hairdresser did leave you some hair, I trust?”

  Bravely Daisy took off her hat and present her shingled head for his examinatio
n.

  “Hmm.” Chin in hand he studied her, a twinkle in his eyes. “Just like Lady Caroline Lamb in the portrait by Phillips.” Alec had studied history at university, specialising in the Georgian era.

  “The one who chased Lord Byron? Didn’t she go mad?” Daisy asked suspiciously.

  “Yes, but she wrote a very successful book on the way, a scandalous roman-à-clef. On second thoughts, the chief similarity is the hair. Caro Lamb had short, honey brown curls like yours, but she had brown eyes, not blue, if I’m not mistaken. As for her expression of haughty wilfulness, only the wilful part applies to you.”

  “Mother would agree, but I’m not wilful, I’m independent.”

  “Same thing. No one could describe you as haughty, at least.” He grinned. “And I don’t suppose Caro Lamb ever had a single freckle on her nose, either.”

  “Blast, are they showing?” Whipping out her powder-puff, Daisy sped to the hall mirror and anxiously examined her roundish face. “No. You beast!” She dabbed a little extra powder on her nose anyway. “You haven’t said if you like it, Alec.”

  He came up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders, gazing at her in the looking glass. “It’s utterly enchanting,” he said softly.

  Daisy blushed, to her own extreme annoyance—too fearfully Victorian! “Here are my gloves, in my pocket,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  A few minutes later the massive rotunda of the Royal Albert Hall loomed before them through the rain. The huge auditorium had been planned by Prince Albert as the centrepiece of a corner of Kensington to be dedicated to the arts and sciences. Not completed until a decade after his death, it had for half a century been a major venue for everything from political and religious meetings to concerts and sports events. Colleges and museums clustered around it, and usually the streets were busy. However, it was a wet Sunday afternoon and they were early so Alec had no difficulty finding a place to leave the Austin quite close to the entrance.

  In the lobby he bought a programme, and the usher directed them around the circular passage to the inner entrance nearest their seats.

  The seats were perfect, neither too far from the stage nor too close, and a little above its level. Daisy could never understand why anyone would pay the premium prices to be in the front rows. All one could see was the conductor, the soloists, and the first ranks of violins and cellos, and just about all one could hear, too. That was where people sat who cared more for showing off their furs and hats than for the music. Not the place for her green tweed and the Selfridge’s Bargain Basement cloche!

  Behind her and Alec and to either side, and even behind the stage, the tiers of seats rose towards the distant glass dome, now a dingy grey. A full house was about eight thousand, someone had told her. At the moment the vast hall was thinly populated, but people were gradually filing in through the many doors around the circle.

  “Good,” said Alec, “there’s a translation in the programme. My Latin isn’t up to it, hasn’t been for years.”

  Together they studied the words of the Requiem.

  “Gosh, look at that,” Daisy exclaimed, and read aloud, “‘Confutatis maledictis: When the cursed all are banished, doomed to burn in bitter flames, summon me among the blessed.’ Talk about holier-than-thou!”

  Alec laughed. “It is rather, isn’t it? You have to consider it as opera. The story may be questionable but the music is divine. Listen to this. ‘Day of wrath, day of terror, day of disaster and anguish, that great, hopeless, exceeding bitter day.’ Just like one of those operas which ends with bodies strewn all over the stage.”

  “Ghastly! I’m not all that keen on opera.”

  “Nor am I.”

  They finished reading the programme as the orchestra players started to wander in. Odd notes, chords, and twiddles of melody arose in a tantalizing cacophony. A momentary silence fell as the leader came in and bowed to the audience, to a wave of applause. The first oboe sounded an A and the serious tuning of instruments began.

  Daisy regarded the leader, Yakov Levich, with interest. A Russian Jew in exile, he was beginning to make a name for himself as a solo violinist—she had read a glowing review of his recent recital at the Wigmore Hall. Tall and almost painfully thin, he had curly black hair greying at the temples and a long, serious face with prominent cheekbones and a high-bridged nose.

  An expectant hush fell as the choir filed in. Daisy turned her attention to picking out Muriel and pointing her out to Alec. She had more colour in her face than usual and the severe black of the choir uniform unexpectedly suited her. She opened her music score with a look of joyful anticipation. Obviously singing was one of the few pleasures in her life.

  Eric Cochran appeared, baton in hand, his longish hair the only sign of Bohemian proclivity now he was clad in formal tails. He led in the soloists. First came the soprano, Consuela de la Costa, a voluptuous figure in crimson velvet cut dashingly low on the bosom.

  “More appropriate to the opera than a requiem mass,” Alec whispered.

  “Perhaps she represents one of the temptations which lead the damned to Hell?” Daisy whispered back.

  “Or the fiery furnace itself.”

  Behind Miss de la Costa, Bettina Westlea was a cool, slender beauty in blue satin with a more respectable neckline. Gilbert Gower, the tenor, came next. A handsome Welshman, he had been a staple of the English opera stage for years, never quite achieving the summit of the profession, but well respected. Next and last, the bass was another refugee from the Bolshevik Revolution. A Russian bear of a man with a full black beard, Dimitri Marchenko had as yet found only small rôles in England, chiefly in oratorio.

  “I’ve heard him in the Messiah,” Daisy muttered to Alec. “His low notes have to be heard to be believed. ‘Why do the nations …’” she hummed.

  “‘ … so furiously rage together’? Most appropriate.”

  They settled back, clapping, as conductor and soloists bowed. Cochran raised his baton, brought it down with infinite delicacy. The pianissimo first notes of the Requiem murmured through the hall.

  The music swept Daisy away. She forgot the grim words except to wonder at the brilliant way Verdi illustrated them. After the momentary annoyance of latecomers entering at the end of the Kyrie, the Dies Irae was gloriously terrifying. Marchenko’s Mors stupebit, reaching down into the depths of the bass range, sent a shiver down Daisy’s spine. Consuela de la Costa’s voice was as vivid as her appearance. Mr. Abernathy had given Bettina whatever help she had needed and she sang the Liber scriptus with a thrilling intensity. Gower’s clear tenor was a touch off-key in the Quid sum miser, but his Ingemisco was so beautiful it brought tears to Daisy’s eyes.

  The first half of the concert ended with a hushed “Amen” dying away into slow chords and silence. For a long moment Daisy, along with the rest of the audience, sat in a near trance before a roar of applause burst forth.

  Soloists and conductor bowed and departed. The chorus began to file out.

  “My hands hurt from clapping,” Daisy said to Alec as they made their way out to the circular passage to stroll about during the interval.

  “It was worthy of sore palms,” Alec said, smiling. “Thank you once more for inviting me. I must write a note to your friend Miss Westlea, too.”

  “I’m glad you could come.” She linked her arm through his, surely justifiable as the eddying crowd threatened to part them. “You do still mean to take me out to dinner, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m incommunicado as far as the Yard is concerned.”

  “Spiffing!” said Daisy.

  “Hungry? There’s the bar over there. Would you like a drink?” Alec asked. “I expect they have salted almonds or something else to nibble on.”

  “No, thanks, I’m not thirsty and I’ll save my appetite.”

  “Did you notice Bettina Westlea had a glass under her chair she kept sipping at when she wasn’t singing?”

  “Her throat must get fearfully dry.”

  “The others manage
d without, not to mention the chorus. I wonder if that might annoy conductors enough to explain her lack of success. She has a lovely voice.”

  “I suspect she’s just generally difficult to work with.” Daisy decided not to describe Bettina’s peevish self-importance in case it spoilt his pleasure in her singing.

  They completed the circuit of the hall just as the bell sounded for the end of the interval. The second half began with a lengthy section for all four soloists. They sat down; the choir rose. Daisy glanced down at the programme: the Sanctus was next.

  As she looked up again, she saw Bettina reach beneath her chair for her glass. Thirsty work, singing.

  Bettina took a big gulp and choked. Her face turned bright red. With a strangled cry she sprang to her feet, the glass flying from her hand as she clutched her throat. Gasping, she doubled over, spun around in a grotesque parody of a ballerina’s pirouette, and collapsed.

  Her sprawling body writhed, jerked convulsively twice. For a moment heels drummed a desperate tattoo on the stage. Then the blue figure lay still.

  3

  Alec leapt up. “Police!” he said sharply, pushing past knees to the aisle.

  The trumpets’ staccato introduction, the basses’ resolute opening “Sanctus,” died away. Half the choir sat, the rest remained uneasily standing, except for Daisy’s friend Muriel Westlea, who scurried down from the ranks, threading her way between woodwinds and violas.

  “Betsy!” she cried, and fell to her knees at her sister’s side.

  From somewhere in the audience came a belated scream. People started to stand up. Though the hall was still quiet, any minute there would be a hubbub followed by a stampede for the doors, and Alec had no way to stop it.

  The conductor still stood on the podium, gaping down at his supine soloist. “Police!” Alec rapped out again as he reached the rapidly emptying front row of seats. “Mr. Cochran, make an announcement, please. No one is to leave.”

  Cochran shook his head dazedly, visibly pulled himself together, and swung round to face the audience. “Your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a carrying voice. “There has been an accident … .”