‘Oh yes! I haven’t seen such a marvellous opera in a long time. This fellow Berlioz will go far.’
Again, shouts of ‘da capo, da capo’ rose from the audience. Wasn’t that Italian for ‘again’? Cautiously, I glanced at Mr Ambrose. If a paying audience was calling for opera with mayhem and murder, would he…?
‘Cease looking at me like that, Mr Linton.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you’re concerned I’ll start snatching people of the streets for a realistic re-enactment of the French Revolution in operatic form.’
‘I would never think such a thing of you!’
Actually, I had been thinking rather along the lines of Hannibal and the Battle of Cannae.
‘Just in case you are not clear about this, Mr Linton,’ he told me, his icy eyes boring into me, nailing me to my seat, ‘I’m not pleased about what happened. Not at all.’
I blinked. ‘You aren’t? But I thought…’
‘Oh, I’m pleased about the outcome.’ He nodded at the happily chattering audience that was slowly getting to its feet and filing out of the hall. ‘No one noticed what happened. There wasn’t a hint of scandal. But am I happy about what occurred?’ Slowly, he flexed his fingers, as if wrapping them around an imaginary neck. ‘Most assuredly not. And you can trust me when I say that, once I find out who is behind this, they are going to pay.’
‘In pounds or francs?’
‘Mr Linton?’
‘Yes, Sir?’
‘Shut up, and up on your feet!’
‘Yes, Sir!’
‘Let’s have a look around the stage, shall we?’
While the audience was still happily chatting about the wonderful performance and the singers returned to the stage for a second round of bows, Mr Ambrose and I slipped out of our box. He started down the corridor, his long strides eating up the distance, and I hurried after him, nibbling at the distance as best I could. Inside, my mind was whirling. A murder! An actual murder! Was it Claudette? Had they gotten to her?
Damn! Why did she have to offer me a free drink? It was practically guaranteed we’d be friends after that. And now I was worried sick for the woman. Damn her and her delicious bottle.
Calm down! It’s not Claudette. It can’t be.
Even from a distance, it had been pretty clear the victim was a man—or at least had dressed like one. Unless she’d taken a leaf out of my book and taken up cross-dressing, Claudette was perfectly safe. But if it hadn’t been her they were after, then who? There couldn’t be this many intrigues and unscripted murder plots in this opera house, could there?
Shouts and curses came from up ahead.
Or maybe there could.
‘Faster, Mr Linton. Faster!’
‘Coming, Sir!’
This was beginning to look more like something other than a simple rivalry. Something much more sinister. Had we misjudged the situation from the start? What the heck was going on?
We rushed around another corner, and finally stood in front of a large door marked STAGE. Well, actually it was marked SCÈNE. I just hoped that was French for ‘stage’, and not ‘gentleman’s lavatory’.
Without hesitation, Mr Ambrose shoved open the door. Thank God the curtain was already closed again, or Monsieur Berlioz would have gotten another unscheduled addition to his latest opera. A group of people in colourful costumes was standing in a circle, whispering to each other, a motionless leg sticking out from their midst.
‘What,’ Mr Ambrose demanded, his voice as cold as a glacier having a good time in the middle of the ice age[24], ‘is going on here?’
Everyone whirled to face him. The moment she caught sight of him, the mezzo-soprano’s eyes flashed, and she stormed towards him.
‘I quit!’ she declared, waving her fingers in her face. ‘No good pay? Fine! Philistine patron who understand nothing of opera? Fine! But dead cadavre interrupting my scene? Non, merci beaucoup!’