A Cadenza for Caruso (15 page)

Sigrid was finished. She put the costume on a padded hanger and held it up for inspection. Both women stared at it in distaste. A plain white long-sleeved blouse, and a floor-length corduroy skirt. A far cry from the silks and satins of
Tosca
and
Butterfly
or the exotic garb of
Aïda
.

Sigrid gave that half-sniff, half-tsk that only the Scandinavians can manage and took the costume over to the wardrobe cabinet—which wouldn't open. Each time Sigrid pulled the handle, the door would give maybe an inch and then snap back. “I can't get it open—it's caught on something.”

Emmy went over to help. She gave the wardrobe door a hard jerk and it flew open—to reveal Enrico Caruso crowded in among the dresses, grinning fatuously, embarrassed to death at being caught.

Sigrid squawked and dropped the carefully pressed costume while Emmy stared open-mouthed. “Rico! What are you doing there?” the soprano demanded.

Sheepishly he held up a cigarette. “Looking for a match?”

“Get out of there, you foolish man!” Emmy said angrily. “Get out at once! I want an explanation, Rico!”

Awkwardly the tenor stepped out of the wardrobe cabinet. A flood of high-pitched, unintelligible Swedish assailed his ears; then Sigrid realized he didn't understand what she was saying and switched to Italian. “So! Now you hide yourself in wardrobe cabinets where you can peek out at the ladies when they are not looking!”

“I? Peek? I never peek!” Caruso proclaimed indignantly.

“Peeping Tommaso! Spying on innocent ladies!”

“How can I spy? There are no peepholes in the cabinet! See for yourself!” He gestured grandly at the wardrobe and started inching toward the dressing-room door.

Sigrid inspected the wardrobe cabinet for cracks or holes. She found none but refused to be mollified. “Look at Madame's dresses! You have crushed them! Now I will have to press everything again!”

“Rico,” Emmy said curiously, “when did you take up eavesdropping as a hobby?”

Caruso bolted through the door.

Toscanini muttered to himself as he paced up and down one of the side aisles of the Met's auditorium. He was not satisfied with the chorus of tenors that hummed offstage in accompaniment to the soprano-tenor duet in the first act. Their attack was smooth and the various voices blended nicely—but the result was curiously empty, not nearly sensuous enough. More work was needed there.

The duet itself was exquisite; Destinn and Caruso got better every time they sang it. But the duet—
all
the duets in
Fanciulla
, in fact—might cause a problem for American audiences. These duets were different from what the Americans were used to; they were duologues, actually—the soloists taking turns singing, the two voices uniting only toward the end. Well, Toscanini thought, the Americans would just have to learn to appreciate the beauties of the verismo duet and it was up to him to teach them!

Puccini had mentioned he thought Emmy Destinn lacked energy in her performance; he obviously wanted a strong heroine in this opera, a change from the ultra-fragile heroine of
Butterfly
. But Toscanini had reassured the composer that Destinn always started slowly and built gradually to a performance peak. The night of the première she would sing with the same soaring urgency she brought to the role of Aida. No problem there.

Toscanini stopped his pacing. Surely the plumbers were finished by now? He directed his steps toward the gentlemen's washroom backstage.

The bass singing the Wells Fargo agent and the tenor singing the bartender were both beginning to push a little—trying to make their small roles larger. He'd have to put a stop to that. But Toscanini could understand their eagerness; the music invited that sort of pushing. No other score of Puccini's was punctuated with so many markings for excessive dynamics—
allegro brutale, allegro feroce
. And he couldn't think of another opera score in which the word
tutti
appeared so frequently: all the instruments of the orchestra playing together at the same time. The result was a massive, primitive sound that the conductor found tremendously exciting.

When it was done right. How that orchestra infuriated him! Parts of it, at any rate—the woodwinds, for instance. Puccini had orchestrated for a much larger woodwind section than usual, and they had had to hire extra musicians.
Musicians
—bah! Not one of those newcomers was able to tease out the best tone his instrument was capable of producing. How many times had he told Gatti-Casazza, you simply cannot expect a first-rate orchestral sound from second-rate musicians! But no, the penny-pinching general manager went right on hiring any low-priced hack he could find—

Toscanini stopped himself. His breath was short and his face flushed; he was doing it again. He fumbled something out of his coat pocket and made himself focus his attention on it. A few minutes of forced concentration did the trick and left him calm once more. The conductor heaved a sigh of relief; his temper had almost gotten away from him again. He went into the washroom.

No one was there. Had the plumbers finished or just quit work for the day? He tried a faucet—ah, the water was back on. Toscanini took off his coat and fastidiously hung it up before going into one of the stalls.

Quietly, stealthily, Enrico Caruso tiptoed into the washroom, keeping one eye on the closed door of the stall. He felt in Toscanini's coat pocket; his fingers closed around an object made of metal and glass. Carefully he took it out.

And almost dropped it in his surprise.
Per dio!
It was a—what did they call it?—a Bughouse puzzle! Bughouse, yes. A glass-covered box marked off into little compartments, with bits of lead that had to be fitted into the proper places entirely by external manipulation. Bughouse puzzle—a child's toy.

Caruso put the puzzle back in Toscanini's coat pocket and tiptoed out of the washroom.

At last, Toscanini was satisfied with Act II. Caruso would not be needed immediately in the third act, so he hurried up the stairs to his dressing room and shut the door. He sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands. What a day!

He'd certainly be glad when
this
rehearsal was over. David Belasco had cut him dead when they'd met backstage. Mr. Gatti had followed him everywhere, watching every move he made. And in the part of Act II where he was seated at a table, Emmy Destinn had clamped a strong hand on his shoulder to prevent his escape—and proceeded to sing full voice directly into his left ear. His head was still ringing.

Only Toscanini had been in a good mood; he could afford to relax a little, he'd had his breakdown. And if the biggest secret in the conductor's life was that he liked to play with a Bughouse puzzle, then Caruso could cross him off the list of suspects.
List
. That's what he should do—make a list. And notes. Detectives always kept notes.

He moved over to his writing table, but found he was out of paper. The tenor made a sound of exasperation. How could he make notes if he had nothing to write on? He distinctly remembered telling Martino to get more writing paper—no, that was not precisely true. He distinctly remembered
meaning
to tell Martino. Ah well, he would borrow some of Pasquale's. The baritone was on stage at the moment, but he would not mind if Caruso helped himself.

The tenor found what he was looking for in a drawer of Amato's make-up table. He found something else as well: at the back of the drawer was a single letter, addressed to the baritone in a slanting feminine handwriting. A billet-doux?
A good detective checks everything
, Caruso thought gleefully, and took the letter out of the envelope.

My beloved husband
—

I long for the day you return to our warm bed in our cozy house in Milan
.…

Milan? Caruso frowned. Amato's home and family were in Salerno.

We have an anniversary to celebrate, my dearest one. Soon it will be exactly two years since you and I were first united in holy matrimony
.…

Two
years? Amato had been married a lot longer than that. A horrible suspicion crept into Caruso's mind—quickly he checked the signature.

Your loving and faithful wife
,

Francesca

Caruso let out a
Pagliacci
sob; Amato's wife was named Rosa. After a moment he went on with the letter.

I think of you there in New York surrounded by beautiful women and my heart breaks. Pasquale, my love! Hurry home to me. I have made plans for the celebration of our anniversary
.…

Caruso felt his face turning red as he read the woman's graphically detailed description of exactly
how
she planned to celebrate. He stopped and fanned himself with the letter. Then he went back and read the good parts again.

Finally he folded the letter carefully and replaced it where he'd found it. Who was Francesca? Some lusty young thing Pasquale Amato had deceived into “marriage” by neglecting to mention he already had a wife? Poor Francesca! Poor Rosa! Caruso felt pity for both the women who called themselves Pasquale's wife.

And poor Enrico! How was he going to cope with this horrible knowledge, this unwanted news that one of his oldest and dearest friends was a bigamist?

9

Martino uncorked a bottle of witch hazel and poured some of the liquid onto a wad of cotton. “Close your eyes.”

Caruso obeyed. His face was still pink from the medicated steam he'd been breathing that nevertheless had failed to relieve his headache. Martino dabbed the tenor's forehead with the witch hazel, being careful not to let any drip on Caruso's green-and-gold satin robe. The cool liquid evaporated almost immediately. “More,” said Caruso.

But Martino had to cease his ministrations momentarily; someone was at the door. It was Martino's job to turn away, tactfully, the dozens of uninvited visitors who called on Caruso almost daily. In the next room the telephone was ringing; Caruso could hear Mario saying, “He is not well and cannot be disturbed.” The young valet's mournful manner of speaking made it sound as if the tenor were on his deathbed.

Martino returned carrying an empty calling-card tray. “A man with a painting to sell—wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He would not leave his name or identify the painting.”

“Ah,
dio!
It is probably stolen.” A lot of thieves had found their way to Caruso's door once it became known the tenor collected objets d'art.

“I tell him we are not buying paintings this year.”

The witch-hazel treatment didn't really help; Caruso waved Martino away. After sitting quietly and feeling sorry for himself a few minutes, the tenor took out his sketch pad and began to draw. A few bold lines, a squiggle here and there, curves to mark the plumpness of the cheeks—and a fair likeness of Luigi Davila looked back at him.

“His nose was a little longer,” Martino said from behind Caruso's shoulder.

Caruso lengthened the nose—yes, that was right. That was what the dead man had looked like. He tore off the sheet and started a new sketch. Dark hair just covering the tops of the ears but long in back, penetrating black eyes, drooping black mustache. Pasquale Amato to the life. Caruso placed the two sketches side by side and stared at them. His headache grew worse.

Pasquale didn't even know Luigi Davila—he'd had to ask Caruso who he was! Unbidden, a thought from nowhere:
He could have been pretending
.

No, it was absurd! Even more absurd than Lieutenant O'Halloran's thinking Puccini was the murderer. Pasquale Amato was a
friend
; friends were not murderers. Especially not this friend—a more stable, humane, rational man Caruso had never met. They'd known each other for so long, they had worked and played together so often—how could he think for one moment that Pasquale could be a killer?

A man with two wives makes a good target for blackmail
.

How odd: Amato's role in
Fanciulla
was that of a lustful man trying to persuade a girl to marry him even though he already had a wife. Caruso wondered how his friend managed to keep Rosa and Francesca from finding out about each other—that must take some doing! Abruptly the thought occurred to him that he must stop thinking like a friend and look at the problem the way a
detective
would. Impartially. Objectively. Other-ly.

Pasquale Amato had known Puccini was being blackmailed because Caruso himself had told him so. If Pasquale were also a blackmail victim, he would welcome the news about Puccini—because that meant he could get rid of his blackmailer and throw suspicion on the composer. As long as he thought he was Davila's only victim, he would hesitate to act. But when some big-mouthed tenor comes along and gives away Puccini's secret, then the hesitation might disappear.

Yes. That is the way a real detective would see it.

There were other little things, vague and inconclusive. Pasquale had never really tried to help Puccini. In fact, he'd done his best to discourage Caruso from investigating on his own.
Don't meddle
, he'd said. That could just be the conservative approach of a basically sensible man. Or it could be the caution of a killer who didn't want a friend to find out the truth about him.

Caruso walked over to the window and looked down on Times Square. The weather was vile—snow and rain, high winds and low temperatures. Past the Times Tower on West Forty-second Street Caruso could just make out the entrance of David Belasco's old theatre, the Republic. That was where it had all begun; it was there Puccini first saw
The Girl of the Golden West
.

It was late afternoon. The day's rehearsal had been shorter than usual. They'd had to vacate the stage because that night's performance was scheduled to begin earlier than the Metropolitan's usual eight-o'clock curtain;
Fanciulla
had gotten short shrift so
Die Walküre
could thunder away on the main stage. But in a little while Caruso would be going to meet Amato and Emmy Destinn at Del Pezzo's Restaurant. Pasquale had invited Emmy, to reestablish the good feelings that had been rather seriously strained by that one disastrous rehearsal. He wanted Caruso along as a buffer.