CHAPTER 1
'Better than ever this year,' Sir Beverly Stainer was saying to a group of friends drinking the free champagne. 'Every year a new challenge, eh, Hogbein?'
'We aim to please,' Hogbein said, smiling. He could afford to smile now. The Festival was well into its run, and such administrative hiccups as there had been were long since soothed. Unless something totally unexpected happened — the King's Hall roof falling in or a tsunami flooding the riverside art gallery — they now seemed set for a good festival. There was a sense of gaiety, here in the luxurious basement of the Royal Hotel; the evening's concert had been a huge success, and it amazingly seemed as if they might be going to break even this year.
'What about this woman — this Camille Lag ... Lag ...?'
'Ligorno,' Marius Hogbein said, only a little shortly. Sir Beverly's inability to remember anything but the name of a horse was too well-known to take offence at. 'Brilliant! Did you enjoy it?'
'Pretty little thing,' Sir Beverly said, beckoning a waiter for more champagne. 'Gifted, too! Fairly raced up and down that piano. Makes you wish you'd practised more, eh?' He laughed noisily. His guests smiled appreciatively. It was worth making the effort. Sir Beverly was a very rich man. 'I suppose you like that kind of thing, Hogbein? Bach and all that?'
Hogbein nodded. 'Very fond of Bach! An amazing composer, as fresh today as he was two and a half centuries ago.'
'Ah yes, well, you would.' Sir Beverly excused the festival director with a pitying smile. 'Your bread-and-butter, what? Couldn't have you going round saying you didn't like Bach, could we?' He roared again. 'Myself, I prefer Offenbach! Same diff, eh? Can-can, you know! Frilly skirts and all that jazz. Ought to have an Offenbach festival some time. Yes, why not? You'd get the numbers, and that's the important thing.'
Marius Hogbein smiled until his cheeks hurt, wishing as he did so that some particularly nasty thing would fall on the fat knight's head. He had inherited Sir Beverly from his predecessor, and it had been impossible to unship him from his position as chairman of the Festival.
'Certainly, numbers are important,' he said courteously. 'But not paramount.' Coral Stone, his secretary, gave him a tight, private smile from across the table and he stared back at her, trying to focus in his eyes patient humour and wry disgust. But he suspected that, half full of champagne as he was, he simply looked cross-eyed.
'What do we have to look forward to next?' Mave Cardwell said, leaning across the table towards him. Her expression said, 'let's cut this foul man out of our conversation!'
'In your line of business,' Marius said thankfully, turning towards her, 'tomorrow night's updated version of 'Pygmalion' with an all-black cast.'
Mave pulled a face. 'Oh, for an evening with the Bard in Elizabethan dress!'
'You surprise me,' Marius said. 'A drama critic looking backwards? Why am I bothering?'
Mave laughed, a rich sound full of mockery. 'You tell me, honey! What do people want? Does anyone know? I don't.' She turned to Hal Princeton, sitting at her side immersed in cigar smoke and gin. 'Do you know what your public wants?'
'Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven, and nothing after ten o'clock. At a guess.'
Alicia Hogbein regarded her husband. 'Were you happy with tonight?'
'The concert? Terrific! A lovely lady. Amazing how she gets so much power from those slim little arms and tiny hands. Must be made of steel.'
Princeton smothered a yawn, born of weariness rather than boredom. Festival time was demanding for those whose job it was to keep the public informed about what they had seen and what they should think about it.
'Shirr-strong as a horse — a lady horse, let's say. But you're right — she's lovely. Anyone who knows her will tell you. Charm, grace ...' He waved his cigar perilously close to Sir Beverly's face, and the chairman leaned away pointedly. 'Sorry, ol' man.' He stood slowly, holding on to the table edge for support until he got his legs properly balanced under him. 'A lovely lady, an' I don't mind who hears me say it! Come on, ol' girl ...'
He held out a hand to Mave, and she, shrugging and pursing her lips at the company, rose in more genteel fashion and gave a comprehensive wave.
''Bye, dears! See you tomorrow — somewhere.'
Marius watched her go. Alicia was collecting bag and lacy stole and making the obvious movements of departure. He sighed suddenly in spite of himself. If he woke up tomorrow and found that the rest of the Festival had been cancelled and he could do nothing about it — well ... No, perhaps not! Too much work had gone into it to back out now, even in his imagination. But he couldn't altogether help looking forward to the end of the season, and three weeks in Europe being himself. With Alicia, of course. She would visit all the museums and art galleries, and he — well, he would probably visit all the museums and galleries, too. He usually did. Out of one set of bonds into another!
As he stood and made his farewells and helped Alicia into her stole he sighed again. It wasn't that he was bored. So what was it? Perhaps he was just too confoundedly efficient, he thought all at once, surprising himself. He planned everything so that there would be no problems, and then when there were none he began to wish for a judicious hiccup or two for him to deal with.
They reached the top of the velvet-draped stairs and found that the night had grown cool with the smell of rain. At least there was nothing in the open air for the next few days. Cancelling was always a hassle.
'It was a good concert,' Alicia said as they reached the car. 'She really is a splendid lady, Camille Ligorno. I'd like to have time to talk to her tomorrow.'
'So you shall. I'll get Craig to arrange it for you.'
But in the morning they found the delightful Madame Ligorno lying amid the crushed flowers in her hotel room, and nothing looked easy any more.
CHAPTER 2
It worried Marius that his first sensation, after the first jolting shock of Madame's death, was relief that she had fulfilled all her commitments to the festival. She had arranged to have a couple of days free afterwards, an opportunity to make the most of the wide Australian beaches and perhaps even to see other distinguished performers whose paths seldom crossed her own, and so were too often no more than a name in a catalogue or pure and beautiful sounds issuing from a compact disc.
He told himself that his reactions were quite understandable; but he was relieved that his secondary emotions were less egocentric. He spoke to the police outside the door of the murder room.
'Did she ... do they think ... do you suppose she suffered at all?'
The policeman shook his head. 'Couldn't have. Instantaneous, the doc says.'
Marius gave a deep sigh. 'Thank God for that, anyway. A lovely woman like that — unbearable to think.'
The man nodded sympathetically. 'Makes you wonder, doesn't it?'
'I'd like to see whoever's in charge,' Marius said. 'I feel somewhat responsible.'
But it was early to know anything for sure. There was plenty of bustle in and around the room, police photographers flashing their cameras, detectives filling notebooks, and the slow movements of other guests past the door in the hopes of seeing something they could later...
