Margaret Truman - Murder at the Opera

Pawkins stood. “Ready for lunch?” he asked.

“We’ll be leaving,” Smith said. “We’ve lost our appetite.”

“Suit yourself,” Pawkins said, following them from the house to where their car waited in front. “Last chance for Raymond Pawkins’ gourmet onion soup. I won’t be around here much longer to make it again. I’m selling this house back to the guy who originally owned it. He lives over there in that mansion. He wants it for his daughter and her family. Make a nice family compound, everybody close to the old man so he can rule the roost. I’m heading for Florida, Fort Lauderdale. The Florida Grand Opera’s pretty good, not up to WNO’s standards, but not bad. They’ve been around for more than sixty years. Plenty of work as a super. I’ll get my PI license and-”

Mac started the engine, put the car into gear, and drove away, seeing in the rearview mirror a smiling Pawkins waving good-bye.

Annabel’s anger turned to tears. “Damn him,” she said. “Everything’s been so wonderful lately, so perfect, the opening, the ball, everything.”

“Life’s like opera, Annie,” Mac said as he pulled onto the G.W. Memorial Parkway. “You have to have a villain to put things into perspective. There wouldn’t be a Tosca without a Scarpia. By the way, do you think I should cheat a little more to the right while I’m on the stairs in the last act? It’s my good side.”

At five o’clock, Milton Crowley did what he did every evening at that time since returning to his cottage in Wareham, Dorset, southwest of London, the home of T. E. Lawrence, and the site of his fatal motorcycle crash in 1935. An effigy in St. Martin’s Church of Lawrence of Arabia, in Arab dress, was a popular tourist attraction.

He pulled down a wicker tray with handles from where it perched on a hook in his kitchen, and placed it on the table. Each item he positioned on it was in precisely the spot where he always placed it-a small, cut-glass decanter into which he’d poured enough single-malt Scotch for two drinks; two Venetian crystal goblets that he and Cora had purchased during a holiday in Venice; four white-bread tea sandwiches, two with egg, two with salmon; a compact Grundig shortwave radio; two napkins; and a photograph of Cora in an oval, gold filigree frame with a stand.

He carefully opened the screen door of the cottage with his foot and walked down a short, grassy slope to where a white wrought-iron bench and table sat next to the gently flowing stream that had been the main reason for him having purchased the cottage, which was stoutly made of ashlar blocks of local Purbeck stone.

He set the tray on the table, brushed off the bench with one of the napkins, sat, and drew a deep, contented breath. It was a fair day, the sun warm, the sky all blue and white. The chirping of reed warblers from a patch of wild celery on the opposite bank caught his attention, and he returned their message with a bird sound of his own. Bluebells, rhododendrons, and azaleas grew along the stream’s bank; he imagined painting a still life of them, had he that talent.

He removed the glass stopper from the decanter and poured the Scotch into both glasses. He stared at the photograph for a moment before raising his glass to it: “To us, Cora. To many beautiful days in this lovely spot on God’s earth.”

He drank from his goblet and ate two of the sandwiches. His eyes became moist. He turned on the radio, which was already set on the BBC, lit a cigarette, and listened to that day’s news. British news items came first. Then the announcer turned to news of international interest.

“The simultaneous terrorist attacks on American political leaders, which resulted in the death of a United States congressman, and includes an attempt on the lives of the mayor of a major American city and the president of the United States, were part of a much wider terrorist plan, according to an American spokesman, Wilbur Murtaugh, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.”

An excerpt from Murtaugh’s statement played:

“This diabolical scheme to simultaneously attack our government leaders has been thwarted in all but one case, which resulted in the death of a revered member of the United States Congress. It was through the diligent and unyielding efforts of this department, and related federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies, that the plan was uprooted, the potential perpetrators identified and apprehended. For those who have doubted the efficacy of our efforts to protect American citizens through such initiatives as the Patriot Act and the National Security Agency’s Subversive’s Surveillance Act, our success in this, the latest terrorist assault on our government leaders, should lay those concerns to rest.”

The newscast ended with a review of Covent Garden ’s production of Mozart’s comic opera, Le nozze di Figaro, which the reviewer found wanting.

Crowley turned off the radio, leaned back, closed his eyes, and listened to the faint sound of the flowing water, and of the birds. He opened his eyes, leaned forward, and again held up his glass to the photograph. “To another day in this insane world, Cora. How fortunate we are to be here.”

He finished what was in his goblet, poured the contents of the second one back into the decanter, stood, stretched, picked up the tray, and carried it to the cottage.

MARGARET TRUMAN has won faithful readers with her works of biography and fiction, particularly her ongoing series of Capital Crimes mysteries. Her novels let us into the corridors of power and privilege, poverty and pageantry in the nation’s capital. She is the author of many nonfiction books, most recently The President’s House, in which she shares some of the secrets and history of the White House, where she once resided. She lives in Manhattan.