Imogen Robertson - Anatomy of Murder

“Bribery seems common practice in opera,” she remarked.

Manzerotti stood and crossed to the fire and held his hands out toward the flames.

“I am glad to be singing in London, but I miss the warmer weather of my own city,” he remarked. There was a strange muscled grace apparent even in his most ordinary movements. “It is perhaps more common than one would like, Mrs. Westerman. But the arts require the patronage of the rich and influential. A recommendation here, an introduction there, the chance to sing for an emperor or some lady of taste and influence-on such things we poor servants of music must build the fragile structure of a career. Where such things matter, you will always find people looking to make a little profit of their own. I myself am ready to tip the gatekeepers to gain an audience.” He looked back into the flames. “Sometimes I make an introduction or recommendation of my own. Sometimes it becomes necessary to use more blunt forms of payment.”

Manzerotti had a trick of coloring the pitch and timbre of his speaking voice so that each phrase left the outline of music in the air. Harriet had the impression of being rocked to and fro as he spoke in oily waters.

Crowther looked at him and said with a slow blink, “But surely your talent speaks for itself, Mr. Manzerotti?”

The castrato nodded in return, as if acknowledging a compliment, though the slight twist of his lips suggested he recognized the satirical edge to Crowther’s question. “Thank you, Mr. Crowther. But a man may be talented indeed, and gain no foothold in these arts. We must also be fashionable to receive our opportunity to perform. To be a romantic artist, slave only to the music, might sound very fine, but it is uncomfortable and does the music no service if it is heard by only its singer. I flatter, I practice, I perform. This is my trade, just as Dr. Gregson’s trade is his secret recipe for pills against gout. He takes an inch or two in the London Advertiser, I make influential friends and celebrate their taste.”

“Such as Lord Carmichael,” Crowther said.

“Indeed. My lord is a gracious host and I met him first many years ago in Milan, so he invited me to make his home my residence during the season. Though I must sing for my supper here also. I am part of the collection, albeit on a-let me remember the phrase-a temporary footing. Lord Carmichael is entertaining the better people in Town at a reception here tomorrow evening. Miss Marin will sing also. I hope you shall attend?”

“Was Fitzraven also to be part of the collection here? He seems to have been made of less fine stuff than yourself, yet we know he boasted of being admitted here after his return from the continent.”

Manzerotti lifted his shoulders. “There are many people in Milan through whom he might have gained that introduction. I did not put their hands together, nor was I here when he visited Lord Carmichael.” He shrugged again and the silk of his coat rippled up and down his back. “Perhaps my lord found him amusing.” He continued in a brisker tone. “But I am not being very helpful to you-perhaps I can be more so. When I first met Fitzraven I was pleased to be his friend for the opportunities he offered. But since I arrived in London to take up my appointment at your opera house, that liking for him has diminished. I believe I observed him following me not less than three times since I arrived, and I think he did the same to others in the employ of the opera house.”

“Indeed?” Harriet said with calm interest, pleased to note her voice did not flutter when she spoke to him. “And why should he do such a thing, do you think?”

Manzerotti picked a scrap of lint from his left sleeve. “I think he had long made it his business to know a great deal about the people of distinction with whom he came in contact. He liked to come up to me in the opera and say, ‘Did you dine well at such and such a place? Did such and such a tailor please you? If not, I can recommend for you another place, another tailor.’ I believe that in doing such things, he hoped he was gaining my friendship.”

Crowther placed his long hands in his lap and felt the glow from the fire on his gray skin. “It seemed he failed,” he observed.

“He did. And if his aim was to find out something to embarrass me into further gifts of money, he failed in that also. My life here is. .” he lifted his hands, his palms raised and open “. . blameless.”

“And, of course, you no longer require his friendship?” Harriet said.

Manzerotti turned his eyes on her again. “Dear Mrs. Westerman, you make me sound very brutal. .” Harriet opened her mouth to apologize and say she meant nothing of the sort, but Manzerotti spoke on. “Remember, I had cause to cut him. Had he been honest in his friendship with me, I would have been loyal to him. But he stole from me more than was polite.”

“Has your work taken you to Paris of late, Mr. Manzerotti?” Crowther asked the question in a rather bored tone and examined his fingertips.

Manzerotti frowned. It was the first time Harriet had seen that perfect brow furrowed in any way and she felt a sudden impulse to smooth it clear again with the tip of her glove. “Not of late, Mr. Crowther. Why do you ask?”

Crowther did not take his eyes from his cuffs. “I am fascinated by the glamour of a life so much unlike my own, perhaps. No matter. But what is more germane, who else in the company do you think found themselves with Fitzraven playing their shadow?”

Manzerotti continued to watch the older man carefully. “I observed him following Bywater. Perhaps he found more than matters of tailoring and dining on those expeditions.”

“You suspect Mr. Bywater of something, sir?” Crowther’s voice by comparison with the avian coo of Manzerotti seemed like wheels on gravel.

“Of nothing-but he is very much in love with Mademoiselle Marin, Mr. Crowther. And the duet. .”

“What of the duet, Signor?” Harriet asked. She was sorry to note that her voice did sound a little breathy, even if it did not flutter, as if she were in the presence of a holy relic. This man seemed to make any space he occupied like a church or a theater.

Manzerotti shrugged again and said with a smile, “It is too good, Signora. Bywater is a man of at best moderate talent, but the duet is the work of a master.”

Jocasta didn’t go to see Kate buried, guessing that if Fred and Mrs. Mitchell caught sight of her, she’d be up in front of the magistrate before the grave was full and that he’d impose more “fines” on her than the constable had. She sent Sam and the two boys he’d fetched along with him though to keep an eye on them, and gave him some scraps of copper and a few words before he went. He’d taken Boyo with him too. The terrier liked him, and she knew he’d get fretful, shut in with her all morning.

Her time between readings she spent in contemplation, thinking over the years of her childhood between the death of the baron and her coming away. There had been a fuss about his death, and much was left to lie, that even as a child she thought should have been dug up and shook about in the air. The bad feelings, the bitterness at being ignored had rotted and poisoned a place she loved. She’d escaped as far as Kendal by means of an early hopeless marriage, then abandoned that as no way near far enough, and made her way to London. It had taken four weeks of walking, and when she set her bundle down in Charing Cross, she’d sworn never to go back up north, and never to marry again either. Marriage seemed to her just a way to find someone to lie to every day.

Sam came trotting in eventually with a pair of pies and plenty of news.

“Don’t think they noticed me at all, Mrs. Bligh.” He wiped the crumbs off his face. “Milky Boy’s twice given me money now to run about with his messages, and he still wouldn’t know me if I kicked him. For all his reading and writing, I think the fellow is daft.”