Listerdale Mystery - Agatha Christie [85]
With a last wave, almost a flourish, of the palm leaf, Paula Nazorkoff laid it down, and stretched out her hand to the Frenchman. He took it and bowed low over it, and a faint sigh escaped from the prima donna’s lips.
‘Madame,’ said Bréon, ‘we have never sung together. That is the penalty of my age! But Fate has been kind to me, and come to my rescue.’
Paula laughed softly.
‘You are too kind, M. Bréon. When I was still but a poor little unknown singer, I have sat at your feet. Your “Rigoletto”–what art, what perfection! No one could touch you.’
‘Alas!’ said Bréon, pretending to sigh. ‘My day is over. Scarpia, Rigoletto, Radames, Sharpless, how many times have I not sung them, and now–no more!’
‘Yes–tonight.’
‘True, Madame–I forgot. Tonight.’
‘You have sung with many “Toscas”,’ said Nazorkoff arrogantly; ‘but never with me!’
The Frenchman bowed.
‘It will be an honour,’ he said softly. ‘It is a great part, Madame.’
‘It needs not only a singer, but an actress,’ put in Lady Rustonbury.
‘That is true,’ Bréon agreed. ‘I remember when I was a young man in Italy, going to a little out of the way theatre in Milan. My seat cost me only a couple of lira, but I heard as good singing that night as I have heard in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Quite a young girl sang “Tosca”, she sang it like an angel. Never shall I forget her voice in “Vissi D’Arte”, the clearness of it, the purity. But the dramatic force, that was lacking.’
Nazorkoff nodded.
‘That comes later,’ she said quietly.
‘True. This young girl–Bianca Capelli, her name was–I interested myself in her career. Through me she had the chance of big engagements, but she was foolish–regrettably foolish.’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘How was she foolish?’
It was Lady Rustonbury’s twenty-four-year-old daughter, Blanche Amery, who spoke. A slender girl with wide blue eyes.
The Frenchman turned to her at once politely.
‘Alas! Mademoiselle, she had embroiled herself with some low fellow, a ruffian, a member of the Camorra. He got into trouble with the police, was condemned to death; she came to me begging me to do something to save her lover.’
Blanche Amery was staring at him.
‘And did you?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Me, Mademoiselle, what could I do? A stranger in the country.’
‘You might have had influence?’ suggested Nazorkoff, in her low vibrant voice.
‘If I had, I doubt whether I should have exerted it. The man was not worth it. I did what I could for the girl.’
He smiled a little, and his smile suddenly struck the English girl as having something peculiarly disagreeable about it. She felt that, at that moment, his words fell far short of representing his thoughts.
‘You did what you could,’ said Nazorkoff. ‘That was kind of you, and she was grateful, eh?’
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders.
‘The man was executed,’ he said, ‘and the girl entered a convent. Eh, voila`! The world has lost a singer.’
Nazorkoff gave a low laugh.
‘We Russians are more fickle,’ she said lightly.
Blanche Amery happened to be watching Cowan just as the singer spoke, and she saw his quick look of astonishment, and his lips that half-opened and then shut tight in obedience to some warning glance from Paula.
The butler appeared in the doorway.
‘Dinner,’ said Lady Rustonbury, rising. ‘You poor things, I am so sorry for you, it must be dreadful always to have to starve yourself before singing. But there will be a very good supper afterwards.’
‘We shall look forward to it,’ said Paula Nazorkoff. She laughed softly. ‘Afterwards!’
III
Inside the theatre, the first act of Tosca had just drawn to a close. The audience stirred, spoke to each other. The royalties, charming and gracious, sat in the three velvet chairs in the front row. Everyone was whispering and murmuring to each other, there was a general feeling that in the first act Nazorkoff had hardly lived up to her great reputation. Most of the audience did not realize that in this the singer showed her art, in the first act she was saving her voice and herself. She made of La Tosca a light, frivolous