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.I picked up one red rose and inhaled its sweet aroma.Feeling oddly jealous, I took up my place by the window once again.Octavia’s entrance occasioned uncertain smiles, raised eyebrows, and only fragmentary applause from the benches.I had a good view of her face as she turned toward Karl and nodded her readiness.Octavia wasn’t dismayed by the tepid welcome.On the contrary, her countenance shone with the classic signs of a stage-struck soprano.This middle-aged woman in the ridiculously low-cut gown was as infatuated with performing as any young nymph promoted from the chorus to her first solo role.Karl struck the keynote, and his paramour’s voice rose in determined song.This was Octavia’s stellar moment.But something was wrong.In the audience, heads turned away from the stage, men murmured, women tittered.As a wave, the assembly stirred and rose to its feet.Karl played doggedly on.Mario and Lucca scraped out a few dissonant chords, then let their bows fall silent and stretched up out of their seats to search for the cause of the commotion.As Octavia’s eyes bulged at the errant fiddlers, her voice also faltered to a halt.Karl’s hands finally sank away from the keyboard, leaving a silent void that glorious music had filled only a moment before.Insisting that we must see what was going on, Emilio jerked the door open.All of us, even Grisella and Jean-Louis, ran out to join Octavia.On the graveled drive, at the edge of the stage, stood a young woman.I recognized her at once.She was the little blonde who had peered at me from the front gates a few days ago.The soldier’s wife, if Signor Luvisi’s information was correct.She was dressed in the same drab cloak, and a little boy grasped her hand.In the crook of her arm she held a baby about six months old, a girl by the look of its pink filet cap.Under the amazed gaze of Octavia’s guests and the players on the platform, she dropped the boy’s hand and hoisted her petticoats.Climbing clumsily onto the stone lip of a flower bed and thence onto the boards of the stage, she made herself and her infant as much a part of the show as any of us.The boy scrambled after her, looking like he was about to burst into tears.The woman’s face was blank, her stare unblinking as she walked straight toward the harpsichord.Octavia ran forward and flapped her hands as if she were driving a goose back to its pen.“Go away!” our hostess cried, cheeks glowing brick-red in the torchlight.“Get off the stage! You have no business coming up here while I’m singing.”The expressions of my fellow performers showed varying degrees of bewilderment and curiosity.Except for Karl.He had risen from the harpsichord and was staring down at the keys as though memorizing the pattern of cracks in the ivory.Our diminutive intruder’s gaze never wavered as she moved her brood in the composer’s direction.A pink flush ascended from her neck to her pale face.“We do have business here,” she stated in a meek voice accented with German.“We have come to ask Maestro Weber a question.”The composer’s shoulders slumped even lower, and Octavia threw up her hands.Catching Vincenzo’s eye, she mouthed, “Do something.” Vincenzo hurried along the space between the stage and the audience.At the juncture where the woman had climbed up, he joined forces with Captain Forti and one of his deputies.Impending capture spurred the little woman to continue.In shaky, but perfectly audible tones, she asked, “Karl, mein lieb, how long are you going to let us starve and wither away in that horrible room?”Octavia shrieked out a question of her own: “Karl, don’t tell me you know this woman?”Whatever depths Karl’s spirit had sunk to in those few moments, it now rose on wings tipped with starlight.The composer seemed to throw off his melancholy like a worn-out cloak.He ripped off his ridiculous wig, brushed his sandy hair from his brow, and straightened his narrow shoulders.Wearing the expression of an ancient knight setting out on a sacred quest, he strode to the woman’s side.His strong arm encircled her waist, and he spoke so all could hear: “Of course I know her.Signora Dolfini, allow me to present my wife, Frau Weber.”Octavia threw her head back and roared like a wounded lioness.***Our audience had decamped in confusion, Karl and his family had been banished to the Post house in Molina Mori, and Octavia was in her room having hysterics.What was left of the opera company had gathered in the dining room to tuck into Nita’s buffet of delicacies.“I always thought Karl was hiding a secret,” I mused, licking a dollop of cream filling off my thumb.“You never said,” Gussie replied between bites of a shiny plum tart.“What made you think so?”“It was those letters he received and never seemed to answer.They made me curious.I meant to get to the bottom of them one day, but since I didn’t think they had anything to do with our murders…” I finished with a shrug of my shoulders and reached over the table for another pastry.My nose recognized the heavy scent of jasmine and musk a second before someone bumped me from behind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]