temperamental prima donna as far as she can to give her an excuse to bitch about anything and everything.”
Carol looked up to see Binns approaching. She got to her feet. “Ms Jawalski, I’d appreciate it if you give Constable Newsome full details of the conversation-anything you can remember verbatim would be a help.”
Binns was beaming. “Lloyd Clancy’s in his dressing room right now. Can I take you down?”
Confident the young constable could complete the interview efficiently, Carol said to Corinne, “Please excuse me. Constable Newsome will have a few more questions for you and will make arrangements for a statement.”
Plainly irked to find Carol leaving her midway through the interview, she said tartly, “There’s a lot more you should know, Inspector.”
“I’m sure we’ll speak again.”
Carol followed Binns as he plunged into a low-roofed wide corridor. Brightly lit, filled with the muffled hum of air-conditioning and carpeted with gray-brown carpet chosen to blend in with the widest range of stains, it seemed identical to all other corridors she had seen in the Opera House. “Do you ever get lost?”
He was delighted with her question. “No, but I can see how you might think that. It’s the white birch ply.” At her raised eyebrows, he elaborated, “This blond wood you see everywhere. It’s in all the passageways, the rooms. Native wood of New South Wales, white birch. Makes everything look the same.”
As they came to a halt outside a pale door labeled
The door opened to his diffident knock. Carol had seen Lloyd Clancy in photographs and on television, but she wasn’t prepared for the full weight of his engaging personality. Rather heavily built and with an imposingly hooked nose, deeply set dark eyes and a rougish smile, he radiated a cheeky informality. He was wearing ancient jeans and a navy blue shirt. “Come in, Inspector Ashton,” he said with an elaborate sweeping gesture. “I find it very reassuring that you’re on the case.”
“Indeed?”
“Absolutely indeed!” He was chuckling at her skeptical tone as he ushered her down a tiny hallway with a cramped bathroom on one side and a walk-in wardrobe on the other. The dressing room itself was quite small, one side of it taken up with makeup mirrors ringed with lights. Set into another wall was a control panel from which music and singing whispered. “The rehearsal,” he said, as she glanced at it. “I’m due back for the next act, so I’ll know when I have to be there.” Seating her on a rather battered lounge, he said to Binns, “Douglas, coffee would be wonderful. Could you?”
The dressing room had the ubiquitous gray-brown carpet and pale cream woodwork and walls. The window was a long oblong laid on its side through which an expanse of water danced in the sunlight. Seeing her watching a catamaran ferry swishing past, he said, “Lovely view, isn’t it? Unfortunately, I hardly have time to appreciate it, and besides, one can become accustomed to too much beauty, don’t you agree?”
“Perhaps, although the harbor’s changing all the time.”
The amusement disappeared from his face. His voice was washed of laughter as he said, “Yes, everything changes. You want to see me about Collis.” He’d taken one of the three-wheeled swivel-backed chairs from the makeup mirror, swung it around so the back faced him, and had straddled it. Now he sat, hands folded along the top of the backrest, watching her closely.
“Let’s start with how he was the last time you saw or spoke with him.”
Clancy’s initial levity had vanished. He said pensively, “I can’t believe we’re sitting here discussing Collis’s death. It’s such a pity…”
“When did you see him?” Carol prompted.
“Would have been about midafternoon on that final day. He was here, in this dressing room. Wanted to check something about next month’s schedule. Seemed preoccupied, but not depressed. Of course, you couldn’t always tell with Collis. He was an intensely private man.”
“Did you get on well?”
This question earned a rueful smile. “To be honest, not particularly.” He seemed to make an effort to be jocular. “I mean, it’s no secret we were rivals. Tenors often are.” He added disarmingly, “In opera we have all these noble, heroic parts, you see. And all this drama spills over into our lives.”
He tried to match her tone. “Positively boiling.”
“And Collis Raeburn? Where was he in all of this?”
Clancy’s smile disappeared. “He was heading for the very top. Superstardom, internationally. It wasn’t just the voice, plenty of singers have that. What made Collis different was his drive, his determination, his eye for the main chance. Oh, and a theatrical sense. His PR person didn’t hinder him, either.”
“Who is that?”
“Anita Burgess. You’d have heard of her.”
Carol had. Ex-wife of a prominent politician, she had used every contact he had made in public life to establish her public relations consultancy as one of the most successful small agencies in Australia.
Clancy went on, “And success like Collis’s made a lot of people very envious. Some wanted to pull him down, some wanted to hitch a ride on his coattails…”
“What did you want to do?” asked Carol blandly.
He gave her a mocking look. “Why, Inspector, surely you realize I’m a success in my own right?” He added, “You might like to think of us as twin rockets, our careers ascending to the skies.”
“Is that how you saw it?”
“I envied Raeburn’s success,” he said soberly. “It was unfortunate that my career coincided with his, because it seemed inevitable that he would overshadow me. But that’s all it was-envy. I didn’t wish him harm, and on a professional level we got along perfectly well. I can say quite sincerely that I regret his death deeply, because he had a magnificent voice, and he’d hardly begun, in operatic terms, to realize his potential.”
“You mention a professional level. How about a personal level?”
A cynical smile. “Hated his guts,” said Lloyd Clancy.
Douglas Binns was apologetic. “Alanna Brooks has come down with a severe migraine headache. She’s in her dressing room, but I don’t know if she can give you an interview.”
The prima donna’s dressing room was the twin of Lloyd Clancy’s, but the curtains had been drawn to shut out the light and the beauty of the harbor. Alanna Brooks’s full-figured body was huddled in a chair, her head resting on one hand. The fair, translucent skin of her face was drawn. She said, her voice husky, “Inspector Ashton, I’m sorry, but I’ve asked Douglas to call a cab. When I get one of these migraines, it’s the full disaster-pain, vision disturbances and nausea. The only thing that helps is to lie down and go to sleep. I realize you need to speak with me, but I’m afraid it’s impossible at the moment.”
“Would you just tell me when you last saw or spoke to Mr. Raeburn?”
Alanna Brooks groped around in a bag and found a pair of sunglasses. As she put them on, she said, “God. I feel terrible.”
“Ms Brooks?”
“Yes, Collis… I saw him on Saturday afternoon, here in the dressing room. He didn’t say or do anything to make me think he was going to do what he did.”
Douglas Binns knocked. “The cab’s here.”
The diva stood carefully. “I think my head’s going to explode… Inspector, can I call you tomorrow? I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
“Handy headache?” said Carol to Anne Newsome as they walked to the car.
“Perhaps she needs time to counter the less than flattering comments Corinne Jawalski continued to make after you’d left us,” said Anne. “She was reasonably civil about male singers, but mention a rival soprano and she’s in for the kill.”
“It’s becoming obvious to me that opera’s just like the Police Service,” observed Carol. “You have to watch your back, because your colleagues can be dangerous.”
She ignored Anne’s surprised expression, wondering herself why she’d expressed this thought in words.
Changing to a strictly-business tone, she said, “Did you ask Corinne about her personal relationship with Raeburn?”
