Hymn Read online

  Lloyd arrived outside Sylvia Cuddy’s downtown apartment building a little more than ten minutes early, and Sylvia wasn’t yet ready. He walked up the tile-flagged steps to the second floor, and Sylvia let him in.

  ‘Excuse the chaos,’ she said, kissing his cheek.

  Like the living accommodation of many people he knew, even successful musicians and restaurateurs and interior designers, Sylvia’s apartment was tiny. Real-estate prices in San Diego had risen stunningly, and even a cramped two-room apartment was beyond the reach of all but the most affluent.

  Only one drawer had to be left open, or one newspaper dropped on the floor, and the whole place looked untidy.

  Sylvia’s ‘chaos’ amounted to nothing more than a coffee-cup left in the kitchen area, and an open file of drawings for the San Diego Opera’s forthcoming production of Mefistofele.

  ‘Have a seat,’ she said. ‘There’s wine in the icebox. Or Perrier. Or freshly-squeezed pineapple. There’s even some stuffed olives. Or some strawberry Jell-O.’

  Lloyd poured himself a glassful of cold Cakebread chardonnay, and stepped out on to Sylvia’s tiny redwood balcony. The balcony had been built up to chest-height to give her extra privacy, and to mask the view of watertowers and warehouses and tract housing rooftops. If you didn’t peer over the edge, all you could see was Banker’s Hill and the Coronado Bay, glittering gold in the distance.

  ‘You’ve worked miracles with this place,’ he told her, turning around with his back to the parapet. ‘I love this dark green wallpaper, and all these drapes.’

  ‘I have to have drapes because I don’t have room for closets,’ she called back. ‘I’m so tired of living in Lilliput, you know? It’s so damned small here I can do swan-dives off the ironing-board, straight down the toilet.’

  She stepped out onto the balcony beside him. She was short, only a little over five-three, with a wild tangle of backbrushed Titian hair, an owlish pair of Paloma Picasso spectacles, lips as plump as pink-silk cushions, and huge rounded breasts that were wrapped up like well-ripened canteloupes in a crimson-and-green floral blouse by André Laug.

  ‘You know what Celia used to say about this blouse?’ asked Sylvia. ‘She said it was like somebody shouting in the jungle. Wasn’t that just typical?’

  ‘I went to see the place today,’ said Lloyd. ‘The place where she died.’

  Sylvia didn’t answer, but waited to hear what Lloyd would say next.

  ‘It’s a car-park, that’s all,’ he told her. ‘A concrete carpark. What a goddamned awful place to die.’

  ‘Any place is a goddamned awful place to die,’ Sylvia told him, taking his hand and squeezing it. ‘Come on, let’s go find ourselves a real drink.’ They left the apartment and Lloyd drove them out to Harbor Island Drive, to Tom Ham’s Lighthouse. Apart from being a bar and a restaurant, Tom Ham’s was a genuine certified coastguard lighthouse, with a spectacular view of the harbour. It was dark now, except for a last diagonal streak of grainy orange light across the horizon. They sat at a window table, looking out over the dipping lights and the reflections of downtown San Diego. Sylvia ordered a Kahlua on the rocks, but Lloyd stuck to whisky. There were times when only whisky was any use.

  ‘You said you thought there might be some connection between Celia and Marianna,’ said Syliva.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t have any proof. It seems too much of a coincidence, that’s all.’

  ‘Coincidences do happen.’

  ‘Well, sure . . . but I’ve got a weird kind of feeling about it. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to this Otto character.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t had any luck finding out about him. Don hasn’t heard of him, but I’m sure that Joe North sometimes used to go along to see him, with Celia and Marianna. He’s back at the theatre the day after tomorrow. I’ll ask him then.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lloyd. Then, ‘Do you happen to know what was the last opera that Wagner ever wrote?’

  ‘That’s a peculiar question.’

  ‘Some pretty peculiar things have been happening.’

  Sylvia frowned at him. ‘Listen, you’ve had a dreadful shock. Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m not too sure of anything, to tell you the truth. But tell me what was Wagner’s last opera.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the last opera that Wagner wrote was Parsifal, 1882. In 1883 he went to Venice and died of a heart attack.’

  ‘He didn’t write an opera in 1883?’

  Sylvia took off her glasses. Her eyes were unfocused and a little bulbous, but they were richest shade of Belgian-chocolate-brown. ‘Lloyd, I could talk about Wagner till the cows come home. However, the question is, is this relevant to anything at all?’

  ‘I don’t know. But inside Celia’s piano, I found this manuscript.’ He reached under the table and produced the plastic envelope. ‘It’s probably a fake, or a mistake. I’m not sure what. But it looks like part of a Wagner libretto, for an opera called Junius. It’s dated 1883.’

  ‘Let me see that,’ asked Sylvia. She took the envelope, eased out one of the pages of manuscript, and peered at it closely. Lloyd watched her, feeling uneasy, as if he were the fall guy for some elaborate practical joke.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked her, at last.

  ‘This isn’t a leg-pull?’ she asked him, suddenly suspicious.

  But she realized from the expression on his face that he was serious, and why would he joke, at a time like this? She examined the pages carefully, turning them over one by one and laying them face down on the table.

  ‘If this is genuine,’ she said, ‘then it’s incredible. Do you have any idea where Celia might have found it?’

  ‘I have no idea. She never mentioned it to me. It was sellotaped inside the piano.’

  Sylvia said, ‘Of course you won’t be able to tell if it’s genuine until you have the paper and the ink properly analyzed. But if it is genuine, you’re going to be rich—especially if you can locate the rest of the opera, too.’

  She peered at one of the pages closely. ‘It certainly looks like Wagner’s handwriting.’

  ‘And if it is?’

  ‘Come on, Lloyd, think about it! If that’s an original score for an unknown opera written by Richard Wagner in the last year of his life, and you can show that you own it, then you’re made for life. You can retire. I can think of at least four musical publishing companies who would pay you millions for it.’

  Lloyd said, ‘To tell you the truth, I wasn’t so much interested in the money. I’m more interested in how Celia got hold of it, and why she hid it, and whether anybody else knows about it. Obviously she never talked about it to you . . . but somebody broke into the house the night she died and I think this was what they were looking for. If it’s worth millions, then that could have been a motive for somebody killing her.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that somebody broke in! That’s terrible! What did the police say?’

  ‘They didn’t say anything,’ Lloyd admitted. ‘I didn’t tell them, either.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ asked Sylvia.

  ‘I don’t know . . . just a feeling, I guess.’

  ‘But if you think she might have been killed . . .’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that. I mean, I guess I’m satisfied that she actually took her own life. But I want to know is, why—and whether anybody put her into a suicidal frame of mind.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s something you really want to find out?’ Sylvia asked him. There was no doubting Sylvia’s kindness or wisdom.

  Lloyd nodded. ‘I know what you’re suggesting. There could have been another man involved. But, believe me, Sylvia, not knowing is worse than knowing.’

  Their waitress came up and asked them if they wanted another cocktail.

  ‘No, no,’ said Sylvia. ‘Two’s my limit. Otherwise I star
t singing “Loike Old Times in Kilkenny, Begorra” and dancing on the tables.’

  ‘We’ll just have the bill,’ said Lloyd. But as he did so, he caught sight of a girl on the far side of the bar, in the corner of one of the booths, and she looked so much like Celia that he shivered as if somebody had unexpectedly laid a cold hand on the small of his back. She was deep in the shadows, and she wore dark glasses, and a black scarf that covered her head like a turban. But there was sufficient light from the small crimson-glass lantern on the table in front of her to illuminate her face, and if she wasn’t Celia then she was certainly Celia’s doppelgänger. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her, but her glasses were so dark that it was impossible to tell if she had noticed him.

  Sylvia touched his hand. Then—when she failed to attract his attention—she turned around to see what he was staring at. ‘Am I missing something?’ she asked. ‘I’m terrible like that. I was out with Don the other night and Robin Williams came into the restaurant and I didn’t even see him.’

  ‘That girl opposite . . . in the corner booth.’

  ‘Excuse me, I must put my specs on. Which girl?’

  ‘That girl in the scarf and the dark glasses. There—right in the corner.’

  But as he was trying to explain to Sylvia which girl he meant, a crowd of six or seven laughing businessmen came into the bar and stood between them. Lloyd leaned from right to left, desperate not to lose sight of the girl, but then the businessmen were joined by their wives, and for two or three minutes he couldn’t see the booth at all.

  ‘Lloyd—what on earth’s the matter?’ Sylvia asked him.

  He grasped her hand. ‘It sounds totally crazy, but I keep seeing Celia. Or girls who look like Celia. I saw one just after I left the morgue. I tried to follow her, but she disappeared in the crowds.’

  ‘And now there’s another girl over there who looks like Celia?’

  ‘Exactly. It’s uncanny. She’s wearing dark glasses but she’s so much like her.’

  Sylvia gave Lloyd’s hand a gentle squeeze. ‘Lloyd—Lloyd, sweetheart.’

  He looked at her quickly, then went back to searching for the girl in the booth.

  ‘Lloyd, you’re only torturing yourself. Celia’s dead.’

  ‘But the resemblance is totally uncanny.’

  ‘Lloyd, she’s dead. Dead people don’t come back and sit opposite you in cocktail bars. You’re just projecting your grief on to a girl who looks a little bit like Celia. It’s like an after-image. I did it myself when my father died. I spent four thousand dollars on two shrinks, to sort myself out.’

  At last, the crowd of businessmen moved away, still laughing noisily. ‘There . . .’ said Lloyd. But as the last man walked with infuriating slowness out of his sightline, he saw that the booth was empty, and that the girl was gone.

  Sylvia looked at Lloyd with sorrow. ‘Oh, Lloyd. I know how much you must be hurting.’

  Lloyd stood up, and searched around the bar for any sign of the girl. The front door was slowly closing, as if somebody had just walked through it, and through the brown-tinted glass he thought he saw a slim dark figure, and the back of a woman’s calf, but then there was nothing but darkness, and the reflection of a man lighting a cigarette.

  He drove Sylvia back to her apartment, and helped her out of the car. A cool wind was blowing from the harbour, and Sylvia shivered.

  ‘Don’t bother to come up,’ she told him. ‘Get yourself safely home and take a couple of Nytol. You’ll feel better when you get some sleep.’

  Lloyd kissed her, and hugged her. ‘Thanks, Sylvia. You’re a genuine authenticated angel.’

  ‘Listen . . .’ said Sylvia. ‘Do you mind if I keep that score? Oliver Drexler’s coming in for rehearsals tomorrow, I could show it to him. I know that he’d adore to see it.’

  ‘For sure,’ Lloyd told her, and reached into his car for the plastic envelope. ‘Take good care of it, though. It could be evidence.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll take care of it, all right. I’ll guard it with my life.’

  She watched Lloyd U-turn across the street, then waved as he headed off northward, back to La Jolla. She let herself in through the heavy bleached-oak door of her apartment building, and climbed the tiled stairs.

  As she climbed, she softly trilled Pace, pace from Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino. She felt worried about Lloyd. It was obvious that he hadn’t even begun to face up to the reality of Celia’s suicide. It was understandable, of course. Suddenly to lose the love of his life in such a grisly and baffling way must have been enough to drive him half-crazy. By concentrating with such ferocity on finding out why she had killed herself, his mind was still protecting itself from the shock. His hallucinations of Celia were probably a symptom of the same self-protective mechanism.

  Sylvia opened the door of her apartment and stepped inside. She wished there were something she could do to help Lloyd get over Celia. But Celia had been so pretty and so talented and so full of life that nobody could ever take her place. Sylvia missed her, too. Until today, she hadn’t realized how badly. She had heard from Don that Exxon were going to put up the money for a major production of The Marriage of Figaro. She had actually started to say, ‘Wait till Celia hears about this,’ until it had struck her with almost physical pain that she would never see Celia again.

  She went to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. She didn’t usually drink as much as she had today, but she felt like something to help her sleep. She shucked off her shoes and walked out of the kitchen into the tiny living-room, carrying a glass of wine in one hand and the libretto in the other. She sat down in her favourite spoon-back armchair, and put up her feet on the coffee table.

  Provided they were authentic, the pages of this libretto was one of the greatest musical finds of the century. Even if Lloyd couldn’t find the rest of the opera, they were still worth a fortune. She didn’t read German very well—particularly Wagner’s spidery script—but she managed to work out some of the meaning.

  Junius: I confess that I listened

  To His sweet and tempting words

  And that I gave myself willingly,

  Body and soul.

  And

  Many hundred thousand goodnights,

  Dearly beloved Veronica,

  Innocent have I come into prison

  Innocent have I been tortured

  Innocent must I die.

  She leafed through to the pages of music, and hummed a few bars to herself. The score was unusually monotonous for Wagner, although it had all of the Teutonic sinew of the Valkyries and Rhinegold. Sylvia slapped the arm of her chair with her hand to emphasize the timing. The music sounded almost like a barbarian war-chant, the kind of song that would have been sung by Goths and Visigoths on their way to battle.

  She was still humming and slapping when she began to have the feeling that she was being watched. She used to feel it quite often, before she had built the high balustrade around her balcony, and it was a feeling that particularly disturbed her. She had imagined that somebody in one of the tract houses was spying on her with binoculars. Her then-headshrinker had told her that she suffered from a mild form of paranoia.

  But this evening, the feeling was different. She didn’t feel that she was being watched from a long way off, but from very near. Almost as if somebody were standing right behind her, and breathing on her shoulder.

  She stopped humming, stopped slapping, and glanced quickly and furtively around. There was nobody else in the room. But the building did seem unusually quiet. There were no televisions mumbling in other apartments, no music playing, no feet chip-chipping up the tiled steps outside.

  A jet took off from Lindbergh Field, its engines thundering. The sliding-door out on to the balcony rattled and vibrated. For a moment, as the airliner circled out over the ocean, Sylvia’s whole world was engulfed by shattering noise. She
looked toward the balcony, and there, to her intense fright, a dark figure was standing, with its back to her. A woman, in a black raincoat, her head wound around in a black turban-like scarf.

  Carefully, her heart still caught on the hook of her fright, Sylvia set down her wineglass and the pages of Wagner’s libretto, swung her feet off the coffee-table, and stood up. She looked around for something to protect herself with, and decided that the swan’s-head umbrella beside her writing-desk would do. This was only a woman, after all, and not an especially big or powerful-looking woman; and by the way she was standing on the balcony with her back to the living-room, it certainly didn’t appear to Sylvia that she had the intention of doing anything violent or sudden.

  All the same, the very presence of a stranger outside her living-room, treating her balcony as if it were her own, was more threatening than Sylvia could have believed possible.

  Sylvia gripped the umbrella in her left hand, took a deep breath to steady herself, and then slid back the balcony door.

  ‘Hallo,’ she said, her mouth dried out. ‘Do you mind telling me what the hell you think you’re doing on my balcony?’

  For a long time, the dark woman said nothing, but continued to stare out over the sparkling lights of downtown San Diego and Coronado.

  ‘This is a private apartment,’ Sylvia insisted. ‘If you don’t leave immediately, I’m going to call the super, and the super will call a cop.’

  At last, the woman turned around. She wore glasses with lenses so perfectly black that she looked as if she had no eyes, just two circular holes in her head. Her skin was very pale, with almost a greyish pallor, but very smooth.

  ‘Hallo, Sylvia,’ the woman replied, with the faintest of smiles. ‘I believe that you’ve got something of mine.’

  Sylvia recognized the voice at once. A thrill of fright ran down her arms, like ice-cold centipedes racing each other to reach her wrists. It was Celia. It had to be Celia. Yet Celia was dead, burned. There had even been photographs in the San Diego newspapers of Celia burning, although Sylvia hadn’t been able to do more than glance at them quickly. She had glimpsed flames, a bowed black head, knees that protruded through the fire like kindling-sticks.