“Except that he sometimes paid her to sing.”
“Sing?”
“Sing.”
“Okay, Sergeant Peltzer,” Byron said, “that’s just weird enough that it might be a clue. Keep digging, and tell the girls that if their john asks for a song, they need to run the other way.”
“Right, Lieutenant.” The sergeant flipped his notebook closed.
Byron turned back to his reports.
* * *
Hermann crashed the last chord of the last aria of the last act, held it for a moment, then released the keys and let the piano action damp the sound. For a long moment no one breathed, then a collective sigh rose from the cast. Amber’s mouth quirked for a moment. She waited for Frau Ballauf to take off her headset and lay it on the stage manager’s desk, then they headed for center stage together.
“All right, gather round, everyone.”
She waited for the cast and chorus to assemble.
“Okay, for the first complete run-through, blocking and all, that wasn’t bad.” She let everyone absorb the compliment for a moment, then continued with, “But it needs to get a whole lot better in the next couple of weeks.” She pointed to Frau Ballauf standing nearby with a clipboard. The stage manager stepped forward, and started talking.
“Right. From the top. Make notes, people.” She barely waited for everyone to pull paper and pencils out of pockets, then referred to her list and started rattling off observations. “Act One Scene One: Dieter, you’ve missed your mark every time in your first entrance. You have to hit your mark, or the lights won’t pick you up and you’ll be singing in the dark, which is not the effect Amber wants.” The baritone ducked his head sheepishly, but dutifully wrote it down.
She turned to her next target. “Katherine, same scene, you need to be moving a couple of seconds earlier. Dieter is having to wait on you to present his line, and it’s making the music and the scene drag.”
* * *
Schardius leaned back in his seat, listening to Frau Ballauf run down her list of observations and corrections. Even though she wasn’t facing him, he was able to hear every word. The acoustics in the opera hall were really very good.
Although he didn’t have much use for Frau Higham as a person—he never cared much for people who contradicted him—he had to admit she seemed to know what she was doing in producing the opera. What had been an amorphous assemblage of singers and words only a few weeks ago had been shaped by this woman into something to behold. The fact that it would continue to improve was also amazing.
* * *
Byron signed off on the last report and laid it in his Out box. He stood up, grabbed his jacket off its hook, and looked over at Gotthilf.
“Let’s get out of here, before someone else brings something in for me to read.”
Gotthilf grabbed his own jacket and was on his heels as he headed out the office door and down the hall to the closest outside door. Once out of the building, they stopped and took a deep breath.
“Now what?” Gotthilf asked.
“I think…Demetrious.”
The two of them turned and plunged into the flow of people in the street.
* * *
“Thank you, Frau Frontilia. And lastly,” Amber said, turning back to the cast, “I need more energy from everyone in the last half of the second act and the first part of the third act, through the battle scene. Marla and Andrea, you two especially. Don’t give me more volume; give me more intensity. More edge, if you get what I mean.”
* * *
Frau Higham was wrapping things up, Schardius decided. Time to go position himself.
He stepped out of the box and hurried down the hall into the foyer to exit the building. There was a bit of shadow cast by the late afternoon sun to the right of the door there on the colonnaded porch of the opera hall, and he settled himself to wait.
Schardius knew from observation the last few days that Frau Linder was usually one of the last people to leave the rehearsal hall. He expected that same pattern today.
* * *
Gotthilf heard Byron grunt in annoyance. They’d just finished checking the last of their favorite informer’s favorite haunts, and no luck. Wherever Demetrious was, he obviously didn’t want to be found—at least, not by them.
Someone walking ahead of them caught his eye. He nudged Byron.
“Isn’t that Metzger’s young friend Simon up there?”
Byron’s gaze followed the tilt of his head. “Believe so.”
“Is that other group of boys with him or following him?”
“Looks to me like they’re following,” Byron said after a moment.
Gotthilf picked up the pace a little, watching the boys as they drew closer.
“Yah, they’re following, all right. And it doesn’t look to me like Simon is very happy about it.”