Swan Song by Edmund Crispin Read Free Book Online Page A

man, hurriedly entered the stage-door. Adam experienced a mild curiosity, but he did not linger, and by the time he had arrived back at the hotel the incident was forgotten.
    Meanwhile, in a dressing-room almost directly opposite to Furbelow’s open door, Edwin Shorthouse swayed a little in a cold draught. Now and again the rope creaked against the iron hook from which he was suspended, but that was the only sound.

CHAPTER SIX
    â€˜ IT ARGUES A certain poverty of imagination,’ said Gervase Fen with profound disgust, ‘that in a world where atom physicists walk the streets unharmed, emitting their habitual wails about the misuse of science by politicians, a murderer can find a no more deserving victim than some unfortunate opera singer . . .’
    â€˜You’d scarcely say that,’ Adam answered, ‘if you’d known Shorthouse. He will not be very much mourned.’
    The three men paused on the kerb to let a lorry go by before crossing St Giles’. A little whirlwind of snowflakes was swept among them by the wind.
    â€˜All the same,’ Fen resumed when they were half-way across, ‘good singers are rare. And as far as I’m able to judge’ – his confident manner tended to nullify this reservation – ‘he
was
good.’
    â€˜Certainly he was good. No one would have put up with him for two minutes if he hadn’t been . . . Is the snow going to lie, one wonders?’
    â€˜It seems to me you’re overhasty in assuming it was murder,’ said Sir Richard Freeman, the Chief Constable of Oxford. He walked very upright, with short, rapid, determined steps. ‘Mudge implied that the circumstances suggested suicide.’ He frowned severely at this Jamesian hyperbole.
    â€˜
Mudge
,’ Fen remarked with emotion. He buffeted his arms across his chest in the manner associated with taxi-drivers. ‘That hurts,’ he complained. ‘Anyway, if it was suicide, I scarcely see how it’s likely to interest me.’
    â€˜Shorthouse. Any relation of the composer?’
    â€˜Charles Shorthouse?’ said Adam. ‘Yes. A brother. Edwin sang in a good many of Charles’ operas, though as far as the normal repertory was concerned he specialized in Wagner. Wotan and Sachs. Mark. That chatterbox Gurnemanz. He was the obvious Sachs when they decided to put on
Meistersinger
here.’
    They passed a public-house. ‘I should like a Burton.’ said Fen, gazing back at it with the lugubrious passion of Orpheus surveying Eurydice at hell-mouth. ‘But I suppose it’s too early. Shorthouse was hanged, wasn’t he?’
    â€˜So it appears.’ Sir Richard Freeman nodded. ‘But not strangled. It seems to have been a kind of judicial hanging.’
    â€˜You mean his neck was broken?’
    â€˜Or dislocated. We shall get the full medical report when we arrive.’
    â€˜It’s by no means a common way to commit suicide.’ Fen commented. His normally cheerful, ruddy face was thoughtful. ‘In fact, the arranging of it would involve a certain amount of knowledge and finesse.’ He buttoned at the neck the enormous raincoat in which he was muffled, and adjusted his extraordinary hat. He was forty-three years old, lean, lanky, with blue eyes and brown hair ineffectually plastered down with water. ‘I gather,’ he pursued as they turned up Beaumont Street by the Randolph Hotel, ‘that Shorthouse had been causing trouble at rehearsals.’
    â€˜Trouble,’ said Adam grimly, ‘is an understatement. By the way’ – he turned to the Chief Constable – ‘I asked my wife along to the theatre this morning. I hope you don’t mind. You see, it’s rather in her line.’
    â€˜Your
wife,’
said Sir Richard, heavily, like one burdened suddenly with a dangerous secret. ‘I didn’t know you were married, Langley.’
    â€˜Adam’s wife,’ Fen explained,