A Chorus of Detectives Read Online Free

on the stage, his jitters would vanish like magic.
    Caruso spotted her and rushed over. “Emmy! Tonight is disaster! I cannot sing!”
    â€œNow, Rico—”
    â€œThe voice, it is gone! The hands shake, I have a hurt in the side, the mouth is dry—my spray! Where is my throat spray? Mario!” His valet rushed up with an atomizer bottle. Caruso sprayed his throat and tried a note; it came out thin and wobbly. “I cannot sing!”
    â€œOf course you can sing,” Emmy murmured automatically. “When the rest of us are dead and buried, you’ll still be here singing. Try to relax, Rico.”
    â€œDisaster! Tonight is disaster!” He hurried away, not listening.
    Emmy left him to his private terrors while she concentrated on heaving her considerable bulk into the donkey cart in which she made her entrance. Then came the word Quiet, please , and Pasquale Amato was out in front of the curtain singing the prologue.
    The curtain opened; on stage, the chorus was busy setting the scene. Then Emmy was gripping the sides of the donkey cart, holding on for dear life, as Caruso grasped the donkey’s bridle and led on the small troupe of actors they were playing that night. Caruso’s first notes were strong and clear as a bell; no one would have known that only minutes earlier he’d been on the verge of collapse.
    When the time came for Emmy’s aria, Quaglia kept his word and followed her tempo. At the aria’s conclusion, Emmy felt a small glimmer of the old satisfaction that used to follow every job of good singing, but the opera didn’t give her time to enjoy it. She was plunged immediately into a quarrel with Pasquale Amato, followed by a love duet with the other baritone in the piece—which still felt odd to Emmy, as many times as she’d sung it; love duets were supposed to be sung with the tenor. Then followed a scene with Caruso, and at last she was off the stage.
    Caruso was on stage alone, leading into the opera’s big aria, Vesti la giubba . Normally at that point Emmy would be hurrying up the stairs to her dressing room to change into her Columbine costume for the second act. But tonight she lingered, wanting to feel the old Caruso magic working on her, hoping to rekindle the spark. Therefore she was backstage when the unthinkable happened.
    Caruso’s voice broke.
    There was a stunned silence backstage. Singers and stagehands alike exchanged uneasy glances, each of them wondering, Did I really hear what I think I heard? The trouble had come at the climactic moment of Vesti la giubba , when the melodic line soared up to a high A. The A had proved Caruso’s undoing, and the golden voice had cracked. It was a sound no one in the world had ever heard before.
    Caruso finished the aria, and the first-act curtain closed to the sound of applause mixed with murmurs of surprise. “Disaster!” the tenor shouted as he rushed off the stage. “I know tonight is disaster!” He pushed his way up the stairs to his dressing room, muttering to himself.
    Exclamations of dismay bounded back and forth. In any other singer, a break in the voice would be either glossed over or snickered at, depending on one’s personal feelings toward the singer. But Caruso ! Quaglia appeared backstage, his whole body quivering with alarm. “Where is he?” he demanded. A dozen fingers pointed, and the conductor dashed up the stairs to the dressing-room level. Soon Gatti-Casazza appeared, followed by his assistant, Edward Ziegler; Caruso’s dressing room would be crowded.
    Eventually enough order was restored that the second act could be started. In Act II, the troupe of traveling actors put on a little play for an audience of townspeople, enacted by the chorus. Caruso didn’t enter immediately; the others sang away, all the while worrying about their tenor. No one worried about the trap door in the stage floor.
    The trap was located in the exact