disappointments of my mother’s life that I never turned out to be a musical genius. For a couple of years, when I was a kid, Mom made me take violin lessons. At the end of the first year I played a piece called “Rustling Leaves.” At the end of the second year I was still playing “Rustling Leaves.” Poor Mom had to admit I wasn’t another Jascha Heifetz, and that was the end of my musical career.
Mom has always been crazy about music herself. She did a little singing when she was a girl, and might have done something with her voice—instead she got married, moved up to the Bronx, and devoted herself to raising a future Lieutenant in the New York City Homicide Squad. But she still listens regularly to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, and she can still hum along with all the familiar arias. That was why—when my wife Shirley and I went up to the Bronx the other night for our regular Friday dinner—I knew Mom would be interested in my latest case.
“You’re a music lover, Mom,” I said. “Maybe you can understand how a man could love music so much that he’d commit murder for it.”
“This is hard to understand?” Mom said, looking up from her roast chicken. “Why else did I stop your violin lessons? Once, while you were playing one of your pieces, I happened to take a look at your teacher, Mrs. Steinberg—and on her face was murder, if I ever saw it!”
“You don’t mean that literally, do you, Mother?” Shirley said. “A woman wouldn’t really feel like murdering a little boy because he played the violin badly.”
“People can have plenty feelings that were never in your psychology books at college,” Mom said. “Believe me, in my own family—my Aunt Goldie who thought the pigeon outside her window was actually her late husband Jake—”
Mom went into detail, and her story was fascinating. Then she passed the chicken a second time, and I was able to get back to my murder.
“Have you ever seen the standing-room line at the Metropolitan Opera House?” I said. “Half an hour before every performance the box office sells standing-room tickets at two-fifty each, on a first-come first-served basis. The opera lovers start lining up outside the house hours ahead of time. They stand on their feet for three hours before the opera just so they can stand on their feet for three hours during the opera! Talk about crazy human motives!”
“People with no ears in their heads,” Mom said, “shouldn’t be so quick to call other people crazy.” And she gave me one of those glares which has been making me feel like a naughty little five-year-old ever since I was a naughty little five-year-old.
I turned my eyes away and pushed on. “Well, there are certain people who show up on the opera standing-room line night after night, for practically every performance throughout the season. These ‘regulars’ are almost always at the head of the line—they come earlier than anyone else, wait longer, and take the best center places once they get inside the house. And since most of them have been doing this for years, they know each other by name, and they pass the time gossiping about the opera singers and discussing the performances. You could almost say they’ve got an exclusive little social club all their own—only their meeting place isn’t a clubhouse, it’s the sidewalk in front of the Met. Anyway, you couldn’t imagine a more harmless collection of old fogeys—the last group on earth where you’d expect to find a murderer!”
“Even an opera lover has to have a private life,” Mom said. “He enjoys himself with the beautiful music—but he’s still got business troubles or love troubles or family troubles waiting for him at home.”
“That’s just it, Mom. If one of these standing-room regulars had gone home and killed his wife or his mother-in-law or his business partner, this would just be a routine case. But what happened was, he killed one of the other people in the standing-room line.”
Mom was looking at me with her eyes narrowed—a sure sign that I had her interested. “The two oldest regulars in the standing-room line,” I said, “the charter members of the club, are Sam Cohen and Giuseppe D’Angelo. Cohen used to be a pharmacist, with his own drugstore on West Eighty-third Street. He retired fifteen years ago, after his wife died, and turned the management of the store over to his nephew, though he went on living in the apartment above it. As soon as he retired, he started going to the opera almost every night of the season.
“D’Angelo was in the exterminating business out in Queens—insects, rodents, and so on—but he retired fifteen years ago too. His wife is alive, but she doesn’t care for music, so he’s been in the habit of going to the opera by himself—almost every night of the season, just like Cohen.
“The two old men met on the standing-room line fifteen years ago, and have seen each other three or four nights a week ever since—but only at the opera, never anywhere else. As far as we know, they’ve never met for a drink or a lunch, they’ve never been to each other’s homes, and they’ve never seen each other at all in the summer, when the opera is closed.
“Opera is the biggest thing in both their lives. Cohen’s mother was a vocal coach back in Germany, and he cut his teeth on operatic arias—D’Angelo was born and brought up in the city of Parma, which they tell me is the most operatic city in Italy—”
“I’ve read about Parma,” Mom said. “If a tenor hits a bad note there, they run him out of town.”
“How horrible!” Shirley said. “It’s positively uncivilized!”
Mom shrugged. “A little less civilization here in New York, and maybe we wouldn’t hear so many bad notes.”
I could see the cloud of indignation forming on Shirley’s face—she never has caught on to Mom’s peculiar sense of humor. I hurried on, “Well, the two old men both loved opera, but their opinions about it have always been diametrically opposed. So for fifteen years they’ve been carrying on a running argument. If Cohen likes a certain soprano, D’Angelo can’t stand her. If D’Angelo mentions having heard Caruso sing Aida in 1920, Cohen says that Caruso never sang Aida till 1923.
“And the old men haven’t conducted these arguments in nice soft gentlemanly voices either. They yell at each other, wave their arms, call each other all sorts of names. ‘Liar’ and ‘moron’ are about the tamest I can think of. In spite of their bitterness, of course, these fights have never lasted long—before the night is over, or at least by the time of the next performance, the old men always make it up between them—”
“Until now?” Mom said.
“I’ll get to that in a minute, Mom. Just a little more background first. According to the other regulars on the standing-room line, the fights between Cohen and D’Angelo have become even more bitter than usual in recent years. They’ve been aggravated by a controversy which has been raging among opera lovers all over the world. Who’s the greatest soprano alive today—Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi?”
Mom dropped her fork and clasped her hands to her chest, and on her face came that ecstatic, almost girlish look which she reserves exclusively for musical matters. “Callas! Tebaldi! Voices like angels, both of them! That Callas—such fire, such passion! That Tebaldi—such beauty, such sadness! To choose which one is the greatest—it’s as foolish as trying to choose between noodle soup and borscht!”
“Cohen and D’Angelo made their choices, though,” I said. “D’Angelo announced one day that Tebaldi was glorious and Callas had a voice like a rooster—so right away Cohen told him that Callas was divine and Tebaldi sang like a cracked phonograph record. And the argument has been getting more and more furious through the years.
“A week ago a climax was reached. Callas was singing Traviata, and the standing-room line started to form even earlier than usual. Cohen and D’Angelo, of course, were right there among the first. Cohen had a bad cold—he was sneezing all the time he stood in line—but he said he wouldn’t miss Callas’s Traviata if he was down with double pneumonia. And D’Angelo said that personally he could live happily for the rest of his life without hearing Callas butcher Traviata—he was here tonight, he said, only because of the tenor, Richard Tucker.”
“That Richard Tucker!” Mom gave her biggest, most motherly smile. “Such a wonderful boy—just as much at home in the schul as he is in the opera. What a proud mother he must have!” And Mom gave me a look which made it clear that she still hadn’t quite forgiven me for “Rustling Leaves.”
“With such a long wait on the standing-room line,” I said, “Cohen and D’Angelo had time to whip up a first-class battle. According to Frau Hochschwender—she’s a German lady who used to be a concert pianist and now gives piano lessons, and she’s also one of the standing-room regulars—Cohen and D’Angelo had never insulted each other so violently in all the years she’d known them. If the box office had opened an hour later, she says they would have come to blows.
“As it turned out, the performance itself didn’t even put an end to their fight. Ordinarily, once the opera began, both men became too wrapped up in the music to remember they were mad at each other—but this time, when the first act ended, Cohen grabbed D’Angelo by the arm and accused him of deliberately groaning after Callas’s big aria. ‘You did it to ruin the evening for me!’ Cohen said. He wouldn’t pay attention to D’Angelo’s denials. ‘I’ll get even with you,’ he said. ‘Wait till the next time Tebaldi is singing!’ ”
“And the next time Tebaldi was singing,” Mom said, “was the night of the murder?”
“Exactly. Three nights ago Tebaldi sang Tosca—”
“Tosca!” Mom’s face lighted up. “Such a beautiful opera! Such a sad story! She’s in love with this handsome young artist, and this villain makes advances and tries to force her to give in to him, so she stabs him with a knife. Come to think of it, the villain in that opera is a police officer.”
I looked hard, but I couldn’t see any trace of sarcasm on Mom’s face.
“Those opera plots are really ridiculous, aren’t they?” Shirley said. “So exaggerated and unrealistic.”
“Unrealistic!” Mom turned to her sharply. “You should know some of the things that go on—right here in this building. Didn’t Polichek the janitor have his eye on his wife’s baby sitter?”
Another fascinating story came out of Mom, and then I went on. “Anyway, for the whole weekend before Tosca, D’Angelo worried that Cohen would do something to spoil the performance for him. He worried so much that the night before, he called Cohen up and pleaded with him not to make trouble.”
“And Cohen answered?”
“His nephew was in the room with him when the call came. He was going over some account books and didn’t really pay attention to what his uncle was saying—but at one point he heard Cohen raise his voice angrily and shout out, ‘You can’t talk me out of it! When Tebaldi hits her high C in the big aria, I’m going to start booing!’ ”
Mom shook her head. “Terrible—a terrible threat for a civilized man to make! So does D’Angelo admit that Cohen made it?”
“Well, yes and no. In the early part of the phone conversation, D’Angelo says he and Cohen were yelling at each other so angrily that neither of them listened to what the other one was saying. But later on in the conversation—or so D’Angelo claims—Cohen calmed down and promised to let Tebaldi sing her aria in peace.”
“Cohen’s nephew says he didn’t?”
“Not exactly. He left the room while Cohen was still on the phone—he had to check some receipts in the cash register—so he never heard the end of the conversation. For all he knows Cohen might have calmed down and made that promise.”
“And what about D’Angelo’s end of the phone conversation? Was anybody in the room with him?”
“His wife was. And she swears that he did get such a promise out of Cohen. But of course she’s his wife, so she’s anxious to protect him. And besides she’s very deaf, and she won’t wear a hearing aid—she’s kind of a vain old lady. So what it boils down to, we’ve got nobody’s word except D’Angelo’s that Cohen didn’t intend to carry out his threat.”
“Which brings us,” Mom said, “to the night Tebaldi sang Tosca?”
“Cohen and D’Angelo both showed up early on the standing-room line that night. Frau Hochschwender says they greeted each other politely, but all the time they were waiting they hardly exchanged a word. No arguments, no differences of opinion—nothing. And her testimony is confirmed by another one of the regulars who was there—Miss Phoebe Van Voorhees. She’s in her seventies, always dresses in black.
“Miss Van Voorhees came from a wealthy New York family, and when she was a young woman she used to have a regular box at the opera—but the money ran out ten or twelve years ago, and now she lives alone in a cheap hotel in the East Twenties, and she waits on the standing-room line two nights a week. She’s so frail-looking you wouldn’t think she could stay on her feet for five minutes, much less five hours—but she loves opera, so she does it.”
“For love,” Mom said, “people can perform miracles.”
“Well, Miss Van Voorhees and Frau Hochschwender both say that Cohen and D’Angelo were unusually restrained with each other. Which seems to prove that they were still mad at each other and hadn’t made up the quarrel over the phone, as D’Angelo claims—”
“Or maybe it proves the opposite,” Mom said. “They did make up the quarrel, and they were so scared of starting another quarrel that they shut up and wouldn’t express any opinions.”
“Whatever it proves, Mom, here’s what happened. On cold nights it’s the custom among the standing-room regulars for one of them to go to the cafeteria a block away and get hot coffee for the others—meanwhile they hold his place in the line. The night of Tebaldi’s Tosca was very cold, and it was D’Angelo’s turn to bring the coffee.
“He went for it about forty-five minutes before the box office opened, and got back with it in fifteen or twenty minutes. He was carrying four cardboard containers. Three of them contained coffee with cream and sugar—for Frau Hochschwender, Miss Van Voorhees, and D’Angelo himself. In the fourth container was black coffee without sugar—the way Cohen always took it.
“Well, they all gulped down their coffee, shielding it from the wind with their bodies—and about half an hour later the doors opened. They bought their tickets, went into the opera house, and stood together in their usual place in the back at the center.
“At eight sharp the opera began. Tebaldi was in great voice, and the audience was enthusiastic. At the end of the first act all of the standing-room regulars praised her—except Cohen. He just grunted and said nothing. Frau Hochschwender and Miss Van Voorhees both say that he looked pale and a little ill.
“ ‘Wait till she sings her big aria in the second act,’ D’Angelo said. ‘I hope she sings it good,’ Cohen said—and Frau Hochschwender says there was a definite threat in his voice. But Miss Van Voorhees says she didn’t notice anything significant in his voice—to her it just sounded like an offhand remark. Then the second act began, and it was almost time for Tebaldi’s big aria—”
“Such a beautiful aria!” Mom said. “Vissy darty. It’s Italian. She’s telling that police officer villain that all her life she’s cared only for love and for art, and she never wanted to hurt a soul. She tells him this, and a little later she stabs him.” And in a low voice, a little quavery but really kind of pretty, Mom began to half sing and half hum—“Vissy darty, vissy damory—” Then she broke off, and did something I had seldom seen her do. She blushed.
There was a moment of silence, while Shirley and I carefully refrained from looking at each other. Then I said, “So a few minutes before Tebaldi’s big aria, Cohen suddenly gave a groan, then he grabbed hold of Frau Hochschwender’s arm and said, ‘I’m sick—’ And then he started making strangling noises, and dropped like a lead weight to the floor.
“Somebody went for a doctor, and D’Angelo got down on his knees by Cohen and said, ‘Cohen, Cohen, what’s the matter?’ And Cohen, with his eyes straight on D’Angelo’s face, said, ‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ Those were his exact words, Mom—half a dozen people heard them.
“Then a doctor came, with a couple of ushers, and they took Cohen out to the lobby—and D’Angelo, Frau Hochschwender, and Miss Van Voorhees followed. A little later an ambulance came, but Cohen was dead before he got to the hospital.
“At first the doctors thought it was a heart attack, but they did a routine autopsy—and found enough poison in his stomach to kill a man half his age and twice his strength. The dose he swallowed must’ve taken two to three hours to produce a reaction—which means he swallowed it while he was on the standing-room line. Well, nobody saw him swallow anything on the standing-room line except that container of hot black coffee.”
“And when the doctors looked at the contents of his stomach?”
“They found the traces of his lunch, which couldn’t have contained the poison or he would’ve died long before he got to the opera house—and they found that coffee—and that was all they found. So the coffee had to be what killed him.”
“And since that old man D’Angelo was the one who gave him the coffee, you naturally think he’s the murderer.”
“What else can we think, Mom? For five minutes or so—from the time he picked up the coffee at the cafeteria to the time he gave it to Cohen at the opera house—D’Angelo was alone with it. Nobody was watching him—he could easily have slipped something into it. And nobody else had such an opportunity. Cohen took the coffee from D’Angelo, turned away to shield the container from the cold wind, and drank it all down then and there. Only D’Angelo could have put the poison into it.”
“What about the man at the cafeteria who made the coffee?”
“That doesn’t make sense, Mom. The man at the cafeteria would have no way of knowing who the coffee was meant for. He’d have to be a complete psycho who didn’t care who he poisoned. Just the same, though, we checked him out. He poured the coffee into the container directly from a big urn—twenty other people had been drinking coffee from that same urn. Then in front of a dozen witnesses he handed the container to D’Angelo without putting a thing in it—not even sugar, because Cohen never took his coffee with sugar. So we’re right back to D’Angelo—he has to be the murderer.”
“And where did he get it, this deadly poison? Correct me if I’m wrong, but such an item isn’t something you can pick up at your local supermarket.”
“Sure, it’s against the law to sell poison to the general public. But you’d be surprised how easy it is to get hold of the stuff anyway. The kind that killed Cohen is a common commercial compound—it’s used to mix paints, for metallurgy, in certain medicines, in insecticides. Ordinary little pellets of rat poison are made of it sometimes, and you can buy them at your local hardware store—a couple of dozen kids swallow them by accident in this city every year. And don’t forget, D’Angelo used to be in the exterminating business—he knows all the sources, it would be easier for him to get his hands on poison than for most other people.”
“So you’ve arrested him for the murder?” Mom said.
I gave a sigh. “No, we haven’t.”
“How come? What’s holding you up?”
“It’s the motive, Mom. D’Angelo and Cohen had absolutely no connection with each other outside of the standing-room line. Cohen didn’t leave D’Angelo any money, he wasn’t having an affair with D’Angelo’s wife, he didn’t know a deep dark secret out of D’Angelo’s past. There’s only one reason why D’Angelo could have killed him—to stop him from booing at the end of Renata Tebaldi’s big aria. That’s why he committed the murder. I’m morally certain of it, and so is everyone else in the Department. And so is the D.A.’s office—but they won’t let us make the arrest.”
“And why not?”
“Because nobody believes for one moment that we can get a jury to believe such a motive. Juries are made up of ordinary everyday people. They don’t go to the opera. They think it’s all a lot of nonsense—fat women screaming at fat men, in a foreign language. I can sympathize with them—I think so myself. Can you imagine the D.A. standing up in front of a jury and saying, ‘The defendant was so crazy about an opera singer’s voice that he killed a man for disagreeing with him!’ The jury would laugh in the D.A.’s face.”
I sighed harder than before. “We’ve got an airtight case. The perfect opportunity. No other possible suspects. The dying man’s accusation—‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ But we don’t dare bring the killer to trial.”
Mom didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Her eyes were almost shut, the corners of her mouth were turned down. I know this expression well—her “thinking” expression. Something always comes out of it.
Finally she looked up and gave a nod. “Thank God for juries!”
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“I mean, if it wasn’t for ordinary everyday people with common sense, God knows who you experts would be sending to jail!”
“Mom, are you saying that D’Angelo didn’t—”
“I’m saying nothing. Not yet. First I’m asking. Four questions.”
No doubt about it, whenever Mom starts asking her questions, that means she’s on the scent, she’s getting ready to hand me a solution to another one of my cases.
My feelings, as always, were mixed. On the one hand, nobody admires Mom more than I do—her deep knowledge of human nature acquired among her friends and neighbors in the Bronx; her uncanny sharpness in applying that knowledge to the crimes I tell her about from time to time.
On the other hand—well, how ecstatic is a man supposed to get at the idea that his mother can do his own job better than he can? That’s why I’ve never been able to talk about Mom’s talent to anybody else in the Department—except, of course, to Inspector Milner, my immediate superior, and only because he’s a widower, and Shirley and I are trying to get something going between Mom and him.
So I guess my voice wasn’t as enthusiastic as it should have been, when I said to Mom, “Okay, what are your four questions?”
“First I bring in the peach pie,” Mom said.
We waited while the dishes were cleared, and new dishes were brought. Then the heavenly aroma of Mom’s peach pie filled the room. One taste of it, and my enthusiasm began to revive. “What are your questions, Mom?”
She lifted her finger. “Number One: you mentioned that Cohen had a cold a week ago, the night Maria Callas was singing Traviata. Did he still have the same cold three nights ago, when Tebaldi was singing Tosca?”
By this time I ought to be used to Mom’s questions. I ought to take it on faith that they’re probably not as irrelevant as they sound. But I still can’t quite keep the bewilderment out of my voice.
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “Cohen did have a cold the night of the murder. Frau Hochschwender and Miss Van Voorhees both mentioned it—he was sneezing while he waited in line, and even a few times during the performance, though he tried hard to control himself.”
Mom’s face gave no indication whether this was or wasn’t what she had wanted to hear. She lifted another finger. “Number Two: after the opera every night, was it the custom for those standing-room regulars to separate right away—or did they maybe stay together for a little while before they finally said good night?”
“They usually went to the cafeteria a block away—the same place where D’Angelo bought the coffee that Cohen drank—and sat at a table for an hour or so and discussed the performance they’d just heard. Over coffee and doughnuts—or Danish pastry.”
Mom gave a nod, and lifted another finger. “Number Three: at the hospital you naturally examined what was in Cohen’s pockets? Did you find something like an envelope—a small envelope with absolutely nothing in it?”
This question really made me jump. “We did find an envelope, Mom! Ordinary stationery size—it was unsealed, and there was no address or stamp on it. But how in the world did you—”
Mom’s fourth finger was in the air. “Number Four: how many more times this season is Renata Tebaldi supposed to sing Tosca?”
“It was Tebaldi’s first, last, and only performance of Tosca this season,” I said. “The posters in front of the opera house said so. But I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“You don’t see,” Mom said. “Naturally. You’re like all the younger generation these days. So scientific. Facts you see. D’Angelo was the only one who was ever alone with Cohen’s coffee—so D’Angelo must have put the poison in. A fact, so you see it. But what about the people already? Who is D’Angelo—who was Cohen—what type human beings? This you wouldn’t ask yourself. Probably you wouldn’t even understand about my Uncle Julius and the World Series.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I never knew you had an Uncle Julius—”
“I don’t have him no more. That’s the point of the story. All his life he was a fan of the New York Yankees. He rooted for them, he bet money on them, and when they played the World Series he was always there to watch them. Until a couple of years ago when he had his heart attack, and he was in the hospital at World Series time.
“ ‘I’ll watch the New York Yankees on television,’ he said. ‘The excitement is too much for you,’ the doctor said, ‘it’ll kill you.’ But Uncle Julius had his way, and he watched the World Series. Every day he watched, and every night the doctor said, ‘You’ll be dead before morning.’ And Uncle Julius said, ‘I wouldn’t die till I know how the World Series comes out!’ So finally the New York Yankees won the World Series—and an hour later Uncle Julius went to sleep and died.”
Mom stopped talking, and looked around at Shirley and me. Then she shook her head and said, “You don’t follow yet? A man with a love for something that’s outside himself, that isn’t even his family—with a love for the New York Yankees or for Renata Tebaldi—in such a man this feeling is stronger than his personal worries or his personal ambitions. He wouldn’t let anything interrupt his World Series in the middle, not even dying. He wouldn’t let anything interrupt his opera in the middle—not even murdering.”
I began to see a glimmer of Mom’s meaning. “You’re talking about D’Angelo, Mom?”
“Who else? Renata Tebaldi was singing her one and only Tosca for the year, and for D’Angelo, Renata Tebaldi is the greatest singer alive. Never—in a million years, never—would he do anything to spoil this performance for himself, to make him walk out of it before the end. Let’s say he did want to murder Cohen. The last time in the world he’d pick for this murder would be in the middle of Tebaldi’s Tosca—her one and only Tosca! Especially since he could wait just as easy till after the opera, when the standing-room regulars would be having cake and coffee at the cafeteria—he could just as easy poison Cohen then.”
“But Mom, isn’t that kind of far-fetched, psychologically? If the average man was worked up enough to commit a murder, he wouldn’t care about hearing the end of an opera first!”
“Excuse me, Davie—the average man’s psychology we’re not talking about. The opera lover’s psychology we are talking about. This is why you and the Homicide Squad and the District Attorney couldn’t make heads and tails from this case. Because you don’t understand from opera lovers. In this world they don’t live—they’ve got a world of their own. Inside their heads things are going on which other people’s heads never even dreamed about. To solve this case you have to think like an opera lover.”
“To solve this case, Mom, you have to answer the basic question: if D’Angelo didn’t poison that coffee, who could have?”
“Who says the coffee was poisoned?”
“But I told you about the autopsy. The poison took two to three hours to work, and the contents of Cohen’s stomach—”
“The contents of his stomach! You should show a little more interest in the contents of Cohen’s pockets!”
“There was nothing unusual in his pockets—”
“Why should a man carry in his pocket an empty unsealed envelope, without any writing on it, without even a stamp on it? Only because it wasn’t empty when he put it there. Something was in it—something which he expected to need later on in the evening—something which he finally took out of the envelope—”
“What are you talking about, Mom?”
“I’m talking about Cohen’s cold. An ordinary man, he don’t think twice about going to the opera with a cold. What’s the difference if he sneezes a little? It’s only music. But to an opera lover, sneezing during a performance, disturbing people, competing with the singers—this is worse than a major crime. A real opera lover like Cohen, he’d do everything he could to keep his cold under control.
“Which explains what he put in that envelope before he left his home to go to the opera house. A pill, what else? One of these new prescription cold pills that dries up your nose and keeps you from sneezing for five-six hours. And why was the envelope empty when you found it in his pocket? Because half an hour before the box office opened, he slipped out his pill and swallowed it down with his hot black coffee.”
“Nobody saw him taking that pill, Mom.”
“Why should anybody see him? Like you explained yourself, to drink his coffee he had to turn his body away and shield the container from the wind.”
I was beginning to be shaken, no doubt about it. But Shirley spoke up now, in her sweet voice, the voice she always uses when she thinks she’s one up on Mom. “The facts don’t seem to bear you out, Mother. All the witnesses say that Mr. Cohen went on sneezing after the opera had begun. Well, if he really did take a cold pill, as you believe, why didn’t it have any effect on his symptoms?”
A gleam came to Mom’s eyes, and I could see she was about to pounce. The fact is that Shirley never learns.
So to spare my wife’s feelings I broke in quickly, before Mom could open her mouth. “I’m afraid that confirms Mom’s theory, honey. The reason why the cold pill didn’t work was that it wasn’t a cold pill. It looked like one on the outside maybe, but it actually contained poison.”
“I always knew I didn’t produce a dope!” Mom said, with a big satisfied smile. “So now the answer is simple, no? If Cohen was carrying around a poison pill in his pocket, where did he get it? Who gave it to him? Why should he think it was a cold pill? Because somebody told him it was. Somebody he thought he could trust—not only personally but professionally. Somebody he went to and said, ‘Give me some of that new stuff, that new wonder drug, that’ll keep me from sneezing during the opera—’ ”
“His nephew!” I interrupted. “My God, Mom, I think you’re right. Cohen’s nephew is a pharmacist—he manages the drug store that Cohen owned. He has access to all kinds of poison and he could make up a pill that would look like a real cold pill. And what’s more, he’s the only relative Cohen has in the world. He inherits Cohen’s store and Cohen’s savings.”
Mom spread her hands. “So there you are. You couldn’t ask for a more ordinary, old-fashioned motive for murder. Any jury will be able to understand it. It isn’t one bit operatic.”
“But Mom, you must’ve suspected Cohen’s nephew from the start. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked your question about the empty envelope.”
“Naturally I suspected him. It was the lie he told.”
“What lie?”
“The night before the opera D’Angelo called up Cohen and tried to make up their quarrel. Now according to the nephew, Cohen made a threat to D’Angelo over the phone. ‘When Tebaldi hits her high C in the big aria, I’m going to start booing!’ A terrible threat—but Cohen never could have made it.”
“I don’t see why not—”
“Because Cohen was an opera lover, that’s why. A high C—this is a tenor’s note. It’s the top of his range—when he hits one, everybody is thrilled and says how wonderful he is. But for a soprano a high C is nothing special. She can go a lot higher than that. A high E—sometimes even an E sharp—this is the big note for a soprano. In the Vissy darty from Tosca, any soprano who couldn’t do better than a high C would be strictly an amateur. People who are ignoramuses about opera—people like Cohen’s nephew—they never heard of anything except the high C. But an opera lover like Cohen—he positively couldn’t make such a mistake. Now excuse me, I’ll bring in the coffee.”
Mom got to her feet, and then Shirley called out, “Wait a second, Mother. If his nephew committed the murder, why did Cohen accuse D’Angelo of doing it?”
“When did Cohen accuse D’Angelo?”
“His dying words. He looked into D’Angelo’s face and said, ‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ ”
“He looked into D’Angelo’s face—but how do you know it was D’Angelo he was seeing? He was in delirium from the weakness and the pain, and before his eyes he wasn’t seeing any D’Angelo, he wasn’t seeing this world that the rest of us are living in. He was seeing the world he’d been looking at before he got sick, the world that meant the most to him—he was seeing the world of the opera, what else? And what was happening up there on that stage just before the poison hit him? The no-good villain was making advances to the beautiful heroine, and she was struggling to defend herself, and pretty soon she was going to kill him—and Cohen, seeing that villain in front of his eyes, shouted out at him, ‘You no-good! You deserve to die for what you did!’ ”
Mom was silent for a moment, and then she went on in a lower voice, “An opera lover will go on being an opera lover—right up to the end.”
She went out to the kitchen for the coffee, and I went to the phone in the hall to call the Homicide Squad.
When I got back to the table, Mom was seated and the coffee was served. She took a few sips, and then gave a little sigh. “Poor old Cohen—such a terrible way to go!”
“Death by poisoning is pretty painful,” I said.
“Poisoning?” Mom blinked up at me. “Yes, this is terrible too. But the worst part of all—the poor man died fifteen minutes too soon. He never heard Tebaldi sing the Vissy darty.”
And Mom began to hum softly.