“All too well, you say!”
“Count Fosco, I thank you for this invitation. But as I warned you once, I have yet to meet an opera I liked. Pure music and vulgar spectacle are fundamentally incompatible. Beethoven’s string quartets are by far my preference—and even those, to be honest, I enjoy for their intellectual content more than their musical.”
Fosco winced. “What, may I ask, is wrong with spectacle?” He spread his hands. “Isn’t life itself a spectacle?”
“All the color, noise, flash, the embonpoint diva prowling the stage, shrieking and howling and throwing herself from the ramparts of some castle—it distracts the mind from the music.”
“But that is exactly what opera is! A feast of sight and sound. There is humor! There is tragedy! There are soaring heights of passion and depths of cruelty! There is love and betrayal!”
“You are making my points even better than I could, Count.”
“Your mistake, Pendergast, is to think of opera as solely music. It is more than music. It is life! You must abandon yourself to it, throw yourself at its mercy.”
Pendergast smiled. “I am afraid, Count, I never abandon myself to anything.”
Fosco patted his arm. “You may have a French name, but you have an English heart. The English can never step outside themselves. Wherever they go they feel self-conscious. That is why the English make excellent anthropologists but dreadful composers.” Fosco snorted. “Purcell. Britten.”
“You’re forgetting Handel.”
“A transplanted German.” Fosco chuckled. “I am glad to have you here, Pendergast, and I shall show you the error of your ways.”
“Speaking of that, how did you know where to deliver the invitation?”
The count turned a triumphant smile on Pendergast. “It was quite simple. I went to the Dakota and made inquiries there.”
“They are under strict orders not to divulge my other addresses.”
“But they were no match for Fosco! I’ve always been interested in this profession of yours. I read all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in my youth. Dickens, Poe. And the sublime Wilkie Collins! Have you read The Woman in White?”
“Naturally.”
“A tour de force! In my next life, perhaps, I’ll choose to be a detective. Being a count from an ancient family is rather boring.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.”
“Well put! We have all kinds of detectives these days, everyone from English lords to Navajo policemen. Why not a count from the lineage of Dante and Beatrice? I must confess, this case with Grove fascinates me, and not only because I was a guest at the—dare I say?—last supper. One week ago tonight, alas. I feel for the poor man, naturally, but it is a rather delicious mystery. I am at your assistance in the matter.”
“I thank you, but I must confess it’s unlikely I’ll need your assistance.”
“Quite right! I am speaking now—if I may—as a friend. I only wish to offer you my services as someone with a particular knowledge of art and music, and perhaps society. And in that last regard, I’d like to think I’ve already been helpful with the question of the dinner party.”
“You were.”
“Thank you.” The count patted his gloved hands together, as excited as a small boy.
The lights darkened. A hush fell on the house. Fosco turned his attention to the stage, practically wriggling with excitement. The concertmaster appeared and sounded the A; the orchestra tuned to it; then all fell silent. The conductor came out to a thunderous burst of applause. Taking his position at the podium, he raised his baton, brought it sharply down, and the overture began.
Fosco listened with rapt attention, smiling and nodding his head from time to time, not a note of Donizetti’s luxurious music lost on him. When the curtain rose on the first act, a murmur and scattered applause filled the hall; a look of annoyance darkened Fosco’s face as he cast a disapproving glance at his neighbors.