Nocturne Read Free

followed a ten-year absence from recital halls—“I am a very poor traveler,” she told journalists. “I am afraid of flying,
     and I can’t sleep on trains. And besides, my daughter is becoming a young woman, and she needs more attention from me.” During
     this time, she devoted herself exclusively to recording for RCA Victor, where she first put on wax her debut concerto, the
     Tchaikovsky B-flat Minor, and next the Brahms D Minor, one of her favorites. She went on to interpret the works of Mozart,
     Prokofieff, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Beethoven, Liszt, always paying strict attention to what the composer intended, an artistic
     concern that promoted one admiring critic to write, “These recordings reveal that Svetlana Dyalovich is first and foremost
     a consummate musician, scrupulous to the nth degree of the directions of the composer.”
    Shortly after her husband’s death, Svetlana returned triumphantly to the concert stage, shunning Carnegie Hall in favor of
     the venue of her first success, Albert Hall in London. Tickets to the single comeback performance were sold out in an hour
     and a half. Her daughter was eighteen. Svetlana was fifty-three. To thunderous standing ovations, she played the Bach-Busoni
     Toccata in C Major, Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Scriabin’s Sonata No. 9 and a Chopin Mazurka, Etude and Ballade. The evening
     was a total triumph.
    But then …
    Silence.
    After that concert thirty years ago, there was nothing more in the scrapbook. It was as if this glittering, illustrious artist
     had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
    Until now.
    When a woman the super knew as Mrs. Helder lay dead on the floor of a chilly apartment at half past midnight on the coldest
     night this year.
    They closed the scrapbook.
    The scenario proposed by Monoghan and Monroe sounded like a possible one. Woman goes down to buy herself a bottle of booze.
     Burglar comes in the window, thinking the apartment is empty. Most apartments are burglarized during the daytime, when it’s
     reasonable to expect the place will be empty. But some “crib” burglars, as they’re called, are either desperate junkies or
     beginners, and they’ll go in whenever the mood strikes them, day
or
night, so long as they think they’ll score. Okay, figure the guy sees no lights burning, he jimmies open the window—though
     the techs hadn’t found any jimmy marks—goes in, is getting accustomed to the dark and acquainted with the pad when he hears
     a key sliding in the keyway and the door opens and all at once the lights come on, and there’s this startled old broad standing
     there with a brown paper bag in one hand and a pocketbook in the other. He panics. Shoots her before she can scream. Shoots
     the cat for good measure. Man down the hall hears the shots, starts yelling. Super runs up, calls the police. By then, the
     burglar’s out the window and long gone.
    “You gonna want this handbag?” one of the techs asked.
    Carella turned from where he and Hawes were going through the small desk in the living room.
    “Cause we’re done with it,” the tech said.
    “Any prints?”
    “Just teeny ones. Must be the vic’s.”
    “What was in it?”
    “Nothing. It’s empty.”
    “Empty?”
    “Perp must’ve dumped the contents on the floor, grabbed whatever was in it.”
    Carella thought this over for a moment.
    “Shot her first, do you mean? And then emptied the bag and scooped up whatever was in it?”
    “Well … yeah,” the tech said.
    This sounded ridiculous even to him.
    “Why didn’t he just run off with the bag itself?”
    “Listen, they do funny things.”
    “Yeah,” Carella said.
    He was wondering if there’d been money in that bag when the lady went downstairs to buy her booze.
    “Let me see it,” he said.
    The tech handed him the bag. Carella peered into it, and then turned it upside down. Nothing fell out of it. He peered into
     it again. Nothing.
    “Steve?”
    Cotton Hawes, calling from the