Wolfe shifted his weight. “Is it true, Mr. Hirsch, that you once told Mr. Stevens you would kill for the orchestra?”
“What?” Hirsch twitched like he’d just gotten a high-voltage jolt. “Who told you that? I never said such a thing!”
By this time, both Meyerhoff and Sommers were trying to jump in. “Gentlemen!” Wolfe snapped it off. It wasn’t loud, but it shut all three of them up. “If you please, at the risk of being repetitious, you’ll all be able to leave here sooner without interruptions.” He turned back to Hirsch.
“It has been said that you spoke the following, or something very similar, at a meeting in Mr. Stevens’s office: ‘I’d kill before I saw this orchestra go to hell. And if things keep on this way, that’s where it will go.’ Well, Mr. Hirsch?” Wolfe’s eyes narrowed.
Beads of perspiration were forming on Hirsch’s nose bridge, above his glasses. He looked at Meyerhoff and Sommers, then licked his lips. “Mr. Wolfe, I never said that, or anything like it.” His voice was tense but low, and he accented each word. “I don’t talk that way,” he continued, gaining speed. “Ask anyone I know. I wouldn’t use a word like ‘kill,’ or even ‘hell.’ I can’t—”
“That’s true,” Meyerhoff cut in. “I’ve never heard David—”
“Enough!” Wolfe spat, silencing Meyerhoff. “Mr. Hirsch, please go on.”
“I started to say, I can’t imagine who would make up a story like that. It just isn’t true. I was angry with Milan quite a few times — many times — but I would never, ever say such a thing.” He looked around again, at each one of us, and then down at his lap. I started feeling sorry for the guy.
“Mr. Hirsch,” Wolfe continued, “can you imagine why anyone would concoct such a story?”
“No, I don’t think I have enemies within the orchestra, other than...”
“Yes?”
“Other than Milan,” Hirsch said, slumping in his chair.
“You considered Mr. Stevens an enemy?” Wolfe asked.
“No, but I think he considered me one,” he said.
Wolfe eyed Hirsch. “Were you planning to resign?”
“I had... considered it at one time, but recently Charlie — Mr. Meyerhoff — had said there might be a change in music directors before too long.”
Wolfe turned to Meyerhoff. The managing director leaned forward on his elbows again. “That’s true. Jason had always been Stevens’s big defender, and the board pretty well went along with whatever Jason wanted. I’ve been telling him for over a year how bad the orchestra’s morale is, and recently he seemed to be coming around to my view, although he was giving up very hard.”
“I gather that if Milan Stevens were to have been fired, it would have been a major setback for Mr. Remmers,” Wolfe said.
“Yes, I think that’s a fair statement,” Meyerhoff said. “He had made a lot out of our getting Stevens originally, and it hadn’t improved things at all — in fact, just the opposite.”
“Did Mr. Stevens resent you?” Wolfe asked Meyerhoff.
“I’m sure he did — he resented anybody who tried to tell him what to do in any way at all.”
“And did you in turn resent him?”
Meyerhoff shrugged. “I guess you might say I resented what he was doing to the orchestra, his inability to pull it together, his refusal to show them any warmth or understanding.”
Wolfe drained his second beer and set down the glass. “Lucinda Forrester-Moore had been a frequent companion of Mr. Stevens’s recently. Is it true that you and she once spent a lot of time together?”
Meyerhoff smiled for the first time since he’d set foot in the brown-stone. “Oh, we’d gone to a number of plays and parties and dinners together — just a thing of convenience,” he said gently. “It was never what you’d term a serious relationship.”
Wolfe nodded and shifted his attention. “Mr. Sommers, I hadn’t meant to omit you from this discussion. Will you share your feelings on your late music director?”
Sommers uncrossed and recrossed his long legs. “They’re pretty much like David’s and Mr. Meyerhoff’s,” he said in a high-pitched voice that seemed somehow to go with his build. “He was certainly anything but a warm man, at least in his dealings within the orchestra. As David said, rehearsals were grim affairs, and he often singled out musicians who he felt weren’t doing as well as they should.
“I don’t want to come on like I’m paranoid,” Sommers said, “but I’m sure Mr. Stevens wanted to be rid of me. I could tell by the way he acted whenever we discussed anything one-on-one, such as a solo I was going to do. He always seemed terribly impatient with me. And then there was that newspaper article...”
“Yes?” Wolfe asked.
“A few weeks ago in a Sunday interview, Mr. Stevens said that several soloists were more interested in their own careers than in the good of the orchestra. That article ran just two weeks after one of my solos, and I’m sure he meant me specifically. Again, that sounds paranoid, doesn’t it? Well, I do think he was out for me.”
“Are you more interested in your career than in the orchestra as a whole?” Wolfe asked.
“I love the Symphony,” Sommers said. “It’d always been my goal to play here, even when I was growing up in Boston. I would never have done anything that ran against the orchestra’s best interests, and I always thought of myself as a team player.”
“Would you have left the Symphony if you felt Mr. Stevens was holding you back?” Wolfe asked.
Sommers looked at both Meyerhoff and Hirsch before talking. “I haven’t told anyone this, but now I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’d thought a lot lately about leaving. Chicago was interested and so was Boston, and I had some initial talks with people in both places.”
Meyerhoff looked stunned. “Don, why didn’t you come in and at least talk to me first?”
“I know, I know, I should have,” Sommers squeaked, holding up a hand. “But I had to sort this out myself. I didn’t want to leave, but...”
“You see?” Meyerhoff said, bounding from his chair and leaning on Wolfe’s desk with one arm. “You see now what that man was doing to our orchestra? Here’s the finest flutist anywhere, a man who loves the Symphony, and he was being driven away.”
“Please sit down, sir,” Wolfe said peevishly. “Your point is made, and I prefer having people at eye level.” Meyerhoff shook his head and sat down. “Thank God you’ll be staying with us now, Don,” he said. Sommers nodded and smiled weakly.
“Well, Mr. Sommers, it seems that congratulations are in order,” Wolfe said, turning back to the flutist. “You’ve decided that without Milan Stevens, the New York Symphony is a better place to work, is that true? Is that a fair statement?”
“I didn’t say that,” Sommers croaked.
“But it seems apparent. Do you deny it?”
Sommers looked down and then back up at Wolfe. “No, but I had nothing to do with his... death.”
“You’ll have a chance to prove that,” Wolfe said dryly. “We’ve already gone well over your half-hour, Mr. Meyerhoff,” he continued, looking at the wall clock. “Because this is a murder investigation, two basic questions need of course to be asked of each of you: One, did you kill Milan Stevens, and two, where were you Wednesday evening between seven and nine o’clock? Would you like to start, Mr. Meyerhoff?”
“Of course I didn’t kill him — we all know who did, although I would never have guessed Milner had it in him. As to where I was — not that it really matters — I had a lot of desk work to grind through, so after supper I went back to my office in Symphony Hall and worked until, oh, it must have been close to ten.”