Hymn by Graham Masterton

Celia had never mentioned it to him. Maybe her big secret was that she had stolen it. He knew what a nut she had always been for Wagner memorabilia. Maybe its rightful owner had killed her out of revenge. Despite what several eyewitnesses had said on the local televison news, Lloyd still found it difficult to believe that Celia had actually poured petrol all over herself and set herself alight. Maybe somebody had forced her to do it—at gunpoint, perhaps. Somebody who had been standing sufficiently far away not to be noticed when the petrol went up.
    Wagner ‘Junius’, January 1883. He left his desk, and went across to the bookshelf, taking out Richard Wagner by Hans von Kiel. Licking his finger, he leafed through it until he reached the index of Wagner’s operas: Die Feen, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, The Twilight of the Gods, Lohengrin and, lastly, Parsifal, which had been written in 1882, the year before Wagner died of a heart attack. No mention of an opera called Junius.
    Lloyd looked through the list of overtures and pieces for chorus and orchestra. The Siegfried Idyll, the Faust Overture, but no Junius. He closed the book and sat with his mouth covering his hand, deep in thought.
    Was it possible that Celia had faked this opera—either as a wicked joke or as a way of making herself some extra money, and that somebody who resented that kind of fraud had found her out? She had been brilliant at improvising Wagneresque music. At parties, she had been able to sing great bursts of pretence verses from The Ring. She had even invented a Wagnerian operatic character of her own, Bulkhilde, and she had once discussed Bulkhilde with the San Diego Opera’s artistic director, Tito Caporosso, for over twenty minutes before he realized he was being leg-pulled.
    He had heard of homicides in the art world, after forgers had tried to con dealers and auctioneers out of millions of dollars. But was there a music mafia, too? People who would burn you alive because you sold them a fake opera? It didn’t seem particularly likely. In fact it seemed almost laughable.
    Lloyd found a spare plastic record sleeve, and slipped the pages of music manuscript into it. His first step would be to take them to Sylvia’s tonight. Sylvia was an expert when it came to long-lost music manuscripts, and her knowledge of Wagner was almost as encyclopaedic as Celia’s had been. In 1972, Sylvia had found nine previously undiscovered piano suites written by Debussy after his visit to the Bayreuth Festival in 1889—compositions that were strongly influenced by Wagner.
    If anybody would know about Junius, it would be Sylvia.
    Lloyd was beginning to feel hungry. He hadn’t been able to eat properly since he had first heard about Celia, and despite the horror of having to identify her body, or even because of it, his stomach had started to growl. He decided to go down to Michelangelo’s Italian restaurant on Rosecrans and treat himself to a plate of their spaghettini alla vongole.
    There was another reason why he wanted to go to Rosecrans: he wanted to see for himself the place where Celia had died.
    He called Waldo to check how the Original Fish Depot was faring. ‘You don’t worry about nothing, Mr Denman. All booked up this lunchtime, all booked up tonight. No problems.’
    Lloyd was still talking to Waldo when he thought he glimpsed a shadow moving silently across the kitchen floor. He paused in his conversation for a second, keeping his eyes on the open kitchen doorway. Then he said, ‘Okay, Waldo, thanks a lot. I’ll check in later, okay?’
    â€˜You got it, Mr Denman.’
    Lloyd gently replaced the telephone receiver, and waited. He thought he heard the back doorhandle eased on its spring. Somebody trying to turn it. Somebody with infinite patience, trying to open the back door without him hearing. This time, however, they wouldn’t have any luck. He had not only locked the door,