Chapter One

Isabel Dalhousie saw the young man fall from the edge of the upper
circle, from the gods. His flight was so sudden and short, and it
was for less than a second that she saw him, hair tousled, upside
down, his shirt and jacket up around his chest so that his midriff
was exposed. And then, striking the edge of the grand circle, he
disappeared headfirst towards the stalls below.

Her first thought, curiously, was of Auden's poem on the fall of
Icarus. Such events, said Auden, occur against a background of
people going about their ordinary business. They do not look up and
see the boy falling from the sky. I was talking to a friend, she
thought. I was talking to a friend and the boy fell out of the
sky.

She would have remembered the evening, even if this had not
happened. She had been dubious about the concert-a performance by
the Reykjavik Symphony, of which she had never heard-and would not
have gone had not a spare ticket been pressed upon her by a
neighbour. Did Reykjavik really have a professional symphony
orchestra, she wondered, or were the players amateurs? Of course,
even if they were, if they had come as far as Edinburgh to give a
late spring concert, then they deserved an audience; they could not
be allowed to come all the way from Iceland and then perform to an
empty hall. And so she had gone to the concert and had sat through
a first half which comprised a romantic combination of German and
Scottish: Mahler, Schubert, and Hamish McCunn.

It was a warm evening-unseasonably so for late March-and the
atmosphere in the Usher Hall was close. She had come lightly
dressed, as a precaution, and was glad that she had done so as the
temperature in the grand circle inevitably climbed too high. During
the interval she had made her way downstairs and had enjoyed the
relief of the cooler air outside, eschewing the crush of the bar
with its cacophony of conversation. She would find people she knew
there, of course; it was impossible to go out in Edinburgh and not
see anybody, but she was not in the mood for conversation that
evening. When the time came to go back in, she toyed for a few
moments with the idea of missing the second half, but she always
felt inhibited from any act suggesting a lack of concentration or,
worse still, of seriousness. So she had returned to her seat,
picked up the programme from where she had left it on the armrest
next to her, and studied what lay ahead. She took a deep intake of
breath. Stockhausen!

She had brought with her a set of opera glasses-so necessary even
in the moderate heights of the grand circle. With these trained on
the stage so far down below, she scrutinised each player one by
one, an activity she could never resist in concerts. One did not
stare at people through binoculars normally, but here in the
concert hall it was permitted, and if the binoculars strayed to the
audience once in a while, who was to notice? The strings were
unexceptional, but one of the clarinettists, she noticed, had a
remarkable face: high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a chin that
had been cleaved, surely, by an axe. Her gaze dwelt on him, and she
thought of the generations of hardy Icelanders, and Danes before
them, that had laboured to bring forth this type: men and women who
scratched a living from the thin soil of upland farms; fishermen
who hunted cod in steel-grey waters; women who struggled to keep
their children alive on dried fish and oatmeal; and now, at the end
of all this effort, a clarinettist.

She laid aside the opera glasses and sat back in her seat. It was a
perfectly competent orchestra, and they had played the McCunn with
gusto, but why did people still do Stockhausen? Perhaps it was some
sort of statement of cultural sophistication. We may come from
Reykjavik, and it may be a small town far from anywhere, but we can
at least play Stockhausen as well as the rest of them. She closed
her eyes. It was impossible music, really, and it was not something
a visiting orchestra should inflict on its hosts. For a short while
she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one
should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of
course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in
some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat
more . . . apologetic. This suited Isabel, who disliked
Wagner.

The Stockhausen was the final item on the programme. When at last
the conductor had retired and the clapping had died down-not as
warm as it might have been, she thought; something to do with
Stockhausen-she slipped out of her seat and made her way to the
ladies' room. She turned on a tap and scooped water into her
mouth-the Usher Hall had nothing so modern as a drinking
fountain-and then splashed some on her face. She felt cooler, and
now made her way out onto the landing again. It was at this point,
though, that Isabel caught sight of her friend Jennifer standing at
the bottom of the short flight of stairs that led into the grand
circle.

She hesitated. It was still uncomfortably warm inside, but she had
not seen Jennifer for over a year, and she could hardly walk past
without greeting her.

Isabel made her way through the crowds.

"I'm waiting for David," Jennifer said, gesturing towards the grand
circle. "He lost a contact lens, would you believe it, and one of
the usherettes has lent him a torch to go and look for it under his
seat. He lost one on the train through to Glasgow and now he's done
it again."

They chatted as the last of the crowd made its way down the stairs
behind them. Jennifer, a handsome woman, in her early forties-like
Isabel-was wearing a red suit on which she had pinned a large gold
brooch in the shape of a fox's head. Isabel could not help but look
at the fox, which had ruby eyes, and seemed to be watching her.
Brother Fox, she thought. So like Brother Fox.

After a few minutes, Jennifer looked anxiously up the stairs.

"We should go and see if he needs help," she said irritably. "It'll
be an awful nuisance if he's lost another one."

They took a few steps up the short set of stairs and looked down
towards the place where they could make out David's back, hunched
behind a seat, the light of the torch glinting between the seating.
And it was at that moment, as they stood there, that the young man
fell from the layer above-silently, wordlessly, arms flailing as if
he were trying to fly, or fend off the ground-and then disappeared
from view.

For a brief moment they stared at each other in mutual disbelief.
And then, from below, there came a scream, a woman's voice,
high-pitched; and then a man shouted and a door slammed
somewhere.

Isabel reached forward and seized Jennifer's arm. "My God!" she
said. "My God!"

From where he had been crouching, Jennifer's husband straightened
up. "What was that?" he called to them. "What happened?"

"Somebody fell," said Jennifer. She pointed at the upper circle, at
the point where the top layer joined the wall. "From up there. He
fell."

They looked at one another again. Now Isabel moved forward to the
edge of the circle. There was a brass rail running along the
parapet, and she held on to this as she peered over.

Below her, slumped over the edge of a seat, his legs twisted over
the arms of the neighbouring seats, one foot, she noticed, without
a shoe, but stockinged, was the young man. She could not see his
head, which was down below the level of the seat; but she saw an
arm sticking up, as if reaching for something, but quite still.
Beside him stood two men in evening dress, one of whom had reached
forward and was touching him, while the other looked back towards
the door.

"Quickly!" one of the men shouted. "Hurry!"

A woman called out something and a third man ran up the aisle to
where the young man lay. He bent down and then began to lift the
young man off the seat. Now the head came into view, and lolled, as
if loosened from the body. Isabel withdrew and looked at
Jennifer.

"We'll have to go down there," she said. "We saw what happened. We
had better go and tell somebody what we saw."

Jennifer nodded. "We didn't see much," she said. "It was over so
quickly. Oh dear."

Isabel saw that her friend was shaking, and she put an arm about
her shoulder. "That was ghastly!" she said. "Such a shock."

Jennifer closed her eyes. "He just came down . . . so quickly. Do
you think he's still alive? Did you see?"

"I'm afraid he looked rather badly hurt," said Isabel, thinking,
It's worse than that.

They went downstairs. A small crowd of people had gathered round
the door into the stalls and there was a buzz of conversation. As
Isabel and Jennifer drew near, a woman turned to them and said:
"Somebody fell from the gods. He's in there."

Isabel nodded. "We saw it happen," she said. "We were up
there."

"You saw it?" said the woman. "You actually saw it?"

"We saw him coming down," said Jennifer. "We were in the grand
circle. He came down past us."

"How dreadful," said the woman. "To see it . . ."

"Yes."

The woman looked at Isabel with that sudden human intimacy that the
witnessing of tragedy permitted.

"I don't know if we should be standing here," Isabel muttered, half
to Jennifer, half to the other woman. "We'll just get in the
way."

The other woman drew back. "One wants to do something," she said
lamely.

"I do hope that he's all right," said Jennifer. "Falling all that
way. He hit the edge of the circle, you know. It might have broken
the fall a bit."

No, thought Isabel, it would have made it worse, perhaps; there
would be two sets of injuries, the blow from the edge of the circle
and injuries on the ground. She looked behind her; there was
activity at the front door and then, against the wall, the flashing
blue light of the ambulance outside.

"We must let them get through," said Jennifer, moving away from the
knot of people at the door. "The ambulance men will need to get
in."

They stood back as two men in loose green fatigues hurried past,
carrying a folded stretcher. They were not long in coming out-less
than a minute, it seemed-and then they went past, the young man
laid out on the stretcher, his arms folded over his chest. Isabel
turned away, anxious not to intrude, but she saw his face before
she averted her gaze. She saw the halo of tousled dark hair and the
fine features, undamaged. To be so beautiful, she thought, and now
the end. She closed her eyes. She felt raw inside, empty. This poor
young man, loved by somebody somewhere, whose world would end this
evening, she thought, when the cruel news was broached. All that
love invested in a future that would not materialise, ended in a
second, in a fall from the gods.

She turned to Jennifer. "I'm going upstairs quickly," she said, her
voice lowered. "Tell them that we saw it. Tell them I'll be back in
a moment."

Jennifer nodded, looking about her to see who was in charge. There
was confusion now. A woman was sobbing, one of the women who must
have been standing in the stalls when he came down, and she was
being comforted by a tall man in an evening jacket.

Isabel detached herself and made her way to one of the staircases
that led up to the gods. She felt uneasy, and glanced behind her,
but there was nobody around. She climbed up the last few stairs,
through one of the archways that led to the steeply racked seating.
It was quiet, and the lights suspended from the ceiling above were
dimmed in their ornate glass bowls. She looked down, to the edge
over which the boy had fallen. They had been standing almost
immediately below the point at which he had dropped, which enabled
her to calculate where he must have been standing before he
slipped.

She made her way down to the parapet and edged along the front row
of seats. Here was the brass rail over which he must have been
leaning before, and there, down on the ground, a programme. She
bent down and picked it up; its cover, she noticed, had a slight
tear, but that was all. She replaced it where she had found it.
Then she bent over and looked down over the edge. He must have been
sitting here, at the very end of the row, where the upper circle
met the wall. Had he been further in towards the middle, he would
have landed in the grand circle; only at the end of the row was
there a clear drop down to the stalls.

For a moment she felt a swaying vertigo, and she closed her eyes.
But then she opened them again and looked down into the stalls, a
good fifty feet below. Beneath her, standing near to where the
young man had landed, a man in a blue windcheater looked upwards
and into her eyes. They were both surprised, and Isabel leant
backwards, as if warned off by his stare.

Isabel left the edge and made her way back up the aisle between the
seats. She had no idea what she had expected to find-if
anything-and she felt embarrassed to have been seen by that man
below. What must he have thought of her? A vulgar onlooker trying
to imagine what that poor boy must have seen during his last
seconds on this earth, no doubt. But that was not what she had been
doing; not at all.

She reached the stairs and began to walk down, holding the rail as
she did so. The steps were stone, and spiral, and one might so
easily slip. As he must have done, she thought. He must have looked
over, perhaps to see if he could spot somebody down below, a friend
maybe, and then he had lost his footing and toppled over. It could
easily happen-the parapet was low enough.

She stopped halfway down the stairs. She was alone, but she had
heard something. Or had she imagined it? She strained her ears to
catch a sound, but there was nothing. She took a breath. He must
have been the very last person up there, all alone, when everybody
else had gone and the girl at the bar on the landing was closing
up. That boy had been there himself and had looked down, and then
he had fallen, silently, perhaps seeing herself and Jennifer on the
way down, who would then have been his last human
contact.

Excerpted from THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB © Copyright 2004
by Alexander McCall Smith. Reprinted with permission by Anchor, a
division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.