Troubles in the Brasses (14 page)

“Of course not! What do you take me for?”

“Either a fool or a liar or both. Is it possible you honestly had no idea that your so-called jokes are raising hell with Frieda’s nervous system?”

“Look, I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”

The kettle was bubbling now. Madoc found a clean teapot, threw in what he thought was probably an adequate amount of tea, and set it to steep on a tray. Remembering that his mother and Frieda would probably be upstairs with the invalid by now, he added three mugs, three spoons, and little bowls of sugar and powdered milk. He often carried tea up to Janet at home; he wished to God he were doing so this time. She’d also have heard the radio reports about the missing plane by now; she must be frantic.

Why the bloody hell didn’t somebody come searching? He’d have to go see whether Bulligan had slept off the vodka yet, and try to bribe or threaten him into taking that old crate to wherever it was possible to get out word that they hadn’t crashed. This time, Madoc would pour the liquor into the gas tank himself if necessary. Which wouldn’t be any guarantee against the old bugger’s trying to siphon it out. He knocked at the door of the bedroom he’d so recently left. Lady Rhys met him at the door and took the tray.

“Thank you, dear. I’ve given Frieda another tablet. Where’s your father?”

“Gone for a walk. You know, this is the first time in my life I’ve seen Tad lose his temper.”

“It doesn’t happen often. What’s happened to Cedric?”

“I left him in the kitchen, looking stricken.”

“As well he might. Beastly fellow! We’d been hoping he’d straighten out as the tour went on, but he’s gotten worse. I don’t know whether he got the idea your father’s a pushover. People don’t make that mistake, as a rule. It’s odd, you know; one expects a certain amount of horseplay and tolerates it within reason, but this out-and-out sadism is something quite new in our experience. Has he always been such a monster, Lucy?”

“I’ve already talked to your son about Cedric, Lady Rhys. If you don’t mind, my throat’s really bothering me.”

“Of course, Lucy. We’ll discuss it later, Madoc.”

Thus dismissed, Madoc wandered back downstairs. Rather, he tried to wander. Left with nothing to do, the musicians and singers must have come to a group decision that they weren’t going to be rescued today and might as well get their luggage out of the plane before it got too dark. Since they were limited to one suitcase and one carry-on bag apiece, the suitcases tended to be on the large side. Getting down that narrow wooden staircase through a minefield of Samsonite was a good deal like trying to go down the up escalator at Toronto airport during rush hour, Madoc found. Being slim and agile, he made it unscathed, but it took time. Joe Ragovsky was waiting for him in the lobby.

“I dug us a hole out back.”

“Oh good,” Madoc replied. “Do people know what to do about it?”

“Yeah, I spread the word.”

“Thank you, Joe. I’d meant to tend to it earlier, but one way and another, this has been a busy day. I’d like to chat with you a bit when you have a minute.”

“No time like the present,” the viola player replied. “Let’s go to the kitchen and make ourselves a cuppa.”

Madoc was about to object in case Rintoul was still there, then he shrugged. They could always take their mugs outside if the atmosphere got too sticky. However, the deposed trombonist was not to be seen. Perhaps Rintoul had gone to waylay Sir Emlyn in the surely vain hope of getting him to change his mind. More likely, he was upstairs rewinding his mechanical mouse and trying to elicit sympathy from his colleagues.

While Joe got down the mugs, Madoc pumped a kettleful of fresh water, took off a stove lid, and set the kettle directly over the hole to get the full benefit from the handsome bed of shimmering red coals that had collected over the day.

“This shouldn’t take long to boil,” he remarked. “I wish we had a piece of my wife’s pie to go with the tea.”

“Your wife does her own baking?” Joe sounded surprised. “I figured you’d have a bunch of maids in the house.”

“On a policeman’s salary? Figure again, Joe. We have a cleaner in once a week and a neighbor’s kid to water the plants and feed the cat when we go away, which we don’t do all that often, except for overnight visits to her brother’s farm. How about you?”

“About the same. My wife’s a schoolteacher, so it’s next to impossible for us to go anywhere together except during the school vacations. With three kids, it’s too damned expensive anyway. My mother-in-law lives with us, which takes some of the load off. She’s a good egg. But a terrible cook. I get most of the meals when I’m around. I like to cook.”

“Damn your eyes, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“What? And miss being able to say I’ve had my pancakes flipped by the guy who captured Mad Carew?”

Madoc scowled. “Oh, you know about that?”

“Sure, I caught on right away to who you were, but I haven’t told anybody. I thought you might be traveling incognito.”

“Hold the thought, Joe. I’m sick of hearing about Carew, and my mother thinks the whole business was disgustingly uncouth. Tell me something.” Madoc fished out the short pieces of violin string he’d taken from Rintoul’s trombone and the longer one he’d picked up from Lucy Shadd’s bedroom floor. “Could these possibly be from the same string?”

Joe took the two bits of wire and held them up to the fast-fading light. “Could be. This is a D-string with one end cut off, and this little bit here looks like the end.”

“It’s wrapped in a different color thread from the other end,” Madoc objected.

“I know, that’s how they come.”

“The string wouldn’t have been yours, by any chance?”

“Nope, this one’s from a violin. I play viola. Our D-strings are thicker and longer. You wouldn’t notice the difference, but it’s perfectly obvious to me.”

“How do you suppose the cut was made? Could you do it with a small pocket knife?”

“Hell, no. This string was made to withstand up to ninety pounds pressure; it’s chrome steel wire wound around a gut core. The sensible thing would be to use a wire cutter.”

“And where would you get one of those in a hurry?”

“From Dave Gabriel, I’d say offhand. Oboe and bassoon players spend about half their time playing their instruments and the other half making new reeds for them. That’s what those mouthpieces are, you know, just hollow reeds like you’d pick out of a swamp. Only this is a special kind of reed that only grows in France or somewhere. The guys have kits with knives and stuff they use to cut and shape the reeds, and string and wire to bind them with. Bassoon reeds have to be wired, then wrapped with string over the wire. Dave coaches a woodwind ensemble, so he carries a great big kit with every kind of tool known to man, pretty much. He’s sure to have wire cutters.”

“Would the cutters be easy to steal?”

“I guess so, if you were mean enough. What the guys usually do is slip their tools inside the canvas covers of their instrument cases. You could sneak a cutter out and stick it back again easily enough without getting caught, but why go to the bother? Couldn’t you just ask to borrow it for a second?”

“Certainly you could,” said Madoc, “provided you weren’t planning to use the string to strangle somebody.”

“G
OD, WHAT MINDS YOU
cops must have!”

Joe Ragovsky actually backed away from the strings Madoc was holding out to him. “What the hell possessed you to say that?”

“I found this longer piece on the floor beside Lucy Shadd’s bed after that screaming incident early this morning. She claimed she’d been attacked by a masked intruder, and had a red line around her throat that suggested an attempt at strangulation.”

“My God! I didn’t know that.”

“Not many of this crowd do, and I’d as soon you didn’t spread the word around. We don’t want mass panic. This smaller piece I took off Cedric Rintoul’s trombone slide. He’d been using it to tickle the back of Frieda Loye’s neck during the concert last night. Perhaps you noticed?”

“No, I didn’t notice. If I had, I’d have busted the son of a bitch’s jaw for him. Cedric’s been tormenting Frieda lately every chance he gets, and it makes me sick. What the hell, I don’t mind a little clowning around. I do it myself sometimes. But picking on a middle-aged woman who’s halfway round the bend to start with—I’m damned glad your father gave him the shove, if you want the truth. Cedric ought to have had his ears pinned back long before this.”

Joe simmered down from irate to bothered. “Only thing that worries me is what’s going to happen with our brass section at the festival. It’ll be tough having to play with two new guys.”

“I’m sure my father will be able to cope,” Madoc reassured him. “He’s got out of worse messes than this. But why do you say Frieda Loye’s a mental case? On account of those nightmares she’s been having the last few weeks?”

“No, not that. It’s more that she’s been so—I don’t quite know how to put it. Funny. Jumpy, snappish, tight as a G-string. I get the impression she’s scared all the time and trying not to let on. I didn’t mean to imply that Frieda’s really gone nuts. She’s just—different, I guess. Maybe it’s her time of life. My mother-in-law went through a spell a while back. She’d wake up in the middle of the night worried sick about some damned little thing without knowing why. She was turning herself into a nervous wreck for no good reason. The doctor gave her some pills and she straightened out okay. Probably Frieda ought to be taking something.”

“Are you sure she’s not already taking something?”

“Huh? Oh, you mean drugs? No, you get that stuff in the pop bands sometimes, but symphony players don’t go for it as a rule. Specially not Frieda, she’s big on vitamins and long walks to keep her wind in shape. But that’s terrible, what you said about Lucy. I don’t know why the heck anybody’d try to strangle her. Say, you don’t suppose Cedric was trying to get another rise out of Frieda and picked the wrong bed, by any chance? It would be a hell of a stupid thing to do, of course.”

“Criminal would be a more apt word than stupid. Do you honestly think Rintoul would go that far?”

“Gosh, Madoc, I’d hate to say. Cedric’s pulled some pretty crazy stunts, but faking a murder, I don’t know. Did Lucy really get hurt? Is that why she’s stayed upstairs all day?”

“She says her throat’s still bothering her. I can’t say whether that’s from the choking or from all the yelling she did when she was attacked. Anyway, she’s decided it made a reasonable excuse for her to take a day’s rest for a change, which she apparently deserves. One gathers she’s kept hopping pretty much of the time when the orchestra’s on tour.”

“Oh yeah, we have a tradition in this business that the head of operations never gets a chance to sleep. It’s not a job for weaklings, that’s for sure, but Lucy took to it like a duck to water. At least it keeps her with the orchestra. I suppose you know Lucy used to be first chair horn?”

“So I’ve been told.” Madoc couldn’t recall how many times by now. “Were you with the orchestra then, Joe?”

“Not really. She switched just a couple of weeks after I got taken on. They claim Lucy used to be first-rate, but you sure couldn’t have proven it by the way she was playing then. There’s no way they could have let her stay on in the brasses and she must have known. Being shifted out must have been an awful blow to her but she took it like a soldier, I have to say. I’ll bet she’s toughing out the strangling, too, eh. Christ, women are rugged. I don’t know many men, myself included, who’d have the nerve to stay up there by themselves all day after having a thing like that happen to them.”

“My mother’s been with Lucy a good part of the time.”

Joe grinned. “No wonder she feels safe, then. It’d take a pretty damned determined strangler to try again with Lady Rhys around. No offense to your mother, Madoc. We all think she’s a great lady.”

“Mother’s not a bad sort, once you get to know her.”

Afraid Joe might think he sounded overenthusiastic about his own parent, Madoc reverted quickly to the main topic at hand. “You could be right, you know, about the alleged strangler’s being Cedric Rintoul trying to get another rise out of Frieda Loye. In that case, Lucy would certainly have recognized him, but wouldn’t want to say so for fear of getting him in serious trouble. She and Rintoul have always got on pretty well, haven’t they?”

“Far as I know. He’s the one she hangs out with when she gets the chance, he and Jason Jasper and poor old Wilhelm Ochs. She’s going to miss Wilhelm, they played together for so long. That’s how it is in an orchestra, you know, we tend to club in with our own section. You’re right: if Lucy knows it was Cedric, she won’t rat on him, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. She’ll wait till she gets the bugger alone and tear him to pieces with her own hands.”

“If he’s still around,” said Madoc. “You don’t think Rintoul will be fired on account of my father’s kicking him out today?”

“Nah, the guys will back him up with the director. Some of them, anyway. Cedric will promise to behave and sober down for a while, then gradually start working his way back into the old routine. We all know it won’t take long. Cedric’s beginning to flat his high notes a little. You wouldn’t notice it yet, I don’t suppose, but I’ll bet your father has. Our director’s known for a while. He’s a good egg, he’ll go easy till he has to make a move.”

“I see. Rintoul will go back and claim my father was one of those Brit bullies who can’t adjust to our informal Canadian ways.”

“Yeah, that’s right, a real Captain Bligh.” Joe was having a lovely time now. “But you don’t act like a Brit.”

“Not I. I was born on this side and never wanted to leave. My wife’s a New Brunswicker. We live in Fredericton.”

“That’s a nice city. I bet you wish you were back there right now.”

“You can say that again, Joe. Were you planning to cook supper tonight?”

“If it’s a case of cook or get pinched, sure. What are we having?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. What is there to have?”

“I’ll scout around the kitchen and see what I can scare up. Say, Madoc, do you think maybe we ought to start going easy on the grub in case we get stuck here for a while?”