Troubles in the Brasses (2 page)

No, thank God, he wasn’t. The intermission had arrived. Sir Emlyn was taking his bows, asking the orchestra to rise. The whole group must by now be aware of their colleague’s plight. They let the horns go off first, the two who’d been sitting beside the sick man helping him off before any of the others. The maneuver was slickly accomplished; probably few in the audience noticed anything amiss. Lady Rhys waited until her husband made his final appearance and dismissed the orchestra, then she stood up and collected her furs.

“Let’s pop backstage for a jiffy and let your father know you’ve arrived,” she said just loud enough for those in the next box to overhear and understand that her going didn’t mean they could, too.

Madoc hoped for his mother’s sake that they wouldn’t come upon the ailing horn player making a ghastly mess backstage, but he hoped in vain. The mess was already made, the musician lay face down in the midst of it. Some of his comrades huddled around, all of them looking pretty green, too. And these, judging from certain background noises, were the strong-stomached ones. Lady Rhys took command.

“Well, don’t everyone just stand there. Frieda, go find Lucy Shadd and tell her to call an ambulance immediately. Joseph, fetch the stretcher from the first aid rack down the hall. We’ll take him to the musicians’ room until the doctor comes. Jason, find one of the stage crew. Tell him to bring some sawdust and a scrubbing pail. The rest of you clear out of here. Not you, Cedric. I want you to help carry the stretcher.”

“Lady Rhys, can’t you get the technicians to do it? My heart—”

“Fiddlesticks. The technicians are busy onstage and you’re fit as a flea. Don’t think I didn’t notice you lugging that silly little blonde all around the swimming pool back in Atlanta.”

“Wilhelm weighs a hell of a lot more than she did,” grumbled the beefy man Madoc recognized as the jester of the trombone section.

“But you’ll only be carrying half of him,” Lady Rhys pointed out reasonably. “What’s the matter with you, Wilhelm? Surely you haven’t been silly enough to eat fried oysters again?”

Wilhelm didn’t answer, or give any sign that he’d heard. Lifting her satin skirt and being extremely careful where she placed her satin slippers, Lady Rhys bent over him.

“Wilhelm, speak to me! Where does it hurt?”

“You’d better step back, Mother,” said Madoc quietly. “The stretcher’s here. Lay it down by his feet, sir, would you?”

He was fairly sure what ailed the French horn player. Wilhelm’s feet offered no resistance when Madoc grabbed hold of the ankles and skidded him clear of the mess he’d made. Once the flaccid body had been rolled over on to the stretcher, everybody would know.

Cedric the trombonist was first to realize what had happened. “My God!” he exclaimed in what could only be described as a screaming whisper. “He’s dead!”

“Cedric, this is no time for hysterics,” snapped Lady Rhys. “Wilhelm’s dehydrated himself and gone into shock, that’s all. And bad enough, the silly man. He’ll have to miss the plane and Lucy will be hopping. Take his foot end. Jason, take his head. Follow me.”

Jason was one of the trumpeters who’d helped Wilhelm offstage. Madoc wondered momentarily whether his mother had forgotten she had a son available, or if she’d deliberately not asked him to help with the stretcher because it might impair his father’s image to have a son doing manual labor in front of the musicians. No, Lady Rhys was not a foolish woman. She was used to bossing musicians around, that was all, and she’d done what came naturally.

A stagehand was hurrying along the corridor with a mop and bucket. He mustn’t be stopped from doing what naturally had to be done. Madoc did what came naturally, too. There was a water cooler standing near the stage entrance, with a holder full of midget paper cups attached to it. As much by instinct as by intention, he used a couple of the cups to scoop up samples of the revolting mess on the floor, and sealed them inside one of the small plastic bags that were as much a part of his daily garb as his shoes and socks. Whatever had killed the horn player had started to do its job at least half an hour ago, maybe a good deal longer. Madoc put the little bag in his pocket and went to find his parents.

“W
HY THE POLICE, LUCY?”

Lady Rhys’s sharp question didn’t cause the trim, elderly woman in the smart gray flannel suit to turn a hair. “Because that was the fastest way to get ambulance service, Lady Rhys. Besides, if it turns out there’s something really wrong with Wilhelm, we’d have to call them anyway.”

“Really wrong” was carrying euphemism to its outermost limit, Madoc thought. The poor chap was dead as last week’s news; it needn’t have taken the uniformed officer or the white-coated intern with the stethoscope to determine that. The young intern was straightening up now, turning to Lady Rhys as the obvious person in charge even though Sir Emlyn was now standing with his usual appearance of gentle melancholy a step or two behind her.

“He’s gone, I’m afraid. Would you happen to know whether he had any history of chronic illness?”

“Oh yes,” her ladyship replied. “Wilhelm had a terrible stomach, and he wouldn’t stop eating things he wasn’t supposed to have. Fried fish, you know, and heavy pastries and far too much coffee. And—”

Lady Rhys whipped a lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her sleeve and pressed it to her mouth. Lucy took over.

“Lady Rhys is quite right. It was chronic bleeding ulcers, I believe. Poor Wilhelm was always a terrible glutton.”

“You knew him pretty well, then?” the policeman asked her.

“I’d known him most of my life, off and on. We played together in the Champlain Symphony when we were both starting out, and later in the Sackbut Sextet. After I joined the Wagstaffe Symphony as a horn player quite some years ago, I played in the same section with him. I don’t know whether you realize it, Officer, but an orchestra exists in a little world of its own, especially when it’s on tour, as we are now. We get very close to each other. As director of operations, I’m the one who’s supposed to keep our little world spinning, so I have to be aware of things like the special diet problems of certain orchestra members. I tried to keep Wilhelm off the fried clams and fried chicken and fried this and fried that, but he had a positive passion for grease. Lately he’d been stuffing worse than ever, it seemed.”

“Did he show any other suicidal impulses?” the intern asked.

Lucy Shadd stared at him. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Doctor.”

“A person who has a known disability and persists in doing things that make it worse is playing Russian roulette with his life,” the young man answered pedantically. “Usually it’s because the person is depressed and has a subconscious or maybe even conscious urge to get his misery over with. Would you say your friend here was more down in the mouth than usual?”

Lucy looked at Lady Rhys, who shook her head.

“If he was, I certainly didn’t notice. It seems to me he went right on telling his dirty stories and playing his decidedly unfunny practical jokes much as usual.”

“He put a lump of plastic dog do in my instrument case only yesterday,” a nearby violist volunteered. “I’d say he was still full of the old pep and vinegar.”

Lucy scowled.

“Oh, you wouldn’t see anything wrong with anybody if he dropped dead at your—” She choked a bit. “Actually, Doctor, I have to say Wilhelm had good reason to be depressed, even aside from his stomach. He was losing his embouchure.”

“His what?”

“It’s something that happens to wind players, particularly the brasses. One’s lip muscles become so painful from the constant strain that one simply can’t endure to play any longer. That’s why I myself work backstage nowadays instead of out front. At least I was able to adapt when it happened to me, but Wilhelm was such a dunderhead—except about the horn. He was a superb French horn player. Nobody can take that away from him.”

Lucy Shadd sounded rather fierce, and as if she’d just about run out of composure. Lady Rhys laid a diamond-laden hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s see if we can find ourselves a cup of tea, shall we? What happens next, Doctor? Do we call an undertaker? Not to sound callous, but we have to push on to Vancouver right after the performance.”

“There’ll have to be an autopsy, I’m afraid,” the intern apologized. “It’s a matter of routine in a sudden death like this. Isn’t that right, Officer?”

The policeman nodded. “That’s right, ma’am. Could you give me the deceased’s full name and address? Did he have a family?”

Lucy had got hold of herself. “His full name was Wilhelm Jan Ochs. I believe his only close relative is a brother in Manitoba. I have his and the brother’s addresses in my files, but they’re packed with the luggage. I can dig them out and call the police station with the information as soon as I find them, if that’s acceptable?”

The policeman said that would be fine. The intern, the policeman, and the ambulance driver, who hadn’t said a word the whole time, wrapped the body in green plastic and transferred it to the stretcher they’d brought with them. By now, intermission was almost over and the musicians had to hurry onstage. Nobody took any notice when Madoc followed the policeman out to the vestibule and handed him the little plastic bag of vomit.

“How did you happen to think of doing this, Mr. Rhys?” the man asked him somewhat suspiciously.

“I’d been reading a detective story on the plane.”

That was no lie. Madoc had picked one up in the terminal to while away the flight. He’d found it hilarious. “The mess could hardly be left there, you know, with half the concert still to play, but I thought somebody ought to do something.”

“How come you didn’t put up a howl when they wanted to move the body?” The cop was finding him mildly amusing, too.

Madoc decided to take the question seriously. “Because I knew it didn’t matter. You see, Ochs didn’t just drop down dead all of a sudden. He’d been sick for quite some time. My mother and I were sitting in the front row and we could see him getting greener and greener. I didn’t think he was going to hold out till intermission. The chaps around him were worried, too, I could tell. They took him between them and got him off as soon as they possibly could. I doubt whether Ochs would have made it on his own.”

“Yes, I know. I have their testimony. Well, thanks for the doggie bag, Mr. Rhys. What do you do in the orchestra?”

“Nothing at all. I hadn’t even met any of them, till just now. I popped up this evening from Fredericton for a little visit with my parents, whom I hadn’t seen for a while. I have to catch them as I can, they’re on tour so much of the time.”

“I can imagine. Must be hard on your mother.”

“Oh no, she loves throwing her weight about. The conductor’s wife is always the power behind the podium.”

“That figures. Are you a musician yourself, Mr. Rhys?”

“Not me. I have a rather tedious job with the Canadian government,” Madoc replied disingenuously.

He was on ticklish ground, all too aware of what his standing in the family would be it he let drop so much as the mere breath of an inkling that he might possibly be here on police business himself. Wilhelm Ochs’s death by gluttony was something this nice fellow would easily accept. Wilhelm Ochs’s sudden demise coupled with whatever it was that had driven Sir Emlyn Rhys to send for his son the Mountie might be enough to bring the tour to a screeching halt right here and now. Just finding out who he was might get the local authorities wondering. If they decided to hold the orchestra members here, bang would go Madoc’s newfound popularity in the family circle.

That consideration alone would not of course have had any weight in striking a balance between his professional and his filial obligations. However, Madoc honestly didn’t see why he should break his father’s heart on the off chance that Wilhelm Ochs might have succumbed to something other than his own greed. Sir Emlyn was the humblest of men but he did have one boast: in all his years of conducting, he’d never once failed to show up on time for a scheduled performance. Why should this be an exception?

The autopsy and his little paper cup, if the police bothered to have it analyzed, should settle the matter. If there had to be any further investigation, it would be undertaken by the right people, namely people other than Madoc Rhys. If any of the orchestra members were needed, they’d be available. Nobody in this crowd was going anywhere except to the Fraser River Music Festival, where they’d been booked for over a year in advance. If it was somebody from outside who’d put an end to Wilhelm’s career before his lip muscles gave out, then it wouldn’t matter where the musicians were anyway.

All very rational, but Madoc still felt guilty. Blast it, why couldn’t his father have come straight out and said what the trouble was? There’d have been no chance to talk to him about it backstage, even if the cop hadn’t been present. Sir Emlyn was short a French horn; that would be tragedy enough for the moment.

Madoc could hear the tentative squeaks and blats which meant the orchestra was tuning up. He headed back to his seat, got an icy glance from his mother, and spent the latter half of the concert wondering how he might decently and reasonably get hold of that autopsy report on Wilhelm Jan Ochs.

Most likely nobody would be doing anything about it tonight, anyway. Depending on how many cadavers the pathologist had lined up ahead of Ochs, results might not be available tomorrow, either. If nothing came through by tomorrow night, he’d get the efficient Lucy Shadd to give the coroner’s office a buzz.

From Vancouver, that would be. Madoc hadn’t expected to be traveling with the orchestra. What he’d envisioned was a reasonably amicable meal with his parents in a comfortable restaurant before the performance, a fast but thorough briefing on the trouble with the brasses, if in fact that was what Sir Emlyn had called him about, and maybe a day or so spent sniffing around asking guilefully stupid questions. By that time, he’d assumed, all would be clear. The miscreant or miscreants would have been turned over to Lady Rhys for excoriation and, if their offenses were heinous enough, excommunication; and he’d be on his way home to Janet.