Troubles in the Brasses (3 page)

He hadn’t even got any dinner, only a little box of semi-edibles described as a snack and a cup of lukewarm coffee on the plane. Lunch had been another sandwich, eaten at his desk, and a mug of stewed tea. Damn it, he was hungry.

Madoc had never been much of a pouter even at four years old, but he felt as if he’d be quite justified in pouting now. This was no way for a mother to treat her son. When at last the concert had whooped its lengthy way to a raucous end and Sir Emlyn was letting the musicians and singers take far too many bows for his liking, Madoc murmured to his mother under cover of the applause, “Can we collect Tad now and get supper somewhere? I’m starved.”

His mother gave him yet another look. “Didn’t they give you something on the plane, for goodness’ sake?”

“Something, yes. Goodness had nothing to do with it.”

“Then why on earth didn’t you stop for a bite at the airport?”

“Because I was running late and I didn’t want to be any later. I was under the apparent misapprehension that Tad wanted rather urgently to see me.”

“Of course he does, dear. Tad always wants to see you. I’m afraid we can’t do much about food just now, but don’t fret. Lucy will have sandwiches and things laid on once we get on the plane.”

“Mother, you don’t mean we’re going straight from here? When are we supposed to leave?”

“As soon as we’re ready is the best I can tell you. It’s a private plane we’ve been lent, so they can’t very well start off without us. I’ll tell you what, dear, why don’t you sit down with your father after he’s finished changing and share his Ovaltine and biscuits? That will tide you over and give you two a chance for a nice, quiet little talk while the rest of us are out here slaving our heads off. You’d be no earthly use with the packing anyway. Come along.”

Ovaltine and biscuits. Madoc should have remembered that on the days when Sir Emlyn was going to conduct an evening performance, he always ate a hearty breakfast and a generous luncheon, but no dinner because he got too strung up to digest. Mother would have treated herself to high tea at the hotel while Tad was having his rest, no doubt, and still be nicely replete with scones and lemon curd tarts. As usual, Madoc was stepping to the music of a different drummer. Suppressing a sigh that wouldn’t have done him any good, he followed his mother’s triumphal march backstage.

Here a kind of orderly pandemonium prevailed. Musicians were either packing their own instruments into the individual cases they themselves would carry or else reluctantly consigning them to heavily padded trunks that had foam nests to fit them into, especially the big, awkward ones like the cellos and double basses. These trunks, Madoc gathered, were to be shipped by train in a specially air-conditioned car. So were most of the musicians and all of the chorus; a van and a couple of buses were already waiting outside to carry them to the station. The director of operations was running at full steam, making sure the instruments were being properly stowed, that everybody’s luggage was accounted for, that nobody who was supposed to be bussed to the train would lag behind, and that those who were supposed to fly didn’t get on the wrong bus by mistake.

Who went how, Madoc figured out after a while, was partly a matter of protocol and partly a question of time. Certain members of the troupe would be needed at the festival earlier than the rest: some to rehearse, some to arrange the amazingly complex details of getting everybody housed and fed and the concerts into rehearsal. Some of the principal players and all four of the vocal soloists would be on the plane with the Rhyses.

Not knowing what else to do, he concentrated on staying out from under everybody’s feet until his mother gave him clearance to enter the conductor’s inner sanctum. There sat his father alone at last, looking elderly and exhausted in the same tweed suit he’d worn for traveling since Madoc could remember. When he spied his son, he managed a smile.

“Ah, Madoc. Sit down, boy. Have a biscuit.”

“Thanks, Tad. When did you start hitting the Ovaltine? Didn’t it use to be hot milk and brandy?”

“Your mother decided brandy kept me awake.” Sir Emlyn reached for the shabby leather briefcase that held his scores, pulled out a flat bottle, and poured a reasonable tot into each of the two plastic mugs that were sitting on the table next to the thermos. “Ovaltine’s not bad, but I still find I like it better if my tongue’s a bit numb. I’m glad to see you, Madoc.”

“Sorry I couldn’t make it sooner.” The brandy was numbing his tongue just fine.

“And how is our sweet Jenny? She’s not offended because I didn’t invite her along?”

“Not at all. She has Annabelle staying at the house, so she couldn’t have come anyway.”

Sir Emlyn nodded. He was beginning to unwind a bit. Madoc didn’t try to hurry him along. Whatever Tad wanted to say, it would come when he got ready.

It came. “This is a bad, bad business, Madoc.” Sir Emlyn was pouring the hot Ovaltine as he spoke, being careful not to spill the tiniest drop. “What do you think about Wilhelm Ochs?”

“I’m trying not to think anything until we get the autopsy report, Tad. It sounds like a perforated ulcer. Ochs had a terrible medical record, I understand.”

His father sighed. “They all have terrible medical records, or think they do. If they’re not sick, they’re complaining. If they are sick, they won’t let you know it because they’re afraid you might be glad of an excuse not to have them around. Ochs was all right at rehearsal this morning and he was all right when he got here this evening. I know because he was moaning to me about how rotten he felt.”

“Maybe the chap was telling the truth for once. He could have eaten something at supper that disagreed with him.”

“He wouldn’t have eaten much since his lunch, I shouldn’t have thought. Might affect the wind, you know. They were planning to eat a late supper on the train. Mrs. Shadd arranged for the dining car to be kept open.”

“Is she the one they call Lucy?”

“Our director of operations, yes. A very efficient woman. She used to be a horn player herself, your mother tells me. Come to think of it, Ochs wasn’t going by train, he’d have been on the plane with us. I wish we were going by train, too. It’s the only civilized way to travel, in my opinion.”

Sir Emlyn finished his Ovaltine with the determination of one getting a duty over with, and took a ginger biscuit to reward himself for the effort. “Now then, Madoc, I suppose you’d like to know why I asked you to come.”

“It might be helpful,” Madoc conceded.

“It wasn’t about Wilhelm Ochs’s death, of course. I wasn’t expecting that.” Sir Emlyn took another biscuit. “But I have to admit I was expecting something. I don’t think of myself as a fanciful man, Madoc, but there has been an atmosphere around this place.”

He ate his biscuit, then nodded as if he’d reconsidered the word and decided it was the right one, after all. “Yes, an atmosphere. Look you, son, there is nothing strange about musicians clowning around a bit. Ours is a stressful and taxing profession; a few laughs can help to break the tension. Some of the jokes may not be in the best of taste, I have to admit.”

The conductor smiled wryly. “In fact, most of them aren’t. The brasses are the worst, as a rule. Chaps who make their careers out of blowing high-toned farts, as Ochs himself far too often called them, have a natural affinity for bathroom humor. One understands and makes allowances.”

“Even Mother?”

“Your mother has great skill at not noticing what it’s wiser to ignore. So have I, but one can’t keep on walking around with one’s head in a bag forever. There has been unpleasantness, Madoc.”

T
HIS, FOR SIR EMLYN,
was a remarkably strong statement. Madoc decided he’d better tell his father about the trombonist with the fishline on his slide. Sir Emlyn thought it unfunny, also.

“Cedric Rintoul is a fine trombonist, but I know nothing to recommend him as a human being. To torture poor little Loye, who’s a bundle of nerves at the best of times, was the act of a wretch. Do you know that plucky woman never missed a note or wobbled off pitch through the entire concert? She’ll have screaming nightmares tonight from the strain, no doubt, and keep the whole train awake. It’s happened at the hotel twice already.”

Madoc shook his head. “I don’t think Mrs. Loye is going on the train. She wasn’t lined up for the bus with the others, and I’m quite sure I heard Mrs. Shadd say something to her about the plane.”

“Ach, then she’ll keep us awake instead.” Sir Emlyn shoved the last of the biscuits toward his son. “At least your mother will be on hand to soothe her down. Loye’s fits are one thing even Mrs. Shadd can’t cope with. I only wish Rintoul weren’t flying with us, too. I’m surprised your mother let this happen.”

“Maybe she thought she’d better have them both where she can keep an eye on them,” said Madoc. “What else has been going on, Tad?”

“A great deal that I don’t know about, I expect. There’s been, as I said, an atmosphere. Ill-will. Fighting. Not among the singers, they wouldn’t strain their throats screaming at each other. Anyway, singers are too involved with their own larynxes to think much about what goes on around them. It’s the orchestra. By fighting I don’t mean fisticuffs, look you, but insults and arguments much worse than the usual more or less amiable teasing and bickering that one always hears among musicians. Ochs was one of the worst. When I first took over the orchestra he was a good-natured clod, gross in his habits and worse in his language, but not a troublemaker like Rintoul. For the past week or so, Ochs had turned into a real curmudgeon, snapping and snarling and accusing his colleagues of dreadful deeds.”

“With any justification?”

“Yes, unfortunately. For one thing, his horn was switched.”

Sir Emlyn leaned across the table. “Now mind you, son, this may not sound all that serious to you, but you must realize a musician’s instrument is virtually a part of himself; not only his means of livelihood but his treasure, his beloved, his constant companion. Unless he plays the harp or the piano, of course.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but Madoc did the best he could with it and his father plucked up the spirit to go on.

“Anyway, there we were, ready to go onstage. Ochs opens his case and begins to yell. ‘Where’s my instrument?’ he’s yelling. ‘Who’s got my so-and-so instrument?’ His language was awful, I tell you. We had a terrible time shutting him up.”

“There’s no chance he made a mistake?”

“Madoc, would you mistake another woman for your wife? Of course the horn in the case was not his. We found out later that it belonged to a student who’d been rehearsing with the Youth Symphony. The kid had gone off with Ochs’s horn in all innocence and brought it back as soon as she realized there’d been a switch. Ochs insisted she’d taken his horn on purpose and there was a hell of a scene, even though anyone with half an eye could see the poor child was simply the victim of a tamned tirty trick.”

Sir Emlyn’s Welsh accent had never altogether deserted him, and tended to get a bit out of hand in his rare moments of extreme agitation. “And that was not the worst,” he went on, abandoning all efforts to keep his consonants under control. “You would not know this, but brass players have to keep putting stuff on their lips. The pressure of the mouthpiece irritates the skin. They all have their favorite ointments, like the singers with their throat sprays and cough lozenges, bless them. Ochs swore by a certain patent remedy which is normally applied to a different part of the person and ideally adapted to the sort of coarse japery which is so popular among the brasses.”

He coughed delicately. “Anyway, somebody got a tube of the stuff and injected it with red pepper juice or some tamned thing, and sneaked it into Ochs’s pocket. The next time Ochs salved his lips, he almost went crazy from the smarting. The stuff raised such blisters that he had to play the Saturday concert with a cotton wool mustache stuck to his upper lip. Now, was that a decent thing to do to a man who was already beginning to have trouble with his embouchure? And of course that ass Rintoul had to keep riding Ochs about how lucky he was that he hadn’t used the salve on the end it was intended for. Madoc, tell me the truth. Do you think Ochs’s death could have been due to some other beastly joke?”

“Anything that beastly would hardly count as a joke, Tad. Do you have any idea who doctored the pile medicine?”

“Well, naturally, I thought of Rintoul because he’s such a nasty rogue and your mother doesn’t like him either, but I couldn’t very well go accusing him without evidence, could I? He’d be just the kind to raise a big stink with the Musicians’ Union, and I don’t have to tell you how the director and the trustees would feel about that kind of trouble. Besides, I may be wrong. Rintoul himself found his mouthpiece stuffed with garlic the other day. Not that it wasn’t poetic justice. He always has a breath on him that would make a horse gag and God help the poor wretch who sits close to him. I’ll have to move Loye; she’s suffered enough. And people think all a conductor has to do is stand up there and wave a little stick!”

He wrestled with his feelings a moment, then made his final plea. “Madoc, I’ve always thought I was a reasonably adequate disciplinarian. I’ve never had much trouble with an orchestra before, but this is beyond me. Even the orchestra manager has ratted on me. She’s supposed to have come down with some particularly horrid sort of flu, but I think it’s plain funk. She’d been looking pretty grim lately. So Lucy Shadd’s been trying to cope single-handed. Your mother’s helping all she can, but I’m stuck with the lot of them until after the festival. I simply don’t know what to do, Madoc. That’s why I sent for you, and that’s why I didn’t want Jenny here. I’d send your mother away if I thought she’d go, and that’s the first time in our married life I’ve wished my Sillie were somewhere I was not. You can see the state I’m in, son. Can you possibly help me out of this?”

“What you’re asking is pretty much what I do for a living, Tad. I shouldn’t think we’d have too much trouble pinning down the joker, or jokers. It’s pretty well got to be one or more persons connected with the orchestra in one capacity or another, and it doesn’t look as if there’s any particularly subtle mind at work. Tell me more about “the dirty tricks.”