Troubles in the Brasses (21 page)

“Monsieur!” cried Houdon.

“Ah, yes, Monsieur! A hot-blooded young fool might demand satisfaction on the field of honor, but you and I, Monsieur, are men of reason. I consider to myself the agonizing strain under which you have labored. I ask of you only a full and abject apology to the deeply wronged Madame Bellini and for myself a chance to share with you the purport of our perfectly respectable and innocent discourse.”

“You have wounded me, Jacques!” cried Madame Bellini, getting into the spirit of the occasion, “and wronged Monsieur l’Inspecteur, who was, after all, doing only his duty. Allow him to explain, I entreat you.”

Jacques-Marie shrugged a shrug of the first magnitude. “But naturally if in the excess of my devotion I have acted upon a false impression, I am willing to render what atonement is required by my honor as a gentleman. Speak, then, and I will hear with profound attention.”

“You are all that is generous and noble, my love,” cried Madame Bellini. “Ah, cock not that eyebrow at me; I may now without restraint employ a term of endearment. This wise young man knows all. Let me myself reveal that which I have hitherto kept locked in my bosom, not from any reason of base deception but entirely, my dear one, to prevent an embarrassment that might even have deterred you from accepting the appointment as concertmaster of the Wagstaffe Symphony which is the crown and pinnacle of your illustrious career. It is I and no other who made the fateful decision not to tell you that my long-separated husband was none other than Wilhelm Ochs.”

“Sacred blue! Wilhelm Ochs? That—that eater?”

“Yes, that eater. I feared, I confess, that you would see me through less enchanted eyes did you but know that I had long ago allied myself with so dedicated a gourmand. But reflect yourself, my Jacques, I beg you. Wilhelm was thinner then. He was attractive. He was amiable, he was generous, he was kind in his way. And he was even when younger a totally magnificent player of the French horn.”

“You have right, my pigeon. What could you then have known of men, a young girl out of the convent? My cherished, I also have a confession. Adrienne Desjardins has told me all, I have known since coming to the Wagstaffe that your so mistakenly espoused was in truth Wilhelm Ochs. She thought it best that I know, you comprehend? Not to make mischief, my word, but in order to avoid any contretemps. Naturally, she relied on the strength of my attachment. It stood to reason he must once have been thinner. I could detect in his visage the remnant of good looks. In a way, I was reassured that he was not more prepossessing. With such a one as he, I comforted myself, there could have been no true union of soul and spirit.”

Madame Bellini was all eagerness to agree. “Oh no, Jacques. None whatsoever.”

“Ah. I found him, I have to say, at least amiable and diligent. And a musician
de premier rang,
after all. A decent man in spite of some thickness of the head and a penchant for vulgar jokes. It was the temperament of the brass player, I told myself. What could one do? Not everybody can play in the strings, or there would be no orchestra.”

“Always the philosopher. I should have known I could trust to your intelligence and compassion, my chevalier.”

“Your apprehension was natural, my flower of the lily. I myself felt some trepidation when I learned you were to sing at the Wagstaffe, but how, I reasoned, could the eminent Sir Emlyn Rhys have chosen another contralto? It is well known that he seeks always the best, even the Fawn. That one is a bitch in heat, no doubt, but she is a voice! Not such a voice as you, my incomparable, and with none of your serene beauty and dignity of manner, need it be said? But still a voice. In any event, Ochs made no scene but behaved himself with what grace he might command. If he sought that which had been, I saw no sign.”

“I assure you, my amorous, he did not. Wilhelm was amiable in his greeting to me. He expressed pleasure that I had gained a little weight; a compliment I did not much appreciate, you understand. He invited me to lunch on the first day, I confess, but I explained that I had experienced enough of watching him eat during our days of cohabitation. He found this a great amusement and we parted without rancor, I to a teashop and he to a Burger King. You surely find no fault in this?”

“There is none to be found. My own, let us forgive each other: And this young inspector of police will forgive us both, eh?” He cast a hopeful glance at the bed on which Madame Bellini was still sitting. She blushed, but demurred.

“But he has not yet told what you gave him permission to say. Speak, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. Of his great perspicacity, Jacques-Marie Houdon will no doubt be able to cast light on this vile deed.”

So Madoc at last got to explain. The concertmaster was interested though not unduly agitated by the news that a second member of the brass section had been done away with.

“One sees it was inevitable. Rintoul was naturally from the beginning the intended victim. Ochs, poor fellow, had without a doubt eaten the poison intended for him.”

Madoc turned to Norma Bellini. “Would your husband have done that? Taken food from other people’s plates?”

“Oh yes, all the time. It was his favorite prank, to dart his fork across the table into some interesting tidbit on another’s plate and gobble it down, laughing all the while. With his mouth open, alas. Jacques is right, without doubt. I know something of these things, I read sometimes to improve my English the Miss Marple and the Peter Shandy, you know? It has been said that murderers employ always the same methods; but I have not found this so in the books.”

“That is perhaps only because the authors wish to display their ingenuity, my innocent,” Houdon murmured.

“Bah, it is mere practicality. Figure yourself, Jacques. It is clear to me that, the too-cunning technique of the ground-up bean of the castor plant having proved unreliable, the murderer would then attempt what you call the hands-on method of the stabbed-in icepick. Is that not correct, my cabbage?”

“My beautiful, I have to agree with Monsieur l’Inspecteur. It is in no way correct for musicians of a respectable orchestra to be killing each other, even though I ask myself why with Rintoul, it has not happened sooner. There have been times, I admit freely, when I have felt the urge. Always I had to remind myself that here was a trombonist of the first rank who, whatever his enormities, did not ever try to imitate the swing band and put in hot licks while playing the trombone solo in the
Tuba Minim
movement of the Mozart
Requiem,
which happened once in the States while I myself was conducting.”

“My God! They are all barbarians down there, of course. Still it is incredible, the audacity,” Madame Bellini remarked.

“And here is more audacity in the stabbing of Rintoul,” Houdon continued. “It is therefore for us a duty to assist in bringing the malefactor to justice. Even”—he sighed and glanced once more at the bed—“when we might naturally prefer to be doing something else.”

“P
ERHAPS, AS A MATTER
of form,” Madoc suggested diffidently, “we might start by making sure you yourselves are eliminated from suspicion.”

Madame Bellini nodded. “That is correct Sherlock Holmes procedure. One sees first that we could not have poisoned Wilhelm because, my faith, we would not have eaten with Wilhelm.”

“And we could not have stabbed Rintoul,” added Houdon, “because I tell you in confidence we spent all last night exchanging with one another that solace which a man and a woman can find to give in even the darkest of circumstances, you comprehend?”

“Fully,” sighed Madoc. “Then what about the rest of the company? Have you any thoughts or opinions you’d like to share?”

“Opinions, yes,” said Norma Bellini. “I myself am confident this murderer is none of the singers. Carlos, Ainsworth, and I have sung together many times under the direction of your excellent father, which is a privilege to be coveted. I know them well. Carlos is a brave man. He might perhaps kill if the life of one he held dear were threatened, but never by stealth, always from the front. For Wilhelm or Cedric, he had no occasion. He had not known them before, he did not wish to know them in Wagstaffe. He is not a snob, Carlos; it is simply that singers and instrumentalists on tour do not mix.”

“Yes, that’s been mentioned,” Madoc conceded. “And the tenor, Kight?”

“Ainsworth?” She shrugged. “Ainsworth is conscious of himself and of the audience. As there is only one Ainsworth Kight, so everyone else counts as audience except his accompanist for whom he has a fondness, you understand, but did not bring on this tour. He accepts also his fellow singers because, after all, not even the great Kight can sing
Judas Maccabaeus
all by himself. Ainsworth is a good-natured fellow, mind you. He is not unfriendly. But he regards nobody in this world of sufficient importance for him to risk his precious throat in killing.”

“And what about Delicia Fawn?”

“What can I say? Except that she is more likely to become a victim than a murderess, and also to lose early both her looks and her voice if she keeps up these pretty tricks. It is all a nonsense with her, you know, but a dangerous nonsense. In effect, however, I cannot see Cedric Rintoul being mistaken for Delicia Fawn no matter how dark the night.”

“Norma has a point there,” said Houdon. “I believe, Monsieur l’Inspecteur, you must look among those orchestra members now with us. It was a mistake not to wait and kill Rintoul after we would be all back together at the festival; since now the field has narrowed, has it not? So we eliminate. Me, we have for the moment laid aside. Though I do not delude myself that you accept only my word, I appeal to you as a man of reason. Would I have chosen to poison Ochs with castor beans when it is known that I have in my own garden a goodly number of castor oil plants?”

“You do?” This was the most promising news Madoc had heard yet.

“But of course. I have little time for gardening, so I attempt a rich display with the least of effort. The flowers of the castor oil plant are nothing to covet, but the foliage is beyond description. One leaf may be ten inches across, I tell you, shaped somewhat like a giant maple leaf but creased into the most beguiling pleats like a lady’s fan. The texture is interesting and the colors most deliciously subtle greens and bronzy shades.”

“Oh,” said Madoc, “are those the plants they used to have growing in Assiniboine Park when I was a kid in Winnipeg?”

Houdon nodded. “I too have observed them there, ten feet tall and of a luxuriance, my word! But those were fed on wild buffalo manure, which in Wagstaffe is not easy to find. I have to buy that which comes dried in bags. I believe this must be only from contented cows as my plants never grow higher than five or six feet.”

“The bovine temperament would count, no doubt. Tell me, who in the orchestra might know you have castor oil plants in your garden?”

“Jason Jasper, for a certainty. He lives not far from me and is also a gardener, though mostly vegetables since he has a large family. He admires my plants and once intimated he would like some seeds. I had to point out that they are poisonous and therefore not a thing to plant around children.”

“When was this? Does he visit often?”

“Not in the sense of a visit, no. One takes the evening stroll. If the neighbor is out in his garden, one might stop for a moment to exchange a word. He is knowledgeable, that Jasper, and not offensive when in his own milieu. With his children, he has the consideration not to stop. With his wife, he has attended a few garden parties at my house.”

“Recently?”

“The last one, yes, only three weeks ago. It was for Norma, to meet with the orchestra and staff before the tour. This was quite proper for me to do and gave me great satisfaction. Ochs and Rintoul both happened to be playing elsewhere with a brass ensemble that day,” he added with a tight little smile. “Anyway, there was much admiration of my magnificent plants and I had to caution again to avoid the beans. They are large, you know, and not unattractive. I had attempted to pick off and destroy the most accessible, but there were no doubt many left. I had so little time to prepare.”

“You had even less time for me.” Now that her cover was blown, Madame Bellini could be quite the coquette. “But this was a charming affair and enjoyed by all. Jacques is a superb host, you can imagine.”

“I’m sure he is. Other than Ochs and Rintoul, were all the orchestra people there?”

“I think so, yes,” replied the concertmaster. “It has been my habit since becoming again a householder to give on occasion these parties when time and scheduling permit. I hire an excellent caterer and nobody is asked to perform. I get few refusals. This is not helpful?”

“Not very, I have to say. On the strength of this, it looks as if anybody in the orchestra could have got hold of the castor beans. One more question; what can you tell me about David Gabriel, outside of the fact that he’s the Wagstaffe’s first chair oboist?”

“But aside from that, what is there to tell? Gabriel plays his oboe, makes reeds for his oboe, maybe on occasion he goes to bed with his oboe, who knows? Ask Ragovsky, he knows everybody. Better still, ask Gabriel.”

The interview was clearly over. Madoc exchanged a few more courtesies and went downstairs. The press conference also appeared to be winding down. Most of the participants were wandering out of the lobby, some to the kitchen where Joe Ragovsky was going to make more biscuits, some out to the flat to watch the planes go off and no doubt pester the pilots for any news about a possible rescue. Only two stayed where they were. David Gabriel was in the chair by the window where he’d been sitting last night, winding wire around another reed. Sir Emlyn remained seated where he’d been most of the morning, looking as gray around the muzzle as an aged beagle. Madoc went over to him.

“Hi, Tad. Let’s hope that’s the last of them for a while. Where’s Mum?”

“She’s gone upstairs to take an aspirin and lie down. I don’t blame her. Madoc, how long is this to go on?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. Hasn’t Rick come back? What did Zlubert have to say?”