Troubles in the Brasses (8 page)

“I’d be pretty darned nervy trying to sleep in a room where my bunkie’s just missed being strangled,” said Helene. “For Pete’s sake, Madoc, couldn’t you have found someplace else to put them?”

“That aspect of the matter didn’t seem to bother them much,” Madoc replied. “And frankly, in a ramshackle old place like this, I don’t see that changing rooms would make much difference. I have a feeling Lucy was determined to tough it out and Frieda was reluctant to put anyone to the bother of switching. I understand she’s already caused some of you to miss a bit of sleep on your previous stops.”

“I’ll say she has,” said Corliss. “She’s been hooting off like a calliope about every third night lately. I don’t know why, she never did before.”

“You’ve worked with her for some time, then?”

“Oh yes, we principals are all old hands with the Wagstaffe. It’s one of Canada’s finest orchestras, as your parents must have told you, so once they hire us, we’re happy to stay on. You know, I suppose that Lucy used to be principal horn player? She bucked for Wilhelm to take her place when she had to retire.”

Madoc gave the cellist one of his gentle smiles. “Retire sounds like an odd word for someone who works as hard as Lucy Shadd does.”

Helene shrugged. Her nightgown was short-sleeved, and Madoc could see how muscular her arms were. “I know, but being on the staff isn’t like being a member of the orchestra. I’d hate getting shoved off the stage, myself.”

“You’re safe enough, Helene,” said Corliss Blair. “We winds blow ourselves out sooner or later, but the strings go on forever. Look at Pablo Casals.”

“Yes,” said Madoc, “why don’t you? By the way, Helene, I was wondering how you happened to be on the plane last night? I’d been given to understand that the players usually preferred to travel with their instruments. You didn’t bring your cello with you?”

“No, it’s on the train, where I thought I was supposed to be. They’d already taken away the instrument cases and I was getting on the bus when Lucy ran up and told me I was on the list for the plane. God knows why, I loathe flying. I assumed it was some sort of mixup, but Lucy’s been having such a hellish time trying to do two jobs that I didn’t want to make a fuss. Besides, I have a favorite cousin in Vancouver and it looked like my chance to grab some free time with her. You just can’t count on anything, can you?”

“Sometimes it seems that way. But my mother is counting on me to find her a clue, so I’d better get cracking. Thank you for your help, ladies. If you’d like a wash, there’s hot water in the kitchen.”

They didn’t want a wash. They wanted to go back to sleep, as who could blame them? Funny ladies, Madoc thought; they hadn’t shown much interest in what had happened to Lucy Shadd. Perhaps they hadn’t really believed him; maybe they were still so traumatized by their own near-miss from being killed on the plane that a failed attempt at a murder down the hall seemed trivial by comparison. It might simply be that they felt Lucy Shadd as staff didn’t merit the same concern that she would have if she were still principal horn player.

Or maybe Helene and Corliss just didn’t like Lucy Shadd. Maybe her officiousness annoyed everybody else the way it had got under Madoc’s own skin last night. That was one more thing to think about. He went next door and tried another experimental rap.

Nobody was home. A beautiful dark blue suit with an ever so faint pinstripe was hung with great care over the back of the one wooden chair, a black cashmere overcoat across two hooks on the wall. An initialed calfskin carryall stood beside the chair, an expensive shaving kit and a black homburg hat reposed on the stained and battered dresser top. The bed had been neatly made up, but nobody was lying in it. Madoc cocked an eyebrow and continued his explorations.

The neighboring room was empty of inhabitants but far from unused. Both beds were a mess of rumpled blankets and shed garments. The floor and dresser were strewn with objects ranging from an empty vodka bottle to an old-fashioned shaving brush and mug to a toy wind-up mouse that was a pretty good imitation of the real thing except, of course, for the key in its backside. Madoc didn’t need the two open instrument cases to inform him that this had to be where the trumpeter and the trombonist had set up housekeeping. But where were they?

They weren’t in the room occupied by the sleeping Lucy Shadd and the wide-awake Frieda Loye. Madoc met the flautist’s horrified stare with a reassuring nod.

“Just checking,” he murmured, and backed out, closing the door with exaggerated care, not that he supposed it mattered much.

In the room beyond, he discovered the missing concert-master, slumbering peacefully in a double bed beside the opulent Madame Bellini. Both Monsieur Houdon and his lady were wearing flannel pajamas, silk eyeshades, and fuzzy white earplugs.
L’amour, toujours l’amour.

So by the process of elimination, Delicia Fawn must be at the far end of the hall. And so she was, looking ravishing in her sleep. And so was Steve MacVittie, looking ravished. And so were Cedric Rintoul and Jason Jasper, wearing surgical masks and tiger-striped pajamas with feet in them, standing one on either side of the bed with their instruments raised to the approximate presumed location of their lips.

“Rehearsing a matinatta, gentlemen?” said Madoc politely.

The sound of his voice woke Delicia, and she began to speak. What she said was not nice. It was not genteel, it was not
comme il faut,
and it was just as well her next-door neighbors had their earplugs in. But she got her point across. Boiled down, it amounted to, “You unspeakable persons, get out of here.”

Madoc raised his hand to stem the flow. “Before we leave, Miss Fawn, I should perhaps explain that I’m here in my professional capacity as a detective inspector of the RCMP. My duty at the moment is to investigate a murderous assault which was made a short time ago upon Lucy Shadd, who is occupying the room two doors away from yours. May I ask how long you and Mr. MacVittie have been in one another’s company?”

Steve MacVittie was slowly coming to life. “Assault, huh?” he grunted through a jaw-cracking yawn. “Is that what all the yelling was about down the hall a while back? Yeah, I’ve been here ever since I won the toss. I haven’t had strength enough to leave. But these guys weren’t.”

“We were so, eh,” Rintoul protested. “You just couldn’t see us. We were hiding.”

“Where, for instance?”

MacVittie’s question was a good one. There wasn’t even a closet, just a few hooks screwed into an unpainted board on the wall opposite the bed.

“We were under the bed,” said Jason Jasper.

Madoc stooped and checked. “You were not, Mr. Jasper. This is an old-fashioned coil spring and it sags in the middle. Mr. MacVittie is a big man and Miss Fawn is not puny, either; therefore it sags a good deal. You and Mr. Rintoul are no lightweights yourselves, I may point out. The combined weight of the occupants is pushing the mattress and spring down so low that neither one of you would have been able to crawl underneath, much less the pair of you together. Added to that, the dust under the bed has not been disturbed. Come on, Mr. Jasper, what else have you and your pal been up to? Did you also think it would be a jolly jape to scare Lucy Shadd within an inch of her life?”

“God, no! Why’d we do a thing like that?”

“Perhaps for the same reason that Mr. Rintoul amused himself by tickling Frieda Loye’s neck with a piece of violin string taped to his trombone all through last evening’s concert, knowing full well that Mrs. Loye was subject to screaming nightmares as a result of previous teasing, and would probably wake up everybody tonight with another one.”

With the exception of Monsieur Houdon and Madame Bellini, who’d have been wearing their earplugs, but Madoc saw no reason to go into that. “It was in fact a piece of violin string, was it not, Mr. Rintoul?”

“What’s the big deal about a piece of violin string?” Rintoul was trying to be truculent, but he’d forgotten he still had the surgical mask over his mouth, so he missed his effect. He snatched off the mask and snarled at Madoc.

“And how come this crap about being a Mountie? I thought you were Sir Emlyn’s son.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive, Mr. Rintoul.”

“Lady Rhys told me you worked for the Canadian government.” Jason Jasper sounded like a petulant four-year-old. “In research.”

“That is quite correct, Mr. Jasper. On behalf of the law enforcement branch of the Canadian government, I am at present researching you. Getting back to my question, Mr. Rintoul, was it in fact a piece of violin string you were using to torture Mrs. Loye?”

“I resent the use of me word
torture.
”

Madoc didn’t respond to his resentment, merely stood and waited. Delicia Fawn was in no mood for passivity.

“Cedric, don’t be such a jackass. So what about it, Madoc? Or do we have to call you Inspector now? What’s so important about a hunk of violin string?”

“Call me what you please. What’s important about a violin string is that a piece of one was used by somebody trying to strangle Lucy Shadd. Where did you get your string, Mr. Rintoul?”

“I’m not saying I had one.”

“If you don’t, one of your colleagues will,” Madoc pointed out. “It’s not possible that none of the other members of the orchestra noticed what you were up to. My mother and I could see it quite plainly from where we were sitting. You’ll be hearing from my father on the subject of unprofessional behavior, I expect, but we’re not concerned with that just now. Talk, Mr. Rintoul.”

T
HE TROMBONIST DID A
bit of snorting and snuffling, then shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Oh, all right. What the hell, guys like you couldn’t see a joke if it waltzed up and jumped on their corns. It was a hunk of violin string I found on the floor of the rehearsal room, that’s all.”

“Where is it now?” asked Madoc.

“How the hell do I know? I threw it away.”

“No you didn’t, Ceddie,” Jason Jasper contradicted eagerly. “It’s still in your case. I noticed when you put your instrument away.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“Go and get it, will you please, Mr. Jasper?” Madoc could perfectly well have gone himself, but he felt like staying here and making Rintoul sweat a little more.

Rintoul was shuffling his tiger-striped feet, looking silly and no doubt feeling even sillier. “What’s the big deal?” he mumbled. “I just thought it would be a handy thing to tickle somebody with.”

“The somebody being, of course, Frieda Loye.”

“Sure, because she was the one who happened to be sitting in front of me last night. Big deal! If it hadn’t been Frieda, it would have been somebody else.”

“Who, for instance? A man wouldn’t have felt the tickling through his shirt collar. There weren’t all that many women in the orchestra, and not all their gowns were identically cut. Mrs. Loye wore one that was perfectly designed for tickling, though I don’t suppose she thought of that when she chose it.”

Jasper was back with the trombone case only a few seconds after he’d gone. He must be anxious to make points with the law. Rintoul obviously wasn’t. As for MacVittie and Miss Fawn, Madoc couldn’t tell whether they were even still awake. It must have been quite an audition, but that was none of his business.

“Open the case, please, Mr. Rintoul.”

Grunting something scurrilous under his breath, the musician obeyed. There lay his trombone, gleaming like a horn of gold, still sporting that wisp of whisker at the nethermost curve of its slide. Madoc could see now that it was a stiffish piece of what still looked to him like wire, about four inches long, wound around with darkish blue thread.

“Is this all the string you found, Mr. Rintoul, or did you cut it from a longer piece?”

“I shortened it. What the hell, I only needed a little bit.”

“Just enough to reach from your slide to Mrs. Loye’s collarbone. What did you shorten it with?”

“A little Mickey Mouse jackknife I had in my pocket,” he mumbled. “I always carry it.”

“Along with your exploding cigars and your whoopee cushion, no doubt. And what did you do with the rest of the string?”

“How the hell do I know? I most likely dropped it where I’d found it. Or else I stuck it in the pocket of my tailcoat, in which case it’s still there and you can see it for yourself once we catch up with the wardrobe trunks, if we ever do. So get off my back before I report you to the Musicians’ Union.”

“I don’t come under the jurisdiction of the Musicians’ Union, Mr. Rintoul. Now, since you and Mr. Jasper here were in fact not hiding under Miss Fawn’s bed, when Mrs. Loye and Mrs. Shadd began to scream, where were you?”

“Oh, for God’s sake! We were trying to get a rise out of Delicia, that’s all. Actually, we were in our own room across the hall when we heard the yelling. We thought it was just Frieda having another nightmare.”

“As a result of your harmless little prank last night?”

“Jeez, you never let up on a guy, do you? We were sort of wondering if we ought to get up and do something to quiet her down. Then we heard Lady Rhys coming down the hall so we thought we’d better not butt in. Then you came along.”

“How do you know I did?” asked Madoc. “Were you watching through the keyhole?”

“Cripes, we didn’t have to. The door in our room has a crack in it big enough to put your fist through,” Jasper put in.

“Yeah.” Rintoul mightn’t have wanted to talk, but he wasn’t about to let Jasper take the floor. “So anyway, once we were up it didn’t seem worth going back to bed, so we waited till things had quieted down and you and your mother had gone back up the hall. Then we thought what the hell, we’d drop in and play reveille for Delicia and her new boyfriend. Kind of cheer things up a little, you know. We saw you sneaking into Helene and Corliss’s room and we were going to serenade you next. Only I guess we sort of misjudged what you were going for, eh?”

Madoc was not amused. Rintoul, at last, was abashed.

“What the hell, Inspector, I’m sorry. You think we got a little bit out of line, eh?”

“Tell me something, Mr. Rintoul, do you wear contact lenses?”

Whatever the trombonist had been expecting, this clearly wasn’t it. “Huh? Hell, no. Why should I?”