Troubles in the Brasses

by Charlotte MacLeod

  The two pilots had been persuaded to leave their increasingly frigid aircraft by the warmth of the stove and Lady Rhys’s persuasion, not to mention Delicia Fawn’s. If in fact the soprano was their goal, though, they might be in for a bit of a letdown. Joe Ragovsky, the principal violist, had already confided to Madoc that he’d be well advised not to waste his time, as if he’d been going to anyway.

  “As soon as you got inside the door, she’d hand you a surgical mask and a bottle of some god-awful-tasting antiseptic mouthwash. You’d have to gargle and put on the mask or nothing doing. Delicia comes on strong enough, but when push comes to shove, she thinks a damned sight more of her voice than she does of her men.”

  If any of these chaps still had enough stamina left for a sociable gargle after a night like this one, more power to them, Madoc thought as he waggled the pump handle up and down, up and down.

  His first customer had been the contralto, a comfortably padded woman of forty or so with a spiritual expression, a heavy braid of dark brown hair, and the almost certainly adopted name of Norma Bellini. She hadn’t spoken all evening, as far as he knew, except to say “Dank you” in a low, thrilling tone when he’d filled her pitcher. She’d had the air of somebody who just wanted to take out her hairpins, slip off her shoes, and lie down; and who could blame her?

  The bass was Carlos Pitney. He’d be called a black man, Madoc supposed, though in fact he had nothing black about him except his well-polished shoes. His skin was the color of walnut, his hair a uniform steel-gray, his eyes a lighter shade of brown than Madoc’s own. He was gravely courteous in his demeanor, stately in his address, and quite willing to pump for himself, though he couldn’t get the knack of the quick little jerk at the top of the upswing which made all the difference between a gush and a hollow gurgle.

  The tenor, on the other hand, made no effort to lift a finger but chatted pleasantly enough about what a pity it was that Madoc’s brother Dafydd had not succeeded in attaining the pinnacle of excellence which he himself had mastered in some particular aspect of vocalization. As far as Madoc was concerned, the man might as well have been talking Choctaw.

  He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, no doubt taking it for granted that Madoc would know the name of anyone famous enough to sing for Sir Emlyn. Madoc had found out easily enough from Delicia Fawn, who’d dropped by to get some gargling water and to find out whether Madoc might care to reconsider. The man was Ainsworth Kight, he was older than he looked, his impressive head of chestnut-colored hair was mostly toupee, and he’d never even made it to the semifinals. Ainsworth was as good a singer as he said he was, though, so none of the rest mattered.

  The two brasses came together, one with the pitcher and one with a water pistol that needed filling. The obnoxious Cedric Rintoul did not become less so on closer acquaintance. The principal trumpeter, Jason Jasper, didn’t impress Madoc all that favorably, either, even though he offered to show Madoc his impressive collection of whoopee cushions if they ever reconnected with the wardrobe trunks. Nothing was supposed to go into those trunks except the clothes worn for performances, but obviously a good many extraneous articles did, and some necessities didn’t. Madoc remembered that onstage Jasper had been wearing black socks pulled over his tan shoes and a white tie deftly folded out of toilet paper: He hadn’t been the only orchestra member in makeshift attire; Madoc had gathered they didn’t do it to be funny.

  Jacques-Marie Houdon, the concertmaster, had been impeccable onstage, and still was. He took his filled pitcher, nodded affably, and went away. Joe Ragovsky, the violist, a likeable chap from the wheat fields of Manitoba, offered to pump and succeeded. Joe even pumped for the cellist. This was Helene Dufresne, whom Lady Rhys had alluded to as a most agreeable woman even if she did walk bow-legged, as cello players tended to do. Tonight Miss Dufresne had on a voluminous gray wool dirndl and floppy leather boots, so Madoc couldn’t tell much about her walk, but he assumed his mother was right. She generally was.

  Frieda Loye, the flautist, gave Madoc a nervous little smile and gasped, “Oh, that’s enough. You mustn’t bother about me,” when her pitcher was less than halfway filled. The clarinetist, Corliss Blair, settled for a mug since she was to share Helene Dufresne’s room and hence her pitcher. The oboist didn’t come to be pumped, but Joe Ragovsky said his name was David Gabriel and they’d be bunking together.

  Sir Emlyn and Lady Rhys would share a room, of course. The self-sacrificing Lucy Shadd was apparently going to take on Frieda Loye and her nightmares as part of the job. The two brass players would be together, as would the two male singers and the two pilots. Theoretically, that meant the concertmaster and Norma Bellini would have rooms to themselves, since it didn’t seem likely that the contralto would care for a ménage à trois with Delicia Fawn and whoever might have won the toss tonight.

  That would appear to take up the ten rooms, with none left over for Madoc Rhys. However, this would not be the case, according to the informative Mr. Ragovsky, since Monsieur Houdon would in fact be paying his respectful attentions to Madame Bellini although nobody was supposed to notice. The way things looked right now, there’d probably be at least one spare bed in the pilots’ room, too.

  While the rest got themselves sorted out upstairs, Madoc occupied himself building a fire in the big kitchen range, filling the hot-water reservoir on the back, and setting a copper washtub of water on top. That should be enough for the morning ablutions. He put more wood in the lobby stove, shut down the dampers, and went to seek what rest he might obtain.

  By now, it was getting on toward five A.M., or not as the case might be. Four or three, maybe, according to how many time zones they’d been blown across. The Grumman most likely had not yet been reported overdue, its flying time was probably longer than a commercial plane’s. The train wouldn’t be due in for ages yet. There was nobody out here to report a downed aircraft without any lights; nobody would be looking for them.

  Back in Fredericton, Janet and Annabelle would be thinking about getting up even though they didn’t have to; they were both early risers by habit. They’d sit a long time over the breakfast table, planning their day, talking family, catching up on Pitcherville gossip, of which there was never any dearth. They’d go over again the details of the cozy chat they’d had last night with Madoc and his parents.

  Madoc was humbly thankful his Jenny would have that to think about instead of a phone call from some reporter wanting to know the details of the crash and how it felt to be a widow. She’d feel a little bit let down if he didn’t call her again tonight, but she wouldn’t really start to worry for another day or so.

  He found a room with sagging twin beds and nobody in either one of them, shed the three-piece tweed suit he’d been wearing to placate his mother, and wished he’d had the foresight to bring a separate overnight case as all the other passengers appeared to have done. He could borrow Tad’s shaving things in the morning, and perhaps even a change of linen. Keeping his socks and underwear on, he wrapped himself in a couple of itchy blankets and stretched out on one of the beds. Luck was with him; he got almost a full hour’s sleep before the screeching began.

  “My God, what’s that?”

  The voice was not his own. In the grayness of almost-dawn, Madoc was interested to see that he’d acquired a roommate. MacVittie must have won the semifinals; Ed Naxton was in the other bed looking startled, as well he might. The noise was dreadful.

  “As an educated guess, I’d say it’s our flautist having her customary nightmare,” Madoc explained. “My father told me Mrs. Loye puts on quite a turn when she gets going.”

  “I’ll say she does. Sounds like a pig getting its throat cut.”

  With the speed of much practice, Madoc was already into shirt, coat, and trousers. “I’ll go. My mother seems to have elected me general handyman.”

  Grateful that he’d opted to keep his socks on against the desperate chill of the mountain night, he slid his feet into his shoes and tied the laces. The lamp
he’d brought to light the narrow upstairs hallway was still feebly aglow, doing its small best against the approaching daylight. Madoc knew just how it felt. Why couldn’t the confounded woman have taken to insomnia instead of nightmares?

  He was not the first on the scene. Lady Rhys had beaten him by a whisker, surprisingly colorful in a long robe of russet, green, and yellow velour. Madoc supposed she must sometimes get sick of all that black. She was standing over another twin bed like the one Madoc had just got out of, shaking a slender woman by the shoulders.

  “Frieda, wake up and quit screaming. You sound like a runaway train. Sir Emlyn needs his sleep, you know.”

  “Mother,” Madoc said gently, “that’s not Frieda.”

  Lady Rhys groped among her gaudy swathings for the ever-present silver chain around her neck, found her Victorian silver lorgnette somewhere along the line, and flicked it open. “Why, so it isn’t. Lucy, whatever is the matter with you?”

  “I—he—water, please!” The voice was croaky and almost incoherent.

  “Madoc, get her some water. He what, Lucy? Who did? Here, drink this.” She held the thick mug Madoc had filled from the pitcher to the hysterical woman’s lips. “Now then, what’s this all about?”

  “My throat. He—”

  Lucy Shadd wasn’t shrieking anymore, but her roommate was.

  “Madoc, go get that lamp,” his mother ordered. “Quickly. Frieda, stop making those ghastly noises. Do you need some water, too?”

  Frieda cut herself off in mid-yelp. “Lucy woke me up.” She made the accusation in something of a self-satisfied tone, as if it were a triumph for her not to have been the waker this time.

  “But you were screaming right along with her,” Lady Rhys pointed out.

  “I was screaming at Lucy to tell me why she was screaming.”

  “You were not!” cried Lucy. “You were screaming at him, too. You were just as scared as I was.”

  “Was I? I don’t remember being scared. Him who?”

  “I don’t know.” Lucy fell back in exhaustion upon her sleepless pillow. “I’m sorry, Lady Rhys. It was too awful.”

  “What was?”

  “Being strangled. If Frieda hadn’t begun to yowl and frightened him off, he’d have killed me. He meant to, I could feel it. You saved my life, Frieda, truly you did.”

  “Did I really? I’m so glad, Lucy. What—what did he do?”

  “He put something around my neck and pulled it tight. I could feel it cutting into my skin. I suppose I must have made some kind of noise. I don’t know. It woke me up, the pain and choking. Then you piped up and I felt the thing slacken and he ran off.”

  “He who?” Madoc prodded. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “No, everything was blurry. I think he’d put something over his face. One of those stocking masks. You know.”

  “But you’re sure it was a man?”

  “It must have been. His hands were so strong.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” said Lady Rhys. “All instrumentalists have strong hands, they exercise them so much. You of all people ought to know that, Lucy. Bring the lamp closer, Madoc, so I can get a look at her throat.”

  Madoc’s younger, keener eyes had already taken note of the thin line around Lucy Shadd’s none too swanlike throat. Fishline, he thought, remembering that small but effective instrument of torture he’d seen attached to Cedric Rintoul’s trombone during the performance. That had been sadistic enough, but this was something else. He was not yet sure what.

  “Mrs. Shadd,” he said, “would you mind sitting up, or at least rolling over so we can see the back of your neck?”

  She obeyed without question. The red line was there, too.

  “You say the garrote was already around your neck when you woke up?”

  “Yes, it was. Don’t make me say it again!” Her voice was rising.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Shadd. I know this is unpleasant for you. I’m just trying to understand how the would-be strangler managed to get his line all the way around your neck without waking you. You would have been lying down with your head on the pillow, would you?”

  “Yes, certainly. I don’t sleep standing up. I suppose the answer is that I was totally exhausted and it took something really drastic to wake me. You must remember, Mr. Rhys, that I’d been stuck for the past several days with the orchestra manager’s job as well as my own, which is taxing enough at the best of times. I’ve had a tremendous lot of responsibility and very little rest. And last night wasn’t exactly peaceful, with that awful business about Wilhelm and having to get the orchestra off. Not to mention just missing a plane crash. That was the closest brush I’d had with death until just now, and I have to say two in one night are a bit much.”

  “We quite understand,” said Lady Rhys. “Now you’d better just lie there and try to get some more sleep. Don’t worry, Lucy, we’ll make sure nothing else happens to you. I have some tablets, if you’d like something to calm you down.”

  “I haven’t got time to be calm. What about the bath-water?”

  “It’s all taken care of,” Madoc told her. “You’d better take the tablet. You’ll be no good to anybody if you wear yourself out completely.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. Who’s going to manage the breakfast?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lucy,” Frieda protested, “quit trying to be Superwoman. You can’t even boil an egg, you said so yourself.”

  “I’ll get a tablet,” said Lady Rhys, and the matter was settled.

  It was odd, Madoc thought, that still none of the others had come to see what the screaming was about. They must all be more used to Frieda Loye’s nightmares than he’d have thought possible. But as Lucy Shadd had just pointed out, the lot of them had been through a colleague’s sudden death and a near-crash after a hard evening’s work and half a night of travel. Maybe their disinclination to leave their hard-won beds wasn’t so strange, at that. While his mother went for the tablets, he took up the lamp and started nosing around for what he might discover. It didn’t take him two seconds to spot the length of thin wire thrown down beside the bed.

  “That’s not just wire,” Frieda said when he held it up. “It’s a violin string. An A-string, I should say, but I’m no authority. Joe or Helen could tell you. Or Monsieur Houdon, I suppose, if you had nerve enough to ask him.”

  “Oh, I’m a nervy sort of fellow,” Madoc assured her. “Are violin strings hard to get hold of?”

  “Not particularly. Stores that sell musical instruments have them. Or you can send away for them, or borrow one in a pinch. String players always carry extras. One can break or go false on you and have to be replaced.”

  “What happens to the broken ones? Can they be mended?”

  “Oh no, that wouldn’t be worthwhile. They just get thrown away. Unless a person took a notion to twist them into flowerpot hangers or something. I must say I’ve never heard of anybody who did. Strings are no big deal, Mr. Rhys. I’ve bought them often enough myself, as a favor.”

  Frieda Loye emitted an odd little snort of laughter. “I remember years and years ago, when I was still at the conservatory. I was waiting for a bus to go to the music store. I had a bunch of errands for some of the crowd and when the bus pulled in, this girl who’d stopped to talk with me yelled, ‘Don’t forget my G-string.’ Everybody looked at us as if we must be a couple of strippers or something. I was so embarrassed, I got off the bus before my stop. You do silly things when you’re young. And sometimes when you’re old enough to know better, too.”

  She sounded awfully bitter. Madoc wondered what she’d done that was so foolish; however, it could hardly be germane to the matter at hand.

  “You saw nothing of this intruder?”

  “No, nothing at all. As Lucy says, we’d had an exhausting trip and I was glad to get to bed. I just wish I’d been able to sleep longer; I feel like a worn-out dishrag. Though naturally I’m glad I woke up in time to save Lucy’s life,” Frieda added in an al
most laughably polite little-girl voice.

  “It’s funny I didn’t see him go out, though,” she went on. “He must have been awfully quick. Maybe I did see him and just don’t remember. I could be in one of those fugue states Freud used to go on about. Do I mean Freud? I read something once he wrote about a boy who’d been scared by a rooster. Unless I’m thinking of somebody else. I’m not much of a reader, I have to admit. Except music, of course.”

  “When you read music, do you wear glasses?”

  “If you mean do I need glasses to see, why don’t you say so? I’m not particularly thin-skinned, you know. One can’t be, working with an orchestra. Yes, I need glasses and so does Lucy. We both wear contacts. What do you want to bet the reason everything looked blurry to her is that she just didn’t have her contacts in? Lucy’s eyes are much worse than mine,” Frieda added rather smugly.

  “That’s right, Frieda.” Lucy spoke wearily, as if her throat was bothering her a good deal. “I’m so used to my contacts that I just didn’t remember having taken them out. I must be even more exhausted than I thought I was. First Wilhelm, then the plane, now this. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

  “You don’t have to take anything, Lucy. Except this.” Lady Rhys was back with the tablets. “They’re quite mild, really. It’s just to help you get back to sleep. Madoc, pour her some more water. Frieda, don’t you think perhaps you ought to take one, too?”

  “Here? In this room?”

  “Now Frieda, you don’t honestly believe that chap would dare to come again in broad daylight? But I’ll sit right here with you if you’re nervous.”

  The flautist appeared to find Lady Rhys’s offer more nervous-making than the prospect of a return visit from the strangler. “No, really, Lady Rhys, I couldn’t think of putting you to the trouble. I’ll be all right. I can always scream if anything happens. I’m good at that, you know.”