‘Yes,’ was chorused meekly by all the members of the band but one. Myrtle Midwynter had her hand over her husband’s mouth, to stifle the protest that she knew he was about to make. She didn’t want him rocking the boat this early on and, basically, Dashwood was right. They had used the band as a social club, and now they were going to have to pay the price of laziness and lack of practice, whatever Myles or anyone else thought. It was time to take their medicine like good children.
II
Harry Falconer had learnt, over the past week, not to leave around anything paper, for Cadence had a passion for shredding anything made of this fascinating stuff. Her formal introduction to the others had not been as bad as he had feared, but there had been a good deal of hissing and spitting over the week, and if one of the others walked within paw’s reach of the newcomer, she never missed the opportunity to biff them one.
It was the paper that was the biggest problem, however. He’d only suffered that once before, with the other three, and it had been an isolated incident, as far as he was concerned. With Cadence, it was a passion, and since she had arrived, he had lost every newspaper he had carelessly discarded, his copy of the Radio Times, and three paperback novels.
Realising that the little treasure wasn’t going to suddenly cease her beloved game, he now kept his current newspaper and television guide in a drawer of his desk, and made sure he confined his other reading matter either to the bedroom or behind the glass doors of a wall unit.
Today, he came home with a spring in his step, believing that everything had gone reasonably smoothly, and his last problem seemed to be under control. It was, therefore, with a light heart, that he inserted his key in the door and let himself in, hoping that there would be, perhaps, four happy felines rushing to welcome him home.
Instead, there was a complete absence of a welcoming party, but still he was not suspicious. Perhaps they were out in the garden soaking up the sun, or chasing insects with the determined absorption in their mission that they always displayed when a bug or a butterfly attracted their attention.
They weren’t! He opened the living room door on to a positively Alpine scene. The whole room was covered in a layer of paper snow that was so realistic it almost made him shiver.
What the hell had happened? He’d hidden all the paper items that he could think of. Where on earth had all this paper confetti appeared from? The only thing that it could possibly be – and here he bent to pick up a small handful to confirm his fears – was the twenty-four pack of his favourite toilet rolls, which had been on special offer when he had done a little shopping, after leaving the office the previous evening.
But he’s put them upstairs, safely in the bathroom, hadn’t he? And he’d shut the bathroom door; he remembered doing it as part of his ‘save the paper’ fund, knowing that toilet paper would prove a superb challenge, even if it was just the one roll that hung from its holder on the wall. How could that cat – and he knew it was that cat – get into the bathroom? It was a ‘mission impossible’ situation.
Taking several deep breaths, he curbed his rising temper, and walked briskly up the stairs. He had noticed Mycroft, Ruby, and Tar Baby peering out of the kitchen doorway, but had ignored them, as part of their punishment. At the top of the stairs, the main culprit was caught bang to rights, still with a half-unravelled roll of paper in her mouth, and shaking it too and fro, as she growled it into submission.
‘You little beast!’ he exclaimed. ‘How on earth did you get into the bathroom to get that lot out?’ But Cadence ignored him, still intent on killing her prey.
With only the very slightest suspicion that he had not closed the bathroom door firmly enough, Falconer leaned over and pulled it tight shut. That got Cadence’s attention, and she turned to the door, leapt up, caught the handle with her front paws, and hung from it until it unlatched, then gave it a little push with her head, and returned to what she had been doing before she was so rudely interrupted.
So engrossed was she, that she had not even noticed Falconer, nor heard his voice when he had spoken. She did this time, though, for he raised it to a shout of disbelief. ‘You can open doors! Nobody told me you were a cat thief. Get down from here and give me the chance to clean up, you little home-wrecker.’
By the time he had finished speaking, the cat had ceased her play, realised that she had been rumbled, and shot off down the stairs with all the hairs on her tail fluffed out in trepidation.
Downstairs, in the living room, the wall that housed the fireplace had been faced with stone, and when Falconer looked over the banisters at her, she made a jump of panic for this wall, and effortlessly climbed her way to the ceiling.
‘S-H-I-T!’ he ejaculated, but rather more quietly than he had spoken before. How, in the name of all that’s holy, was he going to get her down from there? And did he have enough black bags to collect up the shredded remains of twenty-four triple-thick quilted toilet rolls?
III
Saturday 3rd July
Several members of the band met in The Leathern Bottle on Saturday evening, some by accident, others by arrangement, but the result was, nevertheless, the same. Most of them were gathered round two tables pulled together for that purpose, and were giving their candid opinions of Dashwood’s new regime.
‘This’ll only be the beginning; mark my words. He’ll have us in military-style uniforms, and marching to the beat of his drum in no time at all. I can’t believe the way he exploded when he found me and Gayle having a bit of a ‘jam’ when he arrived at the hall.
‘You’d think he’d be glad to see anyone playing their instrument outside official rehearsal hours, wouldn’t you?’ complained Vanessa Palfreyman.
‘He’s already banned our lovely chatty pre-rehearsal meals, and the wine, and now he’s going to split us up into little groups for the first hour, for intensive practice.’ Myrtle Midwynter was just as furious as Vanessa.
‘But you did us proud with that buffet afterwards,’ piped up Geraldine Warwick.
‘That’s not the point,’ continued Myrtle. ‘Last night wasn’t fun. He’s taken all the joy out of it. Myles and I always used to look forward to band practice, and now we’re dreading the next one.’
‘Well, at least you didn’t get singled out like I did,’ Geraldine Warwick chipped in again. When he asked me why I didn’t have a part for ‘Cornelius’, I nearly died with embarrassment. I couldn’t even pretend that I’d mislaid it, because he’d expect it to turn up sometime.’
‘There was no way I could get out of telling him that Mrs Farr couldn’t write parts. I know she was very good with her own stuff, but she played the clarinet, and I’d have needed a part in C. She just didn’t have the self-confidence to have a look at the flute part, and see if she could do something to harmonise with that. I really, really couldn’t help but tell the truth. I hope you understand.’
‘Don’t let it worry you, Geraldine,’ comforted Myles Midwynter. ‘It won’t reflect on you badly. I’ve been the one responsible for this band, in the main, as I – well, Myrtle and I – started it. Dashwood will probably just put another cross by my name, deeming it incompetence on my part, that I put a Musical Director in charge who couldn’t deal with writing parts, or arranging music. You wait and see – it’ll all be my fault in the end. I know how the mind of someone like him works.’
‘And I thought we were getting rather good at the old ‘Teddy Bears’,’ commented Fern Bailey, who had played her little heart out on her viola the previous evening.
‘Not with that old fart, Cameron McKnight, on first violin,’ opined Harold Grimes, who had arrived, uninvited, on the arm of Gayle Potten.
‘Don’t be such a bastard, Harold. When he finds out that you still have to write in the notes, he’s going to throw a hairy fit,’ retorted Gayle.
Harold chuckled, envisaging the moment in the future when this would come out, rubbed his hands together with glee, and replied, ‘Oh, I can hardly wait to see his face. What a picture that’l
l be. And he can stick his rehearsing in our ‘musical groups’ where the sun don’t shine. I’m damned if I’m sitting in a little room all on my own for the first hour.’
‘I’ll be there. Don’t forget, we told him to get lost about splitting us up, last night,’ Lester Westlake, the saxophonist, reminded him.
‘That’s true,’ Harold replied, his aggression suddenly evaporating.
‘You don’t normally come in here, do you Harold?’ asked Wendy Burnett, the oboist, a petite, precise and pernickety woman, fast approaching the age at which life is said to begin. If anything out of the usual happened, she could not resist the temptation to find out why.
‘Harold came with me,’ answered Gayle Potten, Harold’s current squeeze, though no one could understand what she saw in him. ‘We usually go to The Clocky Hen – there’s a bit more life up there. They’ve got a jukebox, and live music some weekends, but it would seem that things are much more interesting in here tonight, and when Myrtle rang up and asked me to come along, I decided to bring Harold with me. After all, I’ve got to have someone to buy my drinks for me, haven’t I?’
This got a laugh, and when the table had settled down again, Myles had an expression on his face that suggested that a light bulb had just been switched on over his head – one of the old fashioned ones that suddenly bursts forth with light, not one of the new energy-saving bulbs that seem to take forever to produce more than ten watts. How on earth was one to surprise a burglar or, more probably, ones teenaged children up to mischief, if one could not surprise them with sudden and immediate light?
‘I’ve had an idea, guys. The gang’s nearly all here. Why don’t we go back to our place and have a proper session. The outhouse is stacked with wine, and we could have a real old bitch about that dipstick, Dashwood,’ suggested Myles, twirling the ends of his fine moustache, mischief glinting in his eyes.
Myrtle was in full agreement. Come on everybody,’ she encouraged them. ‘We can phone the others from our place, then we can have a good old moan, like Myles said, about our pocket Hitler. If we can get it out of our systems on a weekly basis, we should be able to put up with that old tosser until this concert’s over, then we can give him the old heave-ho, and get back to the way things were.’
This was greeted with such an enthusiastic cheer, that everyone else in the pub looked round to see what on earth was going on, only to see the occupants of the two joined tables rise and exit without a word of farewell, obviously on a mission.
It was a good session, and by the end of it, one action of defiance and protest was planned for the following Friday evening – nothing drastic; just a little demonstration of their resentment at Dashwood’s ‘control freak’ changes to the normal rhythm [!] of proceedings.
IV
It had taken Harry Falconer some considerable time to coax Cadence down from her precarious perch on his wall, just below the level of the ceiling. That done, he set to in clearing up the papery mess she had made. On reflection, he decided that she couldn’t have done it all on her own. There had been one occasion, in the recent past, when the other three cats had decided to shred a translation from Greek that he had worked like the very devil over one evening, and then forgotten to put away when he went to bed.
That had seemed like a lot of work for just that, but compared to the sheer volume of shredded (triple-thick and quilted, as it was) paper he faced tonight, it had been a drop in the ocean. By the time he had gathered up every piece to his satisfaction, then vacuumed most thoroughly, it was past ten o’clock, and he hadn’t had even a bite to eat.
Well, that was all to the good. If he had to throw together something quickly, it would be baked beans on toast, with lashings of brown sauce slathered all over the top of it. He hadn’t worked out what wine went best with this, his guilty secret of a meal, so he decided, in the end, that a big mug (he usually used china cups and saucers) of strong tea would be the perfect accompaniment to such a feast as this.
At ten-thirty, he was rummaging around in a box in his garage, searching for a number of little anti-Cadence devices that he was determined to fit before going to bed. At last! There they were! He extracted from the box, a packet containing little hooks on the end of a short arm, and little horseshoe nails. He would fit one of each of these pairs to the doors of the rooms he didn’t want the cat to gain access to, and then he could hook them up, so that no amount of jumping up at the handle could open them. That was the only way he would get a good night’s sleep, and not be kept awake for most of the night listening for furtive little forays to raid the upstairs rooms for more deliciously fun paper.
It was midnight, when he finally retired to bed, having fitted a hook on the inside of his bedroom door as well as the outside. He didn’t want Cadence wandering in here in the wee small hours, and having a go at all his books. Thus reassured, he slept like a log until about half-past five, when the most distressing chorus of howls and near-human screams rent the depths of his sleep asunder.
He sat bolt upright in bed and listened, trying to identify what the hell was making all the noise. He could hear that there were cats involved, but what was that dreadful other noise. What the hell had they got downstairs? Had they caught something and brought it in for a little play before they killed it?
He could stand it no longer, and leapt out of bed, without donning either his dressing gown or his slippers, and faltered at the first obstacle. His door wouldn’t open! Realisation dawned within a second or two, that he had locked the door from the inside with one of his little hook and eye affairs and, feeling a right nelly, he exited the room and raced down the stairs, to break up whatever was going on in his living room at such an hour of the morning.
As anyone with a number of cats will have already realised, the ‘screaming’ was, in reality, only two very angry cats shouting into each other’s faces, each with tails all fluffed up, trying to look fiercer than the other. As he descended, the spectators – in this case, Tar Baby and Ruby, suddenly joined the fray, and the fight turned into one with four combatants.
‘Stop this nonsense at once!’ Falconer commanded, in his best army voice. As this order echoed round the room, the four feline figures became absolutely frozen then, as if at a signal, turned as a pack and ran into the kitchen, from whence he could hear the cat flap flapping backwards and forwards, as all the miscreants made their exit to safety, in the garden.
There was fluff everywhere! He’d have to get up a bit earlier – that is, if he ever got back to sleep again – and vacuum again in the morning. If life was this difficult with cats, what on earth must it be like with children? he wondered, and he determined to ask Carmichael about this when he next saw him.
Chapter Three
Friday 9th July
I
At six o’clock, all the members of the band were assembled in The Leathern Bottle, instruments and all, although this didn’t matter too much, as they were about the only customers at such an early hour. At a busier time of day, this would have been impossible.
‘So, what’ll you all have? The first round is on me,’ offered Myles Midwynter, generously. He was really looking forward to band rehearsal, for the first time since Dashwood had taken over. ‘No, Gwendolyn, you cannot have an orange juice, unless you let me put a vodka in it. We need a united front here, and I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to smell everyone’s breath when we get there. We don’t want any scabs in this band. We must present a united front, mustn’t we?’
‘OK, Myles,’ agreed Gwendolyn meekly, clutching her violin case close to her chest, as if it could confer the comfort of a childhood teddy bear.
Spread around the bar, some leaning on it, others just resting their drinks on it, there was the shared feeling of a bunch of children doing something naughty, knowing they were going to be found out, but simply not caring. It was the camaraderie of the prison camp – us against them, or him, in this case; their combined wits against his.
‘My round!’ called Lester Westlake,
and called for the barman to replicate what Myles had ordered.
By the time that the hands of the pub clock reached five to seven, they had had four drinks apiece – even Gwendolyn – and were ready to face anything that Dashwood could throw at them.
‘Come on, you lot! Let’s go and make that old bugger’s life a misery,’ bellowed Harold, well-mellowed by now, with the four drinks he had had at the pub, and the three he had managed to throw down his throat before he left home.
‘Not so unsubtle, old chap,’ advised Myles. ‘Softly, softly, catchy monkey. We’ll not be too rebellious tonight – just show him, quietly but firmly, whose band this really is. Agreed, everybody?’
‘Agreed!’ said everyone, and they marched out of the pub in a body, and headed down the road to the new village meeting rooms, determination writ large on their faces.
II
It was an impertinent four minutes past seven when they reached the new village meeting rooms, and Dashwood was standing in the main entrance, hands on hips, a confrontational expression on his face.
‘What time do you call this, then?’ he called across to them as they approached, pointedly holding his watch in front of his face and tapping it with one stubby finger. ‘Seven o’clock on the dot, I said, and here it is, already – five past now. That is sloppy in the extreme. In fact, you should be here fifteen minutes early to set everything out, and be ready to start playing at seven.’
‘Give it a rest, will you? We’re here now, and if you stop gassing at us, we’ll be ready to start a lot quicker than if we stand out here being lectured by you.’ Myles was feeling in a particularly rebellious mood, and vented his feelings, inhibitions shed, in the rosy glow of alcohol that surrounded not just him but all of them.
‘If you would be kind enough to go inside, you will notice that I have labelled the rooms for the different sections of the instruments, and put the appropriate number of chairs in them. I should be grateful’ (here, Dashwood really was holding his temper at bay with difficulty) ‘if you would find which room you are in. Inside, you will find your part for a new piece of music, which I would like you to perform during the concert.
Music to Die For (The Falconer Files Book 6) Page 4