Murder in G Major (A Gethsemane Brown Mystery Book 1)

by Alexia Gordon

  “About forty-five percent of winning musicians are offered scholarships to conservatories or music programs. About twenty percent of musicians in winning orchestras go on to professional music careers. And the event pumps about half a million euros into the host village’s economy.”

  “A big deal,” Gethsemane said as much to herself as to Francis.

  Francis scuffed his shoe. “Of all the years to invite Peter Nolan to judge.”

  Gethsemane forgot the bacon. “Peter Nolan?”

  “Peter Nolan, the executive director—”

  “Of the Boston Philharmonia, the preeminent orchestra in the eastern United States. What’s Peter Nolan doing judging a high school orchestra competition?”

  “Slumming.”

  “Oh, stop it. I don’t care how important the All-County is to Dunmullach or to all of western Ireland, for that matter. Peter Nolan judging a high school battle of the honors bands is like Julia Child judging a barbeque battle. Which, before you say anything, people in my part of the world take seriously.”

  “Or sort of like the winner of the Fleischer Prize teaching music to school lads.”

  Gethsemane bit back her un-ladylike response.

  “Peter Nolan must get a gazillion requests to judge competitions. Why this one?”

  “Dunmullach’s Nolan’s hometown. His nephew, Colm, is in the orchestra. Plays strings.”

  Rumors flew in the classical music world about Peter Nolan looking for a new music director for the Philharmonia. Why not her? She liked Boston: history, culture, clam chowder. She’d worked hard her whole life to succeed where people told her she didn’t belong because she was the wrong race or the wrong gender. She’d climbed to the heights of her profession. She deserved Boston.

  “Dr. Brown?”

  “What? Sorry, I was someplace else.”

  “If you’re dreaming about catching the next train out of town, it leaves Thursday at half-nine in the morning.”

  “Actually, I was wondering whether the All-County judges would prefer a concerto or a symphony.”

  Francis shoved his hands in his pockets. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and find a long-lost Eamon McCarthy composition hidden in a book. Or maybe you can summon his ghost and have him whip up a brand new piece for you.”

  Francis tromped off along the colonnade. Maybe he was on to something.

  Gethsemane got lost twice between the dining hall and the music room, arriving just as the bell rang to signal the start of the period. Fifteen pairs of eyes stared at her and fifteen voices fell silent as soon as she opened the door.

  Gethsemane took a deep breath. She had this. She’d performed before New York Times’ music critics at the Lincoln Center. She could handle teenagers. Look confident. Step into the room.

  “Hi. My name is Dr. Gethsemane Brown. I’m your new music teacher.”

  A pencil dropped, a chair scraped, but no one spoke. More seconds passed. Gethsemane opened her mouth to ask for the roll book when a boy on the front row stood up.

  “Welcome to Introduction to Music, Dr. Brown.”

  She examined the boy: Titian red hair, about sixteen years old, taller than her, stocky, somewhere between boyish and manly with hints of muscle starting to replace what had likely been fat before testosterone kicked in. She asked his name.

  “Aengus Toibin.”

  “Well, Mr. Toibin, if you’re supposed to be in Introduction to Music you’d better leave and come back third period.” She walked to the chalkboard. “This,” she said as she wrote, “is Intermediate Music Theory.”

  Another boy, about the same age and height as the first, rose. He stood blond and lithe and beautiful, with eyes greener than Grennan’s, the sort of boy from whom parents tried—and failed—to keep their daughters. “Stop acting the maggot.”

  The redhead sat down and flashed a smile any crocodile would have envied.

  The blond boy addressed Gethsemane. “He knows what class this is. And his name’s not Aengus, it’s Feargus. That’s Aengus.” He nodded at a third boy, the redhead’s identical twin.

  “And you are?” Gethsemane asked the blond. He reminded Gethsemane of someone.

  “I’m Colm Nolan, Head Boy.” He pointed to a shiny enameled pin on the lapel of his uniform jacket.

  Peter Nolan’s nephew. Dangerous good looks ran in the family.

  Colm continued talking. “Feargus is Deputy Head Boy and he thinks he’s funny.”

  Gethsemane noticed a similar pin on Feargus’s jacket. She remembered a book she’d read about a Head Boy and his deputy. Vicious bullies put on trial for driving a younger boy to suicide. She clenched her jaw. Teaching teenaged schoolboys was going to be almost as much fun as defending her dissertation to a hungover committee head who’d lost his tenure and his wife in the same week. Almost.

  Gethsemane read the lunch menu posted near the cafeteria: Battered cod portions, carrot batons, vegetable curry, rice, and fruit salad. No wonder the boys behaved badly. Dyspepsia.

  “The cod’s not bad.” She recognized Francis Grennan’s voice. He stood behind her, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his wrinkled khakis. “Avoid the vegetable curry like the plague.”

  His earlier remark about trains leaving town came to mind. “Transportation options, dietary advice. You’re a one-man information bureau.”

  “I deserved that,” the math teacher said. “But I’ve been in Dunmullach my whole life and at St. Brennan’s through half a dozen music directors. History tends to repeat itself in this village.”

  “I’d be lying,” she conceded, “if I claimed the chance to impress Peter Nolan enough to offer me a job back in the States didn’t excite me or if I pretended I didn’t take this job because it paid better than open mic contests at the pub. But,” she forced certainty into her voice, “now I’m here, I don’t intend to lose.”

  “The legendary American self-confidence. Lunch line’s this way.” Francis disappeared into the crowd before Gethsemane could figure out if he’d insulted her or complimented her.

  She followed him through the serving area to the faculty dining table. She sat across from him and introduced herself to the other teachers.

  “Bit of a boys’ club,” Francis said. “You’re one-fourth of the female faculty.”

  Gethsemane hid her carrots under the clumped rice. If the vegetable curry was worse…

  Francis continued. “The women formed a ‘ladies only’ book club. A show of solidarity. I think they’re reading that true-crime about the McCarthy case this month. You might be interested, given your current lodgings.”

  “Or not. The book’s garbage.” She stabbed the sole cherry amongst her fruit chunks. “Sensationalized distortions of fact propped up by rumor and innuendo.”

  “Such passion. One would think you knew the McCarthys personally.”

  One of them, anyway. Or, at least, his ghost. A snarky, demanding, irritatingly charming ghost who, in one meeting, had convinced her of his innocence. She wished, she admitted with a guilty twinge, she could help prove it. “Not personally. I was eleven when they died. But I know Eamon, through his music, as well as I know my name. He’s—he was—no murderer.”

  “While you’re up at Carraigfaire maybe you’ll uncover a clue to the real killer hidden in some dusty tome and convince Iollan O’Reilly to open one of his cold cases.”

  Iollan O’Reilly. The cop Eamon told her to go to. Was Francis joking? She searched the math teacher’s emerald eyes for signs of mirth. Inscrutable. She couldn’t figure him. Cynical and curmudgeonly one minute, solicitous the next. She took O’Reilly’s name coming up as an omen and decided to play it straight. “You know Inspector O’Reilly? What’s he like?”

  “Sound fella. Straight-laced, serious about his work. Good to have at your back in a fight. Why? You’re not really
going to ask him to re-open the McCarthy case?”

  Spooky. Like her father. Or was she so obvious? “Just—curious. His name came up somewhere.”

  “If you hurry you might be able to satisfy your ‘curiosity’ and catch him on campus. He dates the English teacher and usually has—lunch—with her in the Shakespeare garden.”

  Gethsemane cocked her head. This guy puzzled her more than the quadratic equation.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Never mind. Thanks for the tip, Grennan.”

  She tossed the remains of her lunch and hurried from the dining hall. She crossed playing fields dotted with students enjoying afternoon break on her way down to the brick-walled Eden halfway between the main campus and the boathouse.

  Espaliered fruit trees lined the perimeter. Manicured boxwoods taller than Gethsemane and gravel paths divided the space into quadrants around a central fountain. No visible sign of anyone. Voices, a man’s and a woman’s, rose from the other side of a hedge. The woman sounded angry. “You always say the same thing, Iollan.”

  Iollan. Inspector O’Reilly. Gethsemane hesitated, then leaned her ear toward the hedge. It wasn’t really eavesdropping. The garden was a public place. You couldn’t argue in public and expect privacy.

  The woman’s volume rose. “Why does work always come before me? Four months we’re together and you’ve canceled as many dates as you’ve kept. When do I get to be a priority?”

  “You have to understand,” O’Reilly pled. “Work’s diabolical. Hundreds of open cases in the archives.”

  “By now you should have solved every cold murder in the county back to eighteen sixty-two,” the woman said.

  Gethsemane clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. She tried to peer through the boxwood. Only tangled brown branches and leathery green leaves.

  The argument continued. “I work hard too, Iollan. Do you think teaching’s easy? I spend all day in class then I come home and grade papers and prepare lessons. Yet, I still make time to cook a fancy meal for your birthday and what happens?”

  “I explained,” O’Reilly said.

  “You explained folks a decade dead were more important than me.”

  “That’s not exactly what I said.”

  “You might as well have. One night, Iollan, one night. Your cold cases wouldn’t have been any colder if you’d let them wait one night. Why couldn’t you do that for me?”

  “The cold case unit is my responsibility. I’m all alone right now. As soon as the funding comes through and the department adds some more men—”

  “When will that be? A month? Two? A year?”

  Silence. Gethsemane counted ten.

  The woman spoke. “However long it takes, don’t expect me to be waiting. Goodbye, Iollan.”

  Light footsteps retreated along the gravel in the direction of the garden’s lower gate. A string of expletives and a rant on the general uselessness of females accompanied heavier footsteps approaching Gethsemane. She looked around. No escape. Her sister’s voice popped into her head—if you can’t get out of a situation, take control of it. She was waiting for O’Reilly as he rounded the hedge. Startled, the inspector swore.

  “Hello.” Gethsemane extended a hand. “You must be Inspector O’Reilly.”

  O’Reilly, unsmiling, adjusted a tweed stingy-brimmed fedora. “How long have you been there?” His gray eyes, the color of a gathering storm, fixed hers.

  Gethsemane held her hand two inches from O’Reilly’s nose. “I’m Gethsemane—”

  “I know who you are.” His handshake, though perfunctory, was firm. The strength of his grip and the smooth skin on the back of his hand belied the salt-and-pepper gracing his temples. “Giving music lessons in the garden today?”

  “Just on a break.” Gethsemane glanced at her watch, taking in O’Reilly’s lean, five-ten frame, nondescript suit, and ordinary tie. “Which ends in five minutes.” She noticed his shoes—black leather monkstraps, expensive-looking, designer, probably Italian, out of place with the rest of his attire.

  “I won’t keep you.” O’Reilly stepped to one side.

  Gethsemane blocked his path. “I did want to ask you about one thing. The McCarthy case.”

  “Murder-suicide.” He stepped the other way, colliding with Gethsemane as she blocked him again.

  Sandalwood and clove greeted her nose pressed against the inspector’s neck. His cologne was spicier, more exotic than Eamon’s. She lost her train of thought. The crunch of gravel beneath O’Reilly’s foot as he moved away brought her back to the garden. “Is the McCarthy case one of the cold cases you’re investigating?”

  “The case isn’t cold, it’s closed.”

  “Eamon McCarthy was never convicted of killing his wife. He never even went to trial.”

  O’Reilly readjusted his hat. “Maybe the legal system operates differently in America, but here in Ireland we don’t put dead men on trial.”

  “In America we presume you’re innocent until you’re proven guilty in a court of law. No trial, no conviction, no closed case.”

  “Welcome to Dunmullach.” He made a show of pushing back his sleeve to expose his watch. “Your break.”

  “What about it?”

  The gray eyes fixed hers again. “It’s over.”

  Gethsemane stepped aside as O’Reilly strode to the upper gate. She waited until he disappeared beyond the playing fields before heading the same way. She paused at the gate long enough to tell a murder of crows come to roost atop the boxwood what she thought of ill-tempered policemen, even if they did smell good and remind her of a movie star.

  Gethsemane sprinted from the Shakespeare Garden to reach the music room as the afternoon bell announced Honors Orchestra. She opened the door on three dozen boys from third through sixth year. Some, like the Toibin twins, she recognized from the morning.

  “Good afternoon. For those of you I haven’t met, I’m Dr. Gethsemane Brown, your maestra.”

  “What’s a maestra?” one boy asked.

  “The feminine of maestro, the conductor.” She surveyed the room. “Who can tell me what the conductor does?”

  Laughter followed an anonymous, “Stands down front and waves that little stick.”

  Aengus Toibin raised a hand. “The conductor keeps the time and tempo. He—or she,” he flashed an obsequious smile, “ensures the different sections of the orchestra work together as a cohesive unit. He expresses the emotions of the music through the musicians.”

  Feargus mumbled, “Then quits the day after the All-County.”

  “What piece did you perform in last year’s All-County?” Gethsemane asked.

  No one spoke.

  “Someone must remember.”

  “Beethoven,” a boy near the window offered.

  “Beethoven’s ‘Symphony Number Six in F.’” Colm Nolan grinned around the room from the doorway. “And we did that for Parents’ Day. We performed one of the maestro’s own compositions for the All-County.”

  “You’re late, Mr. Nolan.”

  Colm sauntered over to the other boys. “Sorry.”

  Not. But no point starting a war when you’re outnumbered. Time to speak to Colm about his tardiness later. Gethsemane addressed the group. “Arrange yourself by instrument, as you would for a performance.”

  A few moments of jostling and chair scraping and the boys had positioned themselves into smaller groups: percussion, winds, reeds, brass, strings, first and second violins. The first violin chair nearest the conductor’s podium sat empty.

  “Who’s concertmaster?” Gethsemane asked. The leader of the first violin section, a “first among equals,” had a job almost as important as hers. The concertmaster tuned the orchestra, coordinated the bowing and phrasing of the strings, and communicated the maestr
o’s musical vision to the rest of the orchestra. He had to blend in with the rest of the strings when the entire orchestra was playing while arising to the challenge of a solo when the music required it. As servant of both orchestra and conductor, the concertmaster needed to be at the top of his craft.

  “He went up to university.”

  “Which of you have been a featured soloist?” The star of the show, the main attraction.

  No hands raised.

  “Looks like we’ll have some decisions to make soon.”

  Colm slouched and crossed a foot on his knee. “Important decisions.”

  Gethsemane tossed her mac, missing the coat rack by a foot.

  The coat levitated and hung itself on a peg. “You missed.” The cologne-soap smell accompanied Eamon’s voice. “You look fetching in that suit, by the way. It was one of Orla’s favorites.”

  “Thank you,” Gethsemane poured a double bourbon. “Why can’t we lock boys up between the ages of twelve and thirty-two? Or send them to a remote island, Lord of the Flies-style?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Eamon materialized beside her. “Alcohol poisoning’s not going to make them any more tolerable.”

  “That’s funny, coming from you. And stop appearing out of nowhere. Getting used to a ghost is hard enough without him popping up everywhere.”

  “I see the rigors of a day spent shepherding schoolboys has done nothing to dull your tongue.”

  “I guess they’re no worse than my brothers at that age. I’ll have to ask Mother if she was this exhausted by the end of the day.” Gethsemane flopped onto the sofa. “You used to be a teenaged boy. Give me some insight. What made you tick?”

  “Short skirts and long legs.”

  Gethsemane rolled her eyes.

  Eamon leaned back, his torso melting into the seat cushions. “Seriously, all I can tell you is, when I got up to mischief, I got up to it because I knew it was wrong. That was the whole point.”