Murder Fortissimo

by Nicola Slade

  Matron hurried up the gallery stairs to chivvy the guests who had gone up to take a look at the instruments. ‘Come along, Mrs Ransom,’ she fussed. ‘And you too, Mr Armstrong. Goodness me, I think almost everyone, residents and visitors, must have come up here during the interval. Mr Buchan, Mrs Buchan, please come down now and take your seats again.’

  Harriet watched appreciatively as Pauline Winslow shepherded them into place then turned to find her own seat. ‘Anything wrong, Mrs Turner?’ she enquired, seeing the housekeeper searching the makeshift bar.

  ‘What? Oh no, nothing wrong, exactly, Miss Quigley,’ came the explanation as she ducked down to peer under the table. ‘It’s just that I’ve mislaid my reel of black thread somewhere and I’ll spit if I’ve lost it. It’s one of my silly economies; we all have them, don’t we? I hate spending money on sewing cotton and this is a new one, and button-thread at that, which means it’s stronger and costs more.’ She gestured at the flickering candle bulbs and shrugged. ‘This is all very pretty and Christmassy but it’s hopeless for trying to find something.’

  Harriet murmured something sympathetic and left her to it while she made her way back to Sam who had moved her bag and was now saving her chair, Tim Armstrong having declined a drink and wandered off somewhere. ‘Here, Harriet, take this before I spill it,’ he urged, handing her a glass. ‘I made sure we had iron rations to hand for the second half; there’s a packet of nuts in my pocket if you’re feeling peckish.’

  ‘Good thinking, Sam,’ she congratulated him, sipping her Chilean Merlot and looking round the room. Miss Winslow and her housekeeper made a formidable team, she reflected, admiring the decorations. What a gift, to have both the vision and the determination to realize it. The two women had conjured up a perfect reproduction of a Dickensian Christmas, the scent of pine, the sparkle of the tinsel just touched by the glimmer of candle bulbs, the crackling log fire in the hearth, the tall tree in the corner. There was an evocative glamour to the scene, she mused, like a Christmas card or a Victorian painting and as a finishing touch, Neil had told her, there would be carols to wind up the concert.

  The members of the Oompah Band had returned to the minstrel’s gallery, brainchild and folly of the Edwardian industrialist who had built Firstone Grange. Safely tucked away behind the elaborately turned and carved oak railing, the men in leather shorts galloped into a heavily accented version of ‘Tulips from Amsterdam’.

  Over to her left Harriet could see a cluster of people, some sitting, some standing, all apparently enjoying themselves as they beat time, sang along, or tapped their toes. Ah, that’s where he’d got to; Harriet was pleased to spot Tim Armstrong leaning against the panelled wall and looking a lot happier now, with Ellen Ransom beside him, actually cracking a smile. They both seemed to have put their antipathy to Christiane Marchant on hold for the time being.

  It was too much to hope that Doreen or Fred Buchan might have summoned up a grin but they too were standing by Tim and Ellen, flanking Vic – husband and son respectively – and their gloom was clearly not sufficient to put a damper on their companions. Although still fairly close to the woman in the wheelchair the little group of Christiane’s apparent victims seemed protected by the table and by the distance between them. A psychological protection perhaps, Harriet fancied, but it seemed to be giving them some kind of strength; long might it last, she hoped.

  A flicker of movement from upstairs attracted her attention, a shadow right at the back of the minstrel’s gallery. Harriet’s long-distance sight, in her glasses, was excellent and she was astounded to recognize the thin dark boy she had seen with Gemma. He was gone almost before she could make sense of what she had seen but it had definitely been Gemma’s boyfriend. But what of Gemma? Looking round anxiously Harriet could see Gemma standing at the kitchen doorway, actually looking a little more cheerful at last. Did she know the boy was there? And what exactly did he think he was he up to, upstairs where he certainly had no business to be?

  A happier distraction gave Harriet a moment’s satisfaction. It was the sight of Alice Marchant chatting comfortably with one of the guests while her mother, her wheelchair tucked right apart from the rest of the crowd, sat hunched and brooding like the bad fairy at the feast. Harriet smiled and sat down beside her cousin Sam, just in time.

  ‘Right, peoples,’ shrieked the band leader, with manic enthusiasm. ‘Now you vill do ze hand-klepping, ja?’

  ‘Ja!’ The thunderous reply rang out as the audience happily joined in and the bandleader started them off with a brisk nod of approval. The piece began with only the sound of Neil Slater on the clarinet along with a rousing virtuoso performance by the jolly-faced, tubby drummer, who sported a black moustache, while the other bandsmen demonstrated the hand-clapping.

  The accordion player unhitched his instrument and pranced down to seize Matron as his partner, treating the audience to a spirited display of ‘Hands, Knees and Boompsadaisy’. The euphonium player was about to follow suit, leaving his oversized horn where it had remained during the interval, precariously balanced on the wide, polished handrail that ran the length of the gallery, when there was a particularly loud roll on the drums, and the great brass instrument toppled over.

  ‘Look out below!’ The cry was accompanied by warning shrieks as those below tried to scatter. There was a sickening thud and a clang and clatter as the euphonium bounced once, twice, and settled on the polished oak floor.

  The silence was … shocking. Harriet could almost feel the tension in the air.

  ‘Oh my God!’ It was Matron who cried out, a cry echoed in muted tones by all around when they realized exactly what it was that the euphonium had bounced off, before it clanged and clattered to the floor.

  Christiane Marchant was still seated a little apart in her wheelchair, but now her body was slumped forward and she was hanging out of the chair, her shoulder and the side of her head a bloody, pulped mess. On the table beside her, in stark incongruity, were the smashed and broken remnants of the mince pies, shattered china plates, and bloody tablecloth.

  For a moment nobody moved, then there was pandemonium. Sam Hathaway looked to Matron but she had rushed straight to the woman in the wheelchair. No one else seemed to be taking charge so, with a degree of diffidence, Sam stepped forward.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he said gravely, his voice shaken but clear and audible. ‘Please don’t panic, there’s obviously been a terrible accident and the best thing we can do is keep calm. Perhaps, Matron, it would be an idea if people went quietly into the drawing-room?’

  Pauline Winslow, kneeling beside the body, raised her head and nodded gratefully. ‘Oh yes, that would be best, I should think.’ She frowned, still looking at Sam. ‘Could somebody phone the doctor, please?’

  At the same time Harriet half started to speak then thought better of it, and muttered, ‘Oh, what’s the use?’

  ‘What did you say, Harriet?’ Sam queried. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘It’s just something that occurred to me, something ridiculous. I can’t be sure so I’d be better off holding my tongue.’

  She looked over her shoulder to the cluster round the Breton woman’s body. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, be an angel and rescue Tim Armstrong, Sam, please. What on earth is he doing over there? It’ll be enough to send him right over the edge.’

  In exasperation she turned away, to see what she could do to help, and spotted Alice Marchant still standing where only moments ago she had looked so comfortable. As Harriet steamed towards the younger woman, drawn by the frozen look of horror on her face, she was unceremoniously elbowed aside by Neil Slater, the clarinettist, as he came leaping down the stairs.

  ‘Alice.’ He said no more but enfolded her so lovingly in his arms that Harriet slowed her approach until satisfied that Alice, who had collapsed in a torrent of tears, would be all right now.

  ‘Is she dead?’ The question came from Doreen Buchan who had risen, white with shock. Her voice
was harsh and her eyes wide and staring.

  ‘Er – yes, I’m afraid she is,’ said Harriet. Surely it was obvious? It scarcely took a medical qualification to diagnose death considering the state of the woman’s pitiful skull. Even though the heavy brass instrument had only caught the side of her head, there had been more than enough weight behind it to inflict a great deal of horrific damage.

  ‘Good. She deserved to die.’ Doreen Buchan looked her full at the dead woman’s mangled body and smiled, a terrible, mirthless rictus. After a moment’s silent contemplation she turned to her husband. ‘I think we ought to go home now, Vic.’

  ‘I don’t know that we can, yet, Dor,’ he demurred from his seat beside his ashen-faced father. ‘They’ll need to get the ambulance and inform the police first.’

  ‘The police?’

  Curiously enough it was Ellen Ransom who spoke, a trace of hysteria in her voice, but old Fred Buchan and several other people jerked round to stare at Vic. ‘That’s right, Miss Quigley, isn’t it?’ Why he appealed to Harriet, she had no idea; surely she was nobody’s idea of an expert on sudden death?

  ‘I believe so,’ she conceded. ‘I’ve an idea they have to be informed in any case of sudden death but it’s purely routine.’

  The magic phrase calmed their jangled nerves until a sudden blast of cold air heralded the approach of the ambulance team, whose quiet, professional bearing soon reassured the anxious audience.

  ‘Not much they can do, I’m afraid,’ murmured Sam as he came to stand beside Neil to watch the proceedings.

  Arms still round Alice, Neil shrugged slightly then he gave Sam a measuring glance. ‘Do me a favour, Sam, will you?’

  The tall clergyman nodded, head cocked ready for further instructions.

  ‘Go and have a word with Mike, the euphonium player, will you? He’ll be feeling suicidal about this but you’ve got to reassure him that it was just a terrible accident.’

  ‘Will do.’ Sam made his way to the wide polished staircase and sat down beside the distraught middle-aged man who was sitting there, rocking himself in an agony of distress, hands clasped tightly round his bare knees, shivering in his brief lederhosen.

  ‘Here,’ Sam put a comforting arm round the man’s shoulders. ‘Come on, son, you mustn’t blame yourself, it’s ghastly but it’s a ghastly accident. Not your fault at all.’

  ‘But it must be my fault,’ came the anguished reply. ‘I thought I’d balanced the horn safely, the coping on top of the railing is really wide, but I should have been more careful. Oh Christ! What am I going to do? I’ll never be able to forgive myself.’

  Sam looked round, wondering if he could leave the poor tormented soul while he went in search of a jacket or something, for Mike was shivering. Suddenly a crocheted afghan was thrust into his hand and Harriet was there.

  ‘Here, wrap this round the poor chap,’ she commanded briskly. ‘I just nipped into the small sun parlour for it. It usually stays there for anyone who needs a spot of extra comfort; it’s sunny in there but you can get a draught whistling round your legs. And, here.…’ Her other hand offered a glass. ‘Get this inside him. I don’t care what they say, I don’t think you can beat a decent slug of malt for shock. Shouldn’t do him any harm, it’s not as though he’s got concussion.’

  She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oops, not a terribly tactful thing to say in the circumstances. Sorry.’

  Sam took the whisky and held the glass to Mike’s chattering teeth. ‘Here you are, get this down you, it’ll dull the pain a bit.’

  Tea, coffee and hot, milky drinks were what Gemma was told to distribute among the rest of the audience as a remedy for shock. She had been tidying up, in fits and starts, averting her eyes from the ambulance team and the surrounding mess, and she was glad of a diversion. As she escaped thankfully to the kitchen a shape loomed up out of the dark corner by the pantry.

  ‘Shhh, don’t make so much noise, you stupid cow.’ Ryan made for the back door. ‘Let me out of here, quick, before the pigs get here. Make sure you lock up behind me.’

  Mute with distress she obeyed, fumbling at the door catch with clumsy, shaking fingers, whimpering as he glared savagely at her. ‘Right, you keep your bloody mouth shut, you hear? I wasn’t here, you never saw me.’

  ‘Ryan.…’

  He shot a furious glance over his shoulder. ‘What now?’

  ‘You never … you never did anything, did you? I mean, it wasn’t you that – that pushed that thing over?’

  ‘Are you out of your mind? I wasn’t there, nowhere near it. And no, I never had time to go round and nick stuff, if that’s what you’re on about.’

  She winced as he slammed the door with an angry bang. No, she vowed, I won’t tell the police he was here. He’d already had a first reprimand – for what the police called ‘petty thieving’ and which Ryan dismissed as a set-up. This had been followed by a final warning when he’d been caught shoving some old woman around near the chip shop and somehow her purse had fallen into his pocket. Ryan had pleaded total astonishment at that but he turned eighteen in a few weeks and Gemma knew the next time would be more serious, he’d be considered an adult.

  A uniformed police constable had turned up by now but he had little to do apart from recording the incident. ‘I expect somebody from the Coroner’s Office will be along in due course,’ he told Matron. ‘There’s not that much I can do, to be honest; everyone seems to agree what happened and that it was just one of those unfortunate accidents, something nobody could have foreseen. I can’t see anything untoward and the paramedic has pronounced life extinct so that’s sorted; no need to hang around for an FME.’ At Matron’s questioning glance, he explained: ‘Forensic Medical Examiner. Some forces call them in routinely for a sudden death but my guv’nor doesn’t; just as well, this is a busy time of year for them. I’ll call for an undertaker – does the next of kin have any preference? No? Righty-ho, I’ll fill in the sudden death form and take another look round and after that I’ll get in touch with my sergeant.’

  Sam Hathaway answered Matron’s mute look of distress and joined the policeman as he toured the hall. ‘I suppose they should have left everything alone,’ he apologized. ‘But some of the residents are extremely frail and I think Matron Winslow was afraid there might be a few strokes or heart attacks!’

  At the foot of the imposing staircase Neil Slater joined them and introduced the still distraught euphonium player who was now being comforted by the band’s drummer. The latter lifted his head and beckoned to the three men.

  ‘Here, Neil, come and have a word with Mike. He still thinks it must have been his fault but I’ve been telling him – I reckon if anyone’s to blame it must be me.’

  ‘Really?’ Sam and Neil clustered round, with the policeman, eager to hear the reasoning behind this new theory.

  ‘This is Tony Harris, the drummer,’ Neil said, by way of introduction.

  ‘It’s this way,’ said Tony. ‘Mike thinks it was because he stacked his horn on that ledge, yeah? But the thing is, he’d left it like that all through the interval and nothing happened to it then. Well, you check it out for yourselves, it’s really wide. More like a shelf than a railing.’

  He indicated the gallery and they all craned their necks. Even from downstairs they could see the width of the coping rail. Tony Harris nodded as they noted it. ‘Not only that, but if you look there’s that big speaker just there, comes right up level with the shelf and makes a kind of table. What I reckon happened is that my drum roll set up a load of vibrations and what with this being an old house, it upset the balance and over she went.’

  ‘That’s plausible,’ Neil turned eagerly to the policeman and Sam. ‘It’s a hell of a noise that he makes and the whole gallery was vibrating. I suppose the speaker could have been shifted off-balance in any case, by all the earlier vibrations we set up, and the drum roll put the kibosh on it.’

  The horn player was beginning to look less devastated as the commonsense of the drum
mer’s claims sank in. Sam was glad to see a faint colour in his cheeks and a more hopeful look in his eyes.

  After further investigation the constable contacted his sergeant to report his findings so far. ‘Nothing anyone can do at this time of night,’ he told them. ‘You’d better shunt everyone off to bed and the guests can go home. Somebody will be here tomorrow, maybe, to take another look but it all looks pretty straightforward. Miss Winslow called her own doctor and he’s agreed with the paramedic and is willing to sign the death certificate. It was an incredible stroke of good fortune that Mrs Marchant was sitting there all by herself so nobody else was injured. We could have been dealing with a bloodbath!’

  He missed the old-fashioned look that Sam Hathaway shot in his direction at this melodramatic statement, and stowed his notebook into his pocket. ‘It looks like you said, a load of vibrations, an old house and a bloody unlucky coincidence that had that poor woman just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He looked at his watch and sighed. ‘I’ll stay here till the undertaker is finished then I’ll be off. There’s been a big pile-up on the motorway so it’s all hands to the pump.’

  Sam looked round for Harriet as he was leaving and spotted her, wearing a preoccupied frown, as she watched Gemma and another member of staff replacing chairs and tables in their usual arrangements. He wondered what had caught his cousin’s attention; Gemma looked shocked and upset, but so did everyone else, and no wonder. As he stared at Harriet she sighed and turned away, looking round the hall with a dissatisfied furrow between her brows.

  ‘What’s wrong, Harriet?’ he asked quietly, buttoning his coat and winding his scarf round his throat.

  ‘I wish I could put my finger on it.’ She sighed again as she walked him to the door. ‘I just don’t like this coincidence idea. I heard what that policeman said and if it had been any of the other residents at Firstone Grange I’d be inclined to agree. But Christiane Marchant was hated, Sam.’