Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology

by Jeffery Deaver

  Kramer had been expecting the call. He listened patiently and told her his fee structure, which she instantly agreed to. He asked a number of questions. She sifted his words for clues as to whether or not he was hopeful for Robert, but she spotted no tell.

  Then thought to herself: given the facts, how much hope could he offer?

  Was there any doubt her husband had stabbed to death two people he despised?

  “Give me the names of the detectives,” the lawyer said. I’ll call and see what the booking plans are. If he’s in an unstable mental state, there’ll be a different set of procedures.”

  She did this then hesitated. What did she want to say? Do your best. Please help. You have to understand he’d never do anything like this.

  Except he had.

  “Anything else, Mrs. Tollner?”

  “Does it look hopeless?”

  Now the lawyer was the one pausing. “We’ll probably need to be creative in crafting our defense. I’ll be in touch.”

  Creative. What did that mean?

  She then took a deep breath and began making calls to the family.

  They were, of course, difficult—impossible conversations, largely because she had no answers to the rapid fire and frantic questions friends and family and co-workers of Robert asked.

  She then called the jail and learned that Robert was still in the prison hospital. He remained unresponsive. He wasn’t able to talk to anyone. He was, however, still compulsively humming.

  Beth disconnected and slumped on the couch. A moment later she sat up, as if jolted from a nightmare.

  She’d been thinking of the four notes Robert had been humming in repetition. She realized she’d gotten the order of them wrong, starting with what would have been the third, not the first note. Not A-D-D-E.

  What Robert was really humming was “D-E-A-D.”

  * * *

  The bell rang and Beth opened the door to admit Joanne Post.

  In the driveway her husband, Edward, a lean, handsome man of around forty, sat in his work truck, JP Designs stenciled on the side. He owned a landscaping company.

  Beth waved to him. The couples had been close for the past year, ever since Joanne and Ed had moved here from Virginia. He waved back.

  She closed the door and the two women walked into the living room. Robert’s sister was a tall, lanky woman, a lawyer for a firm that did environmental law. Her salt and pepper hair was cropped short. Joanne was an avid runner and today she wore orange athletic shoes, as well as jeans and a navy sweatshirt.

  The women embraced and Joanne wiped a tear with her index finger.

  Beth adjusted a log in the fireplace—she’d found fires comforted her at frantic times like this. Joanne sat on the couch next to the crackling blaze and warmed her hands. Beth brought in mugs of coffee.

  The sister asked, “How is he?”

  “The doctor, from the jail? He called. He was nicer than I thought he’d be, I mean, he’s also a guard, when you think about it. He said Robert’s still in some kind of fugue state. He told me they don’t use the word ‘breakdown’ anymore—it’s not specific enough—but it fits in Robert’s case since there’s no particular category they can put him in.

  “What do you know about the insanity defense?”

  “I do real estate,” Joanne said, shrugging.

  “But from law school? You must remember something.”

  Joanne looked off. “I think it’s that you can’t be tried if you didn’t understand the nature of what you did. Or if you can’t participate in your defense.”

  She added there would be motions for a mental evaluation. A doctor picked by them, one picked by the prosecution, and a judge-appointed third psychiatrist. This would take some time. “Are you thinking of insanity for Robert?”

  “This is going to sound strange at first, but hear me out.”

  She told Robert’s sister about the curse of the Midnight Sonatina—the composer’s murder of the priest and his suicide.

  She then went online and found the article she’d been reading earlier, when she got the call from Sandra Altman. The women sat next to each other and read:

  The professor returned to London, where a chamber group there added the Midnight Sonatina to their repertoire. It was at one of their concerts that the sonatina was associated with yet another horrific crime.

  After the premier performance, one of the concert goers, upon returning home, began acting strangely: it was reported that the man simply stared at his wife for minutes on end and when, unnerved, she summoned friends over, the man went into a rage and he stabbed her to death. He’d complained to friends earlier that he suspected his wife was having an affair.

  The man’s lawyer presented a novel defense to the court—that he’d been driven momentarily mad by the sonatina. Upon examining him, physicians disagreed over the diagnosis. Some reported that he was indeed moved to temporary madness by the piece, while others asserted that he was feigning.

  A renowned physician testified on his behalf, stating that if music has the power to move us to joy and sorrow, why cannot a piece move us to rage and even murder—beyond our control?

  The judge found him guilty, but, because the doctor’s argument was persuasive, spared the defendant from hanging.

  Joanne said, “What, claim that he was possessed by a piece of music? You know that can’t happen.”

  Beth was an academic and approached life according to the scientific method. Of course there was no such thing as a curse. The supernatural did not exist.

  But she said, “Hypnosis is real. What if, instead of a swinging watch, a string of notes could put you under, let you act out your impulses?”

  “Claiming he was hypnotized into delusion?”

  Beth nodded and added about his humming the four notes. What they spelled.

  “Jesus,” Joanne whispered.

  “The lawyer said we needed a creative defense.”

  “That’s pretty damn creative.” Joanne thought for a moment. “Maybe there is some basis for it. What if it happened other times? Somebody hearing music and losing their mind temporarily.”

  “If it is temporary.” Beth choked on a sob.

  Joanne took her hand. “He’ll get better. We’ll get the best doctors we can.”

  Beth wiped the tears. “Let’s get to work.”

  Sitting, hunched forward at the glass-topped coffee table, each looked over her own laptop.

  “First,” Beth said, “let’s go the broadest we can: Sound inducing impulsive behavior. Not necessarily music.”

  It was possible, they learned, to, yes, induce hypnosis via sounds, though it seemed generally to be true, too, that being hypnotized could not turn otherwise upstanding people into criminals.

  “It’s something,” Joanne said. She jotted references and websites on a legal pad. “What about military marches?” she suggested.

  Nothing, though, suggested that martial music affected the psychology of soldiers, other than inspiring them into battle.

  Discouraging.

  Joanne kept searching. “Here’s a YouTube video of the Salem Players. I want to see if anybody commented on it.” The piece played softly. Given the computer’s tiny speakers, it didn’t sound nearly as eerie as it had last night.

  “And?” Beth asked.

  “Nothing helpful. Just like ‘Cool Piece.’ ‘Where are you playing next?’ ‘Love your hair!’ Stuff like that.”

  Beth watched the energetic performance for a moment and then had a thought. She placed a call to the venue and learned the musicians were at rehearsal, but were presently on a break. She was put through to the conductor.

  “Hello?”

  Beth identified herself and said, “I was at the concert last night. First, what an incredible performance.”

  “Why, thank you, Mrs. Tollner,” the man said in his lilting British accent. He added modestly, “The hall is acoustically marvelous. How can I help you?”

  “I’m a professor and I’m doing s
ome research.”

  Both were true, in a way.

  “I’m curious about the Midnight Sonatina.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you know if anyone in the audience has ever had an odd reaction to the music?”

  “Odd reaction… You mean those stories that it drove people mad?”

  “Yes.”

  He chuckled. “Urban legend. It’s probably driven some violinists mad when they tried to play it but that’s because it’s the most difficult violin piece that’s ever existed.”

  “But no one in the audience?”

  “Never.”

  She thanked him and hung up.

  The two women kept up the work at their respective laptops for another half hour before Joanne stretched and looked at her watch. It was nearly six in the evening. “You have any wine? I need something stronger than coffee.”

  “Sure. Fridge if you want white, cupboard to the left if you want red.”

  “You want some?”

  “Not now.” Beth returned to the computer and kept at the search.

  Nothing…

  But then she had a hit.

  Murder at Boston Concert

  Man in Audience Goes Berserk

  Italian Piece Claimed to Send Him into Bloody Frenzy

  She’d missed the article in her earlier searches because the piece was not named, described merely as an Italian sonatina. It was the Midnight, though, because the composer was Luigi Scavello and the date of the composition was the same.

  She read the article quickly. It was published in a Boston newspaper in 1923. Following a concert in a music college south of the Charles River, a member of the audience suddenly began ranting at a couple with whom he and his wife had attended the performance. He then drew a knife and stabbed the husband to death. He’d had no history of criminal activity, though the two men had quarreled over a business loan not long before.

  The defendant’s solicitor came up with a novel legal claim that he had grown temporarily deranged because of the piece of music.

  The poor man’s nature was given to sensitivity and listening to the hypnotic piece of music, the Midnight Sonatina, stole him of reason and caused him to act on his most base impulse. In short, my client was not himself.

  The lawyer admitted that, yes, it was an extraordinary claim, but the medical testimony established that what had once been an intelligent functioning man was reduced to an animalistic state.

  She called to Joanne: “I’ve got another one. And listen to this. The judge ruled the man was not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to a home and didn’t have to go to prison.”

  So there was yet another instance of precedence for the argument for insanity.

  A creative defense….

  A moment later Beth heard a soft sound behind her.

  Humming.

  Gasping, Beth turned and, in shock, stared at Joanne, who was gazing at her sister-in-law. Her face had the same eerie, blank expression as Robert’s.

  And the humming, too, was the same as earlier, the notes her husband had hummed over and over again.

  The notes that spelled D-E-A-D.

  Beth realized that Joanne had just listened to the Midnight Sonatina on YouTube. And she, like her brother, had also been possessed by the bewitching tune.

  Joanne grabbed Beth’s hair and lifted the knife, the longest and sharpest of those that had been sitting on the island in the kitchen.

  * * *

  Edward Post, Joanne’s husband, was finishing the interview with the detectives from the Westfield Police Department.

  The town was generally idyllic and free of crime—serious crime, at least, so two knife-wielding psychotic attackers was a rarity, to put it mildly.

  The odds that they’d be brother and sister? Nearly impossible.

  But here they were.

  The man stepped outside, stretched and walked to his Jeep. He climbed in and drove to his company, JP Designs. It was one of the more successful landscaping companies in South Central Connecticut.

  In the back of the east lot was a large trailer, a nice one. Post would occasionally stay here if the hours were long and he didn’t feel like tackling the long drive home.

  He parked and then walked inside.

  Beth Tollner walked forward and the two embraced.

  They sat down on the couch. They were here because reporters were mobbing their houses.

  “You can stay here for the time being.” He nodded to a second bedroom in the rear of the trailer.

  “I think I will. Thanks.”

  “How’s Joanne?” Beth asked.

  Edward answered, “Broken arm. Concussion. She’s in the same prison hospital as Robert.”

  As Joanne had lifted the knife, Beth had reached behind her and grabbed the fireplace poker. She’d struck her sister-in-law a half-dozen times, and the woman collapsed on the floor. She remained conscious—and humming eerily—but didn’t have the energy to rise and renew her attack.

  “The physical stuff isn’t that bad. But she’s still in that weird state. Like sleepwalking.”

  Beth said, “I figured out the knives, the pattern.”

  “That he left on the kitchen island?”

  “Right. Robert arranged them like they were notes on a musical staff. D-E-A-D.”

  Edward shook his head.

  “That two people flew into murderous rages after listening to the music? That’ll help the defense.” She looked over at her brother-in-law. “I’ll meet our lawyer tomorrow. I’m sure he can recommend somebody to represent Joanne. He can’t handle her case too. There’d be a conflict.”

  “She did try to kill you, after all.”

  “No, she didn’t. It was somebody—something—else.” Beth nodded at her computer. “I want to give the lawyers as much information as we can about the sonatina.”

  She returned to the article she’d been reading—the account of the Boston concert attack in 1923.

  The conductor of the chamber group, Sebastiano Matta, took strong umbrage at the suggestion that the piece of music they had played—everyone agreed, with consummate skill—was in any way responsible for the tragic event. “Music cannot cause any such mischief. We will not allow anyone to spread scandalous rumors about Señor Scavello’s marvelous sonatina. No one will ever stop us from performing the piece.”

  Beth clicked forward and came to the last page.

  A short scream shot from her mouth.

  Edward spun and approached.

  “No,” Beth whispered.

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  “They’re the same,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  Beth was looking at a photograph of Matta, the conductor of the chamber group in Boston, where the murder had occurred in 1923. And beside him, the beautiful young violinist who’d performed the Midnight Sonatina that night.

  They were identical to the conductor and principal violinist of the Salem Chamber Players from the concert yesterday evening.

  Identical, right down to a scar on the conductor’s jaw and a streak of white in the young woman’s hair.

  How could this be?

  Then, with a shock, she remembered that she’d called the conductor, saying she was researching any odd incidents surrounding the sonatina. And given her name.

  No one will ever stop us from performing the piece…

  Just then Edward’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen—she could see it read No Caller ID—and hit answer, held the unit up to his ear. “Hello?”

  He frowned and glanced at Beth. “Odd. Nobody’s there. Just some music.”

  The chill shot through her body like an electrical jolt. She whispered: “Put it on speaker.”

  He did, and a whirlwind of notes, like knives hissing through the air—the opening measures of the Midnight Sonatina—filled the trailer.

  * * *

  AFTER MIDNIGHT

  Cinderella Then and Now

  RHYS BOWEN

  The palace
clock was chiming midnight as she ran down the steps. Behind her she heard the prince calling, “Wait! Lovely maiden, please wait. Don’t go. I don’t even know your name.” But she did not turn back, she kept on running. One of the glass slippers fell off on the steps, making her almost trip and fall, but she wrenched off the other one and kept going, barefoot. Ahead of her she could see the sparkle of the glass coach, the white horses chomping and ready to gallop away with her. She was vaguely aware of guards standing at the bottom of the steps, hearing the prince’s voice, unsure whether to apprehend her or not. She brushed past them and climbed into the coach.

  “Home, quickly,” she commanded.

  The coachman cracked his whip, the horses neighed, and she was flung back in her seat as they took off. Countryside flashed past in a blur until suddenly there was a flash, a crackle, and she found herself sitting on the road. She was no longer wearing the shimmering dress, but her old rags. A large pumpkin lay beside her. Mice scurried around, looking for places to hide, and the goose who had been her coachman honked forlornly.

  “Oh no,” she sighed. She was a long way from home. If her step-mother and sisters arrived home before her, she would be in awful trouble. “What do I do now, fairy godmother?” she called into the night.

  There was no answer. Clearly the fairy godmother had done her one good deed and retreated into another realm. Cinderella was on her own, back in the harsh reality of a long walk through a dark forest. The mice scurried to her as she stood up. She scooped them up and tucked them into her pocket. She was not about to abandon them to be prey to forest beasts. Neither would she like to be prey herself, she thought.

  “Fly home,” she said to the goose. “I can’t carry you and you’d be a tasty treat for a fox.”

  The goose took a few ungainly steps, wings flapping until it became airborne and flew off into the night. “If only I could fly away home,” she thought, but then she realized that she had no place she could call home any longer. With a sigh she picked up the pumpkin and set off, wincing as her bare feet contacted the rocks in the unmade road.