Troubles in the Brasses

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “None o’ your goddamned business. I ain’t givin’ out no information to no smartass murderer that’s too goddamned stuck up to take a drink with me. Git out o’ my sight, you mangy coyote, or I’ll beat you with this bottle. Come on, you other two ornery sidewinders, I’ll take on the whole goddamned kit an’ boiling of you. Put up your dukes!”

  “Not to be inhospitable, old-timer,” drawled Ed Naxton, “but that’s our vodka you’re drinking.”

  “Then I better quick drink some more before you snatch it back, eh.”

  And that was that. Before Ed could snatch the bottle away, Bulligan had taken one last, mighty gulp and gone out like a light.

  Steve MacVittie snorted. “Fat lot of help he turned out to be. Now what do we do?”

  “Wait for somebody sober to come along, I suppose,” Madoc told him. “Is there any hope of your finding out what’s wrong with the Grumman?”

  “Not a hell of a lot, but we can try. See, those old-time crates like Bulligan’s were so simply constructed that you didn’t need to be any great mechanic to repair whatever needed fixing. Though old Ace here must be either a wizard or else the biggest damned fool going to have kept that mess of rags and rot in the air all this time,” Steve conceded.

  “But the planes we fly nowadays are so damned complicated that you have to be a trained mechanic even to make any sense out of how they’re put together. I don’t know, Madoc. Ed and I will do what we can, but I’m not making you any promises. And I’ll tell you another thing; I’m not going up in that crate of Bulligan’s, and neither is Ed.”

  “I shouldn’t dream of asking you to. There’d be no sense to it, anyway, since we haven’t the faintest notion of which way you ought to go or how soon you’d run out of fuel. Steve, can you at least get your luggage compartment open?”

  “That we can do.”

  “Then why don’t we tell people they can have access to their suitcases if they want? That may buck them up a little. I wouldn’t mind a clean shirt, myself.”

  “Sure, let ’em come. What are we going to do about Ace here?”

  “Tuck him up and let him enjoy his nap, don’t you think? It’s not that cold out here now.” In fact, it must have been well past noon of a bright, mild day, and the interior of the Grumman was warming up nicely now that they had the door open. “Is there a rubber sheet or something we could slide under him, just in case?”

  “A couple of those plastic bags we use for the garbage would do the trick.” Steve lowered one of the reclining chairs. “Here, he might as well ride in style. He’s a gutsy old bugger, you have to say that for him. Pretty crazy, though, don’t you think?”

  “Has to be to fly that wreck on faith and alcohol fumes,” Ed agreed. “Here’s a blanket and pillow.”

  Together the three men made a comfortable bed on the luxurious recliner and lifted Ace into it. He didn’t weigh much.

  “I wonder what he eats and where he gets it,” said Steve. “I wonder what I’m going to eat, if it comes to that. Any chance of some lunch, Madoc?”

  “Don’t worry, you won’t starve for a while yet. We’ll scrape something together. Speaking of which, is there anything left from last night that might as well get used up?”

  “See for yourself, it’ll be in the food locker here.”

  There wasn’t a great deal: mostly sweet cakes and the bottom layer of that huge box of chocolates, plus some cheese and fruit and about half a tin apiece of regular and decaffeinated coffee. Coffee was one thing Madoc hadn’t been able to find at the hotel. With soup and crackers, these gleanings would make quite a decent meal.

  Madoc didn’t feel particularly hungry himself; he didn’t see why anybody else should, after the way they’d pigged out at breakfast. Maybe it was the mountain air. Or the fact that Ed and Steve had been first to get fed this morning while he himself had been the last. He bundled the viands into a big white cardboard box that had probably held sandwiches and carried them over to where most of the onlookers were still standing, discussing the appalling news about Wilhelm Ochs and their chances of being rescued soon.

  Joe Ragovsky detached himself from the group. “Need any help, Madoc?”

  “Thank you, Joe. Would you mind carrying this stuff into the kitchen and checking the fire? It probably needs more wood.”

  “Sure thing. What’s happening out there? Is that old guy going to get help for us?”

  “I hope so. Unfortunately, though, he’s taken a bit of a turn and will have to rest for a while before he can set off.” It wouldn’t help morale any to explain that Bulligan had in fact got sloshed and passed out.

  “Then I may as well call a rehearsal,” said Sir Emlyn. “Come along, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Sir Emlyn, I don’t have my instrument,” said Helene Dufresne. “It’s on the train.”

  “Along with our music,” Cedric Rintoul pointed out. “So I guess we can’t play, eh, maestro?”

  “Ah, but we can,” said the concertmaster. “We ’ave on the plane the scores for the new piece. It is possible to get them, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Madoc. “You can all get your suitcases, if you like.”

  “We’ll have to rehearse in the lobby,” said Sir Emlyn. “That’s the only room big enough to hold us all.”

  The Fraser River Cantata had been composed especially for the upcoming occasion by a young Canadian with whose work both Sir Emlyn and Monsieur Houdon were favorably impressed. The singers liked it too, because he’d written them all parts that were showy but not too demanding. At the prospect of something to do, the whole group perked up.

  Since the chairs were still in the kitchen, it was decided that they might as well eat lunch before moving them out to what had now become the rehearsal room. Sir Emlyn, who had done a really splendid job of cleaning up the kitchen considering his lack of experience, looked rather downcast at the thought of having it dirtied up again, but bowed to the will of the majority.

  Opening cans of soup and heating up their contents was no great chore compared to flipping flapjacks. Madoc set out the cheese and fruit with some biscuits to keep the pack occupied while he resumed what was by now generally considered his official role as company chef.

  He wondered whether he ought to have a bonfire going outside, now that they knew the search for them was on. But there was the smoke from the chimneys where no smoke ought to be, and he was loath to burn up the hotel’s entire supply of firewood on the off chance that some circling plane would spot the blaze.

  Besides, the two downed planes were in sight, or rather one downed plane and one downed pilot. The ancient triplane was a distress signal in itself. Madoc hoped Ace Bulligan would come out of his stupor in a more chastened and rational frame of mind, but he wasn’t about to bet any money on the probability.

  Needless to say, the cheese and fruit disappeared before Madoc could get any. He did manage to snaffle himself a bowlful of soup and a handful of crackers. His thought had been to sit at the table with the rest, but there was no chair left for him to sit on. He’d never considered himself a big eater, but he was beginning to feel himself a damnably frustrated one.

  He took his soup out to the lobby to eat it at the counter for lack of a better place. Even here there was no peace for him. As he was approaching his destination, giving serious thought to the enjoyment of that first hot, savoury spoonful, Lady Rhys came down the stairs.

  “Oh, good, you’re taking soup to Lucy. But dear, couldn’t you have set the bowl on a tray?”

  “Mother, I am not taking this soup to Lucy,” he replied with some asperity. “I’m going to eat it myself. After I’ve done that, I’m quite willing to take Lucy some soup on a tray or a broomstick or whatever you fancy. If you want any for yourself, I strongly recommend that you get it now. That’s no orchestra we’re feeding, it’s a flock of vultures.”

  “And do you feel that their appetites excuse your rudeness in not being willing to sit at the table with them, even though your own father is one of t
he party?”

  “I’m not sitting with them because they didn’t leave me any place to sit. For you, I expect somebody will have the courtesy to get up. Or the timidity. I suppose you know they’re all terrified of you.”

  “I should hope so, indeed! Very well, then, get on with your soup. I can serve myself.”

  “I’m sure you can, Mother. Bon appetit.”

  “Madoc, you grow more like your father every day of your life.”

  With this totally astonishing remark, Lady Rhys took herself kitchenward. Stunned, Madoc ate his soup.

  The soup wasn’t all that great, but Madoc enjoyed it. When his bowl was empty, he carried it back to the kitchen and made sure there was washing-up water heating on the stove. Mindful of his mother’s critical eye, he spread a paper napkin on a tray, added a couple of pink petits fours for a touch of color, and loaded it with a fresh bowl of soup, another napkin, a spoon, a cup of pre-milked and sugared tea, and a few crackers on a little plate. Lucy could crumble them into the soup if her throat was still too sore to eat them dry. He carried the trayful upstairs and tapped at Lucy’s door.

  “Feel like a bit of lunch?”

  “Is that you, Madoc? Come on in. What sort of lunch?”

  “Soup and crackers and a cup of tea. I hope you take milk and sugar.”

  “Yes, thanks. Actually, I feel quite hungry. I must be getting better. How’s the pantry holding out?”

  “We can manage another day or two if we have to, but I don’t expect we shall. The news is out that we’re missing, so I expect someone will be along to rescue us before long. Did my mother tell you we already have one visitor?”

  “The crazy old man in the toy airplane? Fat lot of good he’ll do us. Oh well, maybe the next one will be a Boeing. This smells good.”

  Lucy applied herself to her soup. When Madoc had come in with the tray, she’d been sitting propped up against a couple of pillows, reading a paperback thriller. At least he assumed it must be a thriller; the cover showed a voluptuous redhead in a few wisps of black lace, sprawled over the side of a barber’s chair. A straight-backed razor lay in a deepish pool of blood just below her slashed throat.

  She must have been the manicurist, Madoc thought, or perhaps the girl who did the shampooing. That would explain the skimpiness of her attire; she must have reasoned that she’d be far less apt to get her clothes wet if she wasn’t wearing any to speak of. If that was supposed to be her blood on the floor, however, the artist had made her far too rosy-looking a corpse to convince a policeman. Rather than sit staring at Lucy eating her soup, Madoc picked up the book and started to read:

  Hunk crumpled the empty Coors can in his hairy, sweaty paw and flung it into the fireplace. There was no fire in the fireplace, merely a messy heap of crumpled Coors cans and dirty shirts he’d been meaning to take to the laundry for the past month or so. The stench of stale beer and unwashed shirts was perhaps a trifle on the overpowering side, but to Hunk it meant home sweet home.

  That broad who’d phoned him last night begging him to protect her from some guy who was trying to make her give him back the deed to his barbershop had sounded like a nubile redhead. She’d be twenty-three years old; his redheads were always twenty-three years old. He sometimes wondered what they saw in a sixty-seven-year-old cop who’d turned private eye not for the glamour of it but because there wasn’t much else for a cop to do after he’d been kicked off the force for chronic alcoholism and unclean habits. Whatever he had, they sure wanted it. It was tough on his hemorrhoids, but what the hell?

  Hunk hurled the now empty beer can after its predecessor and went to answer the door, at which somebody had by now been thumping frantically for the past ten minutes or so. Was it the redhead with the deed to the barbershop? Was it the landlord optimistically hoping to collect the rent? Was it a hood with a tommy gun and a contract on Hunk Murgatroyd’s life?

  Hoping it was the hood with the tommy gun, Madoc laid the book back on the bed and went back to watching Lucy finish her soup.

  Chapter 10

  LUCY SHADD LOOKED ALMOST as rosy as the corpse in the barber chair. The rest must be doing her good despite the way she’d earned her right to take a day off. The silk scarf she’d wound around her neck prevented Madoc from seeing whether the red line had faded any. However, it couldn’t be bothering her too much; he made his Holmesian deduction from the fact that she was eating the crackers dry instead of dunking them in the soup.

  She cleaned up everything he’d brought, including the two pink petits fours. “Thanks, Madoc, that tasted really great. I must have been hungrier than I realized. But please don’t go spreading the word around that I’m feeling better. This is the first day off I’ve had in ages. It’s a tradition in orchestral touring that the head of operations never sleeps. And, believe me, we never do. What’s happening downstairs?”

  Madoc filled her in on the morning’s developments, adding that suitcases were now accessible and that he’d bring hers up if she wanted it.

  “I don’t, actually. If I could get at my clothes, I’d begin to feel guilty about not putting them on. Once I’m dressed, my holiday will be over. So that old man heard on the news that our plane had turned up missing? Was there anything about Wilhelm, did he say?”

  If Lucy Shadd was resilient enough to beguile her recovery from a near-strangling by reading about a nubile redhead getting her throat slashed, Madoc decided she probably had the stomach to be told now what she’d have to learn sooner or later anyway. “Yes, there was. I don’t know how much stock to put in anything Bulligan told us, but from what I could piece together out of his ramblings, Ochs has been found to have died from ricin poisoning.”

  “Ricin? What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “As it happens, I have. We had a case back in Fredericton last year. Ricin is one of the potentially lethal vegetable alkaloids like taxine and digitalin. The only source for it I can think of offhand is the castor bean.”

  “And what’s a castor bean? I only know castor sugar and casters on furniture legs.”

  “Well, surely you’ve heard of castor oil?”

  “Ugh, did you have to remind me? God, that stuff is awful. Does castor oil come from castor beans?”

  “Yes, it does. They in turn come from a rather handsome plant that’s often grown as an ornamental in people’s gardens.”

  “Whatever for? That sounds like an awfully stupid thing to do, but then, I’ve never been much of a gardener. Wilhelm was, though. At least he used to buy little potted plants to take with him when we went on long bus tours. I should think he’d have known better than to swallow a castor bean.”

  “Mere swallowing wouldn’t have killed him. The beans would have simply passed through his digestive tract. They must have been ground up and mixed in with his food or something of the sort. I’m told Ochs was a fairly enthusiastic trencherman.”

  “Lord, yes. Poor Wilhelm ate like a pig, even though he had all kinds of ghastly stomach problems. Didn’t anybody tell you that?”

  Madoc nodded. “I’ve heard.”

  “From Frieda, I’ll bet. She always hated Wilhelm’s guts. Oh, God! I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I just meant she hated having to cope with his stomach. You can imagine what it’s like to be jammed up in close quarters with somebody who’s always belching or breaking wind. And of course it’s been worse since Sir Emlyn took over as guest conductor.”

  “Good Lord, why? Was he allergic to my father?”

  “No, but it means we’re doing all those choral pieces. You can’t fit a chorus onstage without squeezing the musicians closer together than usual. Frieda’s prissy in some ways, and Wilhelm did have a pretty gross sense of humor.”

  “You and he were good friends, though, I’m told. Wasn’t it you who got him promoted to first chair?”

  “After I couldn’t blow my own horn anymore, sure. Actually I like what I’m doing now a lot better, but that’s beside the point. Yes, I did put in a good word for him, which
was about all I could do. It’s not the musicians who carry the clout, as any of them will be only too willing to tell you. Wilhelm would have been the logical choice anyway. He’d been with the orchestra almost as long as I had, he was a really fine player, and he knew the Wagstaffe sound.”

  “Your sound?”

  “Every major orchestra—minor ones too, I suppose—has a distinctive way of playing. Some go for a big, grand noise; others are crisper, lighter. It’s hard to explain to somebody with a tin ear; your father could probably tell you better than I. Anyway, if you’ve got somebody in the orchestra who’s capable of playing first position, it makes sense to protect him rather than bring in somebody new who’ll need time to play himself in. Not that it wouldn’t be the fair thing to do anyway, but fairness isn’t always a conductor’s primary consideration.”

  “Surely you can’t call my father unfair?”

  “He wouldn’t have any say in the matter unless he was the permanent music director. Guest conductors usually make the best of what they get except for choosing the big star soloists who aren’t normally members of any orchestra. We knew Sir Emlyn would be bringing his own singers with him, but who cares about singers? They’re not interested in us, they’re just along for the laughs, as you may have gathered. Naming no names, you understand.”

  Lucy picked up the empty tray to set it aside. Madoc leaped up from the windowsill where he’d been perching and took it from her.

  “Did Ochs complain to you about not feeling well either yesterday or the day before?”

  “Wilhelm was always complaining about not feeling well. I can’t say I remember particularly. But why the day before?” Lucy was sharp, no doubt about that.

  “Apparently ricin can take quite a while to act after it’s been ingested.”

  “Surely not a whole two days?”

  “What about late evening of the previous day?” Madoc pointed out. “That would be only a twenty-four hour span, perhaps even less. Don’t the orchestra members ever go out for a late supper after a concert?”