Troubles in the Brasses

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Rintoul had one of the hotel’s thick tumblers balanced on his knee. Whiskey or brandy, Madoc supposed, to make him sleep. He or Gabriel, as the last ones, would no doubt bring that lamp along to light their way upstairs. The stove was dampered down for the night. Joe Ragovsky had probably seen to that. They wouldn’t have to be thinking about such tasks this time tomorrow. Madoc went into the bedroom where Ed Naxton was already peeling off clothes and getting into pajamas, and followed Ed’s sterling example.

  Nobody screamed, nobody thumped around the hallway. Madoc slept straight through till the watch he’d adjusted by the Ricks’ kitchen clock said six o’clock. He got up, splashed his face and brushed his teeth with cold water from the pitcher he’d brought up last night, got into his last clean shirt in anticipation of the rescuers who, God willing, would be arriving before long, and went downstairs.

  It was cold again, colder than yesterday morning. They’d be getting away from here none too soon. He fed the lobby stove and opened the damper to make the fire burn hotter, went out to the kitchen, and fell over Cedric Rintoul.

  Passed out, the bloody soak. Couldn’t he have picked a less awkward place to sleep it off instead of lying down in front of the stove like a damned great Saint Bernard? Madoc gave the gross body a none too gentle nudge with his toe.

  “Rintoul, wake up.”

  He kept his voice down because he didn’t want to wake anybody else. Evidently he didn’t speak loudly enough to do any good. Rintoul didn’t stir. Madoc leaned over to give the trombone player a shake, and found out why. It was a waste of time trying to wake somebody who had an icepick rammed into the back of his neck.

  “Oh my God, another one!”

  That wasn’t much of an epitaph, and Madoc was slightly relieved there’d been nobody around to hear him say it. Now what to do?

  First, he must make doubly sure Rintoul was indeed beyond the veil. There could be no doubt about that; one touch told him the body was cold as an iceberg and stiff as a boot. Death must have been virtually instantaneous, he thought; one quick stab straight into the base of the brain. Bold, resolute, but not bloody. Hardly a trickle showing, as far as Madoc could see in the none too good light. There’d have been more, no doubt, had the icepick been withdrawn.

  Somebody had known enough not to do that, and also had been clever enough not to leave any fingerprints on the handle, most likely. Still, Madoc wasn’t going to touch the icepick itself, just in case. He’d have to find a camera; surely there must be at least one shutterbug in the party. Rintoul must not be moved until photographs had been taken of the body in its present position.

  That meant not being able to get at the stove, which in turn meant no hot water and no tea, until Madoc remembered his mother’s trick with the fancy stove in the lobby. He hooked the kettle toward him with a long toasting fork, regretted the fact that whatever water had been in it last night was now simmered away, and filled it fresh at the pump. He was lifting the curlicues off the lobby stove when his father came downstairs in the scruffy brown Jaeger robe Madoc had known since his knee-perching days.

  “Ah, son, good morning. I was hoping to fetch myself some shaving water before things start to pop around here.”

  “Sorry, Tad, but they’ve already started. We have a problem in the kitchen.”

  “Not the water pump?”

  “No, Rintoul. He’s dead.”

  “Madoc, no! God help me, if I’ve driven the man to suicide—”

  “Tad, he’s got an icepick jabbed into the back of his neck.”

  Sir Emlyn stood perfectly still while Madoc got the kettle on the stove, then raised his right hand in the decisive upward flick he used when he was about to give the downbeat. “I’ll have a look.”

  He walked ahead of Madoc into the kitchen and stood over the huddle on the floor. “Poor, poor fellow. No, I agree with you, Rintoul would not have found this an amusing joke to play on himself. What now, son?”

  “You didn’t happen to bring a camera with you?”

  “No. There are always too many people around taking pictures. Your mother and I got sick of cameras long ago. Carlos Pitney has one, I know. Photography is quite a hobby of his. Shall I wake him up and ask if we may borrow it?”

  “I’ll go if you like.”

  “I’d rather go myself, son. Carlos and I are old friends, and murder before breakfast is not a pleasant thing to be wakened for.”

  “I’ll have your shaving water ready for you.” It was the best that Madoc could do.

  “Thank you, Madoc. I suppose you know the press will be here before anyone else. Will you have to tell them?”

  Madoc sighed. He also had had experience with the zealous folk of the media. News of the downed plane would have reached them last night; they were probably on their way already.

  “Here’s the drill, Tad. It’s any citizen’s duty to report a murder to whatever law enforcement officer is most readily available. That’s myself, in this case, so consider it reported. As soon as Rick shows up, I’ll find out from him who has jurisdiction over the area and ask him to get a message through as quickly as possible. It’s the local man’s job to release the information about Rintoul’s death, not mine. In the meantime, I’ll have to proceed with the investigation, which I’ll do as expeditiously and as discreetly as I can.”

  “That’s better than I’d have dared to hope. This is going to be terrible publicity, you know. First Ochs, then Shadd, now Rintoul. People will be coming not to hear our music but to see who’s going to get murdered next. It is a hateful thing to think of.”

  “Let’s not worry about Shadd, anyway. I expect Lucy herself would rather we kept that incident quiet as long as we can. As soon as we’ve got our photographs and checked for whatever evidence there may be, we’d better move Rintoul’s body out to the woodshed and lock the door. It may not be possible to keep his death a secret from the rest of the party until after the media people have come and gone, but we can try.”

  “Somebody already knows, Madoc.”

  “Oh yes, no doubt about that. It’s quite possible two or three others know, too. Anyone who happened to come down to the kitchen last night for a late snack or a drink or whatever could hardly have failed to discover the body.”

  “And not said anything because they saw no point in disturbing our rest when there was nothing to be done, you think?”

  “And not said anything for fear of getting hit with a murder charge themselves, more likely. I should say from the look of him that Rintoul’s been there for quite a while. He’s still dressed as he was last night. He may have been killed not long after I myself saw him last.”

  “That would have been around the time your mother and I went to bed?”

  “Pretty close. You were among the last to go. Rintoul and Gabriel were the only two left in the lobby when I went. The pair of them were sitting over there in the corner by the window, as you may recall: There was a lamp on the sill.”

  “Yes, your mother put it there to light her wandering boy back home. We were worried about you, Madoc.”

  “That’s all right, Tad. I was worried about me, too. Anyway, Gabriel was working at something or other under the light. One of his eternal reeds, I suppose. Rintoul was nursing a drink. Not his first, I’d say offhand. They seemed content enough at the time, but the stove had been banked for the night and it wouldn’t have been long before they began to find the room uncomfortably chilly.”

  “Couldn’t they have opened the damper and put on more wood?”

  “Yes, but I doubt if they did. I expect Gabriel’s going to tell us he finished what he was doing and went upstairs leaving Rintoul by himself, which may quite possibly be the truth. Rintoul may have said something about fixing himself another drink. Anyway, the odds are that’s what he went to the kitchen for. Somebody grabbed the chance and stuck the icepick into his neck.”

  “Dreadful!” Sir Emlyn shook his head. “But simple enough. The icepick would be the one that was in that rack next
to the sink, I suppose. I saw it yesterday when I was washing dishes.”

  “Yes, and I noticed it was gone from the rack this morning. You’d better get that camera, Tad, before somebody else wakes up and comes looking for breakfast. You can tell Pitney you want to photograph the first press plane coming in.”

  “I would not lie to my friend. Furthermore, I am hoping Carlos will come himself to work the camera. He’s quite expert, and his discretion is impeccable.”

  Softly, in his old-fashioned felt slippers, Sir Emlyn padded upstairs. Madoc went back to the kitchen, took out the flashlight he’d stashed in the kitchen cupboard against emergencies, and used it to take a closer look at the ungainly sprawl that had been Cedric Rintoul.

  Chapter 15

  WITHOUT MOVING THE BODY, he couldn’t see much. Rintoul had fallen face down with his hands doubled under him. Madoc did find the tumbler he’d been drinking from; it had rolled under the stove. The indication was that he’d dropped it when he fell. Since Rintoul hadn’t lifted a hand yesterday to tidy up after himself, it was unlikely he was bringing the tumbler back to be washed. More probably, he’d been meaning to get himself another drink, and that was interesting. He couldn’t have been worried about getting murdered.

  Yesterday morning Rintoul, along with everybody else, had heard Ace Bulligan talking about that early news bulletin. Last night, he’d heard Madoc and Rick confirm the report that Wilhelm Ochs had been poisoned. Maybe he’d thought he knew who’d murdered Ochs, and that the culprit was among those who’d gone by train. Maybe he knew the real killer was here at the Miners’ Rest, and had been stabbed because he couldn’t be trusted not to tell. Maybe he himself had killed Ochs, and had been murdered out of revenge. Had Norma Bellini née Belschi, late Ochs, felt it her duty to avenge the death of her former husband? Would she have chosen an icepick to do the job?

  Why not? Icepicks made excellent weapons because their points were so sharp and their shafts so slender. A woman with plenty of weight behind her could drive one in easily enough, assuming she knew just where to set the point. Maybe La Bellini hadn’t been bent on vengeance, merely anxious to shut Rintoul’s ever-flapping mouth before he told her current lover about her having been married to Ochs.

  Or maybe this had nothing at all to do with Ochs. Maybe Frieda Loye had finally decided she’d had as much of Rintoul as she was going to take. Maybe Corliss Blair had killed him for breathing garlic fumes at her during rehearsals. Maybe Jason Jasper had got tired of being second banana.

  Among all the maybes, Madoc could sort out one incontrovertible fact which he hadn’t had the heart to mention to his father. If the question of who’d stabbed the prankish trombonist was not resolved before their rescue plane, bus, truck, or mule team came along, the local law officer would have every right to keep them here in Lodestone Flat until it was. He was somewhat relieved when his father came back with Carlos Pitney and an impressive-looking Nikon in tow.

  Pitney allowed himself one quick, “God help us, what a thing to happen!” then got down to business. He took a quick reading on his exposure meter, then began to snap. He knew about angles. His flash worked every time. Madoc had no doubt whatever that the photographs would be excellent.

  In about five minutes’ time, Pitney had finished his job. Madoc wrapped a clean cup towel around his hand, took a careful grip on the icepick down by the base of the shaft, and pulled it out. Pitney took a couple more shots of Madoc performing the operation so that there’d be no doubt that it was he who’d done so. Madoc then laid the weapon, wrapped loosely in the towel, inside a long candle box he’d found in the pantry, and put the cover on the box.

  “Thanks a lot. Here, Tad, hold this. Now if you and I, Carlos, can lift Rintoul very carefully away from the stove and lay him on this blanket you so intelligently brought down with you, we’ll get him out to the shed.”

  Madoc had no great hope of learning anything from the state of the floor. It was nothing but rough wooden planks with a few squares of linoleum at strategic areas, all of them by now hopelessly tracked up. The urgent task right now was to get Rintoul out of sight. Already a few creaks from overhead told them that some of the people upstairs were beginning to stir.

  Madoc didn’t want his father to help with the carrying. They’d manage without him. He himself was a good deal stronger than he looked and while Rintoul had been big, Carlos Pitney was even bigger. The two of them got the body wrapped in the blanket and safely stowed in the shed while Sir Emlyn, with great presence of mind, fetched the now boiling kettle off the lobby stove, restored the iron curlicue to its proper place, and made a pot of tea. By the time the self-appointed pallbearers came back, he was setting out mugs and powdered milk in the coziest manner possible.

  Madoc had brought back an armload of firewood, with which he quickly stoked the big kitchen range. Carlos Pitney was snapping a photo of the father and son sipping their tea by the time Joe Ragovsky came downstairs already dressed for the day.

  “Hey, what’s this, a pajama party? I thought I was going to be the first one down.”

  “Ah, you Canadian wheat farmers are no match for us Welsh sheep herders,” Sir Emlyn replied as complacently as though he hadn’t just been an accomplice in a clandestine concealment of a murdered man. “I had intended to fetch myself some shaving water so that I could uphold my well-known dignity among you by appearing clean and unwhiskered, but as you can see, I got sidetracked. Sit down, Ragovsky. Have we anything left to eat, I wonder?”

  “Not a heck of a lot,” Joe replied. “There’s flour and baking powder and canned shortening. And jam. I thought I might whomp us up some hot biscuits to tide us over till the relief plane gets here. They’d be better than nothing, anyway.”

  “A good deal better, I have no doubt,” said Pitney in that deep organ tone even Madoc could appreciate. “Let me pour you a mug of tea first. Sir Emlyn made it. I never knew you were so handy around the kitchen, Em.”

  As Joe was throwing dry ingredients together and cutting in the shortening, Pitney lolled back till his chair creaked, appearing perfectly at ease in a sumptuous maroon cashmere bathrobe with gold piping. “You know, I wouldn’t mind coming back here sometime, with you fellows to cook for me. And the plumbing hooked up.”

  And no bodies in the woodshed. Madoc admired the basso’s aplomb; Pitney’d been looking a trifle unnerved back there watching Madoc go through Rintoul’s pockets. Madoc still hadn’t had a chance to decide whether he’d come across something important. From the sounds he was catching now, he wouldn’t get much opportunity for cogitation any time soon.

  “Tad,” he said, “you’d better grab that kettle and slide back to your room. I think I hear a plane.”

  That might, of course, be only Ranger Rick in his little puddle-jumper. It might, God forbid, be Ace Bulligan coming back for more booze. Leaving Joe to finish the biscuits, Madoc went outside to check. No, this was a bigger plane than Rick’s, though not a great deal bigger. Press, for sure. He went back inside to report.

  Pitney was gone. The kitchen was crammed with pitcher-carriers, all of them clamoring for hot water and not getting any. Nobody had thought to fill the reservoir in the stove or the wash boiler that had served so well the night before. Ainsworth Kight was taking the oversight as a personal affront. Nobody else was paying any attention to him. Jason Jasper was trying to work the pump and not having much luck. Joe Ragovsky was still cutting biscuits.

  Joe’s curly golden beard made an agreeable contrast to the unshaven cheeks around him. Madoc felt his own ill-shaven chin and wished he’d kept the mustache he’d sacrificed during his courting days. Janet had complained that it prickled when he kissed her; but Janet, alas, was not here to be kissed. He took the pump handle from Jasper and got down to business.

  The sound of the plane could be heard now even over the creaking and splashing of the pump and the gabble of the pitcher-bearers. Sir Emlyn and Lady Rhys came downstairs, he now clean-shaven, she morning fresh with not a hair out of p
lace. Both were in their British tweeds, ready to do credit to Sir Emlyn’s position, thereby to the Wagstaffe Symphony Orchestra, thence to the festival. They bore their heavy responsibilities well, Madoc thought with pride.

  By the time he’d got all the pitchers filled, the plane was circling over Lodestone Flat. Going outside again, this time with his parents, Madoc could easily read the lettering on its side. BUED, in red and orange with a green line around the edges. A television crew, beyond a doubt. Madoc endured his mother’s scrutiny, held up his chin as she tried to straighten his collar, then ducked back into the hotel. His aim was to maintain the lowest profile possible and try to get some work done.

  He’d found a key in the woodshed door. It wasn’t much of one, merely the old iron sort that would probably fit any of the doors in the hotel, but it was better man nothing. He’d turned it in the lock and slipped it into his pocket. Now he nipped back into the kitchen and offered to keep an eye on the biscuits so Joe Ragovsky could go out to watch the plane land. As soon as Joe was gone, Madoc unlocked the door again and slipped into the cold woodshed.

  He and Pitney had laid Rintoul on the floor, over at the right-hand side of the shed where there wasn’t much of anything except a few chairs and nightstands the hotel keepers were perhaps intending to repaint before their season began next spring. A couple of these with a tarpaulin draped over them had made an adequate screen to conceal the trombone player’s remains from anybody who might happen to catch a glimpse inside. Madoc ducked under the improvised tent and knelt beside the body.

  After another, more painstaking examination, he decided he’d been right the first time. There was not one blessed thing about the body that even suggested a clue as to who’d wielded the icepick. This had been either a very skillful or a very lucky killing. He’d better get back and check on those biscuits.

  And a good thing he did. The stove was burning really hot now. Another couple of minutes and the biscuits would have been burning, too. Madoc reached in with a potholder and pulled out a huge roasting pan filled with puffy, well-browned, good-smelling humps. Joe was without question a sound man on biscuits. To confirm his appraisal, Madoc extracted one of them from the pan, split it, anointed the halves with dabs of regrettably sweet marmalade which was the best the larder had to offer, and ran a consumer test.