Troubles in the Brasses

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Yes, Joe knew his biscuits. Madoc only wished he could be sure of what else Joe knew. Had Ragovsky meant to be first in the kitchen only out of the goodness of his heart, or because he’d remembered there was a cadaver to be tidied away before the biscuits could be baked?

  The plane was landing. The people from upstairs who’d been frantically making themselves presentable for this moment streamed down the stairs. Ed Naxton was the only one who didn’t head straight for the front door.

  “Hi, Madoc. Any coffee going?”

  “It seems to have got all used up yesterday. There’s tea, if you don’t mind it slightly stewed.”

  “Hell, no. I’ve been stewed a few times, myself. Caffeine’s caffeine, isn’t it?” Ed picked up the big brown teapot that had been left to keep warm on the back of the stove, and poured himself a mugful. “How come you’re not outside getting your picture taken with the rest of the bigwigs?”

  “I had to stay around and watch the biscuits. Would you care for one? So it’s a television crew, eh? I thought it must be when I saw the plane circling just now. My father predicted they’d be the first to show up.”

  “Yeah, just our luck. Steve and I were hoping for a mechanic, or at least some word from Mr. Zlubert.”

  “He’s the man who owns the Grumman?”

  “No, he’s the owner’s right-hand man. Private secretary, I guess they call him. The owner’s off to Paris on the Concorde this week, which is how come he was bighearted enough to lend his plane to the orchestra, though they probably don’t know that. Anyway, whatever they do for the rest of you, I expect Steve and I will be stuck here till the plane’s repaired and we can fly her out. Steve’s going to be one lonesome guy when Delicia leaves. Say, these aren’t bad biscuits. Be better if we had something besides jam to put on ’em, though. Not to complain about the grub we’ve been having, but I’ll sure be one happy man when I can sit down to a great big steak and fried potatoes. Come on, let’s go take a look.”

  “Why not?” Ed would think it strange if he didn’t, Madoc supposed. “Just let me set a pan of water on the stove first, in case somebody else wants tea. Tea and biscuits are all we have for breakfast, I’m afraid.”

  “Better than nothing.” Ed took another one as they left the kitchen. “You make these yourself?”

  “No, Joe Ragovsky did.”

  “Oh yeah, the big guy with the yellow beard. You know, it’s funny to think of Joe playing a fiddle for his living. He looks as if he ought to be out driving a tractor or something.”

  “I expect Joe’s driven one plenty of times. He grew up on a wheat farm, he tells me. Well, well, we seem to be just in time for the main event.”

  Delicia Fawn was beating them out the door. She’d got herself up in what could perhaps best be described as a sports outfit, and it left no doubt as to what her favorite sport must be. The green and beige plaid skirt stopped short of her knees and was slit up the back for further freedom of action. The tan silk shirt had been bought a size too small and left unbuttoned a good way below the point of discretion. She’d thrown a bulky knit green cardigan over her shoulders, arranging it so as to conceal nothing of importance. Her hair was an artful tumble, her lips a crimson pout of welcome.

  Once he’d spied Delicia, the cameraman lost any interest in the downed plane, the stranded orchestra, the distinguished conductor, and even the conductor’s impressive wife. The effervescent chap with the microphone almost trampled poor little Frieda Loye underfoot in his rush to get at this delectable new goodie. Madoc realized he need not have worried about becoming a center of attention. These people didn’t even know he was here.

  “Good work,” said the announcer after he and the cameraman had explored the possibilities as far as limitations would permit. “Now how about some indoor shots? You orchestra chaps get your instruments and make believe you’re rehearsing, eh. Delicia baby, how about if you belt us out a little song?”

  “Miss Fawn is not the only singer present,” Ainsworth Kight observed in a lofty and disapproving tone.

  “Oh yeah? Who else?”

  Sir Emlyn was having a hard time, Madoc could tell. This brash exploitation must be disgusting to him, yet he couldn’t afford to antagonize the media on account of the orchestra’s already precarious position with regard to public relations. He turned to his wife, who sailed forward in her grandest dame manner.

  “Perhaps you haven’t yet realized, sir, that we have with us not only several first chair musicians of the Wagstaffe Symphony Orchestra but also four of Canada’s most distinguished classical singers. Allow me to present Ainsworth Kight, whom we’re privileged to have as our tenor soloist on our festival tour. Madame Norma Bellini, whom you will of course remember from her superb solo recital last month in Stratford, is our contralto, and the great Carlos Pitney is our bass.”

  “Super! They can all sing.”

  Lady Rhys gave the announcer a forgiving smile. “I’m sorry, it is simply not possible for singers of their caliber to belt out a little song on the spur of the moment. Their voices are both precious and delicate instruments. Just to get them warmed up would take a good deal more time than I expect you want to spend here. Might I suggest instead that we take the camera indoors and show you how we’ve been camping out in this quaint old hotel since our plane was forced down? You know how viewers love these little behind-the-scenes glimpses of famous people.”

  The publicity might also soften the hotel owners into taking a more lenient view of the company’s depredations. Lady Rhys was naturally too intelligent to say so.

  “That is an idea to which we cheerfully subscribe, Lady Rhys,” boomed Carlos Pitney. “If these gentlemen want, we could even duplicate the scene after our heroic Mr. MacVittie had brought us safely to the ground, all of us huddled around that picturesque old stove in the lobby, drinking tea in a state of shock.”

  “Hey, terrific!” cried the announcer. “Delicia can be passing around the cups. And Madame Bellini pouring the tea,” he added out of the kindness of his heart.

  Madame Bellini was not going to play. “It is for head of operations to pour tea,” she growled. “I do not make public display of myself in such manner. Excuse, please, I go back to my room. This cold air is not good for my throat.”

  Chapter 16

  ALL THE TIME SHE’D been standing out there, Madame Bellini had been keeping a lacy black woolen stole wound around her head and across her face like a yashmak. She tucked its folds more securely around her mouth and nose, and stalked back into the hotel. Madoc was not a bit surprised. To be acclaimed on the concert stage as the incomparable Norma Bellini was one thing. To appear on television screens all over Canada and risk getting herself recognized by some former landlord or postman as the ex-wife of the suddenly deceased Wilhelm Ochs would be quite another kettle of fish.

  Thanks to Delicia Fawn’s voluptuous distractions, the announcer had not yet thought to mention the French horn player’s mysterious death. He’d get around to it, no doubt, over the tea and biscuits. Madoc could only be thankful Carlos Pitney had suggested the lobby instead of the kitchen. The farther everybody could be kept away from that woodshed door, the better.

  As for himself, it was easy enough to fade quietly out of the crowd and into the kitchen. He filled the kettle, which his father had been thoughtful enough to bring back downstairs, and was putting mugs on a tray to take to the lobby when Lucy Shadd bustled in, reeking with efficiency after her day’s layoff. She was dressed in her trim gray suit, not a wrinkle in it. Except for the scarf—a flowered silk one today—wound high around her neck, nobody would have had a clue to what had befallen her yesterday. Even that wasn’t any real clue. Any woman could wear a scarf for no reason in particular, and no doubt Lucy often did.

  “What are you bothering with a tray for? Why don’t you just set the mugs on the table?” was her cheery greeting.

  “Because they’re going to have breakfast around the stove in the lobby for the benefit of the cameraman,” Madoc
replied with what patience he could muster.

  “That’s a stupid idea. Why not here, where they can eat in some kind of comfort?”

  “We wouldn’t be able to fit everybody around the table.”

  “You did yesterday.”

  “No, we didn’t People had to eat in relays. You weren’t here,” Madoc had to remind her, “so you wouldn’t have known. If we did squeeze them all into the kitchen, there’d be no room left for the cameraman. Anyway, we’ve nothing to eat this morning except tea and biscuits. They can manage those easily enough on their laps.”

  “Well, I still think it’s a stupid arrangement,” Lucy grumbled. “They’ll need plates for their biscuits, and that’s two dishes to juggle.”

  “They could set their mugs on their plates if we were planning to give them plates, which I see no reason to do.”

  “Then how do you expect them to manage the jam?”

  “Lucy, these are not puling infants. They’re grown men and women.”

  “That’s what you think. They’ll spill the jam on their clothes and I’ll get stuck with taking the stuff to the cleaner’s in Vancouver because everything will be in a last-minute flurry by the time we get to the festival. Don’t you know yet when the relief plane’s coming?”

  “I have no more idea than I did the last time you asked me. Those chaps out there haven’t a clue and show no sign of caring. All they want is to get their story and be off.”

  “Huh. I’d better go see if I can get any sense out of them.”

  “Lucy, you’d better do nothing of the sort. It’s my father’s place to deal with the media, and he’s edgy enough already. Here, let me carry that trayful of mugs for you.”

  “I’m not helpless. Bring the teapot and the bloody damned biscuits.”

  Madoc would have preferred to pour the tea over her head, but this was hardly the time to provoke another scene. He gathered his own trayful of spoons, knives, and jam, along with bowls of sugar and the powdered milk they were all so sick of by now, took them to the lobby, set them on the counter, and went back for the teapot and the big platter of biscuits.

  Lucy began pouring out mugs of tea and handing them around. Delicia followed with the biscuits. She’d discarded the heavy sweater so that the camera could get the full benefit of her bendings and twitchings. Madoc still couldn’t work up any amorous yearnings but he was most humbly and fervently grateful for her diversionary abilities.

  He’d gone out to cast another furtive glance at the woodshed door and fetch more boiling water for the teapot when he heard the drone of a second airplane. Hoping it might be somebody useful, he went to take a look, but it was just another television crew from a different network. Its pilot just managed to skin his plane in between the previous arrival and the grounded Grumman. Lodestone Flat was beginning to look like a parking lot. All they needed now was Ace Bulligan in Moxie Mabel. Please God, they wouldn’t get him.

  They wouldn’t be able to get anybody else, either, until one of these TV crews pulled out. Already a third plane was buzzing angrily around the inadequate landing field, circling wide to inspect the rocky dirt road over which Madoc had driven last night with Ranger Rick, wisely thinking better of trying to land there, and going off. Madoc walked out to the two parked planes, whose respective pilots were now amicably engaged in shoptalk.

  “Did either of you chaps happen to catch a radio signal from that plane?” he asked. “Did they mention who they were?”

  “No,” said the first arrival, “they just asked how soon we were going to get the hell out of here so they could come down. I told ’em we shouldn’t be much longer. We’ll need to get the films and tapes back in time to be processed for the late morning news. They’ll be back, don’t you worry.”

  “I certainly hope so. There’s always the off chance they’ve thought to bring a bag of hamburgers with them.”

  “Pickings getting a bit slim in there, are they?”

  “More than a bit, I’m afraid.”

  Madoc stayed and made desultory conversation with the two pilots until the first television crew came out, with Delicia waving bye-bye from the hotel steps. No sooner was their plane airborne than the third one was winging back in heading for its space. This time it was a gaggle of newspaper reporters and yet another cameraman. But no hamburgers.

  Before the second crew was ready to leave, there were two more circling. Madoc stuck his head in the cockpit of the one on the ground and heard the two overhead pilots sputtering at each other about which had priority to land.

  “Break in and tell them we want the one that isn’t press,” he begged his new acquaintance. “All this picture-taking isn’t going to do the orchestra any good unless we get out of here.”

  The pilot grinned. “What makes you think they want you out of here? You’re a damned good story and there’s nothing else on the wire this morning. Cheer up, brother, there are lots more cameras where these came from.”

  Yet another airplane appeared over the ridge, a small green one that Madoc recognized. He said a word of which his mother would not have approved and grabbed the microphone. “Look here, fellows, that plane up there is from the local ranger station with some important radio messages for us. For God’s sake, let him in here.”

  But they weren’t about to yield. When the second camera crew came out, the silver plane had already asserted its precedence over both the red one and the green one, and was on its way down. Ranger Rick dipped his wings in resignation and headed back across the peak. Gone to get his car, Madoc hoped. No sense in trying to fight a losing battle. Now who was this new affliction?

  A dapper middle-aged man with a bald head and a briefcase was stepping out of the silver plane. He lost not a second in getting down to business. “Where are MacVittie and Naxton?”

  “Mr. Zlubert?” said Madoc.

  That stopped him for a second. “Why yes. How did you know?”

  “Wishful thinking, I suppose. Ed Naxton was just saying he hoped you’d turn up. Would you care to go inside and get your picture taken for television, or shall I send your chaps out?”

  “Young man, I’m in no mood for persiflage. Go get them. Now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Madoc thought about touching his forelock but decided not to. He went in and found Ed and Steve still sitting at the edge of the circle around the lobby stove, looking bored. He reached over and tapped Ed, who happened to be nearer, on the shoulder.

  “You’re wanted outside. Mr. Zlubert’s here.”

  “Great!”

  The two pilots raced for the door. Madoc edged his way among the chairs to where his father was trying not to look bored and not quite succeeding. “Sorry to interrupt, Sir Emlyn, but could you possibly cut this short? The people are here about the Grumman, and we have a stacking problem overhead.”

  “A what? Oh, you mean there are other planes wanting to land?”

  “There were three a moment ago. The ranger was here but he couldn’t find a place to park so he went away again.”

  “Madoc, this is terrible! He must have had important messages to deliver.”

  Automatically, Sir Emlyn cast a beseeching glance at Lady Rhys. She at once stood up and began shaking hands with the dumbfounded media representatives. “We are most grateful for your interest in our plight. Thank you so much for coming. Perhaps we shall have the pleasure of seeing you again under less difficult circumstances. Madoc, will you see these kind people to their planes?”

  “I’ll do it!” Lucy Shadd was off and running again.

  Madoc didn’t try to stop her. That one biscuit he’d eaten so long ago was no more than a faint memory, and faint would be the operable word if he didn’t get something more substantial inside him fairly soon. The platter was so empty it gleamed, but there must be something edible left in the kitchen.

  There was also, of course, the matter of Rintoul in the woodshed. Fortunately the interviewees were drifting out onto the flat instead of back to the kitchen. Madoc collec
ted a trayful of used mugs and carried them out to the sink. Carlos Pitney gathered up some more of the post-breakfast debris and followed him.

  “What are you planning to do about our little dilemma, Madoc?” the basso murmured.

  “Fume and sweat, until I can get hold of Rick and find out who’s the law around here. Have people been asking for Rintoul?”

  “He has not been greatly missed. The consensus appears to be that he’s keeping a low profile in the hope that your father will soften enough to let him play at the festival. Cedric is variously assumed to be lurking in his bedroom or communing with nature somewhere out back. I have gently encouraged the latter view. It is, after all, closer to the truth. Is there any hope of our being taken out?”

  “I couldn’t say, but I expect we’ll find out pretty soon. The assistant to that big shot who lent us the plane has arrived. I hope he brought a mechanic with him, but I wasn’t given the time to ask. Shouldn’t you be out there with the rest of the stars?”

  “Oh, I expect Ainsworth can do enough starring for both of us. He eats that stuff up, he and Dellie Baby.”

  “Madame Bellini doesn’t go for it much, would you say?”

  “Not a bit. Norma’s a lady in the old-fashioned sense. I suppose you know what’s going on, Madoc, but, you mustn’t be misled by appearances. She and Jacques-Marie are a respectable married couple in all but the legal sense. The hitch is that they’re both staunch Catholics.”

  “Ah.” Madoc wished he’d known sooner. “Is Houdon a married man?”

  “A widower of many years’ standing. He’s older than Norma, as you may have gathered.”

  “So Ochs was the only fly in the ointment?”

  Carlos Pitney’s eyebrows shot all the way up to his silvery hairline. “Do you know, Madoc, that hadn’t once entered my head. If it had,” he admitted, “I’d probably have kept my mouth shut. How did you find out Norma was married to Ochs?”