The Ghost Sonata

by Allison, Jennifer

  “But he loiks it, Mum!” the little boy replied.

  On the next floor, she overheard Jenny Pickles arguing with her mother about an evening gown that was “too pink!”

  Maybe I have time for a little catnap before dinner, Wendy told herself. But when she opened the door to her room, she discovered something waiting for her. A tarot card lay on the mauve carpeting like an ominous little stain.

  The picture on the card showed a faceless figure wearing a dark cloak—a creature with heavy wings and a long, sharp scythe. A thin trail of blood trickled from the edge of its cloak.

  At the bottom of the card, the word DEATH was printed in large letters.

  46

  Art and War

  47

  The Final Round

  It was the night of the competition finals, and Gilda had taken it upon herself to act as Wendy’s wardrobe consultant and makeup artist as well as her bodyguard. She had come to the tiny backstage dressing room of the Sheldonian Theater prepared with a suitcase containing a choice of two different evening gowns, a makeup kit, a tiara, a wig, a 1960s-style hairpiece, and three different pairs of high-heeled shoes.

  Gilda squinted at Wendy, admiring the false eyelashes she had applied and the heavily teased hairdo she had created as Wendy’s stylist-for-the-evening. “I think you should wear the yellow dress,” she suggested.

  “Why? Because it’s the most hideous dress on the planet?”

  Purchased for five dollars at a neighborhood garage sale, the yellow dress was designed in the style of Princess Diana’s wedding gown. It had most likely been worn years ago by a brides-maid or someone attending a high school prom.

  “To an ordinary person, it’s hideous,” Gilda admitted, “but on a great performer, it’s high impact—the kind of dress an opera diva would wear as she breezes onstage.”

  “Maybe if I was a two-hundred-pound opera singer it would look better. On me, it looks like a very ugly bridesmaid’s dress.”

  “I wish we had one of those tall, powdered wigs like they wore in the eighteenth century. That would really be something with this dress.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Wendy, you’d probably win the competition without playing a note if we had one of those wigs. The English act very strict about proper dress for each occasion, but then they secretly love it when someone does something zany. And don’t forget how they love tradition. Just look at those ridiculous wigs they wear in courtrooms!”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m actually thinking of wearing the red dress my mom gave me. I thought it seemed too ‘Chinese,’ but red is supposed to bring luck.”

  “Then you should definitely wear it.”

  Gilda pulled on her sequined evening gown and peered into the mirror to adjust a rhinestone tiara. “But you have to give me some credit for the hair and makeup,” she said. “I mean, we practically look like models.”

  “It does look cool,” Wendy acknowledged, once again feeling grateful that her mother wasn’t around to see her wearing so much makeup. “But why are you so dressed up?”

  “Wendy, as your manager, I have to project a positive impression for the public. Besides, when else do I get to wear this outside my own house?”

  “Wendy Choy!” Professor Heslop’s voice called impatiently from the performance hall.

  “I guess it’s my turn to warm up on the piano in the hall.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Gilda had decided she wasn’t going to let Wendy out of her sight. So far, everything had gone smoothly, but Gilda was still keenly aware that Wendy might be in danger.

  As Wendy entered the performance hall, she froze, momentarily overcome with the magnitude of her imminent performance in the Sheldonian Theater. She gazed up at the rows of benches decorated with ornate, sphinxlike creatures, and then at a high balcony supported by marble pillars and coats of arms. Looming over the piano were organ pipes in shades of gold and green. it suddenly struck her that this room of gilded gold and marble would soon be filled with people who had actually purchased tickets to hear the music. The fact that she was about to take the risk of performing a piece she had just learned the day before seemed sheer lunacy.

  Wendy sat down at the grand piano, placed her hands on the ivory keys, and stared at her slender, feminine fingers. Were her hands really capable of this? Was her brain capable?

  “What’s wrong?” Gilda observed Wendy’s sudden motionlessness with concern.

  “I’m okay. . . . Just getting focused.” It doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks of me, Wendy told herself. The simple thought was oddly reassuring. Just listen for the music and it will be there. After all, you’ve been thinking about it for days.

  Wendy began to run through scales and arpeggios, and Gilda sat down in the front row of the theater and gazed up at the gilded ceiling that arched above her.

  “You look like you’re off to a fancy dress party.”

  Gilda’s heart suddenly raced. She was annoyed to feel her face flush with warmth and a surge of hope as she turned to find Julian standing behind her.

  “You’re all glittery,” he added with a wry grin.

  “Same to you.” Julian wore a tuxedo with an untied bowtie. Gilda couldn’t help noticing that he had a way of making even a formal suit look appealingly disheveled and undone. She also noticed that he looked more pale than usual.

  “Haven’t seen you about,” said Julian.

  “I’ve been busy with my investigation.” Gilda did her best to sound nonchalant. “You would have found it quite fascinating if you had been around.”

  “Making great discoveries, then?”

  “Of course. It’s truly amazing what one can discover while faffing about.”

  “Still mad about that, are you?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not mad about that.”

  Julian sat down in the seat next to her. “So what did you discover in your sleuthing?”

  “Something very intriguing and bizarre about that boy Charles Drummond.” As she said the name Charles Drummond, an image of herself kissing Julian over Charles’s grave popped into her mind and she felt her cheeks redden.

  As if reading her mind, Julian leaned a tiny bit closer to her. “I’m curious,” he said. “Tell me more.”

  He also kissed Jenny Pickles, Gilda reminded herself. You’re mad at him, remember? “I’m not at liberty to discuss my investigation right now.”

  Julian shrugged, doing his best to act as if he didn’t care one way or another what Gilda might tell him. “Sounds like you’ve had a better time than I have; my teacher had me practicing nonstop. I don’t see the point. You’ve either got it or you don’t.”

  “Did you get your version of ‘Heart and Soul’ just right?”

  Julian’s eyes darted nervously. He exhaled an uncomfortable laugh.

  “You look nervous.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Are you sure?” Gilda had an urge to make Julian feel uncomfortable.

  “Well, to be honest, I never get nervous before a performance, but I feel like something’s different this time.”

  “Feeling guilty about something?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh—maybe your sordid lovefest with Jenny Pickles in the practice room?”

  “What?” Julian pretended to look confused, but Gilda could tell he was acting. “You’re bonkers.”

  “Julian, I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “We played a duet.”

  “You kissed.”

  “You’re dotty.”

  “Julian, at least admit the truth.” Gilda sensed that with each sentence she spoke, she was losing ground somehow. She felt as if she were sliding down a rain-drenched hillside, grabbing at tree branches and plants that slipped from her grasp.

  “Maybe you were seeing a ghost.”

  “Don’t insult me, Julian.”

  “Look, Jenny and I were just playing some tunes for a lark. Maybe there was a little kiss. I can’t really remember
. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “‘Maybe there was a little kiss,’ but you can’t remember? Is that how you feel about what happened with us in the graveyard, too?”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Spookier. You’re special.”

  “I’m your ‘spooky’ date, and Jenny’s there for larks?”

  “I don’t know. Bloody hell, I didn’t realize we were married.” Julian looked as if he couldn’t wait to escape. “I don’t much appreciate being spied on.”

  “I wasn’t spying; I was looking for Wendy because I had something important to tell her. It’s not my fault you and Jenny were slobbering over each other in public.”

  He’s the most maddening, frustrating, self-centered person I’ve ever met, Gilda thought. I hate him! At the same time, she couldn’t help thinking that ever since she had seen Julian kissing Jenny Pickles, he seemed even cuter than before. His slouchy posture, his close-set and very blue eyes, his small mouth with crowded teeth, the spiky, disheveled remnants of a once-neat, school-boyish hairstyle—everything about him was newly appealing as well as infuriating.

  “Look, Gilda, I like you.” He rubbed his hands together, gazing a few inches over Gilda’s head. “It’s just—I have a competition to focus on right now.”

  “Same here.”

  “Julian!” Professor Heslop’s voice interrupted their conversation. “Your turn for ten-minute warm-up!”

  “I’d better get to it.”

  “Break a couple legs.”

  As Julian headed for the piano, Gilda realized Wendy had already disappeared from the performance hall. Running into the hallway to look for her, Gilda spied Ming Fong wearing her headphones and pacing back and forth with tiny, measured steps, as if she were a toy soldier.

  “Hey, Ming Fong, have you seen Wendy?”

  Ming Fong didn’t respond. Instead, she did something strange: she reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a tarot card that she held directly in Gilda’s face without making eye contact, as if she were a police officer holding up a hand to stop oncoming traffic.

  The image on the card looked anxious and turbulent; it depicted seven swords spinning through the air and piercing a large numeral seven. The word UNCERTAINTY was at the bottom of the card.

  “I just found this in my pocket,” said Ming Fong. “And I told you I didn’t do it.”

  Before Gilda could respond, she noticed a flurry of activity a short distance down the hallway. The two Italian boys she remembered seeing in their tracksuits at the drawing of numbers appeared to be in a heated argument. One of them was exclaiming about “bad luck!”

  They drew a small crowd of competitors—the French girl who always wore her hair in messy braids, the Russian boy with the pants that were too short, two kids from London. Everyone spoke with agitated voices about something.

  Gilda drew closer to the group and saw that each of the competition finalists had received a tarot card. Their voices overlapped as they compared the cards they had just discovered:

  “What are these?”

  “They’re tarot cards—like for telling your future.”

  “But this looks unlucky.”

  “Exactly. Looks like someone wants you to think you’re going to have rotten luck.”

  “Where did you find yours?”

  “Fell out of my music bag just as I was warming up.”

  “Mine was in my jacket pocket.”

  “This is the second one I’ve gotten.”

  “’Fess up. Did any of you lot hand these out as a joke?”

  “No—someone else. Probably one of the Americans trying to undermine everyone else.”

  By now, Gilda had moved very close to the group in an attempt to eavesdrop. Suddenly they all stared at her. “Well, I didn’t do it,” she said.

  The group looked unconvinced.

  “Listen, the Americans who are in the finals also received tarot cards,” she added. “In fact, my best friend received the Death card, which is pretty much the scariest one you can get!”

  Everyone was distracted by a rumbling sound from outside the theater. The front doors of the building opened, releasing a flood of elderly ladies wearing plastic rain scarves who filed inside. The hallway filled with rubber boots, sleet-encrusted hair, and rueful comments about the weather.

  “I can’t believe it. Thunder in February!”

  “Rain and snow mixed! Sleet!”

  “Quite odd indeed!”

  The group of finalists disbanded as complaints and exclamations about the weather blended into a dull roar of conversation. Another burst of thunder crescendoed like the roll of timpani drums.

  For some reason, Gilda felt increasingly uneasy as the corridors became jammed with people attending the performance. Where is Wendy? Gilda hurried up and down the hallway, peeking into the ladies’ room, a broom closet, and a rehearsal room, but there was no sign of Wendy. From across the room, she glimpsed Professor Waldgrave with his cat and Professor Maddox with her long black cape. At the moment, both struck her as sinister, witchlike characters. They disappeared into the crowd just as she tried to approach them.

  What if every one of these clues is part of some strange game Waldgrave and Maddox like to play with the competitors? Gilda wondered, feeling frazzled by the backstage nerves and creeping paranoia that surrounded her. What if—every time the competition is held in Oxford—one of the finalists disappears?

  Gilda ran down the hallway. She knew she had to act fast to find Wendy before the performances began.

  48

  Sequins and Sabotage

  Gilda climbed the creaking wooden steps to the balcony level, then headed up another flight of narrow stairs to a large, wooden attic space above the concert hall. From beneath the floor, she heard a rush of applause as one of the performers approached the piano.

  “It isn’t going to stay up, Mama!”

  Gilda caught her breath. Standing in the shadows across the room, Jenny Pickles fiddled with the bodice of an ice-blue strapless gown as her mother squinted at a needle and thread, altering the back of her daughter’s dress.

  “It’ll stay up,” snapped Ms. Pickles. “Just stand up straight and quit yer twitchin’.”

  “Ow!”

  “I told you—hold still.”

  As Gilda drew closer, she saw that Jenny’s hair was fuller and stiffer than ever, as if she were about to perform in a country music festival instead of a classical competition.

  She and her mother had created a makeshift dressing room with a battery-operated curling iron, a lighted mirror, a makeup kit, and an overstuffed handbag. Several yards of colorful material were strewn across the floor—evening gowns in shades of scarlet, vibrant green, and the hot pink that Jenny had apparently rejected. Jenny’s sheet music was strewn across the floor on top of the dresses. Jenny was staring down at the music and moving her fingers through the air, practicing silently as her mother tightened the back of her dress.

  As Gilda took in this scene, she reflected that Jenny had the kind of mother she herself had occasionally wished for—a plump mother who took an inordinate interest in her slender, attractive daughter’s activities, the kind of mother who had no qualms about applying heavy makeup to the faces of young girls. These mothers never seemed to spend any time on their own appearances, but they were perpetually overburdened with bags of cosmetics, hair-care products, and glittery costumes for their daughters’ talent shows, dance recitals, gymnastics meets, and school plays.

  On the other hand, Gilda thought, if Mom ever started lurking around all my activities, I’d probably end up telling her to get lost.

  As Jenny’s mom squinted at the needle in her hand, Jenny suddenly picked up the largest can of hairspray Gilda had ever seen and shook it vigorously. She enveloped herself and her mother in a cloud of aerosol spray that sent her mother into a coughing fit.

  “Warn me next time, Jenny!”

  “Sorry.” The can c
lattered to the floor as Jenny suddenly noticed Gilda staring at her through a haze of hairspray.

  “Omigod, you scared the daylights out of me, Gilda! I thought I was seeing a ghost!”

  “Sorry,” said Gilda, secretly feeling some satisfaction at having startled Jenny. “I was just looking for Wendy.”

  “Haven’t seen her.”

  “We’re tryin’ da stay oud da way,” said Ms. Pickles, speaking with a needle clenched in her teeth. “Doo many frazzled nerves downstairs.”

  “Hey, have you seen Julian down there?” Jenny asked brightly.

  Gilda bristled. “The last time I saw him, he was chatting up a bunch of slappers.”

  “Slappers?”

  “Some flirty-looking girls.”

  A look of recognition came over Jenny’s face as she met Gilda’s eyes—a surprised look that said, Oh, I see. We’re in competition over him. “That’s such a cute tiara,” she said.

  That’s right, Jenny, Gilda thought. I may not have flaming-red hair, but at least I look fabulous in sequins and a tiara.

  “Oh, Jenny, we should have brought your tiara,” said Ms. Pickles. “Remember the one you won at the Miss Magnolia Pageant?”

  “That would be tacky, Mom,” said Jenny, deftly deploying an insult meant for Gilda’s ears. “Nobody in Oxford would wear a tiara to perform.”

  “Then you don’t understand Oxford,” said Gilda. “They have a soft spot for eccentricity and whimsy here.”

  “Maybe I’m glad I don’t understand Oxford then,” Jenny countered. “Anyway, leave it to Julian to think about girls at a time like this, right, Mama? Right before he goes onstage to perform?”

  “Doesn’t sound like he’s very focused on winning this competition, that’s for sure,” said Ms. Pickles cheerfully.

  “He never misses an opportunity to chat up girls,” said Gilda. “He said, ‘It’s all part of the show,’ as far as he’s concerned.” Gilda couldn’t help it; she wanted Jenny to experience the sense of hurt and surprise she herself had felt when she peered into the practice room window the day before.