Murder at the Castle

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘All day, actually. Well, I suppose they took a lunch break.’

  ‘But they couldn’t have got aboard the boat in that time. Dorothy, make a note for me to ask Sir John if anyone missed that rehearsal.’

  I wrote it down. ‘Okay, what else?’

  ‘Once we know who was on the boat, shouldn’t we ask them what they saw and heard?’

  ‘The police will have done that,’ I objected.

  ‘Yes, but we’d be asking different questions,’ said Inga. ‘Not just about Dan, but about De— Gracie. Because, we might as well say it, you’re thinking someone intended to push her and got Dan by mistake.’

  ‘It makes a horrid kind of sense,’ said Nigel. ‘Given the complete unlikelihood of the whole scenario.’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ I leaned forward. ‘That’s exactly what it is – a scenario. Alan saw that a little while ago. We’re talking about operatic passions, the kind of passions we think Gracie lived with. We saw the way she acted, the aura of high drama she carried with her. Emotions like that are contagious. They infected the people around her. And someone carried the drama to the ultimate conclusion.’

  But Inga wasn’t paying attention. ‘Dorothy, you’ve given me an idea! Passions, you said. She lived in the world of passions. Why have we never given any thought to her lover?’

  ‘Lover?’ said the other three of us.

  ‘Surely she had one. At least one. Can you imagine a woman like that living celibate for the past ten years?’

  Well, no. Now that Inga had said it, I could not imagine any such thing. She was the sort of woman who attracted men like flies, and who would want a man dancing attendance on her at every moment. She exuded sex appeal as a pine tree exudes sap.

  Alan shook his head. ‘Don’t know how I missed that. I’m getting old. Do we have any idea who the current man was?’

  ‘No, but I’ll bet I can find out,’ said Inga. ‘Girl talk, you know? There will have been gossip. If there’s a woman in the festival who didn’t hate her on sight, I’ll get me to a nunnery.’

  ‘Not if I have anything to say about it,’ said Nigel warmly.

  ‘No fear. I’ll get them to talk, and they won’t be charitable.’

  I wrote that down. ‘That’s brilliant, Inga. Well done! And when we find out who he was, then we talk to him. He might be the murderer, don’t you think?’

  ‘Far stranger things have happened,’ said Alan. ‘It’s a very good possibility. But we can’t afford to neglect any other notions we might have.’

  ‘Then we need to find Pat. And who was the guy who was friends with Dan?’

  ‘James O’Hara,’ said Nigel.

  ‘Do you think they might be together?’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Nigel replied. ‘But they resented each other a good deal. Or at least it was obvious that James resented Pat. Speaking of grand opera emotions! The Irish have this way of smouldering, d’you know? I didn’t get to know James well; in fact I rather avoided him, because one felt he might erupt at any moment. I have no idea how Pat felt about him, but it’s hard to believe either of them would seek out the other.’

  ‘And if both are ignoring their mobiles, we have only the addresses they gave the festival organizers,’ said Alan with a sigh. I knew he was thinking about driving to Manchester.

  ‘And anything we can glean from the other musicians, don’t forget.’ I was determined to find some bright spots somewhere.

  ‘It seems to me we’re going to be holding a good many conversations with musicians,’ said Alan. He sounded distinctly glum about it.

  ‘But you like musicians!’

  ‘I like to listen to them making music. I don’t know that I like to ask them questions and expect sensible answers. Present company excepted,’ he added, nodding to Nigel, who grinned.

  ‘The real ones can get a trifle scattered, I agree. Especially in a situation like this, when we’re all performing nearly every day, and doing demanding music. I think they can be sensible enough when the topic is something other than music.’

  ‘All right, then. Here’s our list. Find out who was on the canal boat. I think Alan had better do that, if everyone agrees.’ Nods all around. ‘And he can ask Sir John, or more probably his secretary, if anyone missed the orchestral rehearsal that afternoon. Then, we want to try to get information about De— Gracie’s lover. Darn, I’ve got to stop doing that! Inga, you’re going to take that on, right?’

  ‘And enjoy every moment!’

  ‘Indeed. You are revealing a spiteful streak I never would have suspected, young woman!’

  She gave me a wicked smile.

  ‘That leaves the hardest bit so far, finding Pat and James, apart or together, and that’s probably going to involve a lot of those conversations you’re dreading, Alan. Suppose Nigel and I get started on those, and then if we learn anything promising, we can get you involved. You do know how to conduct a proper interview, which we don’t.’

  ‘And where do you propose to do all this talking?’ asked Alan. ‘Because if you’re taking the entire festival contingent out for drinks, I’ll need to talk to my bank manager.’

  Nigel guffawed and I chuckled. ‘I imagine Sir John would bear the expense. But actually I was thinking of a more formal approach. For Nigel and me, that is. I think Inga has her own plans to infiltrate the women’s gossip network, but for us, if Sir John would call everyone in, say, half an hour early for the next performance . . .’

  But Nigel frowned and shook his head. ‘No. Not before a performance. It would rattle some of them too much, and we have an early call tomorrow anyway, for a pick-up rehearsal. He can tell them they have to stay half an hour afterwards.’

  ‘Won’t they rebel?’

  ‘It means extra pay for the orchestra and soloists. They won’t object. I don’t know that the chorus will be paid more, and some of them may try to leave, but there’s an advantage to the castle venue. There’s really only one way out. If Sir John stations himself at the barbican, no one will be able to sneak away.’

  ‘So you’re going to question them in a group?’ Alan sounded dubious.

  ‘Two groups, don’t you think, Nigel? Orchestra and soloists in one room, chorus in another. And I think it might not be a bad idea if we asked Sir John to speak to them first, make sure they understand that he wants this business cleared up. They respect him.’

  ‘More than respect. They – we – revere him as a musician and like him as a person. For me, doing a festival like this under his direction is the dream of a lifetime. Most of the others are professionals, so it isn’t quite the same, but it’s a feather in their cap, all the same. The performances have been spectacular, and the reviewers have lauded them, so everyone’s CV will look that much more impressive. The group will listen to him and do as he says, I can guarantee.’

  I swallowed. ‘Then all I have to do is figure out what to ask them.’

  Alan stood. ‘You’ll think better with some food inside you. Let’s go find a meal.’

  We didn’t linger over dinner. We all had a lot to think about and plan. I was getting extremely nervous. The idea of a group interrogation was daunting. I do better talking to people one on one, but with something like a hundred musicians to question, it obviously had to be done en masse, at least to start. Only, what if everyone claimed to know nothing, to have nothing to say?

  I went to bed early and dreamed I was in front of a classroom again, a classroom full of children who were not just quiet but silent, refusing to respond even to their names.

  We all woke early, although I would have liked to stay in bed till a later hour. A long morning stretched in front of us, with little to do except fret. I’m very good at fretting, although a long life ought to have taught me that the exercise is unproductive of anything except an upset stomach.

  I dressed quickly, leaving Alan in the shower, and went downstairs to find Inga in the hall, wide awake and restless.

  ‘Dorothy, let’s go for a ramble this
morning. How are your knees faring?’

  ‘Once I’m out of bed and moving, they’re splendid. I can almost forget they’re not original equipment.’

  ‘And did you bring your walking stick?’

  ‘I did, and boots as well.’

  ‘Then I’ve a mind to roam the hills. The men can fend for themselves. I want lots of fresh air and sheep and sky.’

  ‘It’s the best offer I’ve had all week. Let me get my boots on, and tell Alan where I’m going, and I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

  When I came back downstairs Inga had cajoled Mairi into some sandwiches and fruit to take with us. ‘We can stay out all morning if we like, or if we get too tired, we can come back and eat our sandwiches here.’

  It was a perfect day for a ramble, as Inga put it, and she was the ideal companion. She kept to a moderate pace, suitable to my age and condition, and didn’t talk at all until we were well away from the house.

  We had climbed a rise so gentle it had hardly hastened my breath, but now we were at the top and could see the rolling valley below. Sheep, with their half-grown lambs, grazed placidly in meadows full of soft green grass dotted with wildflowers. The sky was a soft, spring blue, not the hard, bright blue of full summer, and the clouds were as soft and fluffy as the sheep. Here and there a road, or a lane, led to a farmhouse with its outbuildings.

  ‘You know,’ I said dreamily, ‘except for the occasional car or tractor, this could be the Wales of Brother Cadfael.’ I’d recently been re-reading the marvellous Ellis Peters series about the twelfth-century Benedictine monk from Shrewsbury, who managed to stray into his native Wales much more often than the Rule would ordinarily allow.

  ‘The houses would be different, though.’ Inga liked the books, too, and the television series based on them. ‘Timber-framed, most of them, not brick or stone. And there would be lots more horses and mules about.’

  ‘The sheep would be exactly the same, though. Soft and silly. And I’ll swear the hills and the sky haven’t changed in those nine hundred years.’

  Inga silently pointed to a jet trail high over distant hills, and we both collapsed into laughter.

  ‘All right, all right. I’m a hopeless romantic. So sue me. But even you, my dear daughter of practicality, have to admit that this is an idyllic spot, whatever century we’re in.’

  ‘You’re right. It is. That’s why I wanted to come up here, for the peace.’ She began to hum, softly, a melody that sounded vaguely familiar.

  ‘That’s lovely. Rather haunting. What is it?’

  ‘Brother Cadfael would have known, or would have known the words, anyway. I’m not sure when someone came up with the music. It’s a chant, the Dies Irae. Nigel taught it to me. The words are a bit depressing, but I think the tune is quite nice.’ She hummed a little more of it.

  ‘Now I know why it rang faint bells in my mind. It’s one of the themes in the Symphonie Fantastique, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know the Symphonie that well. Nigel told me it’s the requiem chant they used for solemn funerals and the like, long ago. The words are all about the Day of Judgement.’

  ‘Hardly appropriate, then, for this gorgeous day.’

  ‘We-ell . . . but if you were a Benedictine monk hundreds of years ago, and you thought mostly about death and heaven and hell and that sort of thing, maybe even a beautiful day might remind you of how few of them you had left, and how you’d better mend your soul in preparation.’

  ‘But I’m not a Benedictine monk, and neither are you. How did you get started on this train of thought, anyway?’

  But we both knew. Inga turned her head away from her contemplation of the sky. ‘We can’t get away from it, can we? I’d thought to leave it all behind for a few hours, but . . .’

  ‘There’s no leaving it behind. There never is, no matter what “it” is. You have to work it through, unravel the knot.’ We walked on.

  ‘But there are such a lot of knots to unravel,’ said Inga after a time, in a small voice.

  ‘Don’t you think they may, in the end, all be part of the same tangle?’ I sat down on a convenient stile. ‘I remember once rummaging through an old knitting bag and finding the most awful mess of yarn. I had no memory of why I’d left it like that, or even what I’d used it for, but it was a pretty colour of pink, so I decided to sort through it and see if some of the pieces were long enough to make bows for Christmas presents, or cat toys, or something.

  ‘My dear, I couldn’t even find an end, at first. There seemed to be no beginning and no end, which was so obviously impossible that I tried shaking and shaking the thing. It got itself into an even worse snarl, but eventually an end poked out, and I started following it through. It took days! I’d free a few inches, maybe a couple of feet, and then get so fed up I’d stop and do something else and let my fingers rest. Arthritic hands don’t cope with snarled yarn easily. But I’m stubborn. I persisted, and eventually I had a lovely neat ball of yarn that looked like a full skein. And then I poked around the attic and found the rest of the yarn, the dozen or so skeins I’d put away years ago when I made such a mess of the first one.’

  ‘And I suppose you knitted something beautiful out of it.’

  ‘No, in the intervening years I’d discovered I really wasn’t a very good knitter, nothing like good enough to make the sweater I’d planned. As you observed the other night. So I gave it away to a friend, who did make something beautiful. But the point I was trying to make is that even the most appalling tangle can often be worked out, given enough time and patience.’

  ‘But time is just what we don’t have! Dorothy, tomorrow is the last day of the festival. After the concert’s over, everyone will go back to wherever they came from, and you know some of them are from very far away indeed. Different countries, with different laws – it would be next to impossible even to track down the murderer, much less bring him or her to justice! It has to be over before the last chord tomorrow!’

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, rising with a creak, ‘we’d better get moving, hadn’t we?’

  EIGHTEEN

  Nigel had already left for the castle when we got back to Tower, so Alan, Inga and I sat in the lounge and ate an early lunch of Mairi’s sandwiches and fruit. I had called a strategy conference.

  ‘Look, I’ve had an idea,’ I said, with some hesitation. ‘I don’t know if it’s any good, but we have to do something drastic. Inga reminded me that we have very little time to get to the bottom of the troubles. So I thought . . . but I don’t know if Sir John will agree . . . or even if it’s worthwhile . . .’

  ‘Suppose you tell us what it is,’ said Alan patiently, ‘and perhaps we can offer an opinion.’

  ‘Well, there’s not a lot of time to plan it, but I thought, what if we have a party for the festival tonight? Or late this afternoon, I mean, just after the concert. Because we want everyone to stay around, so we can talk to them. And I thought about herding them into rooms and standing up in front of them and asking questions, and the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed to be productive. So I thought, if we threw a party for them, they’d be relaxed and pleased, and we could mingle and talk, and maybe learn something important.’

  ‘When you say “we”, I assume you mean Sir John.’ Alan’s voice was flat and expressionless.

  ‘Well, yes. That’s why I don’t know if he’ll do it. It would cost a lot of money.’

  ‘And you were planning to hold this party where? In the castle?’

  ‘It would have to be, wouldn’t it? If it were anywhere else, some people wouldn’t come. And there’d be no way to make them come. But at the castle, as a surprise right after the concert . . . we could ask Sir John to invite them all, as a personal favour to him, so he could express his appreciation for all their hard work. Something like that. Only there’s almost no time, and the logistics . . .’ I ran down.

  There was silence while the other two considered the scheme.

  ‘The problems are obvio
us,’ said Alan at last, ‘but I don’t have a better idea. You’re right. At this point we must make the most efficient possible use of what time we have, and an informal gathering of the whole boiling of them might be what we need.’

  ‘Or what will appear to be an informal gathering,’ said Inga. ‘I like it, Dorothy. It’s the perfect setting for my gossip-mongering, at any rate.’

  Alan looked at his watch. ‘It’s just on twelve thirty. The concert starts at two. It’ll be over at – what, four?’

  ‘No later than that,’ said Inga.

  ‘Then we need to get cracking right now. You two change into whatever you’re wearing to the concert. I’ll find Mairi and ask her about a caterer who can feed a couple of hundred people at short notice, and then I’ll phone Sir John.’

  ‘He’ll be in the middle of rehearsal!’ said Inga, scandalized.

  ‘Then he’ll just have to be called away.’ Alan headed for the kitchen and Inga and I for our bedrooms.

  I hadn’t finished dressing when Alan called upstairs. ‘Dorothy! I’ve found a caterer. She wants to talk to you about the menu.’

  ‘But I don’t even know if Sir John is willing to do this!’ I hurried down the stairs, shoeless. ‘Or whether there’s a room at the castle we can use, or anything!’

  ‘She needs to know now, this minute. In for a penny, in for a pound. We’ll worry about the finances of it later.’ He handed me the phone.

  I found it hard to take Alan’s attitude. We’re not hurting for money, but we’re not made of it, either. An impressive bash for two hundred people would make a hole in our bank balance big enough to drive a Rolls Royce through. Alan had been teasing about a pub bill for all those people, and this would be much, much worse. However, the caterer was waiting. I gulped and took the phone.

  A menu was quickly settled. Four o’clock was tea time, so we’d have finger foods, but substantial ones, like bara brith and a new Welsh speciality I’d encountered at a village bake shop, called lamb oggies. A bit like pasties, little meat-filled pies, they can be delicious, and they’re certainly filling. The caterer suggested other treats, saying firmly, ‘I haven’t time to bake anything, but I’ve these things on hand, frozen, and they’ll do nicely. And tea?’