Music to Die For (The Falconer Files Book 6) Page 2

  ‘Of course, my dear,’ replied the vicar, smiling fondly around at all those present. ‘May I present to you Mr Campbell Dashwood, who has recently moved into Wheel Cottage. He has been involved in music all his life, both as an enthusiastic amateur performer and, later, as a professional.

  ‘He has a great deal of experience as a conductor, and is sufficiently multi-talented,’ (here, the vicar made a small bow in Mr Dashwood’s direction), ‘to produce arrangements for all of those – oh, what do you call them, now? – transferring instruments.’

  ‘That’s ‘transposing’, Vicar,’ interjected the newcomer, with a small, superior smile.

  ‘Precisely, Mr Dashwood; just what I meant to say. Anyway, here is the man himself, and perhaps I could hand over to you now, Mr Midwynter, so that you can introduce him to all your players, and then, perhaps, you could find us somewhere to sit, so that we can listen in on your rehearsal, and just give Mr Dashwood here, a flavour of your playing.’

  As Myles Midwynter put down his clarinet, Campbell Dashwood extracted a small notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket along with a minute pencil, licked the end of the latter, and stood, ready to take notes. Before Myles could speak, however, Campbell Dashwood was moved to verify some information.

  ‘I understand that your performance later this summer is to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the forming of the band, and that it will take place in the church, with half the proceeds going to the church restoration fund, and the other half to a charity to which you regularly contribute.’

  ‘Absolutely correct, Mr Dashwood.’

  ‘Please, call me Campbell,’ suggested the little man, but his smile never reached his eyes – either of them – and was somehow chilly.

  ‘Right, Campbell,’ continued Myles, ‘may I begin by introducing you to the strings section of the band. Perhaps when I call out your name, you could stand, so that Mr Dashwood – sorry, Campbell – can identify you,’ he requested, moving to the front of the assembled musicians.

  ‘Let’s start with first violin. May I present to you Mr Cameron McKnight.’

  Cameron stood, still clutching his violin and bow, and made a small bow to Campbell. ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said, smiling, but as Campbell made no answer, he sat down again, feeling a little flustered.

  Myles cleared his throat in embarrassment about the lack of response, but put this down to, perhaps, a bit of initial shyness on Mr Dashwood’s part. Dammit, it didn’t feel right calling him Campbell. He’d have to do something about that later; and he put his mind to finding a suitable ruse to address this enigmatic little man in a more formal manner; one that felt comfortable.

  ‘Next,’ he continued, ‘we have second violin, Mrs Gwendolyn Radcliffe.’ A short, dumpy lady with an iron-grey perm and more than a hint of a moustache rose to her feet, blushing, then sat straight down again, without even waiting to see if any response was forthcoming. Dashwood considered her to be in her early sixties.

  ‘On viola, we have Miss Fern Bailey,’ intoned Myles, and a slightly plump woman shot up off her seat and beamed round at all assembled. She wore a hairband and had a ‘jolly hockey sticks’ air about her that proclaimed her to be just an overgrown boarding school girl, even though she was in her mid-thirties.

  Myles continued gamely, ‘Now we have my own lovely wife, Myrtle, on cello.’ Myrtle didn’t stand, but as they had already met on the doorstep, waved her tea towel in the air instead, before folding it into a small square on which to place the spike of her cello so that there would be no damage to the carpet.

  ‘I say, old girl,’ called Myles. ‘All this announcing is thirsty work, do you think you could do the honours, and top up all the glasses. There are a couple more bottles of white in the fridge if you need them, and a couple more red, breathing, on the dining room sideboard. May I get you a glass of wine, Mr Dashwood?’

  This time, Campbell didn’t correct Myles’s form of address, and said, with a certain amount of smug pride, ‘I never touch anything alcoholic. Not only does it damage the liver, but I am convinced that it rots the brain as well. I don’t suppose I could have a glass of water, could I, if it’s not too much trouble?’

  ‘Got that!’ called Myrtle, and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘Moving on, we have Miss Vanessa Palfreyman on double bass. Stand up and show yourself, Vanessa. Don’t be shy.’ A tall, somewhat stout middle-aged woman with short-cropped dark hair, just beginning to show signs of grey, slid out from behind the camouflage of her large instrument, then ducked back out of sight as quickly as possible.

  ‘Right, that’s the strings dealt with. Now we move on to woodwind, starting with Gayle Potten on flute.’

  ‘Overweight mutton dressed as lamb,’ thought Dashwood, disparagingly. ‘She could do with losing at least three stone, if not more, and if her T-shirt were any tighter there would probably be a very nasty explosion of flesh to be dealt with.’

  ‘Geraldine Warwick, on piccolo and miscellaneous percussion.’ Myles had dropped the use of titles; it was all too wearing to remember which of the women were Miss, Mrs, or Ms, when he’d already sunk a few sherbets.

  ‘Mouse,’ was Dashwood’s only thought about the apologetic pixie, who had bobbed briefly to her feet in response to her name.

  ‘Wendy Burnett, on oboe,’ Myles droned on, stifling a yawn. Surely it wasn’t that late.

  ‘Methuselah’s mother,’ thought Dashwood, unkindly, as Wendy was a very spritely eighty-nine, and looked years younger than her actual age.

  ‘And last in this section, but certainly not least, we have Lester Westlake, on saxophone.’

  Dashwood observed a tall, slim man rise from the back of the room, bowing to all present, and grinning a smile that seemed to contain a great number of large and very white teeth. ‘Lounge lizard!’ His thoughts allowed him the luxury of a minuscule smile. He knew the type, all right. All looks, and nothing much of anything else. Well, he’d better play well, or he’d have his guts for garters.

  ‘Oh, not quite last. I’m afraid,’ Myles apologised. ‘I’ve forgotten myself. I’m on clarinet. The brass section has only one player, I’m afraid, but it is the unforgettable Harold Grimes, on trumpet.’

  A fairly short, elderly man rose to his feet and, extraordinarily, to one who hadn’t seen how much wine he had imbibed, did a little dance on the spot.

  ‘The fool of the group,’ was Dashwood’s silent verdict.

  ‘And our last member to be introduced is Edmund Alexander, who plays keyboard for us, and generally keeps us in line.’

  ‘We’ll see about that!’ thought Dashwood. ‘He’d better be good, or he’s out.’

  ‘Come on, woman; where’s that glass of water? We’ve got a man dying of thirst here,’ shouted Myles, with such volume that Geraldine Warwick was observed to physically jump in her seat.

  ‘I’ve put it on the little table between the two red leather armchairs. Oh, and I’ve put a glass of red wine there for you, Vicar. I know how you like a little tipple.’

  ‘You get yourselves sat down, and we’ll just have a little discussion on what we’re going to play for you this evening.’ Moving back to his place in the band, Myles exhorted the others to wrack their brains, and come up with something interesting.

  ‘Come along, you lot! Mr Dashwood and the vicar don’t want to be sitting here all evening, while you bicker and squabble about what we ought to play,’ he said, cutting across the babble of talk. ‘I know; let’s do ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. That’s always a good laugh – at least it is for me. You know what my timing’s like!’ he finished, with a rich chuckle, drawing smiles from all the other band members, who did, indeed, know how erratic his timing was, and how many hilarious moments it had produced in the past.

  After an enthusiastic, but wildly inaccurate fifteen minutes of fighting the chosen piece, Dashwood whispered something in the vicar’s ear, then rose from his seat and left the room, dragging an embarrassed clergyman in his
wake.

  Once out in the hall, Dashwood turned to Rev. Church and asked, in a furious whisper, ‘Have they really been together for ten years?’ His rogue eye seemed to rake the ceiling, as if he were looking towards the heavens for an answer.

  ‘Yes. The odd person has left, and another one joined, but they’re basically the same people here now, who started it all.’

  ‘And how often do they rehearse?’

  ‘Once a month,’ replied the vicar, now mortified after what he had just listened to in the drawing room.

  ‘Well, that’s going to have to change, if I’m taking over. It’s got to be once a week. And tell me something else. Do they always start that late, and drink so much?’

  ‘They have a meal first, and there’s wine with that, and more during the rehearsal if anyone wants it.’

  ‘Well, that’s got to stop as well. And that drawing room’s no use for rehearsing in – people sitting in low armchairs, and on drooping sofas. Would it be possible for us to use the old meeting hall on a Friday night?’

  ‘I have no problem with that, Mr Dashwood, but who’s going to tell them about the changes?’

  ‘Oh, I will. They don’t frighten me. If they want to be a decent band, then they’ll have to learn discipline – and I’m the man for the job. I’ll drop a note through Midwynter’s door first thing in the morning, then I’ll telephone him later, if you would be so kind as to supply me with his number.

  ‘We can thrash it out between us over the phone. If we can get the rehearsals started earlier, there will be plenty of time for them to go for a drink afterwards, but, in my opinion, one mouthful of alcohol in the system completely befuddles the fingers, whatever instrument one plays.’

  ‘Rather you than me, old chap,’ retorted the vicar, his face a mask of dismay at the outcome of such straight talking, to a man of such entrenched habits as Myles Midwynter.

  ‘Oh, it’s not luck I need, Vicar, just determination and structure, tempered with an iron discipline. I’ll soon have them playing like professionals. You just wait and see. They just need the alcohol-induced scales to fall from their eyes, and they’ll realise what an appalling racket they actually make. I’ll soon have them eating out of the palm of my hand.’

  III

  It had been one of those frustrating days for Detective Inspector Harry Falconer, with a very awkward moment with Detective Sergeant Davey Carmichael. The moment had occurred when they were both in the office, up to their eyes in paperwork, and Carmichael had suddenly said, ‘John Proudfoot’ [PC] ‘said something very odd to me today, sir. He patted me on the arm and said, ‘You’re a very brave lad, carrying on working like this, and we’re all very proud of you. You keep on eating those lollipops – they’ll help to build you up. Now, I’ll say no more.’ What do you think he meant by that?

  ‘And then, when I went to the canteen, the woman behind the counter gave me an extra doughnut, and then wouldn’t charge me for it. She said I needed to keep up my strength and just carry on taking my medicine. I’m fair flummoxed. And I’ve had some odd, sad looks from some of the others working here – you know, the civilian staff? What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘That does sound odd,’ Falconer replied. ‘I’ve got to go down to the desk, so I’ll see what Bob Bryant has to say. He’s usually got his ear to the ground and knows just about everything that goes on around here.’

  Ten minutes later, the inspector stormed back into the room, a look of fury on his face. ‘You and your stupid Kojak look!’ he exclaimed [see: Murder at The Manse].

  ‘What about it, sir?’ asked Carmichael, puzzled at the out-of-the-blue reference to his recently-shaven head.

  ‘Proudfoot’s only put two and two together, and made eighty-seven. He’s been going around telling everyone how tragic it is that you’ve got cancer! They think you’re having chemotherapy and still coming into work, despite the way you obviously must be feeling.

  ‘Well, I bearded him in his den – asleep behind a newspaper in the canteen – and I told him that there was nothing wrong with you, and that he’d better get round to spreading that good news. There never had been anything wrong with you, and now everyone thought you were ill. I said he also needed to apologise to you, personally, as you had no idea what people were thinking, and couldn’t understand why you were being treated so differently.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him about Kojak, did you, sir?’ asked Carmichael, nervously. He didn’t want anyone extracting the Michael about his little fantasies.

  ‘Oh course I didn’t, you twerp. I told them you’d forgotten to put the spacer into your hair clippers, and after the first run across your head, you realised you’d made a mistake, and had to shave the rest of it off, to make it look acceptable, otherwise you’d have had a great bald stripe right across the top of your head.’

  ‘Phew! Thanks, sir. I didn’t want anyone to think I was a fantasising twit.’

  ‘Even if you are – although not the fantasising bit,’ Falconer muttered under his breath, so that Carmichael wouldn’t hear. How things can be twisted all out of shape, if someone gets the wrong end of the stick, and just happens to be the station’s biggest gossip and rumour-monger.

  Harry Falconer was late finishing work that day, and it wasn’t until seven o’clock that he packed up the paperwork he needed to take home, and prepared to leave the Station, but he wasn’t to escape the building that easily.

  At the foot of the staircase, he was hailed by the desk sergeant, Bob Bryant. ‘Hey, sunshine, not so fast! There’s been something left here that I don’t think will keep overnight, so I’d be grateful if you’d collect it now and take it with you.’

  With a puzzled expression, Falconer crossed to the desk, only to have his gaze directed to the floor just behind it, where a small grey-spotted cat nestled on part of an old blanket, in a wire cat basket. ‘Oh, no,’ he thought. ‘I’d forgotten all about that.’ [1]

  ‘I seem to recall,’ Bob Bryant went on, ‘that you promised to take this tiny, helpless creature into the care and comfort of your own home. That fella from the hotel phoned the RSPCA to take her away, but fortunately, word had got around about your very kind offer, so one of their lads went and collected it, and here it is. I don’t know whether it’s a he or a she, but it seems very placid.’

  ‘So did they say why it’s taken so long to get her here?’ asked Falconer, still slightly puzzled.

  ‘Had to catch it first, apparently. It can run like the very devil, when it wants to. Anyway, sunshine, it’s all yours now. I can’t be having animals behind my desk. Gives completely the wrong impression to visiting members of the public, and the next thing you know, we’ll be inundated with all sorts of waifs and strays. Here it is,’ he said, handing over the cage. ‘And good luck. You’re going to need it with that snooty Mycroft of yours, not to mention the other two you took in after that affair at Stoney Cross.’ [2]

  Falconer took the cat basket with a sinking feeling in his stomach. After the first day or two, he thought everyone had forgotten his rash offer to give Perfect Cadence a home, then he had conveniently forgotten it too, making sure he didn’t mention it to anyone, in case his spontaneity came back to haunt him; and yet here it was, much more substantial than a ghost, and liable to cause chaos with Mycroft (his seal-point Siamese), Ruby (a red-point Siamese) and Tar Baby (a huge, black, furry monster of a cat). Still, such is life! He’d just have to learn to keep his mouth firmly shut in the future, and not let his sentimental side get the better of him.

  Placing the basket on the passenger seat of his Boxster, he carefully fastened the seatbelt round it, and headed for home, full of trepidation. The cat had woken up as soon as he started the engine, and managed to howl mournfully for the entire journey, which did nothing for his spirits.

  Entering the house, three furry figures skittered out of the sitting room to meet him, skidding abruptly to a halt when they saw what he held in his left hand. They couldn’t quite see what was in the cage, but they cou
ld smell ‘cat’, and it wasn’t one of them. What was going on here? Why had he brought another cat home? Weren’t they enough for him?

  Before Falconer had even had the chance to close the front door, the three furry bodies had turned their backs on him in disgust, and gone about their business, feigning total disinterest in what he had brought home for them, for if it was a present, he could just take it away with him again, because they didn’t want anything to do with it.

  Fortunately, they had all stalked out of the cat-flap in a huff, to see if anything interesting was going on in the back garden, and he was able to set the flap to ‘in only’, and release Perfect Cadence from her prison. Setting the cat box, door still open, in case she felt she needed somewhere to retreat to, he filled a fresh bowl with food, and another with water, and put both down on the floor, on the plastic mat he used for the other feeding bowls, so that his kitchen floor did not get too dirty, for his pets had absolutely no table manners at all.

  Reaching to the top of one of the kitchen cupboards, he retrieved a litter tray, removed the emergency bag of litter from the cupboard under the stairs, poured the latter into the former, and put it down near the back door for the new cat’s use, until he felt she was at home, and ready to go outside, and still know where to come back to.

  Perfect Cadence performed like a natural. She slunk over to the food bowl, eyes going from side to side, in case there were any of those other cats that she had smelled around, then lowered her head, and ate, making unnerving growling noises, as she made the food disappear. When the bowl had been licked clean, she took a dainty drink of water, then approached the litter tray with an intent look in her eye.

  Falconer finally found the poop scoop about ten minutes later, under a pile of old newspapers that he had placed under the stairs to take for re-cycling, and then completely forgotten about. Armed with this, and trying not to breathe through his nose, he set about cleaning the foul little present that his new house guest had deposited in the litter tray, tied the carrier bag in which he had placed it, and then stood thinking.