The Ghost Sonata (26 page)

Mrs. Choy and Mrs. Chen

 

Your mum rang twice, luv,” said Mrs. Luard as Wendy walked through the front door of Wyntle House. “She said she wants you to use your calling card to get in touch.”

“Okay, thanks for letting me know.” Wendy realized there was no way around it; she had to call home at some point.

“You're welcome to use the telephone in here by the telly if you want.” Breathing heavily as she maneuvered herself on her crutches, Mrs. Luard directed Wendy to the telephone. “I'll be back in a mo'; I have to let Bunny out in the garden for a wee.” Mrs. Luard moved heavily down the hallway with her tiny dog scurrying behind her.

Wendy sat down on Mrs. Luard's worn couch, found her calling card, and stared at it for a minute before finally picking up the phone and dialing.

“Wendy! That you?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Why not call sooner?”

“Just busy practicing.”

“Something wrong?”

“No.” There was an echo on the line, and Wendy had the disconcerting sense of shouting into a canyon. “Wendy—Mrs. Chen say there is a hole in you music.”

“What?”

“A hole! She say, you brain forget you music!”

Wendy felt intensely annoyed. Ming Fong must have blabbed something about that glitch in the first round of the competition to her mother, who had predictably blabbed the news to Mrs. Choy.

“Mom, it's called a ‘memory slip,' and it can happen to anyone.”

“Not practice long enough? Out eating scones and greasy Italian curry with Gilda!”

“I haven't had a single scone—or Indian curry—since I've been here, Mom! I've been practicing my butt off, and it has nothing to do with Gilda.”

“I'm being trailed by a ghost,”
Wendy imagined herself saying. What would her mother do if she heard the truth?
She'd probably withdraw money from her savings account, jump on the next plane to England, and bring me some ancient Chinese herbs and rearrange my furniture.
The idea of dealing with her mother along with a ghost and the piano competition would be far too much to handle, so Wendy decided to keep the true nature of her problem to herself.

Mrs. Choy fell silent for a moment. “Can you still win competition?”

“Mom, this is an international competition. That means there are plenty of people here who have won contests at home just like me. It's very competitive.”

“Great honor for you family if you win.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You father and I work ver' hard, you know? Expensive lessons, trip to England . . . Would be nice to hear you at least
wish
to win.”

Her mother began talking about Ming Fong and Mrs. Chen, but Wendy was only half-listening. There was music in her head, and it was growing louder. For once, she didn't mind hearing the intrusive melody. At the moment, the competition seemed small and insignificant because
someone
had other, bigger plans for her.

34

The Breakthrough

 

Gilda took in her surroundings—the exposed wooden beams of the low ceilings, the noisy tables crowded together, the crackling fireplace—and couldn't help but think that her mother would be outraged if she knew that at that very moment, her daughter was in a smoke-filled Oxfordshire pub, sitting at a table with a boy whom she had just kissed in a damp graveyard.

“I'll have a lager,” Julian told the barman who had approached their table with menus.

“You here with your mum or dad to give you permission?”

“Why would a man of my advanced age be out with his mum and dad?”

“No lager for you, mate.”

“Worth a try.”

“I'll bring you a glass of warm milk with your fish and chips,” the barman joked.

Julian leaned forward to be heard above the jovial din in the pub. “So didn't I tell you that graveyard ritual would work?”

“
Something
definitely happened,” Gilda agreed. She was still baffled by the cloaked figure she had seen. She also had the frustrating awareness that the mystery she had stumbled upon was more complicated than she had imagined; the more pieces of the puzzle she encountered, the less she understood how they all fit together.

“I guess I'd make a pretty good psychic investigator myself,” said Julian.

“There's more to it than doing rituals in a graveyard, Julian. I mean, I've been working to develop these skills for a few
years
.”

“I always thought being psychic was something you're born with.”

“Sure it is. But you still have to practice and study . . .” Gilda was distracted by a familiar voice that cut through the boisterous banter of the pub—an officious, posh-sounding voice suited to sailing across concert halls and lecture halls. Gilda glanced around the room and was shocked when she discovered the source of the voice. “Don't look now, Julian,” she said, speaking in a low voice, “but the competition judges are here.”

“You can't be serious.”

Gilda pointed to a dim corner of the pub where Professor Waldgrave sat at a table with Professor Maddox. “What do you think the two of them are doing here together? They hate each other!”

“Maybe they kissed and made up.”

Gilda glanced back at the two music professors and noticed that Professor Maddox wore a distraught expression. Her hair looked wilder than ever, as if walking in the rain had caused her spiral curls to stand straight on end. Gilda impulsively pulled her dark cat's-eye sunglasses from her bag and put them on. She felt that she simply had to know what they were talking about. “I'm going to sneak over there to spy on them,” she announced.

“Those sunglasses don't quite make you blend in with the crowd,” Julian observed.

“Maybe not, but I bet they won't recognize me.” Gilda removed her hat and opened a compact mirror to apply a blood-red shade of lipstick. “In my investigations, I've learned that most people actually have very short, superficial memories. If they
do
remember you, it's only because of a couple of details—maybe your hair color or a quirk about your clothing or the way you speak or walk. Half the time, all you need as a disguise is a pair of sunglasses.”

“Go on, then; I'll watch the show from here.”

Gilda used a menu to conceal her face as she sauntered slowly toward the judges' table. Peeking over the menu, she saw Professor Maddox leave the table for the ladies' room. In her absence, Professor Waldgrave reached across the table to feed his cat a morsel of fish from her plate.

Gilda found a spot at the end of the bar and climbed onto a bar stool. She did her best to act as if she was the sort of local person who simply happened to stop into her local watering hole for a drink while her dogs waited outside yelping in the rain. She perused her menu and was pleased to see that both “bangers and mash” and “spotted dick” were available.

A barmaid approached to take Gilda's order. “I'll have an Old Tubthumper, please,” said Gilda, copying an order she had heard someone else make and forcing herself to avoid looking in Julian's direction for fear of bursting into giggles. “The warmer and darker, the better,” she added. One of her guidebooks had mentioned that “unlike Americans, the English prefer their beer warm and dark.”

“Half pint or pint?”

“Pint.”

To Gilda's surprise, the barmaid actually slapped down a beer that looked as thick and dark as molasses into a glass, large enough for the heftiest pub-goers in the room. Now Gilda couldn't help glancing in Julian's direction, and could barely stifle her laughter when she saw his jaw drop with disbelief and outrage. For Julian's benefit, she pretended to take a sip and decided that the drink smelled like warm fungus or something that might be used to lubricate a machine.

“What's the matter?” Professor Waldgrave asked.

Gilda's ears perked up at the sound of Professor Maddox returning to her table.

“Rhiannon, Sophia ate only a few bites of your fish. I thought you didn't want it.”

“It isn't the fish.” Professor Maddox's voice sounded hoarse.

Is Professor Maddox crying?
Gilda wished she could turn around to observe the two professors more directly.

“Rhiannon, we have our differences of opinion, but we'll sort it out. That's why they asked both of us to judge—because we come from such opposite orientations. Besides, Winterbottom will be here to help judge the final round.”

Who in the world is “Winterbottom”?
Gilda wondered.

“Despite our differences, I think the group we've pulled together for the finals is a fine selection of performers,” Waldgrave continued. “There will no doubt be some raised eyebrows when Professor Heslop announces the list tonight, but so be it.”

They've picked the finalists!
It was all Gilda could do to keep from swiveling around in her seat and demanding to know whether Wendy and Julian had made it.
Mention some names!
she thought.
Mention some names!

“I'm not thinking about the judging either,” said Professor Maddox.

“What, then?”

“Being at this competition again . . .” Professor Maddox suddenly spoke in a softer voice, and Gilda had to strain to hear her. “Well, I keep thinking about
him
. Don't you?”

THINKING ABOUT WHOM?!
Gilda wished people wouldn't use so many vague pronouns, and she wondered why there was such a very long silence following Professor Maddox's comment. Why wasn't Waldgrave saying anything in reply?

Still wearing her sunglasses, Gilda stealthily turned to peek behind her. Professor Maddox sat with her hands flat on the table, on either side of a virtually untouched plate of fish. Her eyes looked red, as if she had just recovered from a crying spell. Waldgrave's mouth was a thin line; his face stony and drained of color. He rubbed his bald head with one hand, as if trying to remove a smudge he had discovered up there.

“Rhiannon,” Professor Waldgrave finally said, “Charles Drummond has been gone for five years now.”

CHARLES DRUMMOND!
Hearing this name, Gilda felt so excited and agitated, she accidentally knocked over her entire pint of dark beer, which sloshed across the bar and onto the floor. Luckily, the barmaid was too busy ringing up orders at the other end of the counter to notice.

“I know it's been five years,” said Professor Maddox. “But I've had this odd feeling ever since I arrived in Oxford this week. We can't deny the fact that if you hadn't—”

“If I hadn't
what
? Why don't you go ahead and
say
it, Rhiannon?”

Gilda grabbed some napkins and tried to soak up the brown puddle of beer that now spread in front of her on the counter while doing her best not to miss a moment of the drama unfolding behind her.
Go ahead and say WHAT?
she wondered.

“If I hadn't
killed
him,” said Professor Waldgrave, in a slightly lower voice. “That's what you were going to say, wasn't it?”

Gilda sat motionless with a wad of beer-soaked napkins in one hand, trying to will every cell in her body to become a listening device.

“No. That's
not
what I was going to say.”

“It's what you were thinking.”

“Nigel, you're projecting your own guilt onto me.”

“I could say the same to you!” Professor Waldgrave's voice grew louder. “You're projecting
your
guilt onto
me
.”

Gilda glanced behind her and glimpsed Professor Waldgrave pointing at Professor Maddox with an accusing index finger, as if it were a handgun.

“Don't point at me that way, please.”

“You're not so innocent, you know. You had your role to play, and you know that if you hadn't gotten involved, it never would have turned out this way. Never!”

“Not being able to accept responsibility is a sign of immaturity, Nigel.”

“And I think we're
both
very immature, sad people.”

Professor Maddox stood up at the table and Gilda quickly turned around in her seat. She found the barmaid mopping the puddle of beer on the other side of the counter and eyeing Gilda's empty pint glass irritably.

Rhiannon Maddox breezed out of the pub. Gilda wasn't the only person who watched her leave: many eyes were drawn to the strikingly dramatic hooded black cape she wore—a cape so long, its muddy edges dragged across the pub floor.