Troubles in the Brasses (18 page)

“Yes, and I noticed it was gone from the rack this morning. You’d better get that camera, Tad, before somebody else wakes up and comes looking for breakfast. You can tell Pitney you want to photograph the first press plane coming in.”

“I would not lie to my friend. Furthermore, I am hoping Carlos will come himself to work the camera. He’s quite expert, and his discretion is impeccable.”

Softly, in his old-fashioned felt slippers, Sir Emlyn padded upstairs. Madoc went back to the kitchen, took out the flashlight he’d stashed in the kitchen cupboard against emergencies, and used it to take a closer look at the ungainly sprawl that had been Cedric Rintoul.

W
ITHOUT MOVING THE BODY
, he couldn’t see much. Rintoul had fallen face down with his hands doubled under him. Madoc did find the tumbler he’d been drinking from; it had rolled under the stove. The indication was that he’d dropped it when he fell. Since Rintoul hadn’t lifted a hand yesterday to tidy up after himself, it was unlikely he was bringing the tumbler back to be washed. More probably, he’d been meaning to get himself another drink, and that was interesting. He couldn’t have been worried about getting murdered.

Yesterday morning Rintoul, along with everybody else, had heard Ace Bulligan talking about that early news bulletin. Last night, he’d heard Madoc and Rick confirm the report that Wilhelm Ochs had been poisoned. Maybe he’d thought he knew who’d murdered Ochs, and that the culprit was among those who’d gone by train. Maybe he knew the real killer was here at the Miners’ Rest, and had been stabbed because he couldn’t be trusted not to tell. Maybe he himself had killed Ochs, and had been murdered out of revenge. Had Norma Bellini née Belschi, late Ochs, felt it her duty to avenge the death of her former husband? Would she have chosen an icepick to do the job?

Why not? Icepicks made excellent weapons because their points were so sharp and their shafts so slender. A woman with plenty of weight behind her could drive one in easily enough, assuming she knew just where to set the point. Maybe La Bellini hadn’t been bent on vengeance, merely anxious to shut Rintoul’s ever-flapping mouth before he told her current lover about her having been married to Ochs.

Or maybe this had nothing at all to do with Ochs. Maybe Frieda Loye had finally decided she’d had as much of Rintoul as she was going to take. Maybe Corliss Blair had killed him for breathing garlic fumes at her during rehearsals. Maybe Jason Jasper had got tired of being second banana.

Among all the maybes, Madoc could sort out one incontrovertible fact which he hadn’t had the heart to mention to his father. If the question of who’d stabbed the prankish trombonist was not resolved before their rescue plane, bus, truck, or mule team came along, the local law officer would have every right to keep them here in Lodestone Flat until it was. He was somewhat relieved when his father came back with Carlos Pitney and an impressive-looking Nikon in tow.

Pitney allowed himself one quick, “God help us, what a thing to happen!” then got down to business. He took a quick reading on his exposure meter, then began to snap. He knew about angles. His flash worked every time. Madoc had no doubt whatever that the photographs would be excellent.

In about five minutes’ time, Pitney had finished his job. Madoc wrapped a clean cup towel around his hand, took a careful grip on the icepick down by the base of the shaft, and pulled it out. Pitney took a couple more shots of Madoc performing the operation so that there’d be no doubt that it was he who’d done so. Madoc then laid the weapon, wrapped loosely in the towel, inside a long candle box he’d found in the pantry, and put the cover on the box.

“Thanks a lot. Here, Tad, hold this. Now if you and I, Carlos, can lift Rintoul very carefully away from the stove and lay him on this blanket you so intelligently brought down with you, we’ll get him out to the shed.”

Madoc had no great hope of learning anything from the state of the floor. It was nothing but rough wooden planks with a few squares of linoleum at strategic areas, all of them by now hopelessly tracked up. The urgent task right now was to get Rintoul out of sight. Already a few creaks from overhead told them that some of the people upstairs were beginning to stir.

Madoc didn’t want his father to help with the carrying. They’d manage without him. He himself was a good deal stronger than he looked and while Rintoul had been big, Carlos Pitney was even bigger. The two of them got the body wrapped in the blanket and safely stowed in the shed while Sir Emlyn, with great presence of mind, fetched the now boiling kettle off the lobby stove, restored the iron curlicue to its proper place, and made a pot of tea. By the time the self-appointed pallbearers came back, he was setting out mugs and powdered milk in the coziest manner possible.

Madoc had brought back an armload of firewood, with which he quickly stoked the big kitchen range. Carlos Pitney was snapping a photo of the father and son sipping their tea by the time Joe Ragovsky came downstairs already dressed for the day.

“Hey, what’s this, a pajama party? I thought I was going to be the first one down.”

“Ah, you Canadian wheat farmers are no match for us Welsh sheep herders,” Sir Emlyn replied as complacently as though he hadn’t just been an accomplice in a clandestine concealment of a murdered man. “I had intended to fetch myself some shaving water so that I could uphold my well-known dignity among you by appearing clean and unwhiskered, but as you can see, I got sidetracked. Sit down, Ragovsky. Have we anything left to eat, I wonder?”

“Not a heck of a lot,” Joe replied. “There’s flour and baking powder and canned shortening. And jam. I thought I might whomp us up some hot biscuits to tide us over till the relief plane gets here. They’d be better than nothing, anyway.”

“A good deal better, I have no doubt,” said Pitney in that deep organ tone even Madoc could appreciate. “Let me pour you a mug of tea first. Sir Emlyn made it. I never knew you were so handy around the kitchen, Em.”

As Joe was throwing dry ingredients together and cutting in the shortening, Pitney lolled back till his chair creaked, appearing perfectly at ease in a sumptuous maroon cashmere bathrobe with gold piping. “You know, I wouldn’t mind coming back here sometime, with you fellows to cook for me. And the plumbing hooked up.”

And no bodies in the woodshed. Madoc admired the basso’s aplomb; Pitney’d been looking a trifle unnerved back there watching Madoc go through Rintoul’s pockets. Madoc still hadn’t had a chance to decide whether he’d come across something important. From the sounds he was catching now, he wouldn’t get much opportunity for cogitation any time soon.

“Tad,” he said, “you’d better grab that kettle and slide back to your room. I think I hear a plane.”

That might, of course, be only Ranger Rick in his little puddle-jumper. It might, God forbid, be Ace Bulligan coming back for more booze. Leaving Joe to finish the biscuits, Madoc went outside to check. No, this was a bigger plane than Rick’s, though not a great deal bigger. Press, for sure. He went back inside to report.

Pitney was gone. The kitchen was crammed with pitcher-carriers, all of them clamoring for hot water and not getting any. Nobody had thought to fill the reservoir in the stove or the wash boiler that had served so well the night before. Ainsworth Kight was taking the oversight as a personal affront. Nobody else was paying any attention to him. Jason Jasper was trying to work the pump and not having much luck. Joe Ragovsky was still cutting biscuits.

Joe’s curly golden beard made an agreeable contrast to the unshaven cheeks around him. Madoc felt his own ill-shaven chin and wished he’d kept the mustache he’d sacrificed during his courting days. Janet had complained that it prickled when he kissed her; but Janet, alas, was not here to be kissed. He took the pump handle from Jasper and got down to business.

The sound of the plane could be heard now even over the creaking and splashing of the pump and the gabble of the pitcher-bearers. Sir Emlyn and Lady Rhys came downstairs, he now clean-shaven, she morning fresh with not a hair out of place. Both were in their British tweeds, ready to do credit to Sir Emlyn’s position, thereby to the Wagstaffe Symphony Orchestra, thence to the festival. They bore their heavy responsibilities well, Madoc thought with pride.

By the time he’d got all the pitchers filled, the plane was circling over Lodestone Flat. Going outside again, this time with his parents, Madoc could easily read the lettering on its side. BUED, in red and orange with a green line around the edges. A television crew, beyond a doubt. Madoc endured his mother’s scrutiny, held up his chin as she tried to straighten his collar, then ducked back into the hotel. His aim was to maintain the lowest profile possible and try to get some work done.

He’d found a key in the woodshed door. It wasn’t much of one, merely the old iron sort that would probably fit any of the doors in the hotel, but it was better man nothing. He’d turned it in the lock and slipped it into his pocket. Now he nipped back into the kitchen and offered to keep an eye on the biscuits so Joe Ragovsky could go out to watch the plane land. As soon as Joe was gone, Madoc unlocked the door again and slipped into the cold woodshed.

He and Pitney had laid Rintoul on the floor, over at the right-hand side of the shed where there wasn’t much of anything except a few chairs and nightstands the hotel keepers were perhaps intending to repaint before their season began next spring. A couple of these with a tarpaulin draped over them had made an adequate screen to conceal the trombone player’s remains from anybody who might happen to catch a glimpse inside. Madoc ducked under the improvised tent and knelt beside the body.

After another, more painstaking examination, he decided he’d been right the first time. There was not one blessed thing about the body that even suggested a clue as to who’d wielded the icepick. This had been either a very skillful or a very lucky killing. He’d better get back and check on those biscuits.

And a good thing he did. The stove was burning really hot now. Another couple of minutes and the biscuits would have been burning, too. Madoc reached in with a potholder and pulled out a huge roasting pan filled with puffy, well-browned, good-smelling humps. Joe was without question a sound man on biscuits. To confirm his appraisal, Madoc extracted one of them from the pan, split it, anointed the halves with dabs of regrettably sweet marmalade which was the best the larder had to offer, and ran a consumer test.

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?”