Murder at the Castle (16 page)

‘Owen. As Welsh a name as you'll find anywhere. And exactly what would we tell him? That we have a great many unsupported suspicions?'

‘You think too much like a policeman. Our ideas may not have a lot of evidence behind them, but they're not exactly unsupported. We have experience of crime and criminals, you over a lifetime, and me for a good few years now. And we have experience of life, and the way people behave, and misbehave. When we form opinions, they're worth considering.'

Alan smiled at me. ‘I'm not the one you need to convince. I agree with every word you say – as an individual. But as the policeman I once was—'

‘And still are and always will be,' I interrupted.

‘As
a policeman I have to look at evidence. And we have none, not one jot or tittle, that either Daniel Green or Delia Warner was murdered.'

‘Then we'll just have to get some, won't we?'

‘And how do you propose to do that?'

‘First of all, by talking to Pat as soon as we can reach her. Why don't you try her phone again?'

But again there was no answer, and it was time we headed to the afternoon concert.

The music took my mind off everything else for a blissful afternoon. Sir John had chosen to use the English translation of the oratorio, and the setting of those familiar words was glorious. I could hardly believe that in a lifetime of enjoying great music I had never heard this before. The critics would later speak of the performance in awed terms, calling it perhaps the best
Creation
ever performed with semi-professional musicians. They didn't put it quite that way, of course, but that was what they meant. I only knew that I was transported, transformed.

When it was over, the audience simply sat in silence for a long moment before breaking into wild applause. I clapped until my hands hurt, and Inga and Alan right along with me.

When Nigel joined us, flushed with the thrill of performance, he brought the American twins with him. Amid a spate of mutual congratulations, Laurie turned to me. ‘Hey, I owe you a lot, Mrs Martin. That new string made all the difference! Could you hear it?'

I smiled and shook my head. ‘Not with all the other glorious noise going on! I don't have that good an ear. But the whole thing was splendid, orchestra, chorus, soloists and all. Look, if you two don't have any plans right now, how about going with us for a magnificent tea, or a drink if that suits your American tastes better?'

‘Hey, I don't have anything against tea,' said Larry. ‘And by “a tea” they mean a meal over here, don't they?'

‘They do indeed. And I'll bet that hotel – what's its name, Nigel, where we had dinner that one night?'

‘Soughton Hall. They don't do teas in the normal run, but Inga and I found a place that does, called Bodysgallen Hall. It's a hotel in a seventeenth-century manor house, near Llandudno. I think you'll like it.'

‘Well, then,' said Alan, beaming, ‘we'll go to your unpronounceable hotel and celebrate with a fine feast of carbohydrates. Nigel, if you'll lead the way, and take Inga and Larry, I think we can fit Laurie and her violin into our car.'

On the way the conversation was all about the concert, revelling in one glorious moment after another. ‘It's funny. You know how they say the onlooker sees most of the game? Well, in a concert, the orchestra doesn't usually hear much of the music. We're too close to it. I can hear the violins, and sometimes the other strings, and everyone can hear the brass!'

‘I imagine sometimes you wish you couldn't,' I put in.

‘Well, they do get loud! But everything's different in an outdoor setting. The acoustics don't work at all the same way as in a concert hall. And this afternoon – oh, it was almost as if I were in the audience, only better. I could hear everything, and how it all blended together, and yet I was a part of it, helping make that fantastic music! It was . . . I can't even describe it!'

‘You really love what you do, don't you, Laurie?'

‘When it's like today, more than anything in the world.' She thought about that for a little, and then giggled. ‘Well – there's a guy back home . . .'

And we all laughed. ‘But,' I said, ‘if you had to choose between him and music . . .'

‘Well, I guess I did that this summer, didn't I?' she said, after a moment. ‘He wanted me to stay home and party with him. He's got a lake cottage in Michigan somewhere, with a sailboat, and it would have been fun. But I couldn't pass this up!'

‘Does your brother have a girl in the States?' asked Alan.

‘No one serious. It's all about music with him, too. He's even more intense about it than I am. He'll never settle down, I don't think, unless it's with another musician. And that doesn't always work out so well, if either of them tours at all.'

‘I've always thought,' I said, ‘that a musician's life wasn't an easy one. Unless you're in the very top rank, there's always financial insecurity. And as you say, schedules can really complicate family life.'

‘No, it isn't easy, not unless you get a good teaching position in a university someplace. But that can be maddening, trying to teach kids who have no talent, or no ambition. Maybe it was better back in the days when musicians were hired by kings and people like that, and worked in the court.'

‘Like Haydn's musicians. A friend of mine wrote a book about Haydn once, and I read bits of it. He'd managed to find rosters of the court musicians of the time, even including what they were paid! It would have been a lot more interesting if he'd been able to figure out what that equalled in present-day dollars, but even without knowing that, it obviously amounted to a handsome chunk of money for the Austrian princes to shell out.'

And we went on talking about Haydn and the Viennese court until we got to the hotel.

They were able to provide us with as lavish a spread as anyone could have asked for. ‘Good grief, I'll gain five pounds just looking at all this,' I groaned, while loading my plate with three sandwiches, a scone, and a slice of bara brith, the Welsh fruit bread. ‘Tomorrow I've got to take a long walk. I've been sitting too much.'

Alan very wisely said nothing at all.

When my appetite was at last sated, I refilled my teacup and raised it in a toast. ‘Here's to a host of fine musicians, making beautiful music!'

‘Hear, hear!' said Alan.

I had come down somewhat from my Haydn-high and thought it might be time to ask a few searching questions. ‘And speaking of musicians, did any of you get to know Pat Stevens? She was the singer whose fiancé fell off the canal boat.'

‘Oh, that's right, you were going to talk to her today,' said Nigel. ‘Is she coping?'

‘She had already left when we got to her B & B.' Alan stepped smoothly into the conversation. ‘She left a note for her hostess, saying she wasn't going home yet a while. Would any of you know where she might have gone, instead?'

The three musicians looked blank. ‘I suppose I knew her a little,' said Larry slowly, ‘but she wasn't an easy person to know. She and Dan were so wrapped up in each other, there wasn't much left for anyone else.'

‘We'd very much like to find her,' said Alan. ‘Did you happen to overhear anything about her family or friends?'

Larry's face changed. ‘Say, what is all this, anyway? You're sounding like a cop. Why do you want to know so much about Pat? She didn't do anything!'

I sighed. ‘Oh, dear. The thing is, kids, Alan
was
a cop. He's been retired quite a while, but he was a chief constable for years, if you know what that is.'

‘I think I do,' said Laurie. ‘I've read a few Agatha Christies. Sort of like a fancy sheriff, isn't it?'

‘Sort of. Anyway, he can't help sounding like a policeman sometimes.'

‘But to answer your question, Larry,' said Alan, ‘no, there's no question of Pat having “done anything”, as you put it. We'd just like to talk to her because, frankly, we think there might be some question about how Dan met his death.'

‘You're not saying she had anything to do with it!' Larry was getting upset.

‘Look, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot somehow,' I said in a placating tone. ‘Nobody thinks Pat did anything wrong. It's just that we got to thinking, Alan and I, that it was a little odd, Dan falling off the boat that way. We don't think Pat was even with him on that little trip.'

‘No, she wasn't,' said Larry, snapping his fingers. ‘I remember now. She wasn't feeling so good that day. She thought she might be coming down with a sore throat, and that's serious for a singer. So she decided to rest that day, but she wouldn't let Dan stay with her. Seems he was crazy about boats, and she didn't want him to miss it. A shame she didn't keep him away, as it turned out.'

‘We didn't go, either,' said Laurie. ‘I . . . well, I hate to admit it, but I'm scared of heights. And Larry wanted to work on a couple of passages in the “Lord Nelson” that he wasn't real sure of.'

‘And what my baby sister isn't saying is that we were both just a little homesick. I mean, there's lots of interesting things about this country, but it's not much like home. So we just holed up in our B & B with some beer and potato chips and wished there were some baseball on TV.'

‘Ah, well.' Alan raised his hands in resignation. ‘There was always some hope one of you had heard something, but plainly it's not going to be that easy.'

‘Why don't you just call her?' asked Laurie. ‘Or doesn't she have a cell phone? We didn't bring ours because we didn't think they'd work over here, but she's a Brit.'

‘She has a mobile,' said Alan. ‘She's not answering.'

‘You don't think . . .' Larry bit his lip. ‘She couldn't be in any sort of trouble, could she? I mean, if you're right, and her boyfriend
was
pushed off the boat, and she knew something about it . . .'

Well, I wasn't going to touch that one. I didn't see any possible answer that wouldn't reveal our ideas about the murderer having achieved his goal, and I was sure we weren't ready to do that yet.

‘We have no reason to believe Pat is in any danger,' said Alan smoothly. ‘I'm inclined, myself, to think she has simply gone off by herself to try to put her life back together. But we'd like to find her, all the same. Too many peculiar things have been happening of late, and we, Dorothy and I at least, would like to make some sense of them.'

‘So,' said Nigel slowly, ‘you think De— Gracie was murdered, too?'

That one I could deal with. ‘I would like be sure that she was not. Wouldn't you?'

Nigel shook his head. ‘Dorothy, it's just not possible. You forget – I was there. There on that balcony with her. No one pushed her. She just started screaming and backed up too far, and fell. It happened too fast for any of us to try to save her. It was an accident!'

Laurie shook her head in turn. ‘No, Nigel, that's not good enough. We know she wasn't pushed off that balcony. But
why
did she scream? What frightened her? And why did she wave her arms around like that? It was almost . . . I saw an old movie once about someone who was on some drug, a hallucinogenic, and this person had the most terrible visions. A “bad trip”, they called it.'

I exchanged an amused look with Alan. This young innocent was describing as history what had been very much a part of our own youth, although I'd never indulged in LSD and I very much doubted that Alan had.

‘Anyway, I didn't think about it at the time, but do you suppose something like that could have happened to Gracie?'

It was, of course, a perfectly reasonable theory, only most of us knew it wasn't true. I let Alan field that one again. ‘The police often test for drugs in cases of unexplained death. The only drug in Madame de la Rosa's system was a trace of acetaminophen. One assumes she'd had a headache.'

‘She
was
a headache,' muttered Larry. ‘And I'm sorry, but she's giving me one now. I hate to break up the party, but I need to get back to the B & B.'

‘Oh, Larry, I'm sorry,' I said. ‘This was supposed to be a celebration and I turned it into a wake.'

‘Don't worry. It's just reaction. Laurie'll tell you I get like this after performances. I'll be fine after a nap. And anyway, now I know what a real English tea is.'

‘Welsh,' said a chorus of voices.

‘W
ell, that didn't get us anywhere,' I said when we were back at Tower. I had kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed.

‘No,' said Alan, taking off his own shoes. ‘Not very far. We confirmed that Pat wasn't on the boat. If you nap now, you won't be able to get to sleep tonight.'

‘We already knew she wasn't on the boat. Or at least we deduced it. I'm not going to nap. I just wanted to put my feet up.'

Alan chuckled, and that was the last thing I heard for a couple of hours.

‘Well, I didn't
intend
to fall asleep,' I said when I finally roused.

‘It's all those carbs. Lays you out flat, every time. Are you ready for some dinner?'

‘After “all those carbs”? You must be kidding! I never want to eat again.'

‘There are not a lot of other options for evening entertainment in these parts. We could always go for a walk. It won't be dark for at least another three hours.'

‘I don't feel like a walk.'

I was feeling, in fact, contrary. It was a predictable result of an afternoon spent on an emotional roller-coaster, with a big meal and an unwise nap. Knowing that didn't make me feel any less prickly.

‘Well, it's that, or television, or a pub. Or I could borrow a spade from Charles and dig a hole you could crawl into.'

‘It doesn't sound like a bad idea. Oh, I suppose we could go to a pub. I'm not in the mood for a raucous one, though. And I'd just as soon not run into any of the musicians.'