The Strings of Murder (25 page)

McGray grabbed it. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here …’ He opened it and we found a bundle of violin strings, snugly rolled between velvet lining. ‘My, my! A fancy box to keep his strings, don’t ye think?’

‘Indeed. At odds with everything else in this room.’

‘What can ye tell about ’em?’

I took one and inspected it closely. ‘It is definitely not metal. It could be catgut, but I cannot be sure.’

There was a glow in McGray’s eyes. ‘I’ve only just met someone who could tell us a lot about fiddle strings.’

‘Oh, really? Who?’

McGray raised his eyebrows.

‘What, Elgie? No, absolutely not. I do
not
want him involved in this.’

‘There’s no one better to give us unclouded information.’

‘Why, there must be. We have Caroli, or that Ardglass man, or someone else at the Conservatoire.’

‘Aye, and any o’ them could be involved.’ I was shaking my head. ‘Come on, Frey, yer brother doesn’t even have to ken details o’ the case.’

‘Does he not? I suppose you will simply show him these strings, ask him whether they are made out of human gut, and then expect him to ask no questions.’

‘We’ll think o’ something,’ he concluded, carelessly tossing the wooden box into my hands. ‘We better take them with us.’

I could not protest any further, for McGray was already going through the contents of the chest again and again. He also looked carefully at the walls, tapped the floorboards and inspected every possible nook and cranny.

‘There is nothing more to see here,’ I said, looking at the clean, bare walls. ‘My feeling is that Wood was a violinist and – quite literally – nothing else.’

McGray inhaled deeply, sitting on the bed. ‘There are two possibilities: either Wood
was
the murderer, but he
happened to snuff it too soon after his crime … Or someone got rid o’ him to get hold o’ the fiddle.’

‘I am inclined to believe the latter.’

‘D’ye always have to talk like that?’

‘McGray, will you focus, please?’

‘Right, right. Aye, I agree with ye. Wood died at a very strange moment.’

I tapped the little wooden box, thinking. ‘Do not ask me how, but the story strikes me as one of poisoning.’

‘Ye think so?’

‘Aye – I mean
yes
! It should be easy to find traces of poison in Wood’s stomach, but we need to take his body to the morgue immediately.’

‘Aye, but we also need to question all these folks very soon, while they still have it all fresh in their heads. I think we should split up. Ye question all the people here – I ken ye love doin’ that – and in the meantime I’ll take the body to the morgue.’

‘You will need an official order for that.’

‘Mnah! Gimme the search warrant we already have. I’ll get
persuasive
.’

‘Please, do
not
do anything stupid like cracking the mortician’s arms …’

‘Cannae promise anything, laddie,’ he said as he walked away.

I went downstairs and found that the housekeeper had gathered all the people present in the house – Downs was sitting among them with a mighty frown. I decided to question him first, since a moody state of mind is most likely to contaminate a person’s declarations. I told the
housekeeper that I would prefer to question everyone in private, so she led us to a small, secluded parlour.

Downs’s version of the story agreed with the housekeeper’s: he had received a message from Mr Caroli telling him about Wood’s death; he then looked for the man’s will in his files, and immediately set off to do all the paperwork and distribute the goods … which were not many, nor too valuable.

‘His only valuable possessions were his two violins … and perhaps the mahogany chest you saw,’ Downs was saying, sipping a cup of tea which appeared to have relaxed his temper. The man did like his teas. ‘As you remember, he only received the second instrument a few days ago.’

‘Can you tell me who is to inherit Mr Wood’s possessions?’

‘Well, he had no family, as you probably know by now, and although he had quite a few acquaintances he wasn’t close to many. He simply left everything to Mr Caroli.’

‘Very interesting …’ I muttered. ‘All right, Mr Downs, you are free to go now. I am sorry we had to detain you for this long. Unfortunately, I will not release the goods just yet. I hope that you understand.’

Downs was going to rise but he faltered. He opened his mouth but it was hard for him to make any sound.

‘Mr Downs, is there anything else you would wish to tell me?’

‘Erm … Well, yes, yes, Inspector. You see, I am not stupid. I can tell that you and Inspector McGray are following the trace of Monsieur Fontaine’s violin, and that my hands have been on it too much for my own good.’

I only nodded. I did not want to give away any information as to my theories. The truth was that, until the moment he mentioned it, I had not considered him more suspicious than any of the other people involved.

‘You’ll surely understand that it is simply because of my profession!’ he said. ‘I have been the lawyer of those musicians for decades; they recommend me among themselves; it is only natural that I would take care of all their legal matters, including their wills! Mr Wood was not a very practical fellow; he only hired me because Mr Ardglass strongly advised him to. Ardglass and Monsieur Fontaine were two of my first clients.’

Downs’s insistence on clearing his name was in fact having the opposite effect. He had beads of sweat on his temples and his voice trembled at certain points.

I simply nodded again and told him he could leave, but he walked away with hesitant steps. Could it simply be that McGray’s words had scared the man … or was he worried by something else? Whatever it was I would have to decide later; I still had many people to summon. I interviewed them one by one, jotting down their entirely predictable replies in my notebook.

The young housekeeper:
‘Ye’ll excuse me, sir, but Mr Wood gave me the creeps sometimes. No sweetheart, no friends other than those few musicians he had to deal with … And so weird-looking! When I saw that ghastly cut on his face I almost ran the other way.’

The scruffy-looking, sweat-smelling handyman:
‘No, not much, boss; he rarely spoke to anyone, but I tell ye, if a bad oyster killed ’im it wouldn’t surprise me; the laddie was very flimsy. I usually had to open his jam jars.’

The very young maid:
‘Horrible, horrible stuff, and I had to mop it all on an empty stomach! Although it looked more like bile, sir, like Mr Wood hadn’t eaten anything for a while. I know ’cause that’s what my late dad’s puke looked like when he came home from the pub.’

The bony spinster who lived in the room underneath Wood’s:
‘Very strange lad. Very strange, but living at a guest house I’ve seen worse, I suppose. I can’t say his music usually annoyed me, but last night I was tempted to knock at his door and ask him to stop. He was playing a mighty awful song. Well, not even a full song, He was playing the same passage, over and over and over. It gave me nightmares.’

My eyes had been closing, but those words brought me back from my stupor.

‘Nightmares? May I ask why?’

The woman perked up, utterly flattered by my sudden attention. ‘Well, it wasn’t something pleasant to hear, like a sweet melody or a waltz. It was more like … like the violin was trembling.’

My last witness was the chubby man who lived across the corridor. ‘And it suddenly stopped. It just stopped, and then I heard the poor lad choke and the maids making a fuss. They asked me to help them crack the door open, and … well, you know the rest.’

Once I was done with the inquests I confiscated all the keys to Wood’s bedroom and went upstairs to lock it myself. Before doing so I had one last glance round the room, just to make sure that everything was still in place, which was the case. When I saw the two violin cases, now lying on the bed, I took a mad decision: I would take the Amati Maledetto with me. I opened the cases to make
sure I was taking the right one; it was easy to recognize it because of the wooden lion head.

That decision still haunts me at night … taking the violin … Only God knows where the case would have ended up if I’d left it there.

It was still raining hard when I went back to the City Chambers. I found Constable McNair by the entrance and he told me that he had seen McGray coming back a couple of hours earlier. I went to the morgue and found him there, waiting patiently at the entrance.

‘Did you manage to fetch the body?’

‘Aye. Reed is looking at it now.’

I was glad McGray had decided to go to the undertaker straightaway, otherwise we would have wasted precious hours locked in that guesthouse. While we waited for Reed to finish the post-mortem I told him what little I had found out from Wood’s neighbours, and the strange speech Downs had made.

‘D’ye think he could’ve been involved?’ McGray asked. ‘I only threatened him cos I didn’t want to ask Campbell for another bloody order and lose more time – Ye screech like a knife on a bottle when we lose time!’

‘I do not imagine someone like him climbing chimneys, even if he is tiny enough! But he did seem too keen to exonerate himself; I daresay his conscience is not completely clear.’

McGray was going to say something but right then Reed emerged from the small examination room, his apron still smeared in red.

‘Inspectors, you may come in now.’

We followed him in and found the corpse covered in a bloodstained sheet. Only Wood’s pasty face was exposed; the long scar where the string had lashed him looked almost black in comparison.

‘It is a clear case of cholera,’ Reed said, looking down at the body. ‘I found nothing odd in his stomach … well, nothing at all, actually; he spewed it empty before expiring.’

‘One of the maids mentioned that he didn’t seem to vomit food,’ I said.

‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ answered Reed. ‘And it’s likely he didn’t drink anything either. There are clear signs of dehydration; look at his sunken eyes.’

‘Didn’t ye find any injuries, laddie?’ McGray asked.

‘Not at all, sir. No traces of injury or trauma of any kind. If I may say so, disease is the most logical explanation, given the state of the man’s body. He was a tragedy waiting to happen: brittle bones and teeth, undernourished, apparently he had frequent infections in the digestive tract, skin conditions …’ He pointed at Wood’s fiddler’s hickey and the nasty boils around it. ‘It looks like he simply didn’t take care of himself. Didn’t eat properly, didn’t attend his diseases …’

‘He just fiddled,’ McGray said.

‘Whatever he did, his body was in no state to endure a sudden attack.’

I looked at the still face, my mind struggling to come to terms with what Reed was saying.

‘Many poisons cause symptoms that can be mistaken for cholera,’ I finally said.

‘D’ye still think he was poisoned?’ McGray asked.

‘I do not know … There is something here that does
not feel right, McGray. Yes, this man could have died of any sudden malady … but, as you said, why
precisely
now? It is not impossible, but it is a bit difficult to swallow. I will not be at peace unless I have him fully tested.’

Reed assented. ‘Yes, sir. I can take samples of his digestive tract and run tests for all the poisons you want.’

‘Can you take blood samples as well?’ I asked.

‘Aye, sir. It will take several days, but I will let you know as soon as I find something unusual.’

‘Perfect,’ McGray said. ‘Can ye take all the samples ye need right now and keep ’em cool? I’d like to return this chap to the undertaker as soon as we can.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Why the rush?’ I asked McGray.

‘I’ll tell ye in a bit. Let’s go to the office.’

‘Should we tell Caroli that Wood is going to be buried without his stomach?’ Reed asked McGray as we left the morgue.

‘Nae, laddie. The less they know the better.’

Back in our basement office I found Tucker napping under McGray’s desk. That dog was always napping; it reminded me of my brother Oliver.

I laid the Amati Maledetto on the desk and let out a weary sigh. ‘What now?’

‘I’m not sure,’ McGray answered, dropping himself on his chair. ‘But I’m glad ye brought the fiddle. I have an idea … but it’s risky.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I think we should use the fiddle as … bait.’

‘Bait? What do you mean?’

‘Even if we prove that Wood was poisoned, that may not
give us many more clues about the actual killer. It would probably not be a bad idea to let the events … unfold.’

I remained silent for a moment. ‘That is very risky indeed, McGray. If someone is trying to make their way to this violin, letting things
unfold
is precisely what we want to avoid.’

‘Don’t think I’m careless, Frey. I wouldn’t leave the fiddle around for someone to slaughter its owners at will. I’m thinking we should try and foresee its path and then follow it.’

‘Foresee its path?’

‘Aye. And that worm Downs will surely help us – if only to save his own skin.’

Downs’s office seemed custom-built for him: it was one of the smallest workspaces I’d been to, and it was utterly packed with file cases and towers of paperwork. The desks and chairs were so cluttered that there was hardly any space to move. Then again, such a small man would not need lots of room.

McGray and I sat in front of the desk as the attorney consulted his archive. My knees were almost at the level of my chest – so little space we had.

‘I have it here …’ Downs said, climbing down a small ladder and bringing a file from one of the top shelves. ‘Signor Danilo Bartolomeo Caroli.’ He sat at his desk and looked into the papers. ‘Oh, yes, just as I remembered: he leaves all his possessions to his wife, Signora Lorena Caroli. If something was to happen to her it would all go to his second cousin, some chap in Rome called Fausto Larpi; a distant branch of his family. I think I remember him saying that they had not met since they were children.’

‘Going back to Mrs Caroli,’ McGray said, ‘does she have a will of her own?’

‘Oh, yes, in fact she changed it only a couple of months ago … Let me have a look.’ This time he looked among a pile of documents right next to his desk, from where he produced a much thinner file. ‘Yes, yes. Like I told you, she changed her will in July. Before then all her properties and savings were to pass to Mr Caroli and, in his absence, to be split among several churches and charities. Now she has split her will between her husband and her child. Do you know that she is expecting?’