Music to Die For

Book 6: The Falconer Files

by Andrea Frazer

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

The last three Musical Directors of 'The Dalziels' had left them high and dry by moving to France. Their next one was to make the 'ultimate move' by getting himself murdered! The village band in Swinbury Abbot has jogged along quite happily for nigh on a decade. Band practices are free and easy affairs, the music never commencing until after a rather lavish meal with wine, followed by more wine, and then maybe running through a piece or two, just for form's sake. Until the vicar turns up with a new musical director, who plays quite a different tune? For the newcomer's ideas of what a band?s routine should consist of are completely at odds with the musicians? current practices. His clashes with the various band members cause enormous resentment, and, in one of them, a hatred strong enough to provoke murder! Into this welter of negative emotions, Detective Inspector Falconer and Detective Sergeant Carmichael of the Market Darley CID arrive, determined to get to the bottom of things and bring the killer to justice, while simultaneously dealing with their own domestic problems. But the musical mayhem???and the murderousness??? doesn't stop there?

Release date: November 21, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 200

Sample

Chapter One

I

Let us open this story at the beginning of the events that led to the violent upheaval in the normally smooth timetable of the band’s rehearsals, and the way in which these upheavals occurred.

At the moment, the band was without a musical director, and therefore without someone of sufficient training and experience to arrange and write parts out for new pieces they wanted to play. Its members, however, didn’t want to spend any money on purchasing them, as they were a diverse mix of instruments, no two the same. Two out of the three previous musical directors were able to write for all tunings of instrument, whether in C, B flat, or E flat, could read and write for treble, bass, and alto clefs, and were, in consequence, sad losses.

A further complication meant that this also meant that they had no conductor, and to allow them to play without someone waving a baton, or their arms around, was akin to letting a lion perform un-caged and without its keeper.

The first of these previous MDs had suddenly had a whim to move to the Lot in France, and was gone within a few weeks. The next MD did exactly the same thing when her husband accepted early retirement, and they moved to the Dordogne. The third MD was also a woman, but she could not read either bass or alto clef, and could not cope with writing parts for transposing instruments, so for the best part of a year they had to make do with what music they already had and had had nothing new to tackle.

Two months short of the anniversary of this particular lady taking over the position, she announced that she and her husband had purchased a property in Normandy, and that they would be moving there in the very near future. ‘What the hell did France have that England didn’t?’ many members were heard to mutter between themselves, but no open resentment was shown, and she went off on her adventure with the goodwill of all.

This left them all in the aforementioned dilemma, and when the vicar turned up at The Grange at their next rehearsal, and announced that he knew someone who had just moved to the village who had spent his whole life working with bands, it seemed like a miracle – although they’d have to ask him how he felt about France, before getting used to him and settling down again. To lose three musical directors to that country was catastrophic enough: to lose four would simply be calamitous and beyond belief.

Everyone knew, of course, that Wheel Cottage had recently been bought, but no one seemed to have any information about who now lived there. Granted, there had been a large removals van that had turned up one morning about a week ago, and unloaded a lot of rather fine furniture, but the new owner himself (or even herself) didn’t seem to be present.

A few days later, there were suddenly curtains at the windows, and lights on in the evening, but still no visits to the village shops from whoever had moved in. Curiosity had nearly reached fever pitch, when the vicar announced that he might have someone to fill the void, and he would bring him – him – along to their next rehearsal, so that he could hear them play, and they could get to know one another a little bit.

II

Friday 25th June

It was the fourth Friday of the month and, therefore, it was rehearsal night for the village band in Swinbury Abbot. The members had gathered, as usual, in the home of Myles and Myrtle Midwynter. The Grange was a large residence situated on Beggar Bush Lane, to the south of the village centre, and backing on to the terrace of dwellings known as Columbine Cottages. It had no near neighbours, and there was, therefore, no need to worry about complaints about the noise – either its volume, or its quality.

The players had assembled, as was normal, at seven o’clock, to commence with a glass (or two, or more) of wine and a bit of a chat. They knew that Rev. Church would be bringing round his mysterious stranger, as a candidate for the role of musical director, but did not expect the visitation until rather later in the evening.

When Myrtle Midwynter called them to the dining room at a quarter to eight, they settled themselves round the large table to an excellent meal of poached salmon, salad, and new potatoes, followed by a delicious strawberry trifle, still chatting with enthusiasm, and it wasn’t until nearly a quarter-past-nine that Myles announced that he rather thought they ought to play a little something.

There had been a whole month of news and gossip to catch up on, and as only a few of the musicians had been nominated as the designated drivers, the other players had continued to imbibe, with scant attention to exactly how much they had drunk, Myles topping up their glasses whenever they showed any signs of having room for more.

The Midwynters made a good team, despite the disparity in their ages, with Myrtle being only thirty-six years old to Myles’s fifty-eight, and anything they hosted, usually ran on oiled wheels. Every guest’s needs were immediately noticed and catered for, and nothing was too much trouble; this was one of the main reasons why the band met there. Myrtle didn’t mind either the time or the expense of feeding them all, and they all felt at home and welcome.

As Myrtle cleared away the dirty dishes, everyone assembled in the large drawing room, and began to get their instruments out of their cases, search for sheet music, and take on the monthly battle with the music stands – one which the music stands usually won, leaving at least two or three pinched fingers and, on one memorable occasion, a badly squashed nose, but that was more due to alcohol, than ineptitude on the part of the victim, and fortunately, didn’t require any medical attention.

There was a sharp knock at the front door, as Myrtle was coming through the hall, still drying her hands on a tea towel, and she answered it before going into the drawing room to unpack her cello. Standing on the step, she found Rev. Church, and the person she presumed was the candidate for the position of Musical Director.

As Rev. Church introduced her, she took note of the small man with whom she was shaking hands. He was only about five foot seven, with white hair cut fairly short, probably in his late sixties – but it was his eyes that captured her attention, for he seemed to be looking in two directions at once. One of them stared her squarely in the face as they greeted each other, the other had an alarming habit of wandering around, as if in search of something just out of view, and she longed to turn round to see what it could be looking for.

Remembering her manners, she invited them in, and preceded them to the drawing room, opening the door and calling over the loud buzz of chatter and the sound of instruments being both tuned and warmed-up.

‘Quiet everybody! Your attention, please!’ She clapped her hands loudly, in the hope that this would penetrate the hubbub, then called again, a little louder this time, ‘Silence! Be quiet! We have visitors. If I could have your full attention, please, I would like to introduce you to … Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but I never asked your name. Rev. Church, perhaps you would do the honours?’

‘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 o. . .