Read Online Troubles in the Brasses by Charlotte MacLeod - Free Book Online

of responsibility and very little rest. And last night wasn’t exactly peaceful, with that awful business about Wilhelm and having to get the orchestra off. Not to mention just missing a plane crash. That was the closest brush I’d had with death until just now, and I have to say two in one night are a bit much.”
    “We quite understand,” said Lady Rhys. “Now you’d better just lie there and try to get some more sleep. Don’t worry, Lucy, we’ll make sure nothing else happens to you. I have some tablets, if you’d like something to calm you down.”
    “I haven’t got time to be calm. What about the bath-water?”
    “It’s all taken care of,” Madoc told her. “You’d better take the tablet. You’ll be no good to anybody if you wear yourself out completely.”
    “That’s easy for you to say. Who’s going to manage the breakfast?”
    “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lucy,” Frieda protested, “quit trying to be Superwoman. You can’t even boil an egg, you said so yourself.”
    “I’ll get a tablet,” said Lady Rhys, and the matter was settled.
    It was odd, Madoc thought, that still none of the others had come to see what the screaming was about. They must all be more used to Frieda Loye’s nightmares than he’d have thought possible. But as Lucy Shadd had just pointed out, the lot of them had been through a colleague’s sudden death and a near-crash after a hard evening’s work and half a night of travel. Maybe their disinclination to leave their hard-won beds wasn’t so strange, at that. While his mother went for the tablets, he took up the lamp and started nosing around for what he might discover. It didn’t take him two seconds to spot the length of thin wire thrown down beside the bed.
    “That’s not just wire,” Frieda said when he held it up. “It’s a violin string. An A-string, I should say, but I’m no authority. Joe or Helen could tell you. Or Monsieur Houdon, I suppose, if you had nerve enough to ask him.”
    “Oh, I’m a nervy sort of fellow,” Madoc assured her. “Are violin strings hard to get hold of?”
    “Not particularly. Stores that sell musical instruments have them. Or you can send away for them, or borrow one in a pinch. String players always carry extras. One can break or go false on you and have to be replaced.”
    “What happens to the broken ones? Can they be mended?”
    “Oh no, that wouldn’t be worthwhile. They just get thrown away. Unless a person took a notion to twist them into flowerpot hangers or something. I must say I’ve never heard of anybody who did. Strings are no big deal, Mr. Rhys. I’ve bought them often enough myself, as a favor.”
    Frieda Loye emitted an odd little snort of laughter. “I remember years and years ago, when I was still at the conservatory. I was waiting for a bus to go to the music store. I had a bunch of errands for some of the crowd and when the bus pulled in, this girl who’d stopped to talk with me yelled, ‘Don’t forget my G-string.’ Everybody looked at us as if we must be a couple of strippers or something. I was so embarrassed, I got off the bus before my stop. You do silly things when you’re young. And sometimes when you’re old enough to know better, too.”
    She sounded awfully bitter. Madoc wondered what she’d done that was so foolish; however, it could hardly be germane to the matter at hand.
    “You saw nothing of this intruder?”
    “No, nothing at all. As Lucy says, we’d had an exhausting trip and I was glad to get to bed. I just wish I’d been able to sleep longer; I feel like a worn-out dishrag. Though naturally I’m glad I woke up in time to save Lucy’s life,” Frieda added in an almost laughably polite little-girl voice.
    “It’s funny I didn’t see him go out, though,” she went on. “He must have been awfully quick. Maybe I did see him and just don’t remember. I could be in one of those fugue states Freud used to go on about. Do I mean Freud? I read something once he wrote