Troubles in the Brasses Page 4

  Chapter 4

  BUT THAT WASN’T WHAT it turned out to be. The fronts were in fact falsely mock-pretentious, but the modest frame buildings behind them were solid enough. There weren’t many: the hotel, the saloon, which was probably a restaurant also; a somewhat anachronistic nickelodeon which had posters of old Tim Holt and Tom Mix Western movies out front; a few tightly shuttered gift and clothing shops; a general store; a so-called museum with a badly carved life-sized wooden mule tied to a hitching post out front. There was the sheriff’s office, of course, with a big gold star painted on the door; the barbershop with its striped pole and a sign in the window reading SHAVE AND HAIRCUT 2 BITS. TEETH PULLED 25¢ EXTRA.

  “No sign of a watchman around,” Madoc remarked.

  “Who the hell would be willing to stay?” grunted the co-pilot. “I have a hunch I know where we are. Somebody was telling me about a speculator who’d reopened one of the abandoned mining towns as a tourist trap. Somewhere up toward Dawson Creek I think he said. I’m not sure whether it was on the Alberta or the British Columbia side, but I’ll bet you a nickel this is it. They only open the place up about three months a year, I believe. Nobody’d come anyway, once the snows begin. We must have been blown a hell of a lot farther north than I thought we were. Now what do we do?”

  “Burglarize, I think,” said Madoc. “The hotel would be our best bet. They probably have a dynamo and some kind of battery-operated teleradio affair, shouldn’t you think? Not to mention a stove and possibly some food. Are there any tools in the plane? They’ve got deadbolts on the doors, but we could probably jimmy a shutter off one of the ground-floor windows if we had something to pry with.”

  “No problem. I’d better tell the passengers to stay put till we know where we stand here, hadn’t I? I must say I’m surprised they haven’t all come piling off the plane already.”

  “The singers and the winds are worried about the night air on their throats,” Madoc explained, “and the rest have probably gone back to sleep. Go ahead and talk to them. I’ll poke around for a likely place to break in. By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Ed Naxton. My partner’s Steve MacVittie. And you’re Sir something-or-other, like your dad, I suppose. Sorry, I’m not up on that nobility stuff.”

  “I’m not so hot on it, either. Anyway, my father’s only a knight. You have to be a baron or better to count as a peer. Call me Madoc, why don’t you?”

  “Sure, Madoc, long as it doesn’t get me slapped in the family dungeon. I’ll be right back. God, I hope there’s a stove in that dump.”

  It was cold here, really cold. Perhaps Ed was minding it more because the plane had been kept so hot for the benefit of the various hypochondriacs on board. Madoc himself was feeling the chill. He’d only brought a mackintosh to wear over his suit; he’d thought it would be plenty when he left home. Now he wondered whether Janet had thought to pack him a pullover.

  He also wondered whether Ed and Mac would be able to open the Grumman’s luggage compartment if the passengers were going to be on the ground for any length of time. But mostly he wondered how they were going to get into the hotel. The answer seemed to lie in a somewhat wobbly shutter on the side of the building next to the Deadeye Saloon.

  By the time Ed showed up with some airgoing equivalent of a wrecking bar, Madoc had managed to joggle a few screws loose enough from the dried-out wood of the window frame to slide the bar underneath. After that, it was a piece of cake. Ed, being much the larger, boosted Madoc through the window they hadn’t even had to smash, and handed him the flashlight they’d been sharing. Madoc flickered his way through a dusty hallway that was cold as banished hope into an even colder expanse that must be the lobby. He found the front door and released an assortment of bolts and bars in order to let in Ed and a little more cold.

  “Now to find that radio, eh? It ought to be here behind me desk, shouldn’t you think?”

  “Nope,” said Ed. “It’ll be through that door marked NO ADMITTANCE so’s the tourists’ kids can’t monkey with it.”

  Ed would be right, of course. Madoc decided he himself must be even more tired than he’d thought he was. At least his skill at housebreaking hadn’t yet deserted him. The door was locked, but the lock wasn’t much. There was, as expected, a radio, a highly modern and sophisticated affair totally out of keeping with the Wild West decor. Its batteries were dead. There was no way to recharge them, and no spares were to be found.

  They did manage to locate a flossy black iron parlor stove with a lot of curlicues on top, though. It was sitting smack in the middle of the lobby, with a heap of ready-cut stove wood beside it.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to get a fire going,” Ed grunted. “Some of ’em are acting pretty restless back there.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any hope of your getting the plane’s radio fixed any time soon, is there?” Madoc asked.

  “We won’t be able to find out what went wrong with the electrical system till we get enough daylight to see by. As to whether we’d be able to fix it, that’s another question. Maybe we’d better just figure on camping here for the time being, don’t you think?”

  After a trial run with a few wadded-up newspapers and a handful of kindling to make sure the chimney hadn’t been blocked up for the winter, they managed to get the stove throwing out some heat, and none too soon. Lady Rhys led the pack.

  “Ah, good!” She set down the overnight case she was carrying and rubbed her hands together in the glow from the isinglass-paned door. “At least it’s one step in the right direction. Where’s the kettle, Madoc?”

  “One might also ask where’s the water, Mother. I’ll go see what I can drum up.”

  “I’ll come with you.” The director of operations left the doorway, where she’d been shepherding in the stragglers off the plane, and darted to Madoc’s side before Lady Rhys could get there. “Men can never find anything. Which way is the kitchen?”

  How was he supposed to know? Madoc was beginning to feel that it might be possible to work up a fairly vigorous dislike for Lucy Shadd, but of course he owed it to his father’s position not to show any such ungallant sentiment. “Back here, I should think,” he answered mildly, wondering just how either of these efficient women thought it would be possible to balance a pot of water on top of all these wrought-iron exuberances.

  He led the way to the kitchen unerringly, since there were so few places it could have been anyway. The room looked to be fairly well equipped with kettles and pots of various kinds. There were plenty of plates and mugs, and a supply closet stocked with various dried and canned foods, along with canisters of tea, sugar, salt, and other staples. Water was a different matter. Lucy Shadd was at the sink, turning the taps without any luck.

  “What’s the matter with these things? I can’t get the water to come out.”

  “No, it will have been shut off before the owners left,” he managed to explain without laughing in her face. “That is common procedure when a place is closed up for the winter. Water left in the pipes would cause them to freeze up and burst.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know? I’m not a plumber. Do you have to just stand there gaping? Turn it back on, can’t you?”

  “I don’t know whether I can or not. I expect this place has a drilled well. That means the water has to be pumped up by means of a generator. I don’t know where the generator is. I will find it and get it working if I can. I would say it is unlikely anybody in your party will have died of thirst before somebody finds us. It is, however, quite probable that some of your charges would appreciate having beds to lie down on. Since you feel obliged to make yourself useful, why don’t you go and check the bedrooms? You will no doubt find them upstairs. The stairs are to your right as you face the desk in the lobby, in case you were about to ask.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lucy Shadd didn’t flounce away, she simply went. Madoc was sorry he’d been rude, but not sorry enough to call her back. He found the generator in a shed behind the k
itchen. It was supposed to run on propane gas. There were no propane tanks to be found. He went back to the sink, investigated an antique hand pump that he’d thought was intended as a part of the atmosphere, and found after some experimental fiddling that it worked just fine. He filled a large tea kettle and carried it into the lobby all by himself without help from anybody.

  “Here’s your water, Mother.”

  “Thank you, Madoc.”

  Lady Rhys picked up a square pad of folded canvas that had been left sitting on top of the woodpile and used it to grasp the curlicues. The ornaments came off in one piece, leaving a neat round hole just big enough for the kettle in the top of the stove.

  “Set it right here, dear. Did you find any cups and saucers?”

  “Plenty of mugs. And tea, sugar, and dried milk. I’ll bring some, shall I?”

  “I’ll help.” Astonishingly that was Sir Emlyn’s soprano soloist, Delicia Fawn. Madoc couldn’t think why some of the male musicians snickered, until he got to the kitchen. Delicia was not a shy woman.

  “What do you say, dark and delicious? Care to try out for the semifinals?”

  Madoc knew that singers did breathing exercises, and that deep breathing tended to stimulate pectoral development, but did all sopranos breathe as deeply as this one? It was disconcerting, feeling those twin thumps on his waistcoat every time she inhaled. He said, “Semifinals for what?” and knew right away that he’d made a potentially serious mistake.

  “Look, sweetie,” she drawled, running her fingers through his hair without being invited, “you can’t tell a musician by the size of his piccolo, can you? Before I make any decision about who’s going to play my organ for the rest of the tour, I hold auditions, that’s all. Saves a lot of fuss and bother, eh. Drop by my room in a while, assuming I get one.”

  “Yours will be the one with the queue outside the door, I assume. And I’ll be the chap who’s not standing in it. Thank you for your flattering offer, Miss Fawn, but my parents are fond of my wife, and so am I. Besides, I’m not staying with the tour once we get to Vancouver,” he hoped, “and you’d only have to run the auditions over again after I left. Here, take the teapot and canister to my mother, will you? I’ll bring the mugs.”

  Of whom he’d passed up the chance to become one. So this was why his mother wouldn’t let her husband travel alone. Unchaperoned, poor old Tad would have been torn apart by some sex-starved maenad long ago. Here was a side of his parents’ life that he’d never imagined to exist, much less thought to be experiencing. He picked up a trayful of thick white mugs with “Thar’s gold in them thar hills” painted on the sides, and carried them back to the lobby in a state of considerable bemusement.

  These people didn’t really need tea, Madoc thought. They’d been stuffing on one thing and another since they left Wagstaffe. What he supposed his mother thought they did need was the feeling of having found a safe shelter that the homely hot drink would help to create. Considering the circumstances that had got them here, she was probably right.

  It was interesting to see his mother being Mum to a planeload of musicians. However, Madoc didn’t feel he had time to stand around admiring the gracious manner in which Lady Rhys was dispensing the mug that cheered but did not inebriate, to the possible regret of Cedric Rintoul and a few more like him. There were oil lamps in the kitchen; a few of them had better be got going before somebody broke a leg rushing up those stairs to where the line would hypothetically be forming.

  Madoc supposed he ought to find out how Miss Efficiency was making out with the beds, too; nobody else was showing any inclination to be useful. Delicia Fawn, having done her bit with the sugar bowl, had got herself a mug of tea and was snuggling up to the stove. Warming up for the main event, no doubt. Madoc went back to the kitchen and started filling lamps.

  Once he’d set a lighted lamp on the desk and another one on the landing to illuminate the stairway, the dingy lobby began to look almost cheery. Madoc carried a couple more to the second floor and set one of them on a bracket in the upstairs hallway that had most likely been installed for that very purpose. Then, still carrying the other lamp, he followed the gleam of the battery lantern Lucy Shadd had commandeered to a linen closet where she was snatching blankets and pillows off the shelves with the concentrated zeal of a deacon counting the Sunday morning collection.

  “We have water from the hand pump in the kitchen sink,” he informed her, “and oil lamps with which we’ll have to be careful. There are candles also, but I don’t think we ought to risk them. It will not have escaped your notice that this place is a firetrap.”

  “What happened to the electric generator?” was all the thanks he got, and that in no dulcet tone.

  “Nothing to run it on.”

  “Rats! Well, I suppose it’s not your fault,” the woman admitted grudgingly. “It’s just so cursed maddening, when I’d thought I had everything going like clockwork. What’s happening down in the lobby?”

  “My mother is giving them tea. How many bedrooms do we have?”

  “Only ten. People will have to double up. I suppose they’ll start yelling about the lack of privacy. And what in God’s name are we going to do about the bathrooms, with no running water?”

  “Walk, I suppose. Since this place appears to go in for authenticity, maybe they haven’t torn down the old privy yet.”

  “But the singers can’t go trailing out back in the cold! Think of their throats.”

  Madoc was damned if he’d think of the singers’ throats. “What about chamber pots? Surely there must be some around here. I expect they use them for soup tureens,” he added helpfully.

  That actually got a laugh out of Lucy. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,” she agreed. “Come on, let’s look in the bedrooms. Here, give me that lamp. You take the blankets. I hadn’t bargained for being a chambermaid on top of everything else, I must say.”

  “Can’t you ask some of the others to help you?”

  “And have the Musicians’ Union down on my neck? That’s not the way things are done in this crowd.”

  “Then don’t ask. Just leave the bedding in the rooms and let them cope or not as they see fit.”

  “You are naive, aren’t you? However, I suppose it’s worth a try.”

  She darted in and out of the rooms, Madoc at her heels dispensing blankets as directed. The rooms were pretty much as he’d thought they’d be; little boxes with roughly plastered walls and softwood floors studded with the dents of many boot heels. The furnishings were rag rugs, mismatched iron beds with old-fashioned coil springs and nice new foam mattresses wrapped in plastic against the possible forays of wintering rodents, rickety chests and wash-stands in that cheap yellowish wood that ages so ungracefully. There were chipped enamel pitchers and basins on the stands and, yes, enamel pots under the beds.

  “Let’s hear it for authenticity,” said Lucy with a wry sort of gratitude. “Now how the bloody hell do we heat water enough for everybody to wash in?”

  “We don’t,” said Madoc. “Those who are willing to settle for cold water can bring their pitchers downstairs and fill them at the pump. Those who aren’t can damned well stay dirty. We’ll manage something in the morning, if we’re still here.”

  “It’s already morning. My watch says half past three, for whatever that may be worth. I suppose I’d better go down and talk to them. Are there lamps enough to go around?”

  “No, but if it’s that late they won’t be needing any in another hour or so. Come on, then.”

  In the lobby, Lady Rhys was collecting mugs. Most of the others were sitting around looking glum, a few were nodding off in the not very comfortable wooden chairs. Lucy stood on the second step from the bottom, holding her lamp like Florence Nightingale.

  “There are beds upstairs for any of you who want to lie down. They’re not made up, but I’ve managed to find blankets and pillows. Most of us will have to double up, so please take the roommate you had in Atlanta. Whoever that might have been,” Lucy ad
ded with the merest hint of a glance at Delicia Fawn.

  “It’s not too awfully cold up there; the stove’s beginning to take the chill off and it will be kept going. Unfortunately the generator doesn’t work, so there’s no running water in the bathrooms. If you want cold water to wash with, Mr. Rhys tells me you can get some from a pump in the kitchen. He’ll help you work it. The rooms do have rudimentary facilities, and I’m afraid we’ll just have to make the best of them for this once. If you’d rather stay down here by the stove, of course, feel free. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Why should you?” Lady Rhys demanded. “It wasn’t your fault. For goodness’ sake, Lucy, go get some rest yourself. You must be worn to a frazzle.”

  “Thank you, Lady Rhys. I’ll put a lamp in your room, and see about getting your bed made up.”

  “Nonsense, Madoc will do all that. Good night, Lucy.”

  Chapter 5

  WHILE DOING HIS STINT at the pump, Madoc at last got to sort out his fellow castaways. They’d seemed a crowd in the cramped lobby; in fact there weren’t all that many. What they boiled down to were the three Rhyses, the four singers, the concertmaster (who was, as always, the principal violin), and seven of the other principals: viola, cello, flute, clarinet, oboe, trumpet, and trombone. Wilhelm Ochs would have been the eighth. The other principals had opted for the train, either because they detested flying or because they wanted to be near their cumbersome instruments even if they couldn’t take them out of the trunks en route.

  Lucy Shadd turned out to be the only one of the ten staff members traveling with them. The media director had gone on ahead some days ago, luckily for him. The orchestra manager, of course, had been forced by her malady to miss the flight. The luckless woman who bore the impressive title of assistant to the music director had been banished to the train because Sir Emlyn didn’t much like having her follow him around telling him what to do. More importantly, neither did Lady Rhys.