The Bass Wore Scales

The Bass Wore Scales

A Liturgical Mystery

Copyright ©2006 by Mark Schweizer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by

St. James Music Press

www.sjmpbooks.com

P.O. Box 249

Tryon, NC 28782

ISBN 0-9721211-8-8

Prelude

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,

Me immundum munda tuo sanguine:

Cujus una stilla salvum facere

Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

Sixth Quatrain—
Adoro Te Devote

May is a fine month in the Appalachians—cool, green and slightly damp, with clouds hanging so low that you could brush them away from your face if you had a mind to, their smoky essence heavy with the bouquet of fir trees and mountain laurel. Yes, I thought, looking across the blank paper in my typewriter and out the open window, my chin resting in my hand and my elbow planted firmly on the desktop, May is a fine month. I liked March and April as well. June’s okay. July stinks. August, too. It’s way too hot—even up here in St. Germaine. But it was still May, and August was a world away. I took the cigar out of my mouth and looked at it in disgust. It had gone out during my chronological musings. My cigars don’t usually go out when I’m writing. I generally chomp down, light up, and pound furiously at the worn keys of the old Underwood, puffing away like a fat man on a treadmill. Now, here I was contemplating the merits of various months and having to spend valuable writing time re-lighting my stogy. I growled and reached for the matchbox. Like many cigar aficionados, I preferred a wooden match to light my Cubans. I slid the matchbox open, removed one, but paused mid-strike. Meg would be here shortly, and the rule was no cigar smoking when she was in the house. I sighed and tossed the match into the ashtray. The cigar wasn’t helping anyway. I had to face facts. I was up against the most dreaded of the wordsmith’s phobias—writer’s block.

I heard the screen door in the kitchen bang open and counted myself lucky to have had the cigar go out when it did. It’s not that Meg hates cigars. Well, yes it is. It’s that Meg hates cigars. I, on the other hand, love them. It was Rudyard Kipling who penned the immortal line, “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” Rudyard Kipling never met Meg.

Megan Farthing and I were introduced five years ago—I, in my capacity as police chief of St. Germaine and officer on-duty—Meg in her capacity as wanton criminal motorist. She came zipping past my old Chevy pickup in her late-model Lexus like I wasn’t even there. Everyone in town knows my truck, and even though Meg had only moved to St. Germaine a month earlier, I still find it hard to believe that she didn’t see me. I’ve often accused her of speeding on purpose that evening, knowing that I was on the job and lying in wait for a foolish motorist. I further point out that in the five years since I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her exceed the speed limit. Not even once. She denies everything, of course, and looking into her beautiful blue-gray eyes, I almost believe her. Almost.

I tore up the ticket, invited Meg back to my place to see my etchings, and the rest is history. Now, we celebrate this anniversary every July 15
^th
pretty much the way we began—listening to Bach on the stereo and eating knockwurst. Meg is fortyish, divorced, and the best looking woman in three counties. Maybe four. She lives in town with her mother. I live about twelve miles farther out on two hundred remote acres.

“
Hayden,” Meg called from the kitchen. “I’ve got dinner.”

“
Great,” I yelled back. “I’ll be there in a second.”

Rudyard Kipling, although probably never plagued by writer’s block, also never had the pleasure of Meg Farthing’s company. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made that crack about the cigar. Kipling was good, all right (I thought
Gunga Din
a minor masterpiece, especially when read aloud with a really bad English accent), but my real literary hero was the mystery writer extraordinaire, Raymond Chandler.

I opened one of Mssr. Chandler’s books and tried typing one of his famous lines, hoping the gesture would be the impetus that might inspire me to conjure up one of my own.

She opened a mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn’t hear the laugh, but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed.

I looked at the sentence. It was good. Something that I wished I had written. I tried another one.

I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.

I sat for a long moment waiting for the muse to interject, but nothing happened. Nothing. The typewriter had never failed me before. I had come to believe that there was magic in the old contraption because these were the actual keys that Chandler had used to write those lines and a multitude of others including some of his greatest works—
The Long Goodbye, Farewell My Lovely, The Lady In The Lake, The Little Sister
—all of them typed on this very machine—Raymond Chandler’s 1939 Underwood Number 5. I had bought it at auction after I made a few million dollars with a little invention that I sold to the phone company.

“
Hurry up,” called Meg. “The pizza’s getting cold.”

“
Coming.”

I headed for the kitchen, leaving the unsympathetic, antique typewriter sitting alone in the room.

“
Put on some music, would you?” Meg said, as I wandered dejectedly into the kitchen. Then she noticed my slumping shoulders. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“
Writer’s block,” I said.

“
So,” quipped Meg, “the eminent Hayden Konig—police chief and word-slinger—has writer’s block. There
is
a God.”

“
I’ll have you know that my detective stories have been very well received.” I clicked on the Wave stereo, and the piano music of Eric Satie filled the house.

“
And by ‘well-received,’ you mean…?”

“
Umm…well…no one has burned the house down yet.”

“
Not yet,” agreed Meg. “How’s your blog doing? Getting any hits?”

I had put my first four liturgical detective stories up on a blog entitled
The Usual Suspects.

“
Not very many,” I admitted with a sigh.

“
That’s a nice choice of music,” offered Meg, delicately changing the subject and nodding toward the stereo, her hands busy with two beers and an opener.

“
I was listening to it this morning. It’s one of my BMG club selections.” I belonged to several music-of-the-month clubs—just one of the many perks of being frightfully rich. Another perk was that I did not have to work for a living, a perk that I exercised when I gave up my part-time job as organist and choirmaster at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. Yes, as is not uncommon in churches of any denomination, I’d had quite a rift with some of the parishioners. The priest, Father George, hadn’t helped the situation. So I had quit, but the vestry had chosen to categorize my leaving as an “extended leave of absence.” I kept my other full-time job as police chief because I like it. I like it a lot.

“
This is from the new pizza place in town,” Meg said. “The Bear and Brew. You know—the one going into the old feed store.”

“
I wondered when they were planning to open up and start serving.”

“
Friday. Day after tomorrow. This is from their open house. I dropped by after I took Mother over to Noylene’s to get her hair done.”

“
Why wasn’t I invited to the open house?”

“
You were, Hayden. I told you yesterday.”

“
Oh, yeah,” I said, my chagrin hopefully apparent. “I forgot.”

“
Nancy was there. Pete. Dave. They asked where you were.”

“
I was trying to work up at least one good sentence.”

“
No luck?”

“
No luck.”

“
I shall try to generate some sympathy,” said Meg, putting a piece of artichoke and goat cheese pizza on my plate, “but it will be tough. However, I affirm your pathetic endeavors because I love you.”

“
You’ve always been jealous of my typewriter.”

“
Allow me to point out that your last attempt at a detective story ended with your musical gum-shoe drinking beer at a bar named
Buxtehooters.
”

“
Brilliant!”

“
Humph,” said Meg. “Hardly brilliant.”

“
I think I have at least one more story to tell. Sometimes literary genius isn’t recognized until long after the author is dead.”

Meg wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “That’s one theory, sure. Okay, you’ve finished
The Alto Wore Tweed, The Baritone Wore Chiffon, The Tenor Wore Tapshoes
and
The Soprano Wore Falsettos.
What’s the title of the new one?
The Castrato Wore Lifts? The Mezzo Wore Flannel?”

“
All good suggestions. But I think I’m going with a bass.”

“
That is, if you can somehow find some inspiration.”

“
Maybe
you
could inspire me,” I said, suggestively arching my eyebrows over a second piece of pizza.

“
Maybe I could,” Meg agreed. “But I have to ask myself, do I really want to have one of those detective stories on my conscience? I’d have to ask for absolution on my deathbed.”

“
I’m sure it would be granted.”

“
Not necessarily. What if the priest has read your work?”

I ignored the barb. “A true writer is secure in the knowledge of his inevitable success.”

“
And you are secure in this knowledge?”

“
Absolutely.”

Meg smiled. “Then I’d better do some inspiring.”