My stomach spasms stopped. Suddenly, I couldn’t even think of food, but coffee was a good idea. I boiled water, measured the coffee, thinking all the time about Sean. I didn’t have to coerce him into a good kiss. He did that very naturally, too—to Betty Friske as well as me. And chatting up the cute blonde in Ron’s office. I bet Ron never chatted her up.
Was I actually feeling jealous about that oversexed criminal? I hoped they used a blackjack on him. I phoned Marven again and asked if Mr. Bradley had arrived yet. “I only called you five minutes ago,” he said rather curtly. The Strathroy influence didn’t completely cover me yet.
“Remember to call me as soon as you learn anything.”
“Why don’t you go to bed, Miss Newton? It’s not likely we’ll get this tied up tonight. This isn’t
Hill Street Blues.”
“More like the Keystone Kops!” I snipped and slammed down the receiver.
Idiot. I solved the case, and he couldn’t even beat a confession out of Sean in one night. How long would it take him to bring Victor home? I called Marjie Klein to do some boasting and complaining, and learned she was at work.
“At this hour? What’s going on?”
“There’s a wedding at Casa Loma,” her roomie told me. “They wanted one of us to be there to steer the guests around, and Marjie volunteered. It’s time and a half.”
“Tell her Cassie called, will you?”
“Will do.”
I poured the coffee and used some of Sean’s half and half. The wedding parties at Casa Loma were held in the beautiful conservatory with the marble floor. They spilled over into Peacock Alley and the library, too—the main rooms downstairs were all open really, but the guides tried to keep the party more or less in the east wing of the floor. It was a gorgeous place for a wedding. I’d worked a few of them myself like Marjie was doing tonight.
Suddenly I knew I was going to work this one, too. Not officially, but it was a good time to search for the violin. It had to be there, somewhere in that ninety-eight room castle. Sean Bradley knew it—he’d gone back but he hadn’t found it. I knew the place better. I knew every nook and cranny. And what better time to find it than now, tonight, while there was the safety of lots of lights and people without the nuisance of tours passing to interrupt me? I could wander among the guests at leisure secure in the knowledge that Sean Bradley was under lock and key.
I wouldn’t wear my guide uniform but a fancy dress to blend in with the wedding party. Before you could say Antonio Stradivari I was wriggling into my expensive white wisp and calling a taxi.
CHAPTER 15
In Toronto, Casa Loma is familiarly known as the “House on the Hill.” Of course, it’s at the top of the hill twenty-four hours a day, but its preeminent position is more dramatically seen at night with the flood lights playing on turrets, battlements and chimneys. A splendid castle with lights glowing in dozens of windows was an unlikely spot to instill terror in a woman’s heart, but something inside me shrank as the taxi approached it. I was besieged by vague, free-floating anxieties.
There was nothing to be afraid of, I told myself. Sean was in custody. I assumed Etherington had been saddled with the job of guarding Victor since neither of them had been seen since the kidnapping. I’d just go in and make a leisurely tour of all the spots Victor could possibly have hidden the violin. There weren’t that many when his brief visit was taken into consideration. Of the ninety-eight rooms, about ninety could be ignored. I wouldn’t waste a minute thinking about the tunnel or stables, the towers, or even anything above the first floor.
I paid off the cab driver and went into the hallway. The hum of a crowd at play was reassuring. Lots of people—safety in numbers. The wedding dinner was over, and the dancing had begun. Hordes of people roamed through the halls, looking anachronistic in their modern garb, and a few were dancing in the Great Hall. The bride, in a long gown and Spanish-style headdress, was laminated against the groom’s tuxedo, her eyes closed, her head resting on her new husband’s shoulder as they swayed to the music.
I eased myself into a dark, inconspicuous corner to take a long look around for a hiding place. There weren’t that many spots given the size of the room. The long-case clock had a glass front so obviously he hadn’t hidden the violin in there. The sofas and chairs weren’t against the walls but were more or less free standing which made it unlikely he’d pushed his violin under one of them. It would be visible from a doorway. There were tables and plants but nowhere to hide a violin.
I came out and looked right at Peacock Alley which is just a long, fancy hall leading to the Conservatory. When I saw Victor leaving, he hadn’t been coming from that direction. He had been coming from the direction of his favorite spot, the music room. The valuables there are roped off to prevent people from fooling around with the Steinway, the old harp and other things. Other than the instruments, there’s not a lot to engage the tourists’ interest, and in the middle of a wedding feast, the room was deserted, or so I thought until I stepped in.
There was one man there, leaning over the Steinway. He’d hopped the rope and was playing the piano with two fingers. The guide in me wanted to tell him to stop, but tonight I was pretending I was a guest.
He looked over his shoulder and said, "It’s out of tune.” I noticed he had a moustache and an English accent. I’m not personally familiar with the pattern of English school ties, but I imagined they were probably a lot like the finely-striped blue and red and gold one this man wore. There was a crest on his blazer. While I stared, speechless, he smiled and started playing chopsticks, all wrong. Was he the man from the picture? There was some similarity—the same general type .
I looked over my shoulder to make sure there were people in view close behind before speaking. “Do you sing, too?” I asked, examining him closely.
“About the same as I play.” He stopped playing then and began looking around at the other instruments. He picked up the violin and twanged at the strings with his fingers.
“It sure isn’t a Stradivarius, is it?” he laughed.
“No, and you’re no Yehudi Menuhin either.”
“Do you play?” he asked.
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you say we dance instead?” he suggested.
“I don’t dance either, sorry. I better go and find my date.” I waggled my fingers and left. I got a glass of punch from the serving table to make myself look at home and watched Peacock Alley for the Englishman to leave. I had decided it wasn’t Etherington. Either the bride or groom here was English. There were dozens of accents around, speaking in that loud way that sounds like showing off to North Americans. When the man came into the hall, a small group accosted him, calling him by the name Herbie. I took this as
prima facie
evidence he was not guilty and slipped back into the music room for a closer search.
Like the Great Hall, this room was large but didn’t offer that many hiding spots. The violin wasn’t behind either of the big palms in the corners. It wasn’t concealed behind the voluminous folds of the brocade drapes, which would have been a perfect hiding spot, if Victor had only realized they never closed the drapes. I climbed over the velvet rope that cuts the instruments off from the tourists, and determined that the violin wasn’t in the piano bench. Why couldn’t he have put it in some easy-to-get-at place like the piano bench? There were even a few loose sheets of music that could have covered it.
There weren’t many other places. The harp stood a few yards to the left of the piano, accompanied by a little stool upholstered in velvet. There was a cello on a stand close by; it had a chair with a back for the player. The piano’s lid was closed, and the violin was set at its end. Had Victor had time to lift the lid of the grand piano and stick the violin in on top of the piano strings? Was that why it sounded out of tune?
I picked up the violin to place it on the floor. It was propped on its rather shabby case. I lifted the case, and was surprised by its weight. I gave it a little shake. My heart went into nervous palpitations as I realized what Victor had done. He had chosen the most obvious place in the world to hide a violin. He had simply put it in the violin case and propped the other violin on top of the case as it had set for decades.
Sean had even picked up the violin and asked me if it was the Strad, but he hadn’t thought to pick up the case. Of course, I could be wrong. It could be only some other old instrument the castle owned kept here for convenience. I looked over my shoulder. The hall was empty, but someone might come along at any moment. I took the violin case, opened the lid, and saw an undistinguished old violin with three strings broken. A spare put aside and forgotten.
Disappointed, frustrated, and becoming angry, I went to the chair beside one of the potted palms and sat down to think. It had to be here. It just
had
to. I glanced at the long-case clock still reading seven-fifteen, but it had a glass front, like the one in the Grand Hall. I looked again. The glass front had a gilt pattern of closely crossed lines forming small diamonds. The glass itself was dimmed from age. I rose like a zombie and went to the clock. You really couldn’t see anything through the patterned glass. Even the pendulum was almost invisible.
My fingers trembled as I took hold of the knob and pulled the door open. There on the shadowed floor of the case, propped beside the unmoving pendulum sat a violin. I lifted it out and darted back to the chair by the palm where I wouldn’t be seen from the hall if anyone peeked in. I’d never seen a Stradivarius in my life before, but I knew I was looking at one now. This was no ordinary instrument; it was an
objet d’art.
It felt perfectly balanced in my hands, and glowed a soft orangey-red where the “magical” varnish had mellowed. I didn’t need the evidence of the ebony insets in the shape of a cluster of grapes to know this was a Stradivarius, but, of course, they confirmed that it was the Carpani Strad. The hairs on my arms lifted in homage to its perfection. For one moment, I suffered a peculiar atavistic attack of covetousness. I wanted to keep it. How much stronger must Victor’s impulse have been? He had wanted one of these all his life and was one of the few men in the country who could do it justice. And who should such an object belong to if not to someone who could play it?
But how to smuggle it out? I darted to the grand piano, removed the unstrung violin from its case and took the case to my chair. I put the Stradivarius in the case, closed the lid and fastened it. My next thought was to get it out of here and home. Getting it out could prove the hardest part. There was a guard at the entrance, even for a wedding, and he’d take a dim view of someone walking out with part of the castle’s furnishings. The other way out was the exit at the end of the hall by the lockers. In the exultant excitement of the moment that amounted almost to a frenzy, I didn’t think of more practical moves such as calling the police or even a taxi. I just wanted to take the violin and run.
Running would only call attention to myself, and my aim was to get out as quietly as possible, so I did the next best thing. I walked out nonchalantly, carrying the violin case in my hand and even stopped to nod and smile to a few guests. Luck was with me. The guard wasn’t at the door. He should have been, but a guard has to attend to nature’s functions like anyone else, and for a few crucial minutes, the door was unguarded. I walked out unimpeded into the bright lights that shone on the castle so that it didn’t even seem dark. It wasn’t until I had walked beyond the bright lighting that I realized I should have called a cab. The dark spaces between those areas illuminated by street lights were long and menacing. I hurried past the dark spots, peering over my shoulder and caught my breath beneath the lamp standards.
I’d have to wait for a bus, but Toronto was relatively safe especially in respectable areas like this. I crossed the road and started to run for no particular reason except that I could no longer confine myself to normal behavior. I had to release some of the adrenaline that coursed through my veins, and shouting didn’t seem like a very good idea.
There were cars passing by, quite a few of them, but this wasn’t Maine. I had conquered the small-town habit of thinking I was going to know people I met on the street. My heart gave a lurch when a white Corvette sped past, but of course it wasn’t Victor. A young couple was inside. I hardly glanced at the silver-gray Monte Carlo as it cruised by me a moment later. It couldn’t be Sean—he was in custody. The man, the only person in the car, did have a head the shape of Sean’s but it wasn’t wearing a western hat. I hustled on, peering into the shadows as I went, and still keeping an eye on the silver Monte Carlo. Why was it slowing down? The corner didn’t have a stop sign.
The car performed a U-turn and began speeding back toward me. Alarm quickly soared to outright panic. This was too much coincidence. I stopped dead in my tracks when the car began slowing down just a few yards from me. When it came to a full stop, I took to my heels, running back toward Casa Loma. But just before I turned, I got one quick glimpse of Sean’s head emerging from the door. He was moving swiftly, and his expression went beyond sinister. He looked positively lethal. He
was
lethal—an escaped kidnapper and murderer for all I knew.
I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. The Casa Loma was only a block away. I could make it—but already the sound of hastening footfalls was gaining on me. My high heels, my clinging dress, and the violin case bumping against my body all slowed me down. And of course there wasn’t a single pedestrian on the street. Cars sped by unaware of my predicament. He overtook me within half a block. I felt his large hand close over my shoulder in a powerful grip. He turned me around and leveled a cold, hard glare at me. “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to avoid me?” he asked ironically.
“Let go of me or I’ll scream bloody murder.”
He looked up and down the vacant street and smiled contentedly. I opened my mouth and emitted a blood-curdling scream. I heard it reverberate futilely in the air around me. Sean gave a grunt of amusement. “Save your breath. You’ll need it.” At this veiled threat, my heart leapt to my throat.