Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  “Well, yes and no,” said Paul. “Compared to someone who doesn’t play at all, I’ve got a knack. Compared to you? Not much.”

  Happening to look up at that moment, Albert caught sight of himself and his companions in a shop window and, somehow, there were piano keys in the reflection. Only after a blink or two and a subtle shake of the head did he realize the window belonged to a store that sold musical instruments, and that the keys were on the other side of the window. He stopped and looked. It wasn’t a piano. It was just the piano keys.

  “What is that?” He looked at Jeremy Ash, who knew everything.

  “The synthesizer?”

  “Synthesizer?” Albert repeated, looking at the object. He felt like he was lisping. “Synthesizer,” he repeated. “What does it do?”

  “It’s a lovely little instrument, really,” said Paul. “It plays like a piano, but the sounds are produced electronically, and can mimic almost anything—violins, guitars, trombones, trumpets . . . dog barks.”

  Albert had abandoned his companions on the sidewalk by the time the Beatle finished speaking.

  “Anything I can help you with, at all?” said a person whose hair had been twisted and, apparently shellacked, into tall purple spikes atop their head. It might have been a male, it might have been a female. Fortunately, Albert didn’t care. “I’d like to play that,” he said, pointing simultaneously at the keyboard and Paul McCartney who was on the other side of the window, holding Jeremy’s wheelchair and trying very hard to look like someone else.

  “Of course. It’s a Roland D454 with weighted keys,” said the person as they covered the few steps separating them from the device. “MIDI in and out, of course. Quarter-inch jack for sustain and speaker out. Eighth-inch jack for stereo headphones. Operates on both mains and batteries, which are included.”

  The person turned it on. Nothing happened. “Dead quiet, too.”

  “Can I . . .?” said Albert, moving into intimate contact with the instrument.

  “Of course, here old fellow, let me help,” said the clerk, and pulled out the stool. “Now, this little wheely thing here selects the voice.”

  “Voice?”

  “The kind of sound. Violins, for instance,” the individual twiddled the dial, “are here. Number twelve.” He played a C chord and the sound of violins issued from the little speakers. Not good sounding violins, but violins. Albert was amazed. “Bass guitar is, let me see,” said the clerk, “fifteen, I think. There.” The machine made a flute sound. “Oops, wrong one.” Another twiddle. “Here, try this.” Another twiddle, still no bass, but a pretty decent Wurlitzer.

  “I like that one,” said Albert, before the person with purple hair could twist any more knobs. He sat down.

  “We offer lessons,” said the androgynous individual. “Five pounds the half-hour, and . . .”

  That was the last thing he said for quite a while. Albert had begun to play. Within a minute someone had turned off the record that had been littering the background, and the room had fallen silent. A small crowd began to gather, and one of them pointed at a poster on the wall—announcing the upcoming concert at the Albert Hall. Then whispers began to spread. Very quiet whispers. Someone unwittingly helped the Beatle in his disguise negotiate Jeremy Ash in his wheelchair into the store.

  Male or female, purple hair or not, the clerk was a capitalist. As whispers swept out onto the pavement, and people started oozing in, crowding the aisles, he, she, or it, very quietly plugged one end of a chord into the jack on the back of the keyboard, and the other end into a speaker that was affixed outside for occasions such as this.

  Of course, there had never been an occasion like this.

  Some time later, as the last note rang out, a tear slipped quietly from the pierced nose of a girl with unnaturally red hair and black lips.

  Before he he looked up and became aware that he’d become the center of attention, Albert said. “I’ll take it.”

  For a moment nothing happened. The clerk discretely coiled the cords and tucked the instrument in a zippered case, which he handed to Albert, who laid it in Jeremy’s lap. “I’ll pay you for it some day,” said Albert and, at the moment, that was his sincere intention. The clerk, knowing the store had just been gifted with several thousand pounds worth of free publicity, was not concerned. The crowd parted as the mismatched threesome made their way to the door. No one approached them. No one followed. No one recognized the Beatle. Not one of the dog-collared punkers, derby-hatted bankers, or under-dressed ingenues nudged another at the sight of the legless boy. The oil with which they had been anointed was too thick a substance for so feeble a thing as human expression to swim through.

  Eventually, each shuffled his or her own way encased in a small, tight cocoon in which questions they’d long ago stopped asking bubbled and roiled to the surface, demanding attention.

  McCartney studied Albert, whose full attention seemed to be concentrated on negotiating the wheelchair through foot traffic and he realized there was no hope of fulfilling the mission he’d set out to accomplish, which was to persuade the famously eccentric maestro to play on the album he was working on. It had been a long shot; a lark, really, but one he’d felt worth taking. However, as it had already been a remarkable afternoon, and he had the feeling it was about to become more-so, he decided to tag along. So it was he who led them to Sloane Square station, through the turnstile, and through the maze of corridors until, echoing from the distance, they heard the strains of a violin concerto.

  Angela smiled as they rounded the corner. “You’ve come!” she said, lowering her instrument. Albert and Jeremy Ash and the Beatle in disguise stutter-stepped toward her across the river of people too hurried to notice the event that was spontaneously taking shape. “And you’ve brought my biggest fan.’ She lowered a glance at Jeremy Ash. “And a keyboard?” She flashed hopeful eyes at Albert. “Are you going to jam with me?”

  Albert supposed he was. No press. No interviews. No advance publicity. Just unpack the piano and play. Music unbound. “This is called a synthesizer,” he said, unzipping the case on Jeremy’s lap. He studied it for a moment. “It makes different noises.”

  The girl looked frantically around for something she knew wasn’t there. “I’m afraid there’s no place to plug it in.”

  “It’s got batteries!” said Albert, pushing the button as the store clerk had shown him. The little screen lit up.

  “This is fantastic!” said Angela. “But how can you play? There’s no stool.”

  Albert hunkered down on his haunches and, adjusting the piano on Jeremy’s lap, stretched his fingers and pressed a C chord to make sure the device was functioning properly. It was set on ‘flute’. He twiddled the dial as he had seen the store clerk do and, after producing a library of sounds from violins to bird chirps, finally landed on Grand Piano.

  “What do you want to play?” said Angela.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I wish I’d known . . . we could have rehearsed something.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” said the Beatle. “I think you’ll find he picks things up fairly quickly.”

  Angela’s attention had been so focused on Albert and Jeremy and the unexpected unfolding of events, that she’d been only peripherally aware of the third member of the party, who seemed to have taken over the task of driving Jeremy. “Who’s your friend?”

  Before Albert could remember the name, Jeremy Ash spoke up. “Mr. Stone.”

  “Well, welcome to the show, Mr. Stone.”

  Mr. Stone gave Jeremy Ash a poke in the back, at which the boy smiled. “Pleased to meet you, luv.”

  “Angela,” said Angela, extending her free hand.

  “Rock on,” said Mr. Stone.

  “Well, I’ve been practicing Sibelius’sViolin Concerto in D Minor, but I’m not sure a piano will . . .”

  “Just play,” said Mr. Stone, in anticipation of something remarkable. “Before his knees give out.”

 
Angela was unconvinced. She looked at Albert, who was fiddling with the volume control. “Do you know the piece?”

  “Probably,” said Albert. He didn’t know music my title or my composer, only by sound. He was blessed/cursed with what some doctor in his past had labeled Perfect Auditory Recall: having heard a piece once, he could replicate it note-for-note on the piano. A human tape recorder.

  A freak.

  If he had ever heard Sibelius’sViolin Concerto in D Minor, it would come to mind again when he’d heard the first few notes. Which proved to be the case; by the time Angela had reached the end of the second measure, Albert’s hands, if not his heart, were accompanying her as if they’d been rehearsing for months. Angela, it turned out, was a reasonably good instrumentalist, so he left the melody to her while adding countermelody, harmonies in 3rds, 5ths, 7ths and 9ths, and their respective inversions, weaving previously unknown threads through the fabric of the score in a way that gave it new and unexpected texture.

  Mr. Stone was tingling from head-to-foot, as were the bystanders who seem to have entered a puddle of aural treacle that arrested them in their tracks. Many trains were missed. Then someone recognized Albert. And someone else recognized Paul McCartney.

  “This is fantastic, Albert!” said Huffy in Albert’s ear. “This is what I been tryin’ to get you to do all along. You and Paul Mc-freakin’-Cartney in the Tube! Who’s idea was that? Brilliant! That crowd! I heard nobody’d leave the Tube ‘til you finished playin’! Man, I wish I’d been there. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d’ve had a TV crew there. Reporters. The works. Oh, well, nevermind. You’re the talk of London. Hell, you’re the talk of England. What a stunt! Brilliant!”

  Albert’s practice with Huffy, especially on the phone like this, was to let him talk and rant and curse and carry on to his heart’s content, because that’s what Necessary Evils did. It wasn’t unheard of for Albert to put the phone down, very carefully, and go make some tea, which usually took about five minutes. Which meant Huffy still had about three minutes of air left in him by the time Albert came back to the phone and made a listening noise.

  “I could book another two months on this, Albert. Hell, three months! How’d you pull it off? How’d you get Paul Mc-Freakin’-Cartney to come listen to you play with that bit of Cuddle an’ Kiss in the subway!? Hidden depths, Al. Hidden depths.”

  “He was at the Cadogan and just came along.”

  “‘Just came along’. I love it! Paul Mc-freakin’-Cartney just comes along! To the Tube. To listen to some broad play a violin.”

  “Angela,” said Albert. “She’s a girl.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Right. Twist an’ Twirl. Listen, you think there’s any chance he’d do it again? Her, too. I mean, could we set it up again and this time I could have a TV crew there, and . . .”

  “No.”

  “No? What, no? You haven’t heard me out.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” said Albert, searching his fingers for an unbitten cuticle. “Angela wanted me to hear her play, and when we were on the way we found a piano in a store, and —” which reminded him. “You need to pay that man for the piano.”

  “Sure, sure thing. No problem. Just tell me the name of the store and where it’s located, and I’ll tell Bridges to care of it.”

  ‘No problem’, to Huffy was something different than it was to Albert. He knew there was a person with purple hair at the store. But remembering the name and address of the establishment was a task for some huge government spy agency. Or . . .

  “Jeremy Ash will tell you,” said Albert.

  “Great, great. But listen, if you could get McCartney to . . .”

  “No.”

  Huffy had been a manager of talent for many, many years. To him, ‘No,’ meant, ‘What a wonderful idea. Please tell me more!’

  “But he’s Paul Mc-Freakin’-Cartney, Al! He’s a Beatle!”

  Albert’s eyebrows went to war with one another as his brain tried to sift sense from what he’d heard. He’d thought the man’s name was just Paul McCartney. Not that it would have made any difference if he’d known it was Paul Mc-Freakin’-Cartney, he didn’t know either gentleman. But he was sure of one thing, the man was not a beetle. He was a man. Maybe Huffy had been spending too much time at his favorite pub, which was any pub nearby, and in London, there was one on every corner.

  “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “Not a beetle as in bug, Albert. Beatle as in John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Come on!” He hummed a few impromptu bars ofYesterday.

  “I’ve heard that tune,” said Albert. At last, Huffy was speaking his language. This could be a turning point in their relationship. A Necessary Evil that could sing!

  “Of course you do. Everybody does. He wrote it. Paul McCartney.”

  “Mc-Freakin’-Cartney,” Albert corrected. Once he got a thing in his head, he got it.

  Huffy laughed for some reason. “That’s right, Al. Paul Mc-Freakin’-Cartney!”

  So it wasn’t just piano players who had to sign autographs. Songwriters did, too. And all they did was make music. Imagine the demand for autographs on people who did important things, like build houses and fix toilets!

  He’d have to remember to pray for them.

  “Well, anyway, it was a hell of a stunt,” said Huffy. “Wish I’d thought of it. You’re sure you’re all right now, with that hospital business. They say it was just hypertension. That’s like too much stress. You stressed, Al?”

  He wouldn’t be as soon as he could get off the phone. “No,” he lied, but it was a lie in service of the Greater Good, which was getting Huffy to say ‘good-bye’.

  “You should’ve stayed in the hospital, though. There’d’ve been hell to pay if anything had happened to you.”

  Hell would have to wait. “Nothing did.” Albert thought Huffy was not the person in whom to confide the fact that he’d nearly gotten Jeremy Ash run over. Perhaps a priest. Some day.

  “Mention of murder did it, Jeremy tells me.”

  Albert didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Yeah, well, you’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime. Just you stay at the Cadogan. Let ‘em tend out on you. You need anything, just ring Quiggs and he’ll see to it, even to ‘alf ‘is kingdom’, as the bloke says. Don’t forget your sound check Friday. ‘Til then, you’re free as a bird.”

  “What’d he have to say?” said Jeremy Ash from his chair beside the window.

  “He wanted us to do it again.”

  “Do what?”

  “The impromptu concert.”

  “He wants to plan an impromptu concert?” said McCartney, who caught the tail end of the conversation as he emerged from the bathroom. “Sounds like Epstein. Nice bloke, as managers go, but . . .”

  Jeremy and Albert stared out the window.

  “Yeah,” said McCartney. “Well, it’s been fun, but Linda’s going to be expecting me home in a few.”

  Albert turned and escorted him to the door. It was the least he could do for a fellow musician. “I like your song.”

  “My song?”

  Albert hummed a little of the tune, the title of which had already eluded him.

  “Oh,Yesterday.”

  “It’s nice to have a song about that,” said Albert. He wondered if his music was about anything, and if he should be inventing names for it. That would be hard.

  Or impossible.

  Jeremy Ash could do it.

  “Well, cheers, Albert. Thanks much. I’ll have to see if I can crank out another tune one of these days.” He winked at Jeremy Ash, who smiled.

  “Good,” said Albert, packing the word with as much encouragement as four letters would allow. “But I hope people leave you alone.”

  And, with that curious comment, they parted company. It seemed unlikely they would ever meet again; though the McCartneys were among those standing in ovation at the conclusion of the Albert Hall concert two nights later.

  Chapter Five

  Albert did
n’t notice who was or wasn’t in the audience. By the time the applause subsided, he was in a park across the street, sitting on the lip of a granite ledge that surrounded the statue of a large man, smoking a cigarette - Albert, not the statue. Jeremy Ash was beside him. The fact that the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, and a glittering host of bejeweled and beribboned British aristocracy done up like Christmas crackers were, even now, waiting in vain for him to be presented to them, did not occupy his thoughts. They were Huffy’s problem.

  That individual was presently behaving as if he was deeply embarrassed, strolling up and down the line of notable well-wishers being as obsequious and conciliatory as possible, explaining that ‘the maestro is often unwell after a performance. His passion, as you may happreciate, takes its toll.’ Secretly, though, he loved it when his client snubbed the great and near-great. He was from the East End, after all, and hated the aristocracy (but loved the Queen, ‘Go’bless’er’), so any chance to rub their collective nose in it held greater appeal than jarred hare. And, of course, the anomaly of someone like Albert in a world gone mad with folks licking their way through the droppings for their fifteen minute suckle on the elusive teat of fame, simply added to the mystique already surrounding ‘the Maestro’ as a result of his eccentricities—as did the aura of murder and mayhem that inexplicably followed him of late.

  Albert was a self-marketing commodity. ‘The Oddity Commodity,’ Huffy called him privately.

  “You did good tonight,” said Jeremy Ash.

  Albert took a deep drag on his cigarette. He was thinking that, when he finished it, he would try flicking it away, using his thumb and forefinger as Paul Mc-Freakin’-Cartney had done. Which led to consideration of the possibilities of what might happen when it didn’t work. Which it wouldn’t. Somehow a burning ash would end up in the cuff of his tuxedo pants, or amid the folds of the blanket in Jeremy Ash’s lap, or among the dry leaves in the flower bed surrounding the statue of the large man and everything, and everyone, would go up in flames.