1635: Music and Murder (10 page)

Command Performance

Magdeburg
Friday, October 14, 1633

Franz knocked on the door, and waited impatiently for someone to answer. Marla made a slight grunt, and her hold on his arm became a fierce clutch. He leaned over to her bowed head, and said, "But a moment more, and you will be out of the rain and able to sit." She nodded her head slightly, and he straightened.

At that moment, the door opened and a young woman looked out at them. "Yes?" she said in accented English.

"Fräulein Marla Linder, come at Frau Simpson's invitation," Franz replied.

The young woman opened the door wide. "Please, come in.
Wilkommen.
"

Franz led Marla into the house. The comparative warmth of the sitting room was a very welcome change from the liquid ice of the October rain, and he heard her sigh. Another woman swept into the room from a side door as the maid shut the front door behind them.

"Miss Linder, I am so glad to finally meet you face to face," the newcomer exclaimed.

Franz was in no doubt as to who this was, although he had never seen her before in his life. Even in Grantville they had begun to hear of Mary Simpson, the Dame of Magdeburg, whose grace and courtesy had charmed even the young myrmidons of the Committees of Correspondence.

Marla's fingers clenched on his arm again. "Your pardon, Frau Simpson," Franz hastily interjected, "but it would be a kindness if Marla could sit down."

Mrs. Simpson's beaming smile shifted to an expression of concern, and her eyes widened as she took Marla's hands. "Dear, your hands are like ice! You poor thing." Mary released Marla's hand and began unfastening buttons. "At the end of a long journey, and you're soaking wet and cold. Hilde, help take her coat." With the maid's help, the drenched coat was removed and hung up. "Come with us, and we'll get you warm and dry."

The serving woman led Marla out of the sitting room as Mary turned to Franz. "Please, make yourself at home, while we take care of Miss Linder. Tell me, Mr . . . ." she looked at him in inquiry.

"Franz Sylwester, Frau Simpson," he responded with a slight bow.

Mary smiled. "Oh, good, I was hoping to meet you. We'll talk later, but for right now, do you know if Marla gets like this often? How long has she been hurting?"

"Never have I seen her like this," Franz said, his worry coming to the fore. "She has been suffering for over two days now, since after the rain started."

Mary nodded. "As I thought. If we get her dry and warm, it should ease up. Please, Franz, be seated, and we'll be back with you before long." She turned and hurried out of the room.

Franz took his violin in its bag and Marla's flute in its case from the plastic bags that had protected them from the rain. He set the instruments on a nearby table, then hung the precious bags to dry on a peg next to Marla's coat near the door. He stopped for a moment to look at the bags, and marvel at the stuff they were made from. How plastic was made still seemed like magic to him, but there was no denying how useful the stuff was. Take these bags—they weighed next to nothing, could be folded and stuck into a pocket, yet at a moment's notice they could be taken out and used to shield anything they would contain from moisture. Truly, the future must be a marvelous place if it could produce Marla, the music he was coming to love so strongly, and plastic.

With a smile he started on his own buttons, and moments later his own very wet coat was hung on the next peg in the wall. Finally shed of his various burdens, he took a seat in one of the most comfortable chairs it had ever been his pleasure to sit in. The warmth radiating from the stove soaked into him and the chill left his own extremities. He felt his body relaxing for the first time since the trip from Grantville had begun.

Traveling in Thuringia in the late fall and early winter was unpleasant at best, and arduous at worst. Rain or early snow could turn what roads there were into muddy bogs. Shepherding a grand piano from Grantville to Magdeburg in early October had been . . . interesting, Franz mused.

****

The process began when Marla accepted Mary Simpson's invitation to come to Magdeburg and bring 'modern' music with her. The day the letter from Mrs. Simpson arrived, Franz saw a rare mixture of emotions in Marla. She was very excited, which was to be expected; but for the first time in their relationship, Franz saw Marla experiencing uncertainty. It had taken the combined support of Marcus Wendell, Marla's old high school band director, Ingram Bledsoe, her instrument maker friend, and her entire circle of down-time musician friends to convince her that she should take up this opportunity.

Once Marla decided to come to Magdeburg, however, her self-confidence came rolling back like a river flooding over its banks. The metaphor, Franz smiled as he recalled those days, was an apt one; she was as relentless in her focus as a flash flood. The days that followed were very intense, as she gathered music and supplies. Her biggest need, however, was a piano—a good one.

That need for a piano caused a whirlwind inventory of instruments in Grantville. The results surprised every up-timer except Ingram, who was Grantville's resident piano tuner. For such a small town, there were a surprising number of pianos. They found nearly one hundred upright, console and spinet pianos in various states of repair with ages ranging from pre-World War I instruments to one that had been delivered only a few weeks before the Ring of Fire. A fair quantity of the older and more dilapidated instruments were now located in the warehouse-cum-workshop of Bledsoe & Riebeck, the new piano manufacturing firm formed by Ingram and Hans Riebeck, the father-in-law of one of Franz's down-timer friends. They all made jokes about the graveyard of old pianos, but actually the craftsmen were mining the instruments for hardware to make new pianos for down-timers.

Marla didn't even consider selecting one of the smaller pianos, though it would have been easier to move. She focused her attention on the larger grand and baby grand instruments. Franz remembered going with her on her rounds of various houses and churches. There were over half a dozen baby grands in Grantville, and she played each one extensively. He also remembered their conversation as they left the last house.

"Well, that was disappointing," she said, as they walked down the sidewalk from the house. "I haven't heard a baby grand yet that I really liked, but that one was just bad."

"So what will you do?" Franz asked.

"I don't have any choice. I have to have one of the big grands."

"Tell me again where they are."

"First Baptist Church has a Baldwin, the Methodist church has a recent model Steinway, and Marcus Wendell tells me there's an old Steinway in the High Street Mansion," Marla said.

"Do you know them well?"

"The ones in the churches I do. I haven't seen or played the old Steinway, but from what Marcus tells me, it needs some pretty extensive work done to it."

"So which one do you want?"

"I don't have time to wait on the mansion's piano to get fixed. Besides, Girolamo Zenti is having a bidding war with Bledsoe and Riebeck for it, and who knows how long it will take to settle that. It will have to be one of the church pianos. I'll take whichever one I can get," Marla answered, "but I want the Steinway. The Baldwin's tone is too dark, and although it's a lot newer than the mansion's piano, it's still old enough that I'm a little afraid to move it very far. No, it has to be the Methodist Steinway. It's going to put a big hole in the church's music program though," she said in a worried tone, concerned about her home church. "I hope that Reverend Jones will forgive me."

Ingram had once warned Franz that when Marla 'shifted into high gear', she was hard to keep up with. Franz learned exactly what the older man had meant over the next three days, his recollection of which was a little blurred. He moved in Marla's wake, watching mostly in silence from behind her shoulder as she went from office to office and person to person, asking, pleading, demanding and negotiating. Her concern about the effect of this requisition on her home church didn't stop her from making it all the same.

At the end of it, Marla had forged an agreement between several parties wherein the Methodist church agreed to release their grand piano for shipment to Magdeburg. In exchange, the church was to receive some compensation from Mary Simpson's arts league, the use of the best of the baby grand pianos (which happened to be owned by a member of the church, who was also to be compensated), and an option to purchase a new grand from Bledsoe & Riebeck at cost when their new company was able to begin manufacturing them. The arts league agreed to pay the costs to transport the requisitioned instrument to Magdeburg, and the government agreed to give Bledsoe & Riebeck a tax deduction for the difference between the cost of the replacement piano and the price for which they would normally have sold it.

It was the piano that dictated when they would leave for Magdeburg. Their friends Ingram Bledsoe and Friedrich Braun first had to build a shipping crate for it. And of course, Marla was hovering at their shoulders while they were doing so, anxious that it should be perfect so that no harm should come to her beloved Steinway. It was well-designed, well-constructed and definitely well-padded. She finally agreed it was time to encase the piano and prepare to leave. At that point Ingram, for the first time since Franz had become acquainted with him, became firm with her. His words were, "Marla, if you're here, you will drive us all batty. Even if you don't say anything, you'll make us so nervous there will be an accident. Now, be a good girl and go with Franz, and let us pack your baby up for you."

Franz smiled as he remembered the expression on Marla's face. She was surprised more than anything that a man she considered to be like a favorite uncle would speak so to her, but she did understand the sense of it, and reluctantly—very reluctantly—came away with Franz.

The next morning they went to the church to find that the piano was packed, wrapped in one of those marvelous sheets of plastic—Ingram called it a 'tarp'—and sealed with some also marvelous sticky stuff. When he asked Ingram what it was, he thought he didn't hear the answer correctly. "Duck tape?" It gave rise to a number of interesting mental images.

"Duct tape. Duct with a 't'," Ingram said. "The late twentieth century's answer to twine and baling wire." And then Ingram had to explain what baling wire was.

Several large and brawny men had been recruited to remove the crate from the church and load it onto the wagon that was going to carry it to the river. Franz remembered his surprise at the size of the crate. He had expected it to be quite large, but it was only about eight or nine feet long, about six feet wide and about four feet high. When he remarked on this, Friedrich looked at him with a supercilious expression—'Of course, the legs come off,'—as if Franz were a dunce. Before Franz could hit him, the call came to lift the crate, so his sarcastic friend escaped without lumps.

The crate was lifted with a great deal of heaving, straining and grunting; and with a great deal more it was walked out the doors of the church meeting hall, through the entry and out into the daylight. It had to be lifted even higher to place it into the bed of the wagon, so along with the heaving and grunting, Franz remembered hearing words muttered that properly should not be spoken near a church. It took all their strength, but it was finally loaded onto the wagon and on its way to the riverside.

The River Saale was not very wide or deep at the place where they were to embark, and those who had arranged for the barges had told Marla of the trouble they had in finding one that was large enough to carry the piano yet small enough to navigate the course of the river that far upstream. There were actually two barges awaiting them when they arrived at the riverside—one to carry the piano, and one to carry Marla and her friends and their bags and instruments. When she saw the barges, Marla almost had an apoplectic fit. The larger of the two was for the piano. It seemed as though it almost touched the banks on both sides of the river, yet when she looked at the crate it appeared to be wider than the barge. Ingram and Friedrich consulted with the barge master, then Ingram took out his . . . 'tape measure', Franz thought it was called—another marvelous device—and measured the width of the barge cargo space, then measured the crate, and pronounced a judgment that it would fit. That calmed Marla to some extent, but she was still nervous as they wrapped the harness around the crate and attached the hoisting tackle.

Franz still had a bruise from where Marla's long, strong pianist's fingers clamped on his arm while the crate with the almost invaluable and definitely irreplaceable Steinway was swayed up and out and eventually lowered to the deck of the first barge. She relaxed finally as the deck hands lashed down the crate. Piano and crate together only weighed about 1000 up-time pounds, so the barge didn't settle much in the water, which was a good thing—the river was not only narrow at this place, it was also shallow. In any event, the crate filled the craft from side to side. There might have been room for someone to step between it and the side of the barge, but that someone would have needed a very small foot.

That was actually the most exciting part of the trip. The people were loaded on the second barge in a matter of minutes. Marla, of course, wanted to ride on the first barge with her 'baby', but the barge master refused. He said that with the cargo area so full there was only room for his crew. He was right. There might have been five feet between the bow and the crate, and maybe a little more than that between the crate and the stern, which truly was barely enough room for himself, his brother and his two sons to work in. He offered to let her ride on top of the crate. Franz still wasn't sure if the barge master was jesting or not, the man's craggy face was so sober. He thought that Marla actually considered it, but she finally refused, to Franz's relief.

"Well," Marla had said, "here we go." Their bags were being tossed from the dock to the deck of the second barge, so she led the way down the gangplank, followed by Franz and the rest of those who were traveling with them, all clutching precious instrument cases under their arms. The mooring ropes were untied and thrown on deck, and the bargemen leaned into their poles to shove off into the river's current and begin the journey downstream to Magdeburg.