Fruitful Bodies by Morag Joss

Author:Morag Joss [Joss, Morag]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780440335535
Google: WqSVFpWS3NgC
Amazon: 0440242436
Barnesnoble: 0440242436
Goodreads: 7028236
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2001-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

THEY HAD SPENT a relaxing three-quarters of an hour over tea in the gracious Pump Room, listening to the pianist, eating cake and discussing methods of killing Valerie, when Sara, idly fingering the menu card, turned over the last page and read that today’s pianist at afternoon tea was Alex Cooper. She looked behind her at the grudging girl as she plinked from Summertime to Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and searched her memory. She was sure she had not met her before. Then it came to her. James, lying up at the top of the garden of the Sulis, had told her there was quite a good piano there, a baby Blüthner. And in the piano stool of the baby Blüthner he had found music belonging to the departed music therapist with the amusing name. The name which someone kept getting wrong—Alice Cooper instead of Alex Cooper. As the music trudged on, Sara looked more closely at the pianist. Alex Cooper’s new job as Pump Room pianist did not seem particularly to agree with her. The tight little face with small, toffee-coloured eyes, the tense shoulders and decorous playing posture suggested someone who was not a natural performer, and the popular numbers being tapped out on the piano correctly, but devoid of grace, personality or swing, confirmed it. She wore no jewellery or make-up. Her clothes carried too little impact to offend; all that could be said of them was that they covered her body in the same way that her hair did nothing for her except cover her head. Alex Cooper’s message to the world was not just that she was not a natural performer, it was that she would prefer not to be noticed at all.

But she would prefer, surely, to be told that several pounds’ worth of her music was still in the piano stool at the Sulis when she must have given it up as lost. Alex Cooper was clearly not prosperous enough—who would be?—to lose it all, a collection probably acquired over years. Sara got up and approached the platform just as the few people in the Pump Room not holding teacups or cake forks began to applaud the last tinkling notes of the set. Alex turned her dead eyes towards Sara, expecting to deliver an indulgent reply to some standard question about the music.

‘You used to work at the Sulis, didn’t you?’ Sara asked instead, which provoked in Alex a sudden, violent blush.

‘The Sulis on Bathwick Hill? Didn’t you use to work there?’

‘The Sulis? Oh. Oh, well, yes. Yes, but not for very long.’ She shook her head as if to indicate that this was all she knew on the subject, then turned and began to leaf through the music on the piano.

‘It’s just that when you left—’

‘I left ages ago. I’m supposed to be playing,’ Alex said with a nervous, managing smile, ‘I’m sorry.’ She launched with inappropriate aggression into Edelweiss. Sara, puzzled, thought for a moment about shouting above the

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