A Baffling Murder at the Midsummer Ball (A Dizzy Heights Mystery) by T E Kinsey

Author:T E Kinsey [Kinsey, T E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2021-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Ellie opened the chapel door and was greeted by a discordant cacophony from the band, who were playing an out-of-tune, out-of-time rendition of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’. It was a genuinely unpleasant sound. The saxophones were honking, the trumpet squeaking. Skins’s drums sounded as though they were being played by a particularly uncoordinated gibbon.

She hurried in, worried they might all have been drugged again, and wondering what on earth she might be able to do about it. As she skidded to a halt on the tiled floor, she saw at once the reason for the musical chaos – they were playing each other’s instruments. Even Katy had joined in, on her sister’s clarinet. The song ended to cheers and guffaws.

‘What the heck . . . ?’ she began, as the laughter died down.

‘Hello, love,’ said Skins, taking a saxophone from his lips. ‘They got bored of cards.’

‘So I see. But . . . I mean, did you even tell them about Hetty?’

‘He did, sweetie,’ said Puddle from behind Skins’s drum set. ‘But there’s nothing to be gained from us moping about, so we decided to lighten the mood. Can you play the flute?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘Not even a little bit.’

‘Perfect. Grab mine and join us. It’s the small case under Skins’s chair.’

‘I don’t even know how to put it together.’

‘Even better. We’re trying “Frère Jacques” next.’

Elk waved Eustace’s trumpet. ‘What key?’

‘If you can play it in any key I’ll give you a fiver,’ said Dunn.

‘It comes in three pieces,’ said Ellie.

Skins looked over. ‘What does?’

‘This flute. Look.’ She held up the sections of the disassembled flute. ‘How the heck . . . ?’

‘Take the bit with the lump with the hole in it, and put it in the long bit . . . No, other end . . . That’s it. Now take the short bit with the keys on and put it in the other end of the long bit . . . No, other way round.’

‘How should it all line up?’

‘Don’t ask me – I’m just the drummer. It probably doesn’t matter. Can you get a note out of it?’

Ellie had seen flutes being played and knew it was something like blowing across the top of a bottle. She knew how to do that. She tried it. The instrument emitted a mournful hoot.

Puddle tapped the drumsticks together. ‘That’s it,’ she said, delightedly. ‘Everybody ready? After four. One, two, three, four.’

Once again, the tuneless din began. It had vaguely the rhythm of the familiar French nursery rhyme, but none of the assembled – otherwise highly skilled – musicians was able to get anywhere close to the tune. Ellie tapped at the flute’s keys and managed to change the pitch of the hooting. She was beginning to imagine that she was approaching something vaguely like the melody, but hysterical giggling from the rest of the band brought it all to a premature end before she could claim fully to have mastered it.

Katy was smiling, but was less amused than the musicians. ‘Can we do something else now? Something I’m good at.

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