Free The Soprano Wore Falsettos by Mark Schweizer

accurate, choral rendition of The Palms by Jean-Baptiste Fauré.
    “I thought you said his name was ‘Jim Bob’ Fauré,” said Meg, as the offering plate went by.
    “Jean-Baptiste translates to Jim Bob.”
    “No it doesn’t.”
    “It should.”
    During communion, the musical offering was The Holy City, sung by Renee Tatton. I hazarded a glance back up to the choir loft. Ms. Tatton wasn’t wearing a robe, but instead had chosen a lavender, diaphanous gown covered in sequins. I thought that her arm waving was rather extreme for that particular piece, but Meg said that those bird watchers returning from communion would certainly appreciate it. Other than that, it was a pretty good performance.
    “At least she chose to wear something purple,” I commented. “It is a penitential season, after all.”

    • • •

    The service concluded, and the congregation made their way out of the sanctuary and headed to the parish hall for coffee, cookies and the latest gossip — gossip which chiefly concerned one Lucille Murdock. Meg and I were almost the last to leave, hanging back to listen to Agnes Day’s postlude. Finally, we had to admit that enough was enough, and we followed the lemmings to the coffee pot. We had just finished our second cup — real Sunday morning coffee, not Father George’s anemic brew — and were getting ready to leave when Georgia pulled on my arm.
    “You’d better come,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”
    Meg and I followed her through the kitchen, out the door into the alley and back into the sacristy. Elaine was waiting. She and Georgia were helping prepare the homebound communion.
    “Come here,” said Elaine, grabbing my arm and pulling me into the nave. Meg and Georgia followed.
    The organ was still playing. Agnes Day had been improvising on What A Friend We Have In Jesus as the postlude. I’d heard enough of it, before we left the first time, to know that it wasn’t going to be a virtuoso performance. Now, amid the din of the organ, I noticed the zimbelstern, a set of seven bells played by a rotating hammer and activated by a toe stud on the pedal board. The zimbelstern was great for effects — very pretty — and I used it liberally on Christmas Eve, but I hadn’t ever heard it used in What A Friend We Have In Jesus . Then again, I’d never heard an improvisation on that particular hymn tune.
    “Listen to her,” said Georgia. “That’s just awful, even for her. She’s been playing the same thing for ten minutes.”
    “Maybe she’s still improvising,” Meg said.
    I shook my head. “I don’t think so. C’mon.”
    I was down the aisle and up the stairs to the choir loft in short order with the three women following me. I stopped in front of the big stained-glass window that framed the loft and looked at the organ. There, draped across the console, was Agnes Day. I took out my cell phone and called for an ambulance as Meg, Elaine and Georgia joined me in front of the window.
    “Is she dead?” asked Meg. “She’s not moving.”
    “I don’t know.” I stepped down to the console, followed closely by Meg. I pulled Agnes Day back from the console and looked at her face. Her eyes were open and unseeing. I let her slump back gently where I found her, then reached around and turned the organ off.
    “She’s not breathing,” said Meg, “Shouldn’t we do CPR or something?”
    I shook my head. “Look here,” I said, pointing to the right side of her head. “If we’d gotten here ten minutes earlier, maybe. Even then…” I left the sentence unfinished.
    “Then who was playing the organ?” asked Georgia. “A ghost?”
    I pointed to the MIDI recorder. “She was recording her improvisation. I suppose to play it back at some point — maybe listen to it.”
    “What’s that thing?” asked Elaine.
    “MIDI is short for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. Basically, in this application, it records all of the aspects of a pipe organ’s performance.”
    “So it