Free The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists by Barbara Wilson Page A

had acted as if I hardly existed. The huge house had two stairways, and it was possible for me to enter and leave through the kitchen and former servants’ quarters without seeing Olivia at all. Nicky sometimes chided me, “She won’t bite you.”
    “She doesn’t like me. She knows my great-grandparents were peasants.”
    “Nonsense,” said Nicky. “She thinks you’re a fascinating person. She often asks me where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to.”
    That was a kind lie on Nicky’s part. Far from “not biting,” Olivia had sharp teeth and exercised them. She had never used them on Nicky, but I had felt their snap often enough. “Oh, Cassandra, dear,” she would begin, and I knew some request designed to put me in my place would follow. “If you’re going to eat fried fish, could you please not eat it in my kitchen? It lingers so.”
    Why did I keep living in her house then, for almost twenty years? It was free, for one thing, thanks to Nicky, and for the most part I really was hardly there. Some years I spent only a month there, other years six months at most. It was an address in a more than respectable part of town (unlike Peckham where I’d previously had a bed sit), an answering service, a steady point in the universe. It allowed me to keep my clothes somewhere, and to have a desk. It allowed me to be attached, but without responsibility.
    I stayed there because Nicky wanted me to as well, because Nicky, in spite of all our ups and downs, was a true friend. And perhaps I stayed, too, because of the music.
    “I suppose you know that you’ve gotten yourself in a much worse place than you were in even two days ago.” I spoke more harshly than I’d meant to, probably to disguise the wave of sentimentality and relief that had come over me when I saw that she looked fine.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Gunther’s death of course! At first you were only suspected of stealing a period bassoon. Now they think you murdered someone.”
    “Oh, that’s ridiculous. Who killed him? When?” Nicky looked disturbed, but better than I’d seen her two days ago. She was wearing a fitted red sweater with a deep V-neck that showed ample flesh. I knew Nicky was more likely to go for clinging cleavage when she felt she’d pulled off something clever. Her appetite had returned too, if the array of dishes in front of her was any indication. There were several sorts of bruschetta, a salad, a dish of olives, panini with cheese and salami, and a glass of wine.
    “Last night. A porter at the Danieli found him floating in a canal by the Pietà.”
    “Well, that’s a shame,” she said. “I’m sorry. He actually was quite a good bassoonist.” She brooded a little, and then said briskly, “Well, it can’t be helped if they suspect me. That’s the least of my worries.” She took a bite of bruschetta.
    “The least of your worries? May I inquire then, very respectfully, what you are worried about? Obviously not your professional reputation.”
    “It’s that horrible Bitten, of course.” She pushed a plate toward me and signaled the waiter for another glass of wine and one for herself. “Eat a wee bite, lass. You look starving.”
    “She’s not horrible,” I said, remembering Bitten’s playing of the adagio movement. “What has she done? Surely you don’t suspect her of pushing Gunther in the canal?”
    “She told me she’s Olivia’s granddaughter, that’s what she’s done.”
    “What!”
    “Bitten asked, after the first morning seminar of the symposium, if I’d like to have a cup of coffee with her. We’d never met, but I was familiar with some of her research on the girls of the Pietà and thought she was trying to connect with me, woman to woman, about the whole notion of Baroque women musicians. We were the only two women in the symposium playing bassoon after all, so it seemed obvious we would want to talk and, I hoped, form an alliance against Mr. Know-It-All McManus. Oh, futile feminist