Antidote To Murder Read Online Free PDF

notes, organising the publicity posters and the costumes for the sham Indian musicians. Once, apparently, at a show in Rome, the musicians had sweated so much their brown greasepaint had run and they’d arrived onstage looking like a band of lepers. The piano player smiled at the conjured image. Gabriel had better not make that mistake again—the Londoners were a tough crowd to please.
    The pianist slowed the tempo. Margaretha turned her back on her lone admirer and faced him. From the corner of his eye he saw her touch her breast beneath the floating veil. Despite his knowledge that the performance was now for him, he remained focused on the music and the way the sweat stuck his white shirt uncomfortably to his body. He would give her no satisfaction. He would not take his eyes from the music. He would not play one false note.
    Her handmaidens danced well, slinking to imaginary cymbals and bells. If they danced like this to a barely tuned piano in a rundown London hall, imagine how they would perform to a full orchestra at the Empire—better still, on the eagerly anticipated tour for the Army and Navy Club? He knew the thought of all those uniforms excited her: she had told him so as one of her many attempts to make him jealous.
    He raised the tempo again, heard the rattle of her coin-covered brassiere. Conscious of her small breasts, she never removed her top, leaving the silver coins to enhance the mystery. She knew well the thoughts of the hungry-eyed audience, their collective anticipation, their desperate hope that this performance might prove the exception to her rule.
    Margaretha glided on bare feet across the stage, her handmaidens following with choreographed steps. Another veil floated to the ground. The music swelled, her belly rolled. He threw a glance to determine her position on the stage, and she responded to it greedily. Arms extended, she flew across the stage and fell to her knees next to him, leaned backwards, arched her hips, and simulated masturbation.
    Matthew Pike dashed the sweat from his brow and returned to the musical score. It was a complicated piece.
    * * *
    P ike packed up the sheet music and slipped it between the sleeves of his leather case. From the wings he heard the sound of bright female laughter, Cockney voices. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He spun on the piano stool and found Gabriel Klassen all but hidden behind an extravagant bouquet of red roses.
    “Take these in to Margaretha, please, Captain.” Klassen’s guttural Dutch accent grated on Pike’s nerves, set his teeth on edge, and took him back to places he wished he could forget.
    “I am a piano player, not a delivery boy,” Pike said, reaching for his cane and climbing to his feet. “You’ll have to take them yourself—who are they from anyway?”
    Klassen sighed and placed the flowers on the piano. “She will not be pleased. They are from the gentleman in the front row. He is becoming a pest to her, I think. Such a face. He looks like a corpse.” The manager shuddered and Pike tried very hard not to sigh.
    “I’ll speak to him if you like. Is he waiting in the front entrance?”
    “You would rather speak to him than Margaretha? It must be a coward who is more frightened of a woman than of a man.” Klassen laughed nervously.
    Klassen was more on the money than Pike would let on. He was a coward, with one woman certainly. His thoughts threatened to wander to Dody, as they had constantly during the last few weeks. He knew that the longer he put off contacting her, the less likely she was to forgive him. But something illogical seemed to have taken hold of him—the fear of fear itself perhaps—and seized him in a grip that would not let up. He glanced at the flowers on the piano. Perhaps he should send Dody a gift, something to articulate the words he was unable to say. But what? God, how useless he felt.
    Klassen was looking expectantly at him. Pike flicked him a tight smile. “Tell me more about this man.