The Piano Tuner Read Online Free PDF

were it not for its title, “Sketches of Burmah.” He was
familiar with the column—it ran almost weekly—but he had paid it
little attention. Until now. He tore the article from the page and tucked the
newspaper under a pile of magazines on the small table. She shouldn’t see
this. From the dining room came the clink of silverware and the smell of boiled
potatoes.
     
    The following morning, Edgar sat at a small
table set for two as Katherine made tea and toast and set out jars of butter
and jam. He was quiet, and as she moved through the kitchen, she filled the
silence with talk of the endless autumn rain, of politics, news. “Did you
hear, Edgar, of the omnibus accident yesterday? Of the reception for the German
baron? Of the young mother in the East End who has been arrested for the murder
of her children?”
    “No,” he answered. His mind
wandered, distracted. “No, tell me.”
    “Horrible,
absolutely horrible. Her husband—a coal hauler I think—found the
children, two little boys and a little girl, curled together in their bed, and
he told a constable, and they arrested the wife. The poor thing. The poor
husband, he didn’t think she had done it—think of that, losing both
your wife and children. And she says she only gave them a patent medicine to
help them sleep.
I
think they should arrest the patent-medicine maker.
I do believe her, wouldn’t you?”
    “Of course,
dear.” He held his cup to his mouth and breathed in the steam.
    “You are not listening,” Katherine said.
    “Of
course I am; it is terrible,” and he was, he thought of the image of the
three children, pale, like baby mice with unopened eyes.
    “Alas,
I know I shouldn’t read such stories,” she said. “They bother
me so. Let’s talk of something else. Will you finish the Farrell contract
today?”
    “No, I think I will go later this week. At ten I
have an appointment at the Mayfair home of an MP. A Broadwood grand, I
don’t know what is wrong with it. And I have some work to finish in the
shop before I leave.”
    “Do try to get home on time tonight.
You know I hate waiting.”
    “I know.” He reached over
and took her hand in his. An exaggerated effort, she thought, but dismissed
it.
     
    Their servant, a young girl from Whitechapel, had
returned home to tend to her mother, who was sick with consumption, so
Katherine left the table and went upstairs to arrange the bedroom. She usually
stayed at home during the day, to help with the chores, to receive house calls
from Edgar’s clients, to arrange commissions, and to plan social affairs,
a task which her husband, who had always found himself more comfortable among
musical instruments, was more than happy to let her manage. They had no
children, although not for want of trying. Indeed, their marriage had stayed
quite amorous, a fact that sometimes surprised even Katherine when she watched
her husband wander absentmindedly through the house. While at first this
notable Absence-of-Child, as Katherine’s mother described it, had
saddened the two of them, they had become accustomed to it, and Katherine often
wondered if it had made them closer. Besides, Katherine at times admitted to
her friends a certain relief, Edgar is enough to look after.
    When she
had left the table, he finished his tea and descended the steep stairs to his
basement workshop. He rarely worked at home. Transporting an instrument through
the London streets could be disastrous, and it was much easier to take all his
tools to his work. He kept the space primarily for his own projects. The few
times he had actually brought a piano to his home, it had to be lowered by
ropes down the open space between the street and his house. The shop itself was
a small space with a low ceiling, a warren of dusty piano skeletons, tools that
hung from the walls and ceilings like cuts in a butcher shop, fading schematics
of pianos and portraits of pianists nailed to the walls. The room was dimly lit
by a half window tucked