Skeleton Key(102)

“One more thing,” Gregor said. “Did you tell anybody, anybody at all, that you were coming out here? Did you tell anybody why?”

“Not a single person,” Annabel said. “I didn’t even see anybody to tell.”

“Fine,” Gregor Demarkian said.

He got out of his chair and motioned Mark Cashman to follow him. When he got to the hall, he motioned back in the direction of the living room and said, “You’d better find that young woman a doctor. She’s in shock, and if she goes long enough without having it treated, it’s going to matter.”





Two



1


The first thing Eve Wachinsky noticed when she entered Grace Feinmann’s apartment was the piano—except that it wasn’t a piano, exactly. It was hard to tell what it was. Grace had taken her keys and run across the hall to get some things for her to wear while she was recuperating on the sofa bed. Eve went over to the “piano” and ran her hand across the top of it. It had two keyboards, one on top of the other. That was one strange thing. It was painted so elaborately, it looked like one of those movie animations of an LSD trip. Its legs were longer and thinner than the legs on a regular piano, too, so that it looked less like a musical instrument than like a piece of furniture. Eve wondered if Grace played it. Grace played a lot of classical music. Eve had heard it coming through the walls. She had always assumed it was coming from CDs and audio cassettes.

Grace came back through the door, carrying Eve’s green polyester pajamas and her red terrycloth bathrobe.

“Here,” she said, putting them down on the arm of the couch. “You’ll feel much better once you’ve had a real shower. You can never shower for real in a hospital room. I’ll get across the hall and clean up tomorrow. I’d do it today, but I’m just exhausted. I’ve got a performance in two weeks. I’ve been practicing until I drop.”

Eve ran her hand over the “piano” again. “Is this what you perform on? It’s not like any piano I’ve ever seen before.”

“That’s because it’s not a piano. It’s a Peter Redstone harpsichord. And that’s what I perform on, yes. That and the virginals. Except that I started out on the piano. Everybody does.”

“I’m sorry,” Eve said. “I’m very ignorant, really. I never, you know, went to school much.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Not everybody has heard of the harpsichord even if they did go to school a lot. And practically nobody has heard of the virginals. That’s my project at the moment. I’m trying to buy a mother-and-child virginals.”

“It sounds like something you’d hear about in church.”

“It’s an instrument like the harpsichord, actually. It’s smaller, though. And with the mother and child, you have the main instrument that you sit at and then there’s what looks like a drawer in the side, and when you pull it out it’s another virginal. That you can play. If you see what I mean.”

“I see why they call it mother and child.”

“It’s what’s keeping me broke at the moment. Buying the virginals, I mean. I really wanted to do it right this time, so I’m having the Hubbard people make them for me, and then I’m having Sheridan Germann decorate it for me, and by the time it’s all done it’s going to cost nearly thirty thousand dollars. That’s why I’m living here. I teach at Fairfield University in the music department, and they pay really well, for a music department. But not well enough to afford something like that without very low expenses and a second job.”

Thirty thousand dollars. Eve had never made all of thirty thousand dollars in a year. She took her hand off the harpsichord. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might be expensive. Now it seemed as if it could be worth a fortune. She moved away from it toward the couch. There was a picture on the end table in a frame, showing Grace in what looked like a leotard under a long black skirt, with a harpsichord on one side and a large man on the other. The photograph was signed All my best, Igor Kipnis.

“That’s me at the Connecticut Early Music Festival,” Grace said. “Last year. I played a selection of songs written by Henry the Eighth. And that’s Igor Kipnis, who is one of the two greatest harpsichordists now working. He kept trying to get me to go back to performing full-time.”

“Why don’t you perform full-time?” Eve asked.

“Because no matter how hard I practice, I’m never going to play like Igor Kipnis. Or Gustav Leonhardt. Or any of those people. I’m just not a world-class player. I’m good enough to teach. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a cup of coffee. Or tea. Or even hot chocolate. I can always drink hot chocolate.”