For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(120)

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Her breakfast,” Lady Helen said.

Miranda nodded. “She’d left off eating in the morning. And three times—perhaps four—I’d gone to the loo and she’d been in there being sick. Once I found her at it and the other times—” Miranda twisted a button on her navy cardigan. She wore a navy T-shirt beneath it. “It’s just that I could smell it.”

She belonged on the force, Lynley thought. She was a natural observer. She didn’t miss a trick.

She said in a rush, “I would have said something to you Monday night only I didn’t know for sure. And other than being sick those mornings, she didn’t act any different.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she wasn’t acting like she had anything in particular to worry about, so I thought perhaps I might have been wrong.”

“Perhaps she wasn’t worried. An out-of-wedlock pregnancy isn’t the sort of disaster it might have been thirty years ago.”

“Maybe not in your family.” Miranda smiled. “But I can’t exactly see my dad greeting that kind of news like it was an announcement of the Second Coming. And I never got the impression her dad was any different.”

“Randie, come on. Let’s do it,” the saxophone player called from across the room.

“Right,” she said. She gave Lynley and Lady Helen a light-hearted salute. “I’m taking a ride during the second number. Listen for it.”

“Taking a ride?” Lady Helen said as Randie scampered back to join the rest of the jazz combo. “What on earth does she mean, Tommy?”

“It must be jazzspeak,” Lynley said. “I’m afraid we’d need Louis Armstrong here to translate.”

The concert began with a roll of drums and the keyboard player call-ing out, “Pound the valves down, Randie. One and two and three and—”

Randie, the saxophonist, and the clarinet player lifted their instruments. Lynley glanced down at the sheet of paper that served as programme for the concert and read the name of the number. “Circadian Dysrhythmia.” It featured the keyboard player who, huddled over his instrument with effort and concentration, carried the lively melody for the first few minutes before tossing it over to the clarinet player who surged to his feet and took it from there. The drummer provided a steady tip-tapping on the cymbals in the background. As he did so, his narrowed eyes flitted round the room to take in the crowd.

By the middle of the number, more listeners had joined the group in the JCR, wandering in from the bar with drinks in hand, and coming in directly from the college grounds where the music no doubt drifted into the surrounding buildings. Heads bobbed in the sort of second-nature response that is generally the listener’s reaction to good jazz while handsrapped against the arms of chairs, the tops of thighs, and the sides of beer glasses. By the end of the number, the audience was won, and when the song ended—with no prior warning or winding down of the musicians’ enthusiasm but just upon a single note that was cut off into silence—the moment of stunned surprise that followed was broken by long and enthusiastic applause.

The band didn’t acknowledge this approbation with anything more than a nod from the keyboard player. Before the applause died down, the saxophone was twirling through the familiar, sultry melody of “Take Five.” After one complete turn through the number, he began to improvise. The double bass player kept up with him through the repetition of three notes and the drummer maintained the beat, but otherwise the saxophone was on his own. And he gave it his heart—eyes closed, his body swayed back, his instrument lifted. It was the sort of music one felt in the solar plexus, hollow and haunting.

As he completed his improvisation, the saxophone player nodded at Randie, who stood and began hers on the last note of his. Again, the double bass played the same three notes, again the drums maintained the same steady beat. But the sound of the trumpet changed the mood of the piece. It became pure and uplifting, a joyous celebration of brassy sound.

Like the saxophone player, Miranda performed with her eyes closed, and she tapped her right foot in time with the drummer. But unlike the saxophonist, when her solo was completed and the improvisation thrown to the clarinet, she grinned with unrestrained pleasure at the applause that greeted the ride she had taken.

Their third number, “Just a Child,” changed the mood once again. It featured the clarinet player—an overweight redhead whose face shone with perspiration—and it provided a dusky sound that spoke of rainy evenings and fusty nightclubs, a fog of cigarette smoke and glasses of gin. It invited slow dancing, lazy kissing, and sleep.

The crowd loved it, as they did the fourth, a piece called “Black Nightgown” which featured the clarinet and saxophone. It also ended the first set.

There was a general cry of protest when the keyboard player announced “We’re breaking for fifteen,” but since it was an opportunity to replenish drinks, most of the audience began to shuffle towards the bar. Lynley joined them.

The two darts players were still at it, he saw, their concentration and dedication having gone unimpaired by the performance in the next room. The younger man had apparently hit his stride, for the score on the blackboard showed that he had drawn nearly even with his bearded competitor.

“Last toss, this,” the younger player announced, displaying the dart with the flare of a magician about to make an elephant disappear. “Over the shoulder and I’ll have a bull’s-eye and a win. Who wants money on it?”