“Yes.”
He chuckled. “Urban legend. It’s probably driven some violinists mad when they tried to play it but that’s because it’s the most difficult violin piece that’s ever existed.”
“But no one in the audience?”
“Never.”
She thanked him and hung up.
The two women kept up the work at their respective laptops for another half hour before Joanne stretched and looked at her watch. It was nearly six in the evening. “You have any wine? I need something stronger than coffee.”
“Sure. Fridge if you want white, cupboard to the left if you want red.”
“You want some?”
“Not now.” Beth returned to the computer and kept at the search.
Nothing...
But then she had a hit.
She’d missed the article in her earlier searches because the piece was not named, described merely as an Italian sonatina. It was the Midnight, though, because the composer was Luigi Scavello and the date of the composition was the same.
She read the article quickly. It was published in a Boston newspaper in 1923. Following a concert in a music college south of the Charles River, a member of the audience suddenly began ranting at a couple with whom he and his wife had attended the performance. He then drew a knife and stabbed the husband to death. He’d had no history of criminal activity, though the two men had quarreled over a business loan not long before.
The defendant’s solicitor came up with a novel legal claim that he had grown temporarily deranged because of the piece of music.
The poor man’s nature was given to sensitivity and listening to the hypnotic piece of music, the Midnight Sonatina, stole him of reason and caused him to act on his most base impulse. In short, my client was not himself.
The lawyer admitted that, yes, it was an extraordinary claim, but the medical testimony established that what had once been an intelligent functioning man was reduced to an animalistic state.
She called to Joanne: “I’ve got another one. And listen to this. The judge ruled the man was not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to a home and didn’t have to go to prison.”
So there was yet another instance of precedence for the argument for insanity.
A creative defense...
A moment later Beth heard a soft sound behind her.
Humming.
Gasping, Beth turned and, in shock, stared at Joanne, who was gazing at her sister-in-law. Her face had the same eerie, blank expression as Robert’s.
And the humming, too, was the same as earlier, the notes her husband had hummed over and over again.
The notes that spelled D-E-A-D.
Beth realized that Joanne had just listened to the Midnight Sonatina on YouTube. And she, like her brother, had also been possessed by the bewitching tune.
Joanne grabbed Beth’s hair and lifted the knife, the longest and sharpest of those that had been sitting on the island in the kitchen.
Edward Post, Joanne’s husband, was finishing the interview with the detectives from the Westfield Police Department.
The town was generally idyllic and free of crime — serious crime, at least, so two knife-wielding psychotic attackers was a rarity, to put it mildly.
The odds that they’d be brother and sister? Nearly impossible.
But here they were.
The man stepped outside, stretched and walked to his Jeep. He climbed in and drove to his company, JP Designs. It was one of the more successful landscaping companies in South Central Connecticut.
In the back of the east lot was a large trailer, a nice one. Post would occasionally stay here if the hours were long and he didn’t feel like tackling the long drive home.
He parked and then walked inside.
Beth Tollner walked forward and the two embraced.
They sat down on the couch. They were here because reporters were mobbing their houses.
“You can stay here for the time being.” He nodded to a second bedroom in the rear of the trailer.
“I think I will. Thanks.”
“How’s Joanne?” Beth asked.
Edward answered, “Broken arm. Concussion. She’s in the same prison hospital as Robert.”
As Joanne had lifted the knife, Beth had reached behind her and grabbed the fireplace poker. She’d struck her sister-in-law a half-dozen times, and the woman collapsed on the floor. She remained conscious — and humming eerily — but didn’t have the energy to rise and renew her attack.
“The physical stuff isn’t that bad. But she’s still in that weird state. Like sleepwalking.”
Beth said, “I figured out the knives, the pattern.”
“That he left on the kitchen island?”
“Right. Robert arranged them like they were notes on a musical staff. D-E-A-D.”
Edward shook his head.
“That two people flew into murderous rages after listening to the music? That’ll help the defense.” She looked over at her brother-in-law. “I’ll meet our lawyer tomorrow. I’m sure he can recommend somebody to represent Joanne. He can’t handle her case too. There’d be a conflict.”
“She did try to kill you, after all.”
“No, she didn’t. It was somebody — something — else.” Beth nodded at her computer. “I want to give the lawyers as much information as we can about the sonatina.”
She returned to the article she’d been reading — the account of the Boston concert attack in 1923.
The conductor of the chamber group, Sebastiano Matta, took strong umbrage at the suggestion that the piece of music they had played — everyone agreed, with consummate skill — was in any way responsible for the tragic event. “Music cannot cause any such mischief. We will not allow anyone to spread scandalous rumors about Señor Scavello’s marvelous sonatina. No one will ever stop us from performing the piece.”
Beth clicked forward and came to the last page.
A short scream shot from her mouth.
Edward spun and approached.
“No,” Beth whispered.
“What is it? Tell me.”
“They’re the same,” she whispered.
“Who?”
Beth was looking at a photograph of Matta, the conductor of the chamber group in Boston, where the murder had occurred in 1923. And beside him, the beautiful young violinist who’d performed the Midnight Sonatina that night.
They were identical to the conductor and principal violinist of the Salem Chamber Players from the concert yesterday evening.
Identical, right down to a scar on the conductor’s jaw and a streak of white in the young woman’s hair.
How could this be?
Then, with a shock, she remembered that she’d called the conductor, saying she was researching any odd incidents surrounding the sonatina. And given her name.
No one will ever stop us from performing the piece...
Just then Edward’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen — she could see it read No Caller ID — and hit answer, held the unit up to his ear. “Hello?”
He frowned and glanced at Beth. “Odd. Nobody’s there. Just some music.”
The chill shot through her body like an electrical jolt. She whispered: “Put it on speaker.”
He did, and a whirlwind of notes, like knives hissing through the air — the opening measures of the Midnight Sonatina — filled the trailer.