Chapter 19

By the next morning, the conference room across from Alice’s office was swarming with edgy people - staff and musicians exuding stress.

Sir Gregory marched into the middle of the chaos. “Cancel the rest of the concerts this weekend. It’s not safe for anyone to be in this building. You should go home too, Alice. We should suspend operations until the real killer is arrested.

“And why are they still holding Matthews?” he asked, at the moment Cynthia walked into the room.

“He hasn’t been cleared yet,” Cynthia said. “We need more answers than we have.”

Alice was disturbed that musicians who were close to retirement age - the principal flutist and a second violinist - had requested early retirement, effective immediately. Another, a cellist, asked for a six-month leave.

Sir Gregory opened the door to leave the room, as Alice’s staff began filing in. “Could you please stay for this meeting?” she said to him. He bristled. “Do you really need me here?”

“Yes, I think it would help,” she replied.

He looked over her shoulder, noticing that a couple of her staff members had overheard their conversation.

“Yes, yes, of course I can stay. Whatever you need.”

Alice’s staff was seated around the conference table. She seemed momentarily overcome with emotion, choking back tears. “I understand this is terrible for all of you, all of us. I want you to call upon me at any time if you need to talk about this.” What were these words that had just tumbled out of Alice’s mouth? She had not intended to say that. The words continued. “We are a family, and I know we will all help each other to get through this.”

Her staff members looked surprised, even shocked, and they mumbled words of appreciation, looking at each other like a comet had just hit them all. Alice introduced Cynthia, who was in a soft armchair near the conference table.

“Some of you may have met Detective Cynthia Masters. She’s heading the investigation. She can answer any questions you may have.”

“Thank you, Alice. And we’ll also need to interview all of you later today,” Cynthia added.

“Are we in danger?” one young woman asked, “maybe even sitting here in this room?”

“Not likely,” Cynthia said confidently. “We believe it’s the orchestra members who are being targeted. At the moment, they could all be in grave danger, and I’m going to recommend that concerts be suspended for a while. And you should probably all take a day or two off -after we speak with you. This seems to be the work of a very deliberate and determined killer, someone who has a point to make, or a score to even.”

“You think the two musicians were chosen for a reason?” Alice asked her.

“Possibly for easy access, or habits that made it easy to get to them, but not necessarily for who they were, if that makes any sense.”

Two of the eleven people in the group nodded.

“So how long do you advise suspending operations?” Alice asked.

“At least a week or two,” Cynthia said. “We’re working round the clock on this, and we expect to uncover something in the next couple of days.”

The meeting took less time than she had expected. She handed a bunch of her cards to Alice, asking her to distribute them to the group. “Call me if you think of anything, or have any concerns. Don’t consider anything as insignificant.” She said goodbye quickly and left.

Despite the fact that she now had a large team of investigators, including a newly appointed six-member task force of the city’s top homicide detectives, all working on these two cases, there were no real leads. She had a member of her department track the media coverage of the murders. As of that morning, it was international news, and editors took every opportunity to look for cute headlines. One New York news station had begun its morning broadcast with, “Well, maybe flying a plane or working in a coal mine, but who would have thought that playing in a symphony orchestra could be a life-threatening profession? Lately, that seems to be just the case, with two members of the Philadelphia Symphony brutally murdered this past week.” Others made humorous cracks about the dangers of playing wrong notes. Cynthia found herself offended by the fact that some members of the media were making light of such a serious situation.

She wondered if she had finally encountered a case that could not be solved, but quickly put the idea out of her mind. “It’s just a tough case; I’ve had tough cases before,” she mumbled to herself, once back inside her car.

Her previous case was one of the most difficult the city had encountered - a series of unexplained drownings. Six young men, seminary students, were found in the Schuylkill River, at intervals two weeks apart. There were no signs of foul play. Her colleagues believed the case would never be solved, but it took Cynthia four weeks to determine that the killer was a fellow student. Once his guilt was confirmed, similar killings in other cities were solved. The seminary student was a serial killer who had murdered 23 people.

For the first time in years, Cynthia drove around aimlessly for nearly half an hour, trying to plot a strategy. Then she went to talk to Dave, the medical examiner, in person. Cynthia thought that she had heard almost everything, but could not believe her ears when the medical examiner told her that the violinist had died from a severe allergy to peanuts, which had been ground into a cake of rosin that must have replaced her own rosin.

“A cake of rosin?” Cynthia asked, hoping he would explain, and not wanting to admit there was another musical thing she had to learn in order to solve this case. “Please, enlighten me,” she added, when he did not come forward with the explanation.

“It’s what string players apply to their bows in order to make the horsehair grip the string and produce a sound. Otherwise the bow would slip off and there would be no sound.”

“Who the hell thought that one up?” she asked. “Come to think of it, who thought of roasting and grinding up coffee beans, cooking them in water and drinking the stuff? Okay, sorry for the distraction. So...rosin comes in a cake. Like a cake of soap?”

“Much smaller.” He picked it up from his table and showed her a small dark-colored rectangular block, encased in wood on three of its six sides. “It’s made from hardened tree sap put into a wooden mold. The rosin is put on the horsehair, and it creates a kind of dust as the bow is pulled across the strings,” he added. “If they hadn’t brought along her violin case, we might not have figured this out.”

Cynthia had given instructions to bring Elizabeth’s violin and case along with her body, although she had no clue the answer would be inside the case. Elizabeth’s violin case, like most, had a small compartment where violinists kept small items such as rosin and extra strings. Normally the rosin would go back into the compartment, even after use at intermission. Otherwise the cake of rosin, left loose in the case, might scratch the varnish on the violin. Cynthia wondered what would have inspired Dave to have the rosin tested.

Reading her mind, he provided the answer. “I played the violin in high school. When I looked at her rosin, it didn’t seem right. A slightly different color, and not as clear as usual. And it smelled like....well, peanuts mixed with sap.”

“Wouldn’t Elizabeth have noticed it?” she asked.

“My guess is probably not. It’s a little dark backstage. She probably just grabbed it, rosined her bow at the last minute just before going onstage, maybe put on a little extra. Playing the first notes, when the dust was coming off the bow, would have affected her breathing immediately.”

This meant that the murderer either knew Elizabeth Levin or somehow knew about her allergy. But the rosin could only have been switched at intermission, or put on her bow for her, the latter very unlikely, Cynthia thought. This new information also meant that the killer would have known her violin case from all the others. How could someone have done that without being seen? Cynthia would speak with the orchestra members to get an idea of how commonly her allergy was known.

Cynthia realized that knowing everything she knew at this point would not prevent the remaining eight murders planned by the methodical killer. She had heard that the Mayor had been in touch with the Police Commissioner, asking why the killer had not yet been caught, asking for a plan of action, questioning the qualifications of the investigators on the case. One more murder, Cynthia thought, and the whole city might be asking a lot of questions about her competence to head the investigation.