Infernal Devices - KW Jeter [66]
"But–" I looked in bewilderment from his face to the instrument. "I've never heard Paganini play; I've never even held a violin in my life!"
"So? How hard can it be?" Scape thrust it into my hands. "Go on, take it."
I held it awkwardly, the bow somehow having got tangled with the strings. "This is impossible–"
"Not like that; the other way around. Don't drop it, for Christ's sake – that's a genuine Guarnerius, that Sir Charles sent over. Worth a lotta money someday; already is, probably."
"No; no, I can't do it." The violin felt incredibly light in my hands, as though it could float off into the air if I released it. The glowing wood trembled with my pulse. "They'll never believe it–"
My protests were interrupted by the door being pulled open by one of Lord Bendray's servants. I could see beyond him that the banqueting room was now empty, as he informed us that the other guests were awaiting us in the music room. "Is your boss there?" asked Scape.
"No, sir; he is in his laboratory, with orders not to be disturbed."
Scape breathed a sigh of relief, and I realised a further extent of his duplicity; neither Lord Bendray nor Sir Charles was aware of how he had represented me to the other. Thus his panicky state when he had discovered that Sir Charles was here at Bendray Hall; his intrigues depended upon the two men being kept apart, at least as long as their attentions were centred upon me.
"It won't work," I whispered to him as the servant led us down another of the Hall's great high-ceilinged corridors. "This is madness!"
His words came from the corner of his mouth, as the blue lenses of his spectacles stayed fixed ahead: "Just give it your best shot. What've you got to lose?"
From a small curtained alcove, I could see Sir Charles and Mrs Wroth seated some distance from a grand piano. The same butler as before served them from a tray held between them. When they had their sherry glasses in hand, the butler turned to Miss McThane, just behind them; his eyes widened a bit when she took the bottle off the tray and kept it. Her sullen, narrow-eyed gaze bored into the back of Mrs Wroth's neck as she drained her first glassful.
Scape prodded me forward. "Go on. Break a leg."
"What?" The neck of the violin slid in my sweating grip.
"Never mind – just get out there." He placed both hands in the small of my back and pushed with some violence. I found myself next to the grand piano, blinking at my audience, with the violin in one hand and its bow in the other.
Sir Charles frowned as he gazed at me. He leaned forward, cupping his chin in the angle between thumb and forefinger as he studied the actions of what he assumed to be a mechanical automaton. As before, he took no notice of the disturbing interest – of an entirely different sort that his wife signalled with her small half-smile and unnerving gaze.
Unseen by their intimidating eyes, my mind was spinning through ever-faster revolutions. The violin Paganini – what did I know about either? As a trickle of salt ran from my upper lip into the corner of my mouth, I racked my brain for some fragment of memory, some overheard and half-forgotten scrap of information cursed myself for having paid no attention to the breathless accounts of the virtuoso's performances that had appeared in various journals; how was I to have known that the topic would ever have any importance to me?
I could recall nothing, not a word of anything that anyone had said about this musical conqueror astride the world of concert stages and salons; a vague impression, gleaned more from occasional comment and witty allusion by those more au courant with the refined realms of culture – that was all my frantic scurrying through the cupboards of memory produced.