A Note Before Dying

Book One in the Mara Solomon Series

Adam Cole

Part Eight

(C) 2020 Adam Cole

Published by Nuncici Press, an imprint of Adam Cole Works LLC

Mara’s gaze dotted up to the top of the first page.  The title winked at her.  “Swansong for Harp.”  Instantly, the words of the Orlando Gibbons madrigal began playing down in her head like credits in a film.

The silver Swan,

   who living had no Note, 

When Death approached, 

   unlocked her silent throat. 

Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,

Thus sang her first and last,

    and sang no more: 

"Farewell, all joys!

    O Death, come close mine eyes! 

"More Geese than Swans now live,

    more Fools than Wise." 

The words of the song referred to the ancient legend of the Mute Swan who, at the moment of her death, was said to burst into a heartbreaking song.  Mara imagined the harpist scribbling madly as the door to the apartment opened to reveal her murderer. 

Did Reanne know she was going to die?  Did she know far enough in advance that she had time to scribble out this composition?

Why compose a piece?  Why not call for help?

Why would even a seasoned composer, which Reanne was not, write something like this, unplayable, unlistenable?3

“I don’t want to die knowing I never took care of me.”

That’s what Reanne had said.  Mara hadn’t answered, hadn’t really thought about it at the time.  She had been angry about Reanne’s comment, that Mara always put her mother first.  Well, what am I supposed to do, she always wanted to protest?  Let her suffer?  The woman was a basket case. 

Edna had never been a fully functional person.  She’d suffered from a severe fever as a girl and had never been the same since.  Always a little loopy, she had managed to hold it together long enough to snare a goodhearted man.  By the time he’d realized that her dizziness was not a coquettish flirt, it was too late. They had birthed a daughter.

Mara’s father had barely managed to take care of them in the years he’d been around.  At the point of exhaustion he decided Mara was old enough to take over for him, and he vanished to the West Coast, never to be seen or heard from again.  After that Edna Solomon had no one but her daughter.

Edna had been okay until then.  Okay in a relative way.  She’d tried to do the Mom thing, bought clothes, even though sometimes they were the wrong size or boys’ clothes, made lunch for Mara before school, though she forgot as often as she made it.  And the lunches were substandard, sometimes a bad peanut-butter and jelly shoved into an unwashed lunchbox.  But she’d tried.

After the departure of her husband she turned mean.  Sour.  Disinterested.

Mara, who had always been observant as a kid, could tell that something was wrong with her, with the way they were living, even when her father was around.  On the odd occasions where she might be invited over to someone’s house, she noticed things were much more stable over there.  That didn’t bother her until she was older.

Little kids in the days before the internet didn’t really know what mental illness was unless somebody told them.  And Mara didn’t have those particular resources at hand.  All she had were some books on music her father had left behind, and as her friends gradually began abandoning her, lots of time by herself to work through them.

She figured out that what happened to her Mom was maybe something like what happened to Robert Schumann, or Hugo Wolf, a gradual disintegration of the faculties.  Bursts of creativity and clarity, followed by long periods, even months, of languor, depression, disorganization. 

Mara drummed her fingers on the small table in the Brick Store Pub in downtown Decatur as gymnastic waiters danced around her like Chinese plate spinners, brandishing full platters on their hands.  Meanwhile, the scene visible outside through the clear glass window of the restaurant was typical for downtown on a Thursday afternoon in April: Muggy, hot.  Kids sitting around in the drizzling rain with their hoodies on, talking to one another, skateboarding around on the newly constructed plaza that covered the Marta station.  The sounds of their boards rose and fell like a chorus of hoarse voices.

A little bell sounded, the curtain call to a scene she was in.  Detective Randle shouldered his way through the narrow doorway, looking at the crowd in the restaurant over his hairbrush-bristle mustache.  Spying her, he almost smiled but caught himself, maintained his professionalism, and moved in towards her little table.

“Hello,” he said, and sat down deliberately, shoving his raincoat out behind him like the tails of a tuxedo.

“Hi, thanks for coming,” Mara said, trying to be heard over the noise without actually yelling.

“My pleasure,” he said.  Randle had no trouble making his voice audible.  Deep and booming, it cut haphazardly through the noise.

They stared at each other.  She was wondering if he was going to take off his raincoat.  After a minute, the Detective figured out what Mara was looking at and, awkward for the first time rose to remove his coat, almost colliding with a well-dressed man who had limped in just behind him.  By the time Randle was facing her again, Mara had taken out the paper with the composition on it.

“What do you have for me?” he asked.

“Well…It’s interesting,” she said, making a gesture with her hand which didn’t mean much.  

“Interesting to your line of work, or mine?” the Detective asked.

“Not to mine, exactly.  It’s not a great piece of music.”

“Okay,” said the Detective gamely, smiling a little beneath his mustache.

“No, it’s just…there are a lot of things about it which make me wonder…”

“Make you wonder what?”

“If it’s a death-note of some kind.”

The Detective’s eyes instantly lit up.  Now she was speaking his language.  He seemed to be restraining himself, as if she was a horse and he might spook her.

Mara continued.  “Look at the title: Swansong.  That could have been the harpist’s way of letting us know she knew that she was going to die.”

“Why is that?”  The Detective’s eyes narrowed.

“Because according to folk legend, the Swansong is the last thing a swan sings before it dies,” she said.

“Okay,” said Randle.  He was silent, expectant, offering no clue to his thoughts.  His eyes remained steely, still apparently interested, but his mouth and bushy mustache was hidden behind his finger as he listened.

“There’s more,” Mara continued.  “Look, you see this?”  She pointed at the little bunches of notes.

“Yes…” Randle focused his eyes on the page uncertain of what he was looking at.  It was just a collection of little black circles to him.

“These are clusters.  They’re groups of notes that are close together.  They can’t be played on a harp.”

The waiter asked Randle if he wanted to see a menu.  Randle waved him off carelessly.  He brought his attention back to Mara, but the incident had broken her momentum.

Seeing the glazed look forming in Randle’s eyes, Mara tried to recapture his interest.  She leaned forward.  “Why would a harpist as good as Adastra write something that you can’t play on the instrument?”

Randle considered for a moment.  “I don’t know,” he shrugged.  “Maybe it’s a mistake?”

Mara blinked.  Okay, yes, that was a possibility. “Well, she did it several times,” Mara said, flipping with just a little annoyance through the pages. 

“Maybe she made the mistake several times?” the Detective offered.  He was humoring her now, still patient, but it was clear she was losing ground.

“That’s why I don’t think it was a mistake,” she argued.  “I think it’s---“

“It looks like she wrote this thing out kind of fast,” the Detective said, bringing his hand to the paper and flipping the pages under her nose as if Mara wasn’t there.  He was listening more to himself than to her, now.  “She probably didn’t notice.  She might have planned to correct it later, or to give it to another instrument.”

That was a damn good guess.  The sense of it annoyed Mara immensely, because she thought it was wrong, but she couldn’t say why.  She glowered at the pages.

“Did you find anything else?” Randle inquired.  He was obviously trying to hide his disappointment behind a good-natured smile.

“No…” Mara said, looking hard at the music, as if hoping something new would appear.  “I thought it was…last night it seemed…”

The Detective tapped her hand genially a couple of times.  The scars on his palm were harsh against the tender skin of her knuckles.  “I know just how it is,” he said.  “Sometimes I’ll get brilliant insights in the middle of the night and the next morning they’ll be like, ‘The criminal ate more cereal.’  Something like that.  Don’t worry about it.”

Stretching, Randle got up.   He gave Mara a mild look.  “Dr. Solomon, I really appreciate the time you spent,” he began.

“Sure, you bet,” Mara said, looking up at him as if he were the only guest at her party, and he was leaving.

“No, really,” said the Detective.  “Why don’t you hold on to the paper, and if you see anything else that you think is strange, give my assistant a call and tell him about it.  Okay?”

His assistant.  So that was it.  Her credibility with the detective was officially over.  “All right,” she replied.

“Atta girl,” he said.  “Thanks for calling.  I’ll see you around.”  He rose to his feet and, with a preoccupied glance, surveyed the restaurant.  With hardly a look back at her, Detective Randle vanished into the crowd.

Atta girl?  Mara sat amidst the ruins of her theory, disgusted, while the waiter obliviously brought her the plate of brie and crackers she had ordered.  She matched a cracker and a piece of cheese, placed them together and furiously began to nibble.

All of a sudden there was a terrible clatter of dishes and silver.  Mara saw an upstretched hand follow its owner down to the floor.  She quickly rose in alarm.

More about A Note Before Dying

Mara Solomon is a musicologist, not a detective.  She has no idea that she’s about to take on a murder case.  

In an unexpected visit to the Decatur Police Station she discovers that her estranged friend, the harpist Reanne Adastra, has been brutally beaten to death, her body left to rot in the South River.  The only clue to the movie seems to be a piece of music, scrawled by Adastra before her death and left behind.  The police have no idea what to make of that.

But Mara thinks she knows.

Adam Cole is the host of TruerMU where he interviews celebrities and up-and-coming musicians and creatives.  His guests have included Shawn Mullins, Liberty Devitto and Rick Beato, among many others.  A jazz and classical pianist, Adam’s numerous fiction and non-fiction titles engage readers with the truth about music.  Visit Adam at www.acole.net

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