Dissonance

I would have remembered that concert even if the cellist hadn’t died halfway through. In the first place, Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19, ‘Dissonance’, is one of my favorite pieces, especially the first movement, which opens with an uncharacteristically brooding and disjointed struggle like an anguished moan before moving into a bright and lively ‘allegro’ tune. Being a decent viola player myself, I knew the piece well. The Four Corners Quartet played it beautifully. I’d heard many of the most famous recordings but never anything quite like this. It must have had something to do with the fact that they’d been playing together for 30 years. That concert, the last of their New Zealand tour, they seemed one single artist playing an intricate, multi-voiced instrument. The piece wasn’t simply a clever arrangement of notes—it had a living, breathing presence, full of desire, anxiety, grief and (was it just my imagination?) a strange kind of animus.

Raymond Zhang collapsed just before the start of the second movement. His hands relaxed their grip on the cello and it fell onto the stage floor with a deep, resonant bang. He slithered off his chair and lay on the stage, still holding his bow. His face was purple and he seemed to be choking. For a few seconds the other musicians didn’t seem to notice, they were so intent on the music. The audience gasped and a doctor even ran up onto the stage to give him first aid but it was too late.

Zhang was 51, tall and good looking. My first impression when I saw him onstage was that he seemed a little arrogant, mainly because he was chewing gum and looked bored. Once he started playing, though, it was clear that he was a virtuoso—I figured the gum chewing was some kind of statement, that he was playing at being the nonchalant rock star. Immediately after the death, it occurred to me that he’d looked quite healthy and not at all like someone who was on the verge of keeling over.

Sure enough, the coroner found Zhang had been poisoned.

Twenty minutes before the beginning of the concert, the theater manager had brought four bottles of cold water and placed them outside the artists’ dressing rooms. Apart from the theater manager, the only people with keys to the backstage area were the musicians and Sheree Zhang, Raymond’s wife. Between the time that the manager placed the bottles outside the doors and the time of the beginning of the concert, someone had slipped poison into Ray’s bottle. The theater manager was so mortified by the idea of being a murder suspect that she had taken to her bed.

At that time I was a bright young thing working as a journalist for the Ōtepoti Times, assigned to the ‘social pages’, a local euphemism for the crime news. Ordinarily it was shabby stuff: a kid stealing money from his granny, a lot of drunk-driving convictions, some domestic arguments. I was keen to get ahead in the journalism business, to cut my teeth on a long-form story, and here was a scandal made to order. As soon as the news about the murder came out, I pitched an idea for a piece to my editor. After all, I had the advantage of being an eye-witness. Kristen was wary of reporting on a trial in progress but there was no doubt the story was a crowd-pleaser. Foreign tabloids were going to town with the thing: Musician Collapses at Concert—Murder!, Cellist Assassinated on Stage, etc., etc. As much as she hated sensationalism, Kristen realized it would be odd if we wrote nothing when the international spotlight was on our little town. So I finally persuaded her to let me interview the group members for the purpose of producing a balanced and unbiased profile of the group.

I rang their agent in Sydney saying I was a journalist interested in writing a kind of ‘soft publicity’ piece. The focus of the article would be on the music, not on the tragedy and it was therefore an opportunity for them to present a more balanced picture than the one appearing in tabloids. In short, I offered it as a form of damage control. The agent replied after deliberating for a day. He said all three were open to talking to me but that I must pass the draft of the piece in front of him before submitting it to my editor. I agreed.

The next day I was prepared to interview first violinist Peter Short, viola player Magda Farraday and second violinist Elizabeth Sanders. I also wrote a brief note Zhang’s widow expressing my sympathies and horror at her husband’s violent death; I was writing a piece commemorating the group and would she like to contribute any statement on Raymond’s behalf? I understood if it was too much to ask however etc. etc.

Sheree banged on my door at 7.30 in the morning in a hot fury.

“If you’re going to talk to that lot, you’d bloody well better listen to me first!” she said.

Wiping the sleep out of my eyes, I invited her in. Even half asleep, I knew I wanted to hear what she had to say.

She was a petite woman with olive skin, short dark hair and a kind of desperate ferocity about her. Sitting in my kitchen smoking a cigarette, she had dark circles under her eyes and her foot twitched constantly. She looked restless and unhappy, reminding me of a cornered cat. Her story was that the quartet had turned against Raymond and her, that they’d been making his life unbearable for months. He’d wanted out and the group blamed her. Now she expected they’d also blame her for his death.

“They said I was manipulating him, called me ‘Yoko Ono’ behind my back. It was never like that though,” she said, flicking her ash savagely into a saucer. “The fact is he was bored stiff and sick of the vibe.”

“What was the vibe?” I asked.

She paused, mentally reaching for the mot juste.

“Prison Camp? Cult? Dysfunctional family? Sinking ship? Take your pick.”

I wasn’t sure Sheree was trustworthy, but I wanted her to keep talking.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re all committed to this quartet like it’s a religion or something. Magda presides over everything like a malignant frog, ‘Queen of the Bog’ I call her. Peter’s the High Priest, a viceroy enforcing all the rules, making sure everyone’s behaving in the company’s best interests, keeping out riff-raff (he hates me, by the way). Then there’s Elizabeth the Vestal Virgin, keeping the sickly flame alive through thick and thin.”

“And Raymond?”

“That’s just it, there wasn’t a place for him. He didn’t fit. He was the fourth corner. Then he met me and realized there was Life Outside the Family.”

“Why did he join the group in the first place?”

Sheree blew smoke out of the side of her mouth and jiggled her knee a little more. She screwed up her face then shook her head as if making a decision.

“I might as well tell you—you’re going to hear some twisted version of it from the others anyway. Back in the day, when the Four Corners was first formed, Ray and Liz were romantic partners. They eventually had a kid, Stewart. He died as a teen and they split up as a result. It’s pretty common—it’s a shit thing for parents to go through and it can wreck a relationship. Anyway, even though Liz and Ray divorced they both stayed in the quartet. The Four Corners was incredibly popular, they’d just signed a record deal and were touring all over the world and making a lot of money. Ray said it was tough for a while but then they got through it. Personally, I’m not so sure that Liz got through it.”

“What do you mean?”

“She didn’t love Ray any more but she felt it was his duty to suffer with her, for her. She liked to pile the guilt on him, accused him of pushing Stewart too hard, said he hadn’t been a good father to him—none of that was true. Ray loved Stewart more than anything in the world. Losing him was just as hard on Ray as it was on her. The difference is that he’d never dream of blaming her for it. Having her bring it up all the time was torture, really.

“When Ray and I got together I think it was a shock for Liz—she wanted him to be there to absorb her misery. She actually had the nerve to say he’d betrayed her. In the beginning I made an effort to get to know her, smooth things over, but she gave me the cold shoulder every time. I think she wished I’d just go away.”

“What about the others?”

“Well Peter’s chatty and he’ll pretend to be sympathetic but his loyalty is to the firm, 100%. Initially I thought he was a friendly face so I told him some things in confidence—of course they ended up being used against me.”

“What things?”

She shook her head. I let it go.

“And Magda?”

“She’s a strange one. She gives the impression of neutrality, of being above mortal concerns, of treating everyone equally. But after a while you get a feel for what she approves of and what she doesn’t. She doesn’t approve of me.”

“Sounds like a difficult situation for you.”

“It was. Ray and I were making plans to get away. After this tour we were going to go to Perth to start a new life, set up a music school for aboriginal kids.” Tears sprang to her eyes and she pushed them away angrily.

“I’m sorry,” I said, uselessly.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Not now”

“Off the record,” I said, “Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

She gave me a look as if she thought I was a moron.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

I nodded. She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray and stood up abruptly.

“Just make sure you remember what I said. Not for me, for Ray.”

***

I met Peter Short for lunch at a good, discreet restaurant—paid for by the paper.

He was a loquacious type, charming and urbane with an old-world courtesy about him. I was expecting him to be haughty and reserved but if anything he was eager to talk. I think discussing things was a relief for him. In a past life he might have been a Roman orator, or at least a politico who enjoyed hanging around the Forum gossiping with his friends. He was also a bit of a flirt.

When I told him I played the viola and was particularly fond of ‘Dissonance’, he talked about it at length—occasionally leaning over to press my arm. When I talked, he looked at me with flattering attention and his eyes were irrestistibly expressive and dark.

Getting down to work, I told him I wanted to avoid talking about the tragedy as much as possible. I was more interested in the group itself. First question: It’s unusual for any quartet to play together for so long. Could he tell me something about how they got together and the secret of their success?

“You’re right,” he said, “It is unusual. I doubt if any of us could have predicted the scope and longevity of the collaboration. Well, maybe Magda did—she tends to have a kind of omniscience about this sort of thing. How did we get started? Well, it was in our university days. Magda was studying medicine at the time, but I was terrifically impressed with her playing. She and Liz and I played in the city orchestra together. We also had a chamber group and made pocket money by playing at weddings and such.

“Then we graduated and drifted apart. Magda took up residency in Brisbane and was doing very well but then--she had one of those funks that brilliant young people sometimes have. She decided medicine wasn’t for her after all and came home, really rather depressed. I had a small conducting job in Sydney but was looking for a performance outlet. Liz had just started seeing a wonderfully talented cellist—Raymond Zhang--they were both based in Sydney too. Seeing as we were all in the same city again I proposed the idea of a quartet. Magda was very enthusiastic and Liz and Ray agreed to give it a try. Amazingly, after just a year together we were making enough money to live on. That’s unheard of in classical music, believe me.”

“In thirty years there must have been times when it wasn’t easy. I imagine you had some rough patches?”

Peter raised an eyebrow at me and wagged a finger.

“A good thing you look so angelic or I would think you were trying to muck-rake.”

I smiled, mea culpa.

“Well, I had a visit from Sheree this morning,” I admitted, “She mentioned a tragedy in passing--Stewart’s death.”

He nodded.

“Ah, I should have guessed she’d be there ‘the fastest with the mostest.’ Yes,” he sighed. “Liz and Ray’s son died. That was our nadir. You might say Stewart had four parents in us. Losing him was an absolute tragedy. It hit us all like a lightning bolt. We all did some soul searching—what could we have done differently? But, that’s life, isn’t it. Terribly sad things happen.”

“What exactly did happen?” I asked.

“Narcotics. He was of that age when kids like to experiment—fourteen. Such an awful shame. He was a brilliant child, which made it worse. He’d just received a scholarship to study piano at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He and his parents were preparing to move there for his sake and held a big farewell party. We were all at the party but we didn’t suspect anything. He went to bed early, we thought he was just tired and a little drunk from tasting champagne, but in fact it was opiates. Liz tried to wake him next morning but it was too late. So much promise…wasted.”

“Sorry, that’s very sad.”

“Yes. Liz and Ray divorced, as Sheree probably told you. Ray had the idea he was going to go on to New York after all, run away. I convinced him to stay for the group’s sake, and he ended up doing the right thing. We’re like family, after all. With music, we helped him and dear Liz pull through it. It made us stronger and wiser. Our success in spite of it all—that was Stewart’s great legacy.”

“And you? Were there ever moments when you thought you might quit?”

He looked at me sharply but seemed to relax a little when he saw I was smiling in a coquettish way.

“There have been some…people who made me think twice, I’ll admit it. But in the end they realized I’m married to my music. It takes a special kind of lover to accept that artists live for their art. Poor Ray found that out, to his detriment.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Sheree had trouble understanding the importance of music in our lives.”

“You mean in Ray’s life?”

“Yes, yes. Of course. She made things harder for him than they needed to be.”

“You don’t like her.”

“I like her as a woman. I don’t think she was the right choice for Ray.”

“Did you know they were planning to leave?”

“Yes, he told me. Foolish idea. Poor Ray. I dissuaded him and he saw the light. Thank god. Magda would have had a fit if she’d found out. I pointed out to him that they were in too much debt, largely thanks to Sheree’s disastrous investments…”

“What investments?”

“She had some idiotic idea about setting up a school in the Outback so she put money—his money, mind you--down on a ramshackle building in the middle of nowhere. No plumbing, no electricity.”  His face had become thunderous and I watch the unexpected change with fascination.

“Do you think Sheree killed Ray?” I asked.

“I would say she had a hand in driving to him to it.”

“Suicide?”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“He told me that when he went, he wanted ‘Dissonance’ at the funeral. The fact that he died during that piece…I read it as his last message to us. He got out doing something he loved, with the people he loved.”

He seemed to know he’d been indiscreet, smiled ironically and took a sip of wine.

“This is off the record, of course. Just my opinion.”

“Understood.”

***

I invited Elizabeth Sanders for a stroll in the Botanic Gardens and she seemed particularly interested in the rock garden. We sat down on a bench among the succulents and furry-leafed dwarf daisies. She was a brunette with a dreamy expression. Her eyes were a deep blue, an unusual color that I’d not seen before. She had little to say but she wasn’t exactly stand-offish, more preoccupied. I talked about the plants, trying to put her at her ease.

“I like alpine plants,” she said, “They know how to thrive in difficult conditions. Their fuzzy leaves, their daintiness…”

“Speaking of difficult conditions,” I said awkwardly, “This must be a hard time for you.”

“Yes, it is,” she said faintly but with a shrug. “We were very close.” I waited but there was nothing following. She fiddled with a silver bracelet, turning it around and around her wrist.

“Can I ask you something?” she said suddenly.

“Yes, of course,” I said, surprised.

“Have you ever felt as if you were losing yourself? As if you were, possibly, going mad?”

With disconcerting abruptness, she seemed to have shaken off her torpor and come alive. Her eyes were burning and she seemed almost quivering with eagerness, the same way she looked when she was playing. I felt suddenly embarrassed under that intent gaze.

“I—well, I don’t think so. Sometimes I feel like I’m outside of myself looking in. Is that what you mean?”

“It’s more as if…oh, it’s hard to explain. As if the world were suddenly upside-down. One day you woke up and everything you thought was true was really a lie. All your touchstones had disappeared. The North Star had suddenly blinked out.”

“I imagine,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully, “That what you’re describing is a natural consequence of having had a terrible shock. You and Raymond were very close and--”

“No, no, it’s not that. Grief? I understand that. It’s the lying I can’t bear. The horrible deception. I really think I will go mad!”

She looked anguished and, somewhat to my horror, tears started streaming down her face. I realized that somehow the fact that she was confiding in me, a complete stranger and a journalist at that, meant she felt completely alone in the world. While Peter had described the quartet as a ‘family’, clearly Elizabeth Sanders did not trust any of them with her thoughts.

I had a brief internal struggle. On the one hand, I wanted to dig deeper and ask what on earth she was talking about. On the other hand, I didn’t want to take advantage of someone in her most vulnerable moment.

“Perhaps you need to talk to a professional? A grief counsellor, for example,” I suggested. “I know someone very good.”

She nodded, dabbing her eyes and nose with a tissue.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Yes, that’s probably a good idea.” She’d become quiet and vague again, retreating to her shell. I cursed my qualms.

“Meanwhile if you need someone to talk to, I’m talking as a friend not a journalist, here’s my number,” I handed her my card.

She smiled slightly and accepted the card but I knew she’d never call. The moment had passed.

***

My last interview of the day was with Magda Farraday. I’d arranged to have her give me a short masterclass on the viola and then I’d ask her a few questions about the quartet, all of which her agent had already vetted.

She had purple-red hair and an interesting face, squashed like a bat’s, but with eyes that sparkled with intelligence. Of all the musicians, she was probably the most brilliant and you could feel it. She gave off a kind of spark. I noticed that her left wrist was in a cast and she said it was a repetitive-strain injury and it had been particularly bad in the past year. Realizing that she’d been playing with an injured wrist at the concert, I was awe-struck.

She listened to me play and immediately identified seven ways I was torturing the piece. She spoke lucidly but with a lot of patience and sensitivity so that instead of being humiliated I felt enriched, as if new dimensions of the music had suddenly opened up for me. Finally, despite the injured wrist, she played it herself (from memory) and brought me to tears. I gave her a one-person standing ovation and had to collect myself before starting the interview.

“First of all, I’m so sorry about the recent tragedy. Please accept our condolences for your loss.”

“Thank you. Ray is indeed an irreplaceable loss.”

“That said, I want to talk about the group itself, which has had a remarkably long career. In this way perhaps we can celebrate Ray’s contribution to what has become something of a legend in Australian classical music circles. Going back to the beginning, why did you choose to join a quartet rather than pursuing a solo career?”

“In the first place, I did not have the sense of ego that one needs to be a solo artist. In the second place, and it’s related to the first I suppose, music is not a solitary pursuit. I enjoy, more than anything, the sense of interchange, the tensions, harmonies and shared silences. Chamber music satisfies this desire in me; it’s a kind of intimate conversation, a dialogue between equals.”

“Can you talk about how the Four Corners was formed?”

“Very simply. Peter Short had the idea and invited me to play viola. I’d played with him and Liz before here and there. When Ray joined, it became clear very early on that we had a musical affinity. You could say that he was that special ingredient that made an already good thing really great.”

“Why do you think you all stayed together so long. What was the ‘secret’, if you like, of such success?”

Magda thought. She had a great presence about her, a kind of regal poise.

“We were like four trees that had grown together and our roots and branches had become entwined. We are necessary to each other in a way. We’ve learned to hear each other’s subtle musical tics, to recognize and anticipate each other’s thoughts, musically speaking, to a remarkable extent. I think this is rare, we have this secret language almost.” She laughed. “It sounds fanciful, but it’s how I see it.”

“You have a tour of the Americas booked for next year. Will this go ahead without Ray?”

“At the moment it is too early to say. We’re still shocked by his death. It’s hard for us to imagine continuing without him. However, if the right person appears possibly we may consider it.”

“Thank you,” I said, wanting to wrap it up as I noticed she was wincing and sweating with pain. “One last thing, and this is off the record of course. Do you have any idea what happened to Ray?”

“I do not and I cannot possibly comment on that,” her face became stony.

I ended the interview and thanked her for the masterclass.

***

An hour later, Kirsten rang me on my cell.

“Magda Farraday’s been killed,” she said.

“What?” I asked. “But I just saw her!”

“I know. Elizabeth Sanders stabbed her to death outside her hotel door, straight after Magda came back from the interview with you. The police are going to want to talk to you. I told them you’d be at the station at 8 o’clock. Can you make it?”

“Of course,” I said. I was shocked and yet somehow not completely surprised. Something in the back of my mind had clicked. The time was 7 o’clock. If my hunch was right, I’d be able to help the police clear up this bloody mess.

I spent an hour going over newspaper records from thirty years earlier, paying particular attention to the ‘social pages’.

At 8 o’clock I showed up at the police station on Great King Street and the secretary took me up to see Detective Inspector Gabrielle Harlow. She was a very serious looking woman with a face covered with freckles, two facts that clashed in a pleasant way.

“Amy Wright?”

I nodded.

“Take a seat.”

I did.

I answered all her questions and then took a deep breath.

“Listen, Detective Inspector, I have a feeling I know what happened. I was talking to these people all day and…well, I feel like I should tell you my hunch about why Elizabeth Sanders did what she did. If there’s no evidence for it, that’s just as well, but I want to get it off my chest.”

“I’m listening,” Gabrielle Harlow crossed her arms and sat back in her chair, skeptical.

“Before Magda Farraday joined the quartet, she was a trainee doctor. She was fired from her job for stealing morphine from the dispensary and banned from practicing, for life.”

“OK,” said the policewoman, still waiting.

“After that, the Four Corners was her life, her whole life. She absolutely could not face the prospect of it breaking up. Liz Sanders and Raymond Zhang had a son who was a musical prodigy. He was offered a scholarship in the States, his parents intended to go with him. That would mean that the quartet would break up. Magda Farraday was at the party where this child died of an overdose of opiates.

“Now, when Raymond Zhang and his wife were talking about leaving for Perth, Raymond Zhang dies. Of an opiate overdose.”

“Liquid morphine, in his water bottle,” Gabrielle murmured.

“You see where I’m going with this?” I asked.

She nodded slowly.

“Earlier today,” I said, “Liz Sanders told me she felt as if she were going crazy. She said she’d been betrayed. At first I thought she was talking about Raymond betraying her by marrying Sheree, but now I think she realized what Magda had done. She saw the similarity between Stewart’s death and Raymond’s. She realized the person she’d trusted and looked up to all that time had essentially destroyed her life.”

“And so she took revenge,” Gabrielle nodded. “I have to admit, it makes sense.”

“I have the feeling that there’s someone else who knows,” I said. “And now there’s no one left for him to protect: you should talk to Peter Short.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said grimly, “I certainly will.”

***

A week later I drove Sheree Zhang to the airport.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“Glad to be going away from here, frankly. It’s been…horrific.”

I nodded.

“At the same time, I’m glad it’s all come out in the open. It was like an abscess that needed to be drained. It’s just a damn shame that two people had to die to get here.”

“Three, you mean?”

“I don’t mind Magda dying, to be brutally honest with you.”

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“I’m going to make our dream happen, Raymond’s and mine. We put money down on a building last year. It needs some work and we were too broke to fix it up. But I’m going to sell Raymond’s cello at a charity auction. That will help get the school in shape. It will be good to be doing something useful. Eventually I hope to set up a scholarship program for aboriginal kids, I’m going to call it the “Stewart Zhang-Sanders Trust”.

I looked at her sideways and saw that her eyes were shining and she seemed almost at peace. There was no longer any aspect of the cornered cat about her.

“I wish you all the luck in the world,” I said. And I meant it.