Gently Instrumental Read Online Free Page B

be excitable, saying things he didn’t mean.’
    ‘He had a record of attempted blackmail.’
    Hozeley played softly a succession of melodic phrases. ‘I promised him a holiday after the Festival. A fortnight’s touring in France.’
    ‘What was his response?’
    ‘He spoke wildly, pretended I was trying to keep him a prisoner.’
    ‘And were you?’
    Hozeley played a phrase. ‘To him, I may have seemed repressive. But it was necessary. He was too susceptible. I had to protect his developing talent.’
    ‘But he was . . . susceptible.’
    ‘I said so.’
    ‘That was the true cause of the friction?’
    Hozeley shrugged. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Whom did you suspect?’
    Hozeley played.
    ‘Can we put it this way,’ Gently said. ‘What happened at the rehearsal was no surprise. You were expecting a crisis. Perhaps Virtue had told you his intentions in so many words.’
    Hozeley struck a chord harshly. ‘No.’
    ‘You had no idea he was planning to break with you?’
    ‘He was . . . too much of an artist.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘The
Quintet
was written to provide him with a vehicle.’
    ‘And that would influence him?’
    ‘Yes.’ Hozeley ruffled a trill and closed it. ‘The
Quintet
was to launch him as a soloist before the top national critics. Terry wanted that. You assess him as a failure, but after the
Quintet
he would have arrived. It would have stiffened his character, given him reputation. He wanted that beyond anything.’
    ‘Yet he ruined the rehearsal?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘To humiliate me, I think.’
    ‘Only that . . . ?’
    Hozeley played some stabbing notes. ‘That was the weak side of Terry’s character.’
    ‘And it came out of the blue.’
    His head bowed. ‘I didn’t think he would hazard his great chance. And I still don’t believe he meant it, that he wouldn’t have come round later.’
    ‘But the other man . . . ?’
    ‘He didn’t exist. That was simply Terry trying to hurt me.’
    Hozeley leaned over the keyboard and played a long, sonorous passage, a complete statement. When it ended he sat back, breathing faster.
    ‘Yet you must have thought differently . . . at the time.’
    Gently had strayed to one of the windows. Beyond a lawn and flower beds one could see a summerhouse, fruit trees, a kitchen garden and an old brick wall. Further still was the distance of marshes and the southward gleam of a river. Down the garden a sunbrowned youngster was hoeing, his denim jacket hanging from a spade.
    ‘I admit that I was shocked.’
    ‘You were bowled over. You couldn’t face coming back here that night. I suggest that you did believe in the existence of the other man. What other motive could there have been for Virtue’s behaviour?’
    Behind him Hozeley played a note. ‘My humiliation.’
    ‘But why?’
    Hozeley played.
    ‘Yes – you believed it,’ Gently said. ‘That he was casting you off for a rival. Your honeymoon with him was over, his ambition wasn’t strong enough to hold him. Virtue was a mistake. In your infatuation you had taken him for what he wasn’t. And Tuesday’s rehearsal brought it home to you – all Virtue wanted from you was money.’
    ‘No.’ A sudden discord.
    ‘Wasn’t that why you were so upset? Now, you’d like to hide your head in the sand, but then – for that moment – you were staring at the truth.’
    ‘It wasn’t the truth.’
    ‘What was, then?’
    Fingers dragged across the keyboard.
    ‘That was the truth you had in your mind when you left the rehearsal, so soon after Virtue.’
    ‘I was – shocked.’
    ‘Shocked and humiliated.’
    ‘Yes . . . I needed time to think.’
    ‘To think how to settle up with Virtue.’
    Hozeley struck some clashing chords.
    ‘Listen . . . please! All you are saying was certainly going through my mind. He had been so brutal that I had to think it, he made certain that I would. But I knew something that you can’t know. I knew that Terry’s talent was real. Infatuation couldn’t blind me to