"Sean McMullen - The Colours of the Masters" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

The Colours of the Masters
by Sean McMullen
This story copyright 1988 by Sean McMullen. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All
other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


I first heard Chopin perform the night that I had just been ordered to cancel my flight back to New
York, along with the well earned vacation that was to have followed it. Paris was reminding me how
much I disliked the place by treating me to a soaking, windswept drizzle as a taxi carried me to an
address near the Parc Monceau. For the previous month I had been supervising the installation of some
computerised sound processing equipment in our company's local office, and I was tired, lonely, and
aching to be in a country where most of the people willingly spoke English.
It was still early in the evening as the cab pulled into the drive of a mansion that probably dated from
the early Nineteenth Century. There was a long, open path from the driveway to the porch of the house:
the rain intensified at that very moment. I paid the fare, took my bags and trudged down the gravel path,
by now so despondent that I did not bother to avoid the puddles. Gerry Searle, my immediate superior in
the company, met me at the door.
"I had a few nasty things to say to you until a minute ago, Gerry," I said as he took my dripping coat,
"but just having someone to talk to in English makes me forgive you for quite a lot."
"Forgive me? For what?" There was no surprise in his voice.
"For giving me the Paris installation, instead of the one in Rome. You speak French, but my second
language is Italian. My parents still live in Rome, I could have saved the company hotel bills. And did you
know about the local autonomy dispute that's going on in the Paris office? The staff have boycotted
speaking English and I spoke only twenty words of French until a month ago."
"Rico, I know how the situation is here, but I just had to get you to take over," he said, trying seem
earnest but unable to face me. "An important deal came up, a potential recording contract worth
hundreds of millions. That's also why I asked you to delay your flight back to the States."
"Ordered me to delay my flight back. And why me? I'm one of the back room boys. The only time
that I ever set eyes on the musicians we record is when they appear on television."
I sat down heavily on a teak and velvet parlour stool and wiped my face with a handkerchief. A
servant appeared from behind me, spoke to Gerry briefly, then carried my bags off. A servant. The
furnishings also confirmed that this was not only the house of someone rich, but someone whose family
had been rich for a long time. Very nice, but what would they want with a computer analyst specialising in
digital sound software?
"The recording has to be done in this house, Rico," Gerry explained as he beckoned me to follow him.
"The musicians are very famous, but..."
"But?" I asked, making no attempt to get up.
"They are dead. The people who own this house are distant relations of mine, and when I visited them
they-- "
"They probably held a seance and conjured up Mozart's ghost, and you just happened to have a
recording contract in your pocket!" I shouted, standing up and snatching my coat from the rack. "Send
my bags after me. Company business, like hell! Bunch of whackos. Try to stop me and I'll go to another
outfit-- I've had offers."
"Please, Rico, I can explain."
"Good. Phone me in New York, but try to get the time zones right or you'll get my answering
machine."