Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 13, Mid-December 1994

The Notes of Morrow’s Horn by Stephen Wasylyk

Legends, it is said, are merely topics of conversation that fall somewhere between folklore and witches’ tales. You believe them or you don’t, so feel free to decide about this one. The mystery that goes with it is real, however, and can be attested to by the people present when it came to light.

Thirty-odd years ago, I was living in a too-small apartment with my wife Judy and three-year-old son Matthew. A month away from my law degree, I was looking forward to finally earning a salary instead of scraping by on a small inheritance and a few dollars from Judy’s part-time job. The only question was where.

The answer came one spring evening. The small, thin man at the door had bushy, iron-gray hair, prominent ears, and a nose too large for his thin face. The dark pinstriped suit screamed attorney, backed by hard eyes you wouldn’t want to look into from a witness stand. His smile, however, made you forget all that.

His name was Gerald Tobias, he said, and he’d been given my name by one of my professors as someone who might be interested in what he had to offer.

Interested? If I’d had a red velvet runner, I’d have unrolled it before him. Fifteen minutes later, after reassuring an apologetic Judy he understood the disorder of the apartment, he was settled in our one worn easy chair, a sleeper-clad Matthew in his lap.

He was from a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania, where he’d built a substantial practice. He was a widower, had lost a son in Korea. Another son was in Denver. He’d reached the point where, as he put it, he’d rather do more fishing than lawyering, but didn’t simply want to close the doors and walk away when the right man could take over in a year or so. Far better than struggling in my own office until I was established. But perhaps not better than joining a major law firm in Philadelphia or New York where I could earn big money eventually, which, according to the professor who’d given him my name, I was capable of doing.

Personally, he’d always felt there was no point to accumulating more money than he’d need to live comfortably, do what he wanted to do, and buy what he wanted to buy. Billionaire, pauper, or somewhere in between, we all ended in the same place, our accomplishments indicated only by the size of our tombstone. Since none of us ended in a position to admire it, what was the point? Some things were far more important than money.

If I wasn’t interested, he’d understand. If I was — he’d looked at Judy and smiled — if we were, he suggested we spend a weekend with him. He had a large house and a housekeeper-cook who came in during the day. We could look the town over and go through the house we’d live in. Since he owned it, there would be no rent, but we’d be responsible for maintenance and taxes. He stroked Matthew’s hair and casually mentioned that it had a rather large back yard for a boy to play in.

A real house? With a back yard? Judy’s eyes lit up. The town would absolutely have to be the tail end of the universe to lose her vote. She’d had enough of struggling up and down apartment house steps with a stroller and a toddler, and if we settled in a city, she’d have several more years of it before we could afford to buy.

Gerald Tobias was a great lawyer. He had no talent at all for description.

The town was a jewel, nestled in a fold of the mountains with a river running through the center. The tallest building in the business district was only ten stories, the courthouse massive granite, almost all the houses single family; the whole thing sparkling below you when the road crested the mountain and curved downward. The only jarring note was to the northeast where a small steel mill producing highly specialized products belched smoke.

Our house was a surprise: a low stone rancher as far removed from the Tobiases’ gingerbread Victorian wood frame as several generations can get. His “rather large back yard” turned out to be more than a half acre.

The inhabitants were a typically diverse mixture of ethnic groups, religions, social classes, and color — with the usual quota of successes and failures, honest people and criminals, adulterers, alcoholics, and religious and ethnic bigots, all with the usual range of sexual preferences.

After we’d settled in, I learned that everyone called Gerald Tobias, “Mr.,” and when he spoke, everyone listened. A judgeship at any level had always been his for the asking, and terming his practice “substantial” was a considerable understatement. He was counsel for the steel mill, almost every large business in town, and most of the prominent families. Remarkably, he’d taken on no partners nor added staff until I came along. He employed only two middle-aged women, one as receptionist, the other as legal secretary, who knew more law than I did. I blinked when I saw that their salaries were higher than anything a good many of my classmates expected to earn for several years until I realized, why not? They were the reason he didn’t need any assistants.

It was obvious he could have merged with another firm. Any would have given him anything he wanted. He could have also gradually scaled down the practice without any financial penalty to himself or the two women, letting the other attorneys compete for the clients he’d given up. He had, instead, gone out of his way to bring me in.

One reason he was so respected was that he never pulled his punches. If you didn’t want an honest answer, you didn’t ask. Nevertheless, I had to know, so I stuck my neck out one evening.

“Why me?”

He smiled. “Curiosity. I’ve always felt that a life is simply a road with tollbooths along the way. Eventually you reach one where you can’t meet the price, so you’re shunted to a side road. Or you continue until you reach one where you consider the price too steep. Either way, each of us determines how far we go.”

“And you want to see where I get off.”

He smiled again. “If I live that long.”

He’d never turned down a client because of ability to pay, so not all his clients could be termed fat cats. No client was more important than another, but the huge retainer said that if one had to occupy that position, it would be Ian Farr.

Farr owned the steel mill — lock, stock, and barrel — which made him twice as wealthy as the next man on the list. And wealth equates with power.

I first met him while having lunch with Tobias. He was about ten years older than I was — I’d floundered around for four before deciding I wanted to be a lawyer — a solid two hundred twenty pounds on a five ten frame, thick-necked, square-faced, with a powerful handshake and eyes that evaluated and dismissed me in seconds, which didn’t bother me at all. I’d run into many of his clones in school. They came from monied families and had assured futures, dismissing you as destined for drawing up wills for people whose assets were a house and one CD.

Handled exclusively by Tobias, but the day would come when Tobias would say, he’s yours to have and to hold. If you can. Having seen the retainer, I sure as hell wanted to. Having met him, I was equally sure I didn’t. Arrogance had always irritated the hell out of me.

After he’d gone, Tobias said, “Not a very pleasant man. Takes getting used to.”

I didn’t say I thought that day would never come for me.

But a small town has a very structured society where dislikes and even hate are concealed by smiles, and Tobias’s presence at any social function was mandatory, whether the hostess liked him or not. As his associate and eventual successor, I fell into the same category, which made “better-look-this-guy-and-his-wife-over” invitations equally mandatory. A hostess always likes to know how far away to seat you at some future dinner party.

That was why Judy, Matthew, and I pulled up in front of the Farr home one warm fall afternoon. Just as some invitations were necessary in the interest of communal harmony, so was their acceptance.

The house was a two story fieldstone; wings and a columned portico with wide steps had been added to the original square box, the driveway circling around a small grove of trees. You’d have to drive a long way to find another as fine.

A maid led us through a polished hallway to a flagstone patio, complete with furniture, that overlooked the river. A tailored lawn sloped to a carefully planned and structured garden of blooming fall flowers. Below, the river sparkled in the sun as it split around a fingerlike island where the brilliance of autumn color dappled the green of the pines.

The introductions were naturally pleasant.

Rachel Farr was slender and long-legged, had honey colored hair pulled close around her head, darker eyebrows, an oval face, a slant to her blue eyes, a slightly Roman curve to her nose, and somewhat thin lips, all perched on a long, graceful neck.

She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.

The warmth in her eyes and the sincere welcome in her voice said she was nothing like her husband. Her family had been in the valley long before the Farrs crossed the mountains. Some people who had reason to be arrogant weren’t.

She brought over a girl perhaps six months younger than Matthew, who would undoubtedly grow up to be at least as beautiful as her mother.

“This is Alyssa,” she said, positioning her before Matthew. Alyssa regarded him stolidly for a moment before punching him in the chest.

Matthew hadn’t yet forgotten the lessons learned in a public playground. He pushed her, dumping her on the seat of her pants.

Judy’s voice was soft but full of menace. “Ma-a-a-thew!”

Alyssa didn’t cry. She sat looking up at Matthew. He toddled around behind her, clasped his hands around her chest, and hauled her to her feet. Hand in hand they took off toward the miniature playground at the side.

“Looks like love at first sight,” said Rachel dryly.

Ian’s face said she was the only Farr who thought so.

The wives strolled off to look at the garden. If any relationship developed here, it would be one in which the wives were friends but the husbands only tolerated each other.

Farr thrust a drink in my hand.

“Beautiful view,” I said.

He lifted his glass toward the island. “Except for that. Or I should say, what’s on it.”

I couldn’t see anything on it except trees. I said so.

“Tobias hasn’t told you? I’m not surprised. I count it as one of his failures. A man named Henry Morrow owns it. I want him off Tobias says it can’t be done. Legally, that is.”

“Then he’s probably right. Why do you want Morrow off?”

“Because that goddamn trumpet he plays irritates me.”

Henry Morrow must have one helluva pair of lungs, I thought. “That island is what — a half mile away?”

He handed me a pair of field glasses.

Focusing them on the island, I picked up a rowboat pulled up on shore and tied to a tree.

“He rows over,” he said.

“Why in the world would he want to do that?”

“To serenade my wife.”

I was beginning to be amused. I glanced up at the house to see if there was a balcony.

“A trumpet is hardly the instrument of choice for a romantic serenade.”

“You’ve never heard him play,” he muttered.

“Well, trumpet or not, it’s a problem that can be solved easily. He comes over onto your property—”

“Tobias got an order barring him from my side of the river. Morrow ignores it.”

“And you and Tobias let him get away with that?”

He refilled his glass almost angrily. “There are other considerations. Let Tobias tell you what they are.”

“Well, contrary to growing opinion, the law can’t solve every problem. How does Rachel feel about the serenading?”

He hesitated as if reluctant to reveal a family disagreement. “She considers it entertaining. Flattering to a woman, I suppose.”

The trumpet as an instrument of romance still intrigued me. “What does he play?”

“Nothing anyone would recognize.”

I almost smiled. “This is some sort of test, isn’t it?”

“In a way. Since neither of us has an answer, we thought you might.”

I did smile. “All right. I’ll talk to Tobias. In the meantime you can use ear plugs.”

“It isn’t funny,” he said coldly.

He didn’t have to tell me that. Push people like him far enough, and he’d solve the problem in his own way, regardless of consequences. I would guess that so far, only the influence of Rachel and Tobias had kept him from committing mayhem on the person of Henry Morrow. I certainly didn’t want to end up in court defending him on a manslaughter charge, even though, given who he was, he’d probably get off. But Morrow would be dead.

“Don’t assume I can’t understand how annoying it must be. Do you think he’ll be here tonight?”

“I’d bet on it.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to come back and hear it for myself. Perhaps talk to him.”

He shrugged. “Talking to him is a waste of time.”

We carted Matthew off in spite of his wailing that he wanted to play with ’Lyssa. He was asleep before we left the driveway.

“Rachel’s nice,” said Judy.

“Not to mention so beautiful that she has an admirer who serenades her with a trumpet every night and whose devotion is likely to get him shot.”

She sighed. “Now, why can’t I have one of those?”

“Might be because while you are also beautiful, you ain’t rich.”

“I knew I was flawed in some way. What is it all about?”

I told her.

“Well, if you talk to him tonight, see if he can find some time for me. After taking care of a toddler and a house, and the laundry, and the shopping and cooking, any hardworking housewife could do with a romantic serenade to end the day, even on a trumpet.”

I pulled into our driveway, turned off the engine, and sat for a moment. “We’re laughing, but has it occurred to you that the situation has the makings of a tragedy?”

“Has it occurred to you that laughter is often used to chase away frightening thoughts?”

I drove back at midnight after calling Tobias to ask why it was so difficult for the most powerful man in town to get rid of a trumpet player who annoyed him.

So Tobias explained.

Morrow had arrived three years ago, a member of a tune-in, turn-on, drop-out contingent of acid heads who had taken up residence in the woods. That hadn’t spoken well of their thought processes, but then those had probably been burned out before they arrived. Not that maintaining a year-round back-to-nature commune in this climate was impossible. Native Americans had done it for thousands of years before being pushed out by the settlers, but they had never enjoyed the benefits of indoor plumbing and central heating. The contingent disappeared at the first sign of frost.

Except Morrow. He’d met Rachel. When and where wasn’t clear. To stay and woo the object of his passion, he needed employment and a place to live; otherwise he’d have been loaded aboard the first outbound Greyhound bus.

He found both easily. He’d dropped out of the Curtis Institute where he’d been studying trumpet, a tragedy according to the people there whom Tobias had contacted. Morrow was a musical genius. Very little demand for a talented trumpet player in a small town without a symphony or anything else classical, and rock and roll demanded guitarists and keyboard specialists.

However, although Morrow had been trained in the strict structure of the classical, there are some musicians to whom playing any type of music is as natural as breathing. And, being gifted, they inject their own interpretations and add their own embellishments, no matter what they are playing.

The town, like many others, had a large proportion of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, and other ethnics who took second place to none when it came to having a good time at a dance.

So when he wandered into one clutching his trumpet and sat in with the polka band, the audience recognized musical genius when they heard it. They didn’t care who the tall man with the long blond hair and beard, wearing the worn, torn clothing, was. They didn’t care where he’d come from or what he thought of society. They didn’t care what substances he ingested for his pleasure. What they did care about was that when he lifted that trumpet to his lips, an average accordion player was suddenly inspired, a mediocre drummer acquired an extra arm, the floor shook, the walls trembled, and the roof threatened to cave in.

And their spirits soared, which is what music is supposed to do for people.

“Guess where they work,” said Tobias.

“Farr’s steel plant, of course. Almost everyone does. Are you telling me they’ll go on strike if he leans on Morrow?”

“That would be a contract violation. What they’ll do is invoke every comma and period in every clause. Very legal but very detrimental to production.”

“Farr says Morrow owns the island. Since when does a societal dropout acquire property?”

“Evidently when he’s lovestruck. The island was formed during a flood a great many years ago and simply grew. Morrow mooned around over Rachel for more than a year before he discovered no one owned it, so he homesteaded it under a law that hadn’t been used around here for more than a century. All he had to do was file a claim, build a home, and till the soil, three requirements that were the foundation of many of today’s large farms. So there he was on her doorstep. The serenading started last spring, along with several heavy-handed arrests, a peace bond, and the restraining order. But as I told you, Farr can’t step on him too hard, even if I were to permit it, without paying a heavy price. So far, I’ve managed to keep him in line, but—”

“I know. One of these days he’s going to erupt.”

“Exactly. Now, I don’t want you to think that your future here depends on finding a solution, but I will point out that if you do you will have very little to worry about.”

I arrived at the Farr home a little after midnight, Judy’s “Be careful. You know how unstable these flakes can be,” ringing in my ears.

They could also be very meek and mild, floating somewhere in intergalactic space.

I found Farr and Rachel on the patio. The autumn night had acquired a chill, the full moon so bright I could distinguish houses on the far shore.

It was as though an unseen conductor had been awaiting my arrival to lower his baton. The opening notes drifted up from the riverbank, gentle ripples of sound that gradually grew in volume. The silvery sound of a solitary trumpet, yet behind it you could almost hear the accompaniment of a full symphony.

When it came to music, I was somewhere in the center of the “generally ignorant” category, but listening to Henry Morrow was like walking into an art museum and being confronted by an obvious masterpiece. He was pouring out something pure and shining from his very core, and the beauty that emerged had Rachel mesmerized, her lips parted and her eyes dreamy.

She wasn’t being presented with the customary bouquet of roses. He was handing her a world full or orchids, wrapped in moonbeams and sprinkled with stars, but riding under that beauty was the primitive call of a male to his mate.

Farr was dealing with a Pied Piper of love, romance, and ecstasy, and he had to be thinking of the age-old method of handling a predator — shotgun. If Morrow was allowed to continue, the night could well come when Rachel couldn’t resist that call.

The notes were still drifting toward us when I started down the slope to a barrier of shrubbery and a break leading to a short flight of flagstone steps to the riverbank.

The last notes hung quivering. The tall figure lowered the trumpet and passed a hand over his lips. We had no trouble seeing each other clearly in the moonlight. I could swear his eyes glowed with an inner light.

“You must be that new lawyer,” he said. “Didn’t the old man tell you there was nothing you could do?”

“Don’t be smug, Henry. Sometimes we ordinary mortals possess enormous power.”

“You can’t throw me off the island, and you can’t stop me from playing.”

“I’d never want to silence someone with your talent, but I do prefer you do it elsewhere. I’ll tell you why. Let’s forget that if you keep it up Farr will surely shoot you. If you’re allowed to go on, you’ll destroy something fine and good in that house. And for what? For a little while, she’ll be up there with you, but no high lasts. She’ll crash, and when she does, she’ll find that everything really important to her is gone. If you want to try floating through life ten feet off the ground, that’s your business, but you have no right to take her with you.”

“You can’t stop me, man. No one can stop me.”

I sat on a flagstone step. “You’re not invulnerable, Henry. We all have our weaknesses. Yours is music.”

“Music is my strength.”

“Not bad music. Let me tell you what I’m going to do if you don’t leave. I’m going to install speakers pointed at your island. Then I’m going feed the worst music I can find through those speakers. Off-key, distorted, slowed down, speeded up. Music that even a tone-deaf cretin couldn’t stand. Music that is fingernails drawn across a blackboard. In five minutes, your hands will be over your ears. In ten, you’ll be twitching. In fifteen, the furthest thing from your mind will be playing your trumpet ever again. In twenty, you’ll swimming for the far shore. And even if I’m wrong, even if you’re not all that sensitive, you’ll still have to put away your horn because no one will be able to hear a note you blow into it.”

He loomed over me menacingly. “Lawyers have no heart.”

“We turn it in when they hand us the sheepskin, Henry. Now in fairness, I’ll point out that you probably could get a restraining order, but Farr will pay no more attention to that than you did. It’s what’s known as the-shoe-on-the-other-foot maneuver. You want to serenade my client, I’ll serenade you. So, what do you think? Do we have the basis for an agreement?”

Both hands lifted the trumpet above his head, the words a moan of frustration. “I love her, damn you!”

I looked up at him. He didn’t appear to be high on anything more than passion, but that wouldn’t lessen my pain if that trumpet bounced off my skull. “No one who has heard you play can doubt that, but you came along about ten years too late.”

The trembling trumpet shimmered in the moonlight like a headsman’s axe about to descend.

“I have a hard head, Henry. Hit me, and that trumpet becomes trash. That’s no way to treat a fine instrument. I will also smash you in the mouth so hard, your talented lips will become permanent scar tissue. On top of that you go to jail. Sit down and let’s talk.”

He lowered the trumpet slowly and joined me, placing it between his feet and holding his head in his hands.

He moaned. “You got no pity in you, man.”

We talked for a half hour. I’ve never pled a case so passionately and eloquently in my life.

I finished with, “Listen very carefully, Henry. Love is doing what is best for her, and the best thing you can do is go.”

He spread his hands in despair. “Where?”

“If I were you, I’d head for the nearest recording studio. You have a great gift. Don’t confine it to playing moonlight serenades and polkas when you can make thousands of women happy because they’ll think you’re playing just for them.”

The night chill was getting to me. I rose stiffly. “Just go, Henry. Don’t sit around waiting for a miracle. When you can’t win, you settle for a draw. Just hitch up your jeans and get the hell out. You won’t be the only man who had to walk away from the woman he loved.”

His voice broke in grief. “One... last... time?”

No one could have denied him that. “Fair enough. I’ll enjoy hearing it.”

I did. So did Rachel. I saw the tears. Farr didn’t. You don’t lose a world full of orchids wrapped in moonbeams and sprinkled with stars every day.

He was gone the next day. I simply smiled when Farr asked how I’d done it, but naturally, that relationship solidified. He might not like me, but respect was more important. I’d seen that in Tobias.

A year later, Henry sent me an album from New York. When I played it, Judy sat there with glazed eyes. I suspect she plays it even today when I’m not around.

I also suspect Henry sent one to Rachel, who also played it when Ian wasn’t around. Like thousands of other women who felt Henry was playing only for them. It proves, I suppose, that when it comes to the language of love, the message is more important than the medium.

He cut only two albums. Both became collector’s items when someone emptied a .38 in him one night, supposedly a stocky man seen by an apartment house neighbor. The news sent a ripple of sadness through the town, but whatever Rachel felt, she kept it to herself. Exposing your innermost feelings had yet to become fashionable. As far as I know, Ian said nothing.

Several of Henry’s friends wanted him buried on his island, but the town wouldn’t permit it. He ended with the Presbyterians on the far side of the river.

Two years later, they found Tobias sitting alongside a creek in the hills with his fishing pole in his hand and smiling. The number of black limos in the funeral procession must have created a shortage elsewhere.

Judy, Matthew, and I miss him to this day.

Several drinks too many and an icy road took Ian Farr three winters after that. The drinks were understandable. The steel industry was going under, and so was his plant. The buildings are now abandoned shells. The town died with it, like so many others built around steel. Still pretty from afar, but up close the death wounds gape unhealed.

The main street is potholed, storefronts boarded, houses abandoned. Young people are missing; the old ones wear the stunned faces of someone sandbagged from behind. Those who left and came back can’t believe what they see.

Not too many years afterward, Alyssa spent six months holding her mother’s hand and caring for her as she wasted away from one of those tumors that, caught early, late, or in between, kill a person anyway.

When Judy, Matthew, and I first arrived, we had driven up on curving, two-lane blacktops only the locals use now. The state finally — finally — finished an interstate that nips across the north end in a long curve. The exit ramp for the town, as luck would have it, intruded into the Farr family plot in a corner of the cemetery. Not small, that plot. It contained two hundred years of Farrs. The state wanted to move the affected graves elsewhere, splitting up the family.

Fortunately, Alyssa’s father-in-law is a good lawyer. And not without influence.

I made them purchase additional land and convert the plot into a triangle that would follow the curve, moving the graves that were in the way into the new area so that all those Farrs remained together.

On the crisp fall day they were doing that, I got a call to hurry on out there.

A very nervous cemetery manager met me, trailed by a man I took to be the crew foreman. The manager was new, his predecessor having joined his erstwhile charges a year ago.

“My first thought was to keep quiet,” he said, “but there are six men here. One would be sure to say something that would get back to you as the family’s attorney, and I don’t want to be held responsible for something not my fault.”

He led me to the scene of a disaster, explaining as we went.

Ian had already been relocated. The small crane moving Rachel’s coffin hadn’t raised it quite high enough. It struck a small granite outcrop and slipped from the chains. Landing on its corner had sprung the lid open when it hit the ground.

“Swear to God,” the foreman said, “it was only a little bump.”

That was a guilty conscience speaking. Once locked, coffins do not open easily. It would never do to have a corpse spilled into the street if the pallbearers should somehow drop one.

That, however, wasn’t important at the moment.

What was important was that the silk and satin interior was empty, so pristine it appeared never to have been occupied.

I’d helped carry that coffin to the site on a rainy morning through the wet grass and slippery mud. Heavy as it was, we’d never have missed the slight weight of Rachel’s wasted body. And Rachel, who had been a beautiful woman but no more vain than any other, had asked that the coffin remain closed.

The cemetery manager had the drawn look of a man envisioning a huge lawsuit.

I kept my face impassive. “It’s all right. There was a private cremation ceremony. The burial was only symbolic.”

They both looked relieved, particularly the manager. It sounded so good, I almost believed it myself.

I walked away and sat down on the weathered headstone of a Farr who had crossed the mountains before there was a town, fumbling with a trembling hand for the occasional cigarette I was driven to when life whistled a fastball past my stupid head.

Grave markers of every size and shape were aligned beneath a canopy of fall color, leaves already drifting to earth. In a few weeks they would form a blanket six inches deep. I’d just consigned Ian Farr to an eternity under that blanket with an empty grave beside him, without the slightest clue to where his wife really was.

Perhaps the peace and quiet helped me think of chance meetings, and of momentary madness, and how we all reach Tobias’s toll-booth where the price is too high.

And of Alyssa’s long hours holding her mother’s hand while waiting for her to die, of secrets whispered in a dim room, of the soul cleansed in anticipation of death, and of inbred duty and obligation.

And that no one will know until Judgment Day what dark secrets are interred in any cemetery.

One more would make no difference at all.

I killed the cigarette and glanced at my watch. Just enough time to avoid Judy’s anger. We had to drive to Philadelphia that night. Concert pianist, our daughter-in-law. Appearing at the Academy of Music.

I let the car roll down the narrow, curving macadam lane to Henry’s grave, not very far away, noticing for the first time how an expanse of smooth grass alongside his marker broke the symmetry of the aligned tombstones.

The words of a local detective came back. “Six rounds? Someone sure wanted to make a point, didn’t he?”

Henry had become a legend here — the longhaired flake who lived on the island and played a polka trumpet like no one before or since, and serenaded the woman he loved by moonlight with the most beautiful music you ever heard — music you still might hear on a silvery fall evening when the moon is bright.

Skeptics say if you do hear it it’s because someone is playing one of his albums on a hundred-watt hi-fi stereo.

Maybe so. I do know I hear it occasionally. Lawyers being notoriously unimaginative, perhaps I’m only recalling a distant memory.

I don’t think so. I remember Henry’s playing as being infinitely sad and full of longing, but since Rachel died—

Well, it seems to have acquired a triumphant lilt.