Boston, 2056.
Tatiana Bates, associate principal cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was not a murderer. She was a musician.
Because of this, she was rather nervous about her current activity. Hans Midden, the current principal cellist, had died, suddenly and mysteriously, and Tatiana had been enlisted to find whoever had done it. They couldn't have gone to the police about it, could they?
She bent over the body, careful not to let her mask or gloves slip, and examined the face. Then she used the toe of her boot to gently turn Hans over.
In the middle of his back was a round hole, from which blood had gushed for a while. There was a dark spot on the floor where he had lain. Tatiana frowned. Then she whipped her ruler out of her pocket and measured the diameter of the hole.
It was about an inch.
She really didn't have any forensic training, so she left the site to think about what she'd discovered.
~~~
It came to her in a dream in the middle of the night, and she woke up panting, throwing the covers off herself. Of course it was an endpin, which meant that a cellist had to have done it.
She shared this information with the conductor and the board, and timidly asked if she could hire a forensic detective. They didn't seem to have any objection, so she found a Dr. Joshua Bennet, a very pretentious sort who carried a pocket watch. She hoped he would do his job.
After having spent hours with the body, Dr. Bennet announced that Hans had been poisoned.
Tatiana couldn't believe it. What about the hole?
"Are you familiar with the film Gosford Park?" asked Dr. Bennet.
Tatiana was, indeed. She liked it very much.
"You will recall that one of the characters is poisoned and subsequently stabbed. The knife wound is meant to be a distraction from the poison. Here the case appears to be similar."
She saw his point, but -- "Dr. Bennet!"
He turned back pompously. "Yes?"
"In the film, there is no blood from the knife wound, but the hole in Hans' back has blood all around it!"
Dr. Joshua Bennet waved his hand. "Mere details, Ms. Bates."
Well, wasn't the devil supposed to be in the detail?
~~~
That evening, she sat a few feet away from Hans' stiff body. He'd been a good section leader, even if they hadn't been best friends. They'd had a nice rapport and played well together, and the rest of the section respected him -- or so she'd thought.
What if it hadn't been a cellist? What if she was wrong about the endpin? Or what if... what if the endpin had been poisoned?
Her spine stiffened, and she began to stand up, but was arrested in her movement by a 15-inch carbon fibre pole, commonly known by cellists and bassists as an endpin, which struck her squarely in the middle of her back and sent her tumbling to the floor, beside her former stand partner. And up in the scaffolding, just underneath the roof, a masked figure in loose robes let out a diabolical chuckle before fading into the blackness of the night.
