A Study in Sherlock

I nodded agreement, but Emmy didn’t look comfortable.

“I don’t want to get Ina’s friends in trouble,” she said. “She mentioned one friend in her diary a lot. Someone named Teenie, but Teenie also shows up in the account book. I can’t betray the people Ina cared about.”

“Her diary?” Boothby scratched his ear. “Think the cops need that, Artie?”

“Judge,” I answered, maintaining the pretense, “if Teenie was really her friend she wouldn’t be in the account book, right? Ina would be sharing whatever it was with her, not selling it.”

“Makes sense,” he answered.

“So it doesn’t compromise a friendship if you make photocopies and give them to the police. At this point, I think it’s CYA.”

Boothby nodded. “And I’d preserve the original diary in the safety deposit box.”

“Yup,” I said.

“Okay.” Boothby poked a finger at Emmy. “My clerk and I think you’d better get a lawyer—you can charge it to the estate. Notwithstanding you overheard us, you ain’t suing us for malpractice ’cause we didn’t give you any legal advice. All we told you is, get a lawyer.”

“Thanks, Judge.” She smiled briefly as she stood up. “I felt so alone. You’ve helped me a lot.”

Boothby and I stood to shake her hand.

“We’re here for you, Emmy,” he told her. “Any time.”

As her eyes became watery again, she turned quickly and walked out of the office.

Boothby considered me. “This young court reporter … Ina … I’d never noticed her.” He took off his glasses and massaged his eyes. “She was like a piece of courtroom furniture to me—fingers attached to a steno machine. A life I never took interest in, Artie, until it was over.”

The Depression-era ditty “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” was just audible over the hubbub. That and other paeans to poverty bespoke the theme of Judge Gibson Watts’s “The Taxman Goeth” party, held annually on the first Saturday after April 15.

The Watts home was a 3,500-square-foot log building, sitting on fifteen acres with six hundred feet of shoreline on Muscongus Bay in Maine. It was built in the 1920s by a New York City physician who wanted to combine the New England experiences of a log home and a view of Maine’s rocky coast. So he ordered a spruce log palace, appropriate for snow country in the northern woods and mountains, to be built overlooking the coastline, where it fit in like a Shinto temple along the Thames. The Watts family had bought it in the fifties, when Maine real estate was dirt cheap by their Baltimore standards and the Spruce Goose, as the locals called it, was even cheaper. Watts and his two sisters inherited it when their mother died in 1971; he bought them out soon thereafter and moved into it when he relocated to Maine from Maryland to practice law. A lifelong bachelor, Watts had the place to himself.

An eclectic group of the judge’s friends had shown up, including other judges, lawyers, assorted court personnel, lobstermen, the proprietor of the local convenience store, and the chief of the Maine State Police (a former client). Those expecting tax refunds received happy face stickers to wear. Those experiencing “taxectomy” received tin cups with which to solicit charitable donations.

Boothby was filling his tin cup with cashews at the dining room table, and I was at the sideboard sampling the shrimp, when I heard someone rip off a couple of arpeggios on the piano across the hall. A semiskilled pianist, I knew great technique when I heard it. When the pianist started in on Chopin’s D-flat nocturne I headed into the living room. The reprise section has a filigree that’s beyond my skill, and I wanted to see it done up close.

I recognized the pianist as Julia Austrian, a Juilliard-trained concert pianist who had a home in nearby Damariscotta. I pulled up a chair behind her just as she approached the difficult passage: her right hand glided gracefully over the keyboard, her fingers touching the keys with an astonishing combination of speed, precision, and apparent ease.

“How do you do that?” I asked after she had finished.

She turned around and smiled. “Four hundred thousand hours of practice.” We both laughed, and she added, “Are you a pianist?”

“I’m a wish-I-could pianist, but I see I should keep my day job. By the way, I’m Artie Morey.” I extended my hand.

She shook it. “Julia Austrian, Artie. Since you’re a pianist, let me ask you: did you notice anything in the left hand?”

I hesitated, unsure of what to say. “It was as smooth as maple syrup. I’d give my right arm if it made my left hand that silky.”

“Thanks! That means I carried it off.”

“Carried it off?”

“Before starting I noticed that a couple of the low notes were off key,” she explained. “Probably brand-new strings—new strings stretch out of tune—so I had to substitute notes.”

“You improvised on the fly?”

Austrian nodded. My jaw dropped in awe.

She shrugged and smiled. “The best thing I learned at Juilliard was how to fake it.”

“Juilliard trains pianists to fake?”

“Sure. What do you do when you have a memory lapse? You can’t just stop.”