The Drowned Violin. H. Mel Malton

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      10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Malton, H. Mel, date-

      The drowned violin / Mel Malton.

      (An Alan Nearing mystery)

      ISBN 1-894917-23-5

      I. Title. II. Series.

      A note to readers

      The fictional Town of Laingford is loosely based on Huntsville, Ontario. You won’t find Sadler’s island or the Weems house, though, no matter how hard you look, because they’re made up. All the people in the book are made up, too, like the story is.

      However, there is an amazing Pioneer Village in Huntsville, as well as several excellent ice-cream places and a great lookout spot, if you want the perfect view to go with your double-chocolate cone.

      Many thanks to Anne Millyard and Christopher Thorpe, for their encouragement. The story was conceived during the first ever Muskoka Novel Marathon, a wildly fun writers’ challenge which is now a successful annual fundraising event in support of Muskoka literacy programs. You can find out more about the event at www.huntsvillefestival.on.ca.

      And as always, many thanks to my editor, Allister Thompson, and publisher Sylvia McConnell, who didn’t bat an eye when I said I was breaking out of the mold and writing a YA novel.

      One

      A bright green canoe sliced through the waters of Steamboat Lake, the three canoeists paddling hard, as if they were racing. There was no other boat in sight, though.

      “Hey, you guys! Stop paddling for a second,” said the kid in the stern. He plunged his paddle straight down into the water, putting on the brakes. “There’s something weird floating in the water over there, see it?”

      Alan and Josée, in bow and centre, quit and turned to look at Ziggy, who was pointing with his paddle.

      “Zig, come on! We have to get to the dock before my mom shows up,” Alan said. Then he turned back to his work, making a face like a camel to blow a flop of hair out of his eyes, a habit that drove his mother crazy. They were all eleven years old—classmates and summer friends. It was Ziggy’s canoe—on permanent loan from his grandfather.

      “No wait, I see it,” Josée said. “It looks dead, whatever it is.” Alan stopped in mid-stroke and turned back to look. Dead? His heart told him that if he wasn’t there on the dock at five o’clock, his mom would have a nuclear meltdown, but his brain wasn’t listening. Something was floating there, for sure—off to the right, or starboard, as Ziggy would insist on saying. Something too interesting for a detective-type like himself, destined to be a private eye, to ignore.

      Ziggy and Josée did something complicated with their paddles to bring the canoe closer. The thing in the water did look dead, as Josée had said, but it wasn’t a beaver or a duck. In fact, Alan didn’t think it was an animal at all. It looked oddly familiar.

      The bow of the canoe came within a paddle’s distance, and Alan reached his paddle out to bring the thing in. It was floating just below the surface, with a smooth curve like a belly poking up and catching the late afternoon light, shining in a way that suggested something hard—not fur, but wood, maybe, or plastic. He placed his paddle across the gunwales and stretched his right arm out over the side of the canoe to get hold of it. It wasn’t a dead animal, that was for sure, or he would never have put his hand anywhere near it. It looked like a box. A jewellery box, maybe, from some long-ago sunken steamer trunk? Something full of diamonds, or stolen rubies? The wake from the canoe was making the thing bob further away. Alan’s imagination went into overdrive, and he stretched just a little more than was smart.

      “Hey, watch it, Nearing, you moron. You’re tipping us.” Almost too late, Alan pulled his hand back and shifted his body back into the centre of the canoe. At the same time, the thing turned over, like a hooked trout does just before it makes a dive for the bottom.

      “Holy cow—it’s a violin!” Alan shouted. There was no doubt about it. It was obviously broken—the whole bottom half of the thing was smashed in, but what remained of it was unmistakably violin-shaped—that distinctive curve, the long neck (broken, too) with the curly wooden carving at the end, and the pegs to hold the strings.

      “Sans blague?” Josée said, doing another sideways paddle-stroke. “Let’s move in again, Zig, so Alain can grab it. Just don’t lean out so much this time, hey?”

      “What’s a violin doing in the middle of Steamboat Lake?” Alan said, reaching again.

      “How should I know? I’m just the driver,” Ziggy said, doing his grandfather-impression. “Okay, grab it now!” Alan tried, and this time his fingers closed around the neck, but the violin gave a slight twitch, as if it were alive, and slipped out of his grasp. And this time, the thing didn’t turn over, it simply sank, quickly and decisively, like the Titanic.

      “Crud,” Alan said. “So much for that. We’ll never know what that was all about now—it must be about fifty feet deep here.”

      “Too bad,” Josée said. “But you have one of your own already. That one didn’t look like it could be fixed.”

      “Oh, I don’t think it was a valuable violin,” Alan said. “The pegs were plastic, I think, and it had that look, you know, like the cheap ones have. Still, it was very weird to find it floating out in the middle of the lake.”

      “Yeah, well, weird or not,” Ziggy said, “we’d better get going. You’ll be lucky if your Mom doesn’t break your neck just like that drowned fiddle.”

      “Hey, you were the one who had to stop . . .” Alan said.

      “Mes amis . . .” Josée said. “Don’t argue, paddle!” They did.

      They were quite

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