#dailyprompt-2015 — Public Fediverse posts

Epilogue: A Toast to Treachery

The arrest of Inspector Salomone was a quiet affair, conducted with the discretion that only a small village like Speranza could muster. Inspector Davies, the unassuming but astute officer who had once investigated the death of Elias Thorne, led the disgraced Salomone away in handcuffs. The former guardian of the law did not rage; instead, he wore a look of terrified resignation, muttering about a “higher tempo” and a “conductor” who would not be pleased.

“I was merely the second fiddle, Moira,” Salomone hissed as he was placed into the squad car, his eyes darting toward the bell tower. “The orchestra plays on, with or without me.”

Back at the Coffee Taverna, the atmosphere was one of exhausted relief. The adrenaline that had fueled our escape from the Cigars House had faded, replaced by the heavy, comforting scent of roasted beans and the earthy aroma of Altea’s unlit tobacco.

We gathered around the table to open the bottle of Speranza, Year Zero. Altea, with the reverence of a priestess, used a corkscrew to pull the ancient stopper. It emerged with a satisfying pop, releasing not the smell of vinegar, but a rich, complex bouquet of dark cherries, leather, and… something metallic.

“To the soil of Speranza,” Anna toasted, raising her glass. “And to friendship, the only root that doesn’t rot.”

We drank. The wine was exquisite—velvety and deep. But as I set my glass down, Toe, my sleek black cat, jumped onto the table. He did not look at the wine. He looked at the cork.

With a surgical extend of a single claw, he hooked the cork and batted it toward me. It rolled across the wooden table, coming to rest against the base of the kerosene lamp.

“Look,” I whispered, the Poirot-like instinct twitching in my mind.

Burned into the side of the cork, hidden until it was pulled from the neck of the bottle, was not a vintage year. It was a sequence of musical notes. A specific, haunting trill.

“That’s not just a melody,” Marisa said, her face paling as she recognized the notation. “That is the opening bar of The Devil’s Trill sonata. It’s the signature of the ‘Maestro’—a legendary thief who steals not with silence, but with sound.”

A New dissonance

Before I could respond, the heavy oak door of the Taverna creaked open. The wind from the street blew in, extinguishing the candles and plunging us into a sudden, Hitchcockian gloom.

Standing in the doorway was a young woman, drenched from a sudden squall. She clutched a violin case to her chest as if it were an infant. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the same terror I had seen in Viviana Bellini’s face weeks ago.

“Dr. Hopes?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “They told me you could help. I am the second violinist for the quartet playing at the gala tonight. But… the first chair has vanished.”

She stepped into the light, and Ashwaganda let out a low, warning growl from his perch.

“He didn’t just disappear,” the woman sobbed, placing the violin case on the table next to the branded cork. “He vanished while he was playing a solo on stage. One moment the music was there, and the next… only silence. And in his place, they found this.”

She opened the case. The violin was gone. Resting in the velvet lining was not an instrument, but a perfectly preserved, severed finger of a marble statue—and a single, fresh cacao bean.

I looked at Altea, Anna, and Marisa. The “Conductor” Salomone had warned us about had already begun his performance. The wine was finished, but the overture to a new nightmare had just begun.

“Lock the doors, Anna,” I said, picking up the marble finger. “It seems our quiet life in Speranza is about to get very loud.”

A QUESTION OF RELIGION by Veronica Smith

I come from many generations of mixed-marriages.  That is, one spouse was Catholic and one Protestant.  Anyone familiar with Irish history will understand the tension that such a relationship caused.  Ireland was not the only country affected either.  Wherever the British Empire had a colony, there was always tension between those, who were a different religion, and the British Protestant establishment.  It was particularly prevalent in the 19th century. 

Take my Haigh great-great-grandparents as an example!  Great-great Granny was an Irish Catholic, married to an English Protestant.  Under Roman Catholic guidelines at the time, the children of such a mixed marriage should be brought up Catholic.  However, in this case, only the daughters were brought up Catholic.  The sons were brought up Protestant, like their father.  This had unfortunate consequences because, when my great-grandmother insisted on bringing up her son, my maternal grandfather, as Catholic, it caused an irreconcilable rift with her Protestant brother, who argued that all male children in their family line should be brought up Protestant. 

Both my parents came from such mixed marriages, where one parent was Protestant and one Catholic.  Mind you, only my Catholic grandparents seem to have bothered about religion, the Protestant ones being only nominally “different”!  This made for more harmonious house-holds! 

My parents decided to be practising Roman Catholics.  That meant Mass on Sundays; fish dinners on Fridays; the Rosary…….  It is what suited their generation, to have a formal religious identity.  For their children, it was a different matter.  Growing up in the 1960s brought new influences and new ways of thinking (like the Beetles making Indian philosophy fashionable). 

One of my siblings married a Jewish spouse and converted to Judaism, bringing up their children following Jewish traditions.  Another of my siblings drifted from one Protestant sect to another, even dabbling with Free Masonry, until discovering better “spirits” in a bottle of alcohol!  I myself tried very hard with Catholicism, even wanting to become a nun in my youth – until witnessing the vicious in-fighting between the nuns in my boarding school!  It reminded me that even those in religious orders are only human and subject to petty squabbling! 

So, I spent decades searching for a religion that could satisfy my spiritual needs.  That included most of the major, established world religions but they all seemed too worldly to me.  It was not until I was in my fifties that I discovered Celtic Spirituality and the Shamanic animistic world view.  It seemed to click in a way that my parents’ formal religion had not.  My poor elderly mother feared that I was joining some weirdo occult group, which would “steal my Soul”!  She failed to see the improvements in my overall attitude to life, how I became less prone to panic-attacks and bouts of depression. 

Whether you agree with Shamanism or not, I will tell you about something that I have witnessed at Shamanic gatherings in Ireland.  I have seen people from both Protestant and Catholic communities sitting down together, getting to know each other, and forgetting about old religious divisions.  They unite in a way that the old religions actively discouraged, despite ecumenical efforts.  A belief that brings people together in peace and harmony cannot be “evil”, as my parents would have labelled it, bless them! They were products of their generation, as I am of mine.

ENDS AUTHOR: Veronica Smith first published 30th August 2025

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