Case file
The Second Set
The premise
A jazz cellar in Saint-Germain, Paris, October 1949. On the night of the twelfth the quartet played a set half of Paris now claims to have been at — one night, one acetate master, cut in the room. Gustave Aury owns the club, the contracts, and the record.
Last night he took the master from the office safe at the break, told the room he was sailing for New York on Saturday, and walked out along the quai at 01:00. At dawn a bargeman brought him out of the river by the Pont Marie. His portfolio lay on the parapet, clasped shut, the night's money still in it. The master was not.
The police have taken the door list and will be back at noon. You have three rounds.
Who is at the table
Everyone introduces themselves with one public line before a word is said. Nothing below is a clue — this is only what the whole table already knows.
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Odile Brun
The voice: she came in for two numbers a night three years ago, and now the room comes for her. The October master is half hers and she knows it.
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Piet Vandam
Bass: Dutch, unhurried, the wall the quartet leans on. He has kept the band's time for six years — and, lately and quietly, some of Aury's books.
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René Callier
Piano and leader: he picked every player, wrote every arrangement, and signed the quartet to Aury when this cellar was the only room in Paris that would have them.
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Wesley Crane
The trumpet, out of Kansas City by way of the army bands: he came to Paris for a fortnight in 1946 and never went home. Paris lets him play what he hears — and what he played on the twelfth of October, nobody has played since.
Where you are
The club is one room and a stair: the stage, the bar with the house record pile behind it, the office above with its safe, and the alley door the musicians use. Out the alley it is three minutes along the quai to the Pont Marie. It rained until one. The third set — the open jam — ran from 01:15 until 03:00, with half of Saint-Germain sitting in. The four of you were on and off that stage all night, and the stage is the only alibi in the room.
Everyone at the table gets a character, three cards and one rule: you may hide things, you may not invent them. Between the acts a dossier appears on every phone with a new fact about somebody in the room — and it never clears anyone.
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