The Doctor walked to the side of the piano and raised the top case. A pungent odor rose from the piano. It was unfamiliar, curried and heavy. “Excuse the smell, Mr. Drake. Turmeric. One of the Shan men suggested I put it into the piano to protect it from termites. You probably don’t do that in London.” He laughed. “But it seems to have worked.”

The lid opened away from the window, so it was dark inside the piano, and Edgar saw the bullet hole immediately, an oval crack in the soundboard through which the floor could be seen. Carroll’s letter was right, the bullet had split all three strings of the fourth-octave A key, leaving them loose, twisting back toward the tuning and hitch pins like strands of uncombed hair. Shot through the belly, he thought, and briefly considered telling the Doctor the stories of the Reign of Terror. Instead he looked inside. There was a nick on the inside of the piano lid, in the trajectory of the bullet, but no exit hole; it probably did not have enough momentum to break through the lid. “Did you take the bullet out?” he asked, and to answer the question himself, he struck a key. There was a rattling on the soundboard. Many clients who called in London sought his services for “a terrible racket,” which turned out to be a coin or screw which had accidentally been dropped into a grand and sat rattling on the soundboard when it vibrated. He squinted into the piano, found the bullet, and picked it out. “A souvenir,” he said. “May I keep it?”

“Of course,” said the Doctor. “Is the damage serious?”

Edgar dropped the bullet into his pocket and peered back inside. “Actually not too bad. I will have to replace the strings, and I need to take another look at the soundboard, but I think it will be all right.”

“Perhaps you should start. I don’t want to keep you any longer.”

“I probably should. I hope I haven’t bored you.”

“No, not in the slightest, Mr. Drake. It has been a pleasure—most educational. I can see I have chosen my help well.” He extended his hand. “Good luck with the patient. Shout if you need anything.” He turned and walked from the room, closing the door behind him. The force sent a tremor through the floor. There was a faint chime of the stirring of strings.

Edgar walked back around to the bench. He didn’t sit; he always told his apprentices that pianos were best tuned if the tuner was standing.

Now to begin, he thought. He hit the middle-octave C key. Too low. He tried one octave below, and then C in the other octaves. Same problem: both almost a full semitone off. The treble notes were even worse. He played the first movement of the English Suites. Without the key with broken strings. He was always self-conscious about his skill as a pianist, but he loved the cool ivory of the keyboard, the swing and sway of playing a melody. He realized it had been months now since he had played and he stopped after several measures; the piano was so miserably out of tune that it was painful for him to listen. He could see why the Doctor had not wanted to play it.

His first tasks would be what he liked to call “structural repairs.” On the Erard this meant mending the broken strings and the soundboard. He walked around the piano, to the hinges of the lid, removed the hinge pins and put them in his pocket. He pulled on the lid, sliding it along the top of the piano until it was balanced on the edge of the case. He bent at his knees, lifted it, and set it gingerly against one of the walls. With the lid out of the way, there was enough light to work inside the piano body.

It was difficult to see all the damage to the soundboard from above, so he climbed beneath the piano and inspected its belly. The entry wound was more visible. A crack ran with the grain, but only for several inches. This is good, he thought. Although the hole would remain, he could easily repair the crack with “shimming,” which meant inserting filler wood into the holes. He only hoped the crack wouldn’t affect the piano’s sound. Although some tuners claimed that shimming was necessary to reestablish tension in the board, he believed that for the most part the repair was superficial, for clients who were disconcerted by long cracks in the inside of their pianos. So he hadn’t anticipated shimming—it seemed superfluous given the setting—and he hadn’t brought a planer to smooth out the board. But the beauty of the Erard caused him to reconsider.

There was another problem. Shimming was usually accomplished with spruce, but Edgar hadn’t brought any, and he didn’t know if spruce grew in the area. He looked about the room, and his eyes settled on the bamboo walls. I would be the first to use bamboo to mend a piano, he thought with some pride, And it is so resonant that perhaps it will make a sound more beautiful than spruce. Besides, he had seen the Burmese peeling strips off the bamboo, which meant that the wood could probably be shaped with a penknife and he wouldn’t need a planer. It wasn’t without risks; using two different types of wood meant that they might respond to the humidity differently and the crack would reopen. But he welcomed the opportunity to innovate, and decided to try.

First he had to file the hole, which took nearly an hour. He worked slowly; the cracks could run and damage the entire soundboard. When he had finished, he rose and sawed a piece of bamboo from the wall. This he carved and coated with glue, and worked into the hole. The broken strings allowed him to reach it from above, and he smoothed it. It took a long time—the blade was small—and while he worked, he realized that he could have gone to ask Carroll for help, for a planer or another larger knife, perhaps for other wood. But something discouraged him. He liked the idea that he could take the very wall of the fort, a product of war, and transform it into the mechanics of sound.

When he had finished shimming, he set to work on the broken strings. He removed and coiled them, and dropped them into his pocket. Another souvenir. In his bag he found string of the correct gauge and unwound it, running it from the tuning pin to the hitch pin and back. He attached the third string to its own hitch pin, and then ran it alongside its companions. When he cut it, he left a length the width of his hand, which would measure three turns around the tuning pin. The strings were bright and silver next to the dullness of their neighbors, and he tuned them sharp, for they would settle.

When the strings and pins were finished he walked back to the front of the piano. To raise the pitch of the entire piano, he began at the center of the keyboard and moved outward, striking keys and tightening strings, now working quickly. It still took nearly an hour.

It was early afternoon when he began the task of regulating. The piano’s action is a complex mechanism, he would explain to clients, communicating between key and hammer, and thus the pianist and sound. Now he removed the nameboard to reach the action. He evened the hammers’ heights, eased sluggish jack centers, and adjusted the setting of the let-off, where the jack kicks out from beneath the hammer. Between regulating, he took breaks, easing keys, adjusting the shift of the una corda pedal. When he finally rose, dusty and tired, the piano was in workable order. He had been lucky that there were no major repairs, such as a cracked pin block. He knew he didn’t have the tools to carry out such a repair. He had little idea how much time had passed, and realized only as he was leaving that the sun was sinking quickly over the forest.

It was dark when he met the Doctor in his office. A half-eaten plate of rice and vegetables was resting on the desk. The Doctor was seated before a stack of papers, reading.

“Good evening.”

The Doctor looked up. “Well, Mr. Drake, you are finished at last. The cook thought I should send for you, but I told him that you wouldn’t want to be disturbed. He complained when I told him to wait until you had finished, but fortunately he is a music lover himself, and I was able to convince him that the sooner you finished, the sooner he would be able to hear the piano.” He smiled. “Please, sit.”