The fiddle came from a recluse. In 1988, Brian Skarstad, a violin maker in Pleasantville, New York, received a tip from a friend in New Orleans. A woman in the French Quarter had died in her apartment, and when police arrived, they found furs, jewelry, and somewhere around two hundred fiddles. Skarstad was a well-respected restorer of violins; he had sold instruments to musicians who had played with the New York Philharmonic. He flew to New Orleans even though his friend there was, in his words, “kind of a madman.” Skarstad recalls seeing violins stacked in moving boxes when…