Digging Too Deep (13 page)

Yet, what about that round rock and the finger bones inside it? That was as damning as it could get, she thought. There is absolutely and positively a murder to be solved—two, in fact. What a story I’ll have for my editor
.
She visualized huge apologies, demands that she return to the U.K., followed swiftly by an offer to take over the newspaper’s top crime reporting spot. As for the royal lawsuit hanging over the
London Daily Post,
well, that would sort itself out eventually.

When the professor’s playing stopped, and the final note died completely away, she was unwilling to shatter his mood with the strident ringing of the doorbell. Tosca decided to knock instead. The door swung back slowly, and the man’s great bulk blocked the opening. Tosca noted his wary expression.

“Good evening, Haiden. Am I disturbing you? I was so moved by your playing. It brought tears to my eyes. Your delicate touch is perfection, bringing out the full pathos of the piece. I’ve never heard it played with such emotion.”

Whittaker raised his eyebrows. “Well, well. Come in, come in, Tosca. I’m pleased you liked my playing.” The professor continued talking as she entered the house. “Have you a favorite composition I can play for you? It would be my pleasure.”

He led the way into the living room, where the stub of a blue candle smoldered in the bowl on the piano. Smiling, he stood seemingly transformed before her, his suspicion apparently giving way to surprise and joviality at her compliment.

“I was wondering,” said Tosca as she settled herself into a corner of the sofa, “if you enjoyed the CD I brought you earlier, or haven’t you had a chance to listen to it?”

“Not yet. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Oh, no, thank you. I’ve brought you some of my Cornish mead.” She took the small, corked jug from her purse.

“The glasses are in the kitchen.” He picked up the jug and left the room.

Tosca looked around, again admiring the red brick fireplace and wondering if it was ever lit. Hanging above the mantel was a blue and red Tibetan thangka wall tapestry. This was a new addition since she was here last. Maybe now that Monica was gone, he felt free to indulge his own tastes.

As she turned to the opposite wall, her eyes stopped moving. She stood and walked quickly to the small antique picture frame hanging there, another new addition she hadn’t seen before. Within its center, covered by glass, was a torn half-sheet of paper, part of a music score. On it were written two bars of music. As she studied its melody, Tosca recognized the unusual dissonant structure. Reading the musical arrangement carefully, she hummed it to herself. Beneath each note was a number, but she didn’t understand how the numbers correlated to the musical notes.

“Ah!” said Whittaker, behind her. “I see you’re interested in my twelve-tone row.”

“Yes. Arnold Schoenberg, if I’m not mistaken.”

Tosca noted his surprise.

“You are very perceptive,” he said, “especially since the score is not signed. You know your music.”

He set the half-filled wine glasses on the coffee table.

“Schoenberg was certainly a fiery, passionate composer,” said Tosca. “I admire him greatly. To my mind, his “Verklärte Nacht” is the most haunting piece he ever wrote, yet it has been described as box office poison.”

Whittaker took her arm. “Come and sit down, and we’ll enjoy your mead.”

Tosca resisted, continuing to study the piece. “What is the significance of those numbers?”

“Purely mathematical, dear lady, purely mathematical.” He fluttered a dismissive hand. “Schoenberg is one of my idols, my favorite composer. He once said the wonderful thing about music is that one can say everything in it, so that he who knows, understands everything,”

“Goodness, that’s a cryptic comment if ever I heard one.”

“He was a ritualistic man, a numerologist, as I am myself. Schoenberg attached numbers to letters of the alphabet to give them meaning. Those numbers, for instance,” Whittaker pointed to the music score. “He might have used them for his students. He taught in Los Angeles. Piano teachers mark measures with numbers when they teach.”

“Surely not the way these numbers are marked, professor?”

Whittaker shrugged. “As I said, the man loved numbers. It’s common knowledge that when Schoenberg discovered his son’s name, Roland, had adverse numerological implications, he changed the boy’s name to Lawrence Adam. Did you know that the writing of music developed as artificial numbers in the late fifteenth century?”

“No,” said Tosca. “My scholarship is far less broad than yours.” At the professor’s condescending smile, Tosca knew he was vain, too.

“Please, sit down.” He took hold of Tosca’s elbow again and led her back to the sofa. “I’ve never tasted mead.”

“You’re in for a treat,” promised Tosca.

“It’s certainly a strange color, Tosca, quite opaque.”

“Yes, because of the honey and plants I use. It may look somewhat unappetizing, I’m afraid. In fact, J.J. won’t get anywhere near it, but I think you’ll find its robust flavor is most appealing to the palate.”

The professor took a tentative sip. “You mentioned honey, but I didn’t expect it to be this sweet. I like it. Thank you.”

As they discussed Schoenberg, other composers and favorite pieces, she found herself appreciating Whittaker’s vast musical knowledge until she heard his grandfather clock strike ten.

“It’s late. I must go.”

She thanked the professor for an enjoyable musical evening, told him to enjoy the rest of the mead she was leaving with him, bade him goodbye and left. As she passed the front of the house she was unable to resist her habit of peeking through undraped, lighted windows. She stopped abruptly when she saw him take the framed fragment of music off the wall, clutch it to his chest and hurry out of the room.

J.J., watching television in her favorite NASCAR T-shirt, was startled as her mother burst through the front door and planted herself dead center of the room, lips wide open in a triumphant smile.

“Looks like you had a successful visit,” said J.J. “Well, don’t just stand there grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Tell me what the professor said.”

“There’s absolutely something fishy going on. Oh, he was pleasant as could be, and we talked about music for ages, but then I asked him about a piece of sheet music he’d framed. It was hanging on the wall. He completely dismissed my question, but after I left I looked back through the window. You know how no one pulls their drapes around here. Well, I saw him take the frame off the wall. Can you imagine? I’d like to know why.”

“What kind of music?” asked J.J.. “I listen to lots of different music and dance to it. So what’s the big deal?”

“I doubt you’d be dancing to this, because no one can dance to twelve-tone compositions. Machines or robots, maybe. And you can’t just listen to it. You have to figure it out while it’s playing.”

“Twelve-tone? Mother, you know I don’t play the piano. That’s complete gobbledygook to me. Keep it simple.”

“All right. Arnold Schoenberg, an Austrian composer, decided that simply creating themes and developing them was too limiting. So instead, he decided that every single note of the twelve notes should have equal value. The only way he could do that was by not replaying a single note until every one of the twelve notes had been played and finished.”

“Okay, I’ve got that. Is there more?”

“You’ll like this bit. You can play the tone row backward, upside down, and even upside down and backward simultaneously.”

“I may need a shot of whiskey to understand that.”

“People usually do on first hearing it, but two rock musicians, Frank Zappa and Sid Vicious, both said they had been influenced by Schoenberg’s atonal music.”

“They’re both dead,” said J.J. “Maybe the challenge killed ‘em off.”

“Yes, well, so is Schoenberg’s theory, basically. Anyway, to finish up, some of his compositions are considered too mathematical and even emotionless, but that’s where Professor Whittaker’s interest is, I believe, in the mathematical side of Schoenberg. Seems so to me, at any rate, considering those intriguing numbers added to the music he framed.”

“Sorry I can’t help you there, Mother. It’s way over my head, and it’s way past my bedtime. See you in the morning.”

“Kosk yn da,”
said Tosca absentmindedly.

“Thanks. Sleep well yourself,” replied J.J. She blew a kiss in her mother’s direction and climbed the spiral staircase to bed.

Tosca, still puzzled by the professor’s action, made herself another cup of tea, humming the notes she’d memorized from the framed page. Schoenberg’s compositions were like abstract paintings, she’d read, and had turned the music world on its head when he’d first introduced it in his native Austria. Poorly received, Schoenberg’s chamber symphonies and orchestral pieces were greeted by hisses and boos, but by the 1930s he was hailed as a genius. He immigrated to the United States and taught at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Tosca remembered from their conversation earlier in the evening that Haiden said there was a mathematical reason why he himself paid homage to Schoenberg. What could that be, and why did he now appear to be hiding the framed notes? Tosca found a notepad and pen in J.J.’s roll top desk and sat down to recreate the bars of music and numbers she’d seen.

She drew five horizontal lines to resemble a musical score sheet. Because of her photographic memory, which stood her in good stead as a reporter, she was able to visualize the notes and numbers, and copied them down. She was certain she recalled them correctly.

Opening up her laptop, she clicked on the Whittaker file and added the information to the notes for her article, unsure if the incident was of interest but encouraged to believe so because of Whittaker’s actions. Why take the frame off the wall, and why only after Tosca commented on it? She needed to delve more deeply into Schoenberg’s compositions.

At breakfast the next morning J.J. proposed an hour’s driving lesson. “You really must get the hang of it, Mother. That rental car is costing a fortune. A manual transmission is not that difficult to master. Once you learn to drive the Healey you can have it all to yourself when I’m away at the races.”

“No time right now, love. I am off to the local library. I want to find a biography of Schoenberg. I need to know the significance of those numbers. Could they be the reason for the professor taking the music off the wall?”

J.J. shook her head. “Who knows? Now look, Mother, don’t change the subject. You’ve been here almost three weeks already. When do you plan to get started learning how to drive my car?”

“
Ghas dha son.
Don’t bully, dear, I’ve told you before, it’s very unfeminine. Tell you what, why don’t you drive me to the library, and I’ll watch you shift gears on the way. I’ll talk into my tape recorder and listen to the instructions later.”

“All right, but I’m surprised you’re still carrying around that recorder in your purse.”

“Habit, I suppose. Besides, don’t forget I’m writing a new column.”

“Nothing from around here, I hope.”

“Hardly, unless there’s a princess or two hiding out down the street. Let’s not worry about it. Come on, let’s go.”

Dressed in casual clothes, they set out. J.J. was in jeans, and Tosca reveled in wearing a cotton dress in the middle of February, a cold month back home in London. At nine-thirty in the morning traffic off the island was light, most of its working inhabitants having left at least an hour earlier. Within minutes they were at the Newport Beach Public Library, an imposing building that had cost seventy-one million dollars, contributed largely by private donors. It was one of the larger libraries in Orange County and housed an exceptionally up-to-date and comprehensive reference section.

One of Tosca’s first priorities after arriving in the United States had been to register for a library card. She became a frequent visitor to the newspaper racks, where she perused newspapers from around the world.

“Why bother?” said J.J. “It’s all on the Internet.”

“I like holding a real newspaper in my hands and turning the pages, flipping back if I need to and skipping sections instead of having to scroll down. It’s still one of my great pleasures.”

At the library Tosca swept past the newspaper racks this time and headed for the nonfiction book stacks while J.J. found an unoccupied computer and amused herself by searching for the latest online auto racing news. At the end of half an hour Tosca found what she needed among the biographies, selecting two on Schoenberg and three on other composers. She tapped J.J. on the shoulder to indicate they could leave and checked out the books she’d selected. They drove back to the island.

Tosca made tea for them both and delved into J. Peyser’s
The New Music.
It confirmed that Schoenberg had indeed been a systematic person, a numerologist, basing many decisions in his life on the belief that numbers held specific implications, just as Professor Whittaker had told her. Schoenberg believed that the number thirteen stood for death. Rather than use it, he numbered his music measures 12 and 12A. He was convinced that he would die during a year that was a multiple of 13, but as it turned out, he was one year off. Nevertheless, his death occurred on a fateful date: Friday, July 13, 1951.

After making some notes Tosca called the Newport Library information desk.

“I should have asked this while I was there earlier this morning. May I inquire as to where I would find original sheet music?”

“Modern or out of print?”

“Oh, definitely not modern. Classical pieces from the early nineteenth century.”

“You could try the music department at the University of California, Irvine. They have archives and can probably help you out or give you some leads.”

“Thank you so very much.” Tosca closed her phone and called out to her daughter, who was sunbathing on the roof. “J.J., I’m going out. I’ll drive my rental car.”

Taking great care to keep the traffic dividing line on her left, all the while grumbling about uncivilized heathens who drove on the wrong side of the road, Tosca found her way to the library complex at the University of California, Irvine. Spread across fifteen hundred acres at the northern edge of Newport Beach, UCI was a major West Coast medical research university. It also boasted a thriving arts program; its symphony concerts and classic and modern plays were well attended. Professor Whittaker had obviously found a home.