Murder in A-Major (16 page)

T
he following day, I waited until mid-morning before presenting myself once again at the house on Bilkerstrasse, hoping that by the time I arrived, the bustling Schumann household would be sufficiently settled to allow me an uninterrupted interval with Madam Schumann. There were too many hanging threads now—especially after the events of the previous day—for me to put off my investigation even for twenty-four hours. The housekeeper, admitting me this time after only a single knock on the door, shook her head in a sign of utter hopelessness. “I do not know what they are going to do with him,” she lamented, her eyes travelling up the staircase. “Quiet one minute, terrible the next, and it goes on and on like this.” She shook her head again.

“Who are ‘they'?” I said.

“The doctors. Four of them now.”

“Hellman, and who else?”

“Dr. Möbius. Dr. Gruhle. They've been here before. Then there's a new doctor, Dr. Hasenclever—”

Ah yes, Richard Hasenclever. I knew of this fellow. Physician, would-be poet, would-be conductor, dilettante. A man who basked at every opportunity in the Schumanns' fame, he boasted that he had collaborated with Schumann on the composition of a choral ballade. He was also a prominent member of the Music Society of Düsseldorf. But when it came to the practice of medicine, the man had as much claim to expertise as my chimneysweep.

“You said there are four doctors up there,” I said to the housekeeper.

“Yes. The fourth is also someone I haven't seen here before. A Dr. Böger.”

I was familiar with this physician as well. His qualifications consisted solely of experience in military hospitals, where he purported to treat soldiers suffering from an affliction which had only recently come to be known as shell-shock (and which the Commissioner, who had once been a battlefront officer, preferred to call cowardice). I imagined that Dr. Böger's advice to Schumann would be along the lines of You must pull yourself together,” or something equally simplistic.

“I suppose you wish to see Madam Schumann?” the housekeeper said.

“It may be a bad time to tear her away,” I said, expecting that, along with the four doctors upstairs in their bedroom, she was attempting to calm her husband and somehow stabilize him.

“I will let her know you are here,” the housekeeper said. To my surprise, instead of climbing the stairs, the woman stepped across the hall and knocked gently on the door of Dr. Schumann's study. I heard Clara Schumann instruct her to usher me in.

I found her standing before a well-laid fire. A heavy shawl was draped about her shoulders, its dark strands defining the mood in the room. Her expression was cautious and hinted of resistance. This would not be an easy conversation.

“Madam Schumann,” I said, “I'll try not to detain you too long. I'm sure you feel a need to be with Dr. Schumann.”

“If I thought I could be of use, I would be there instead of here,” she replied in a voice that conveyed almost palpable defeat.

“I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this,” I said, “but the law requires that attempted suicides be reported and investigated where there are questionable circumstances, as there are here. Yesterday you mentioned fleetingly that you and your husband had had a disagreement over some issue, and that he chose to dash off rather than come to grips with it. But there must be more to this…certain details you left out. After all, domestic spats don't ordinarily drive a man to attempt to drown himself.”

“Robert has been drowning himself for a long time,” Clara said. “Drowning himself in rages that have no sense, not to me, not to anyone.”

“We need to be specific here. What drove your husband to attempt suicide?”

“It is a private matter. It is none of your business, really.”

“I take it you would prefer, then, to submit to questioning by a panel of magistrates,” I said. “I
can
have you summoned before them. Believe me, their patience does not stretch nearly as far as mine. Please understand, madam, I am not insensitive to what you are suffering, but I have a duty to perform. You
could
make it easier for both of us.”

She stood motionless, studying me as though attempting to satisfy herself that I truly meant what I said.

“Inspector Preiss,” she said at last, “kindly be seated. You say you need details? Very well, then. I have something to tell you, and I warn you: I am going to tell it to you fully, unconditionally, and without shame.”

She offered me a chair, then looked away for several moments as though composing herself. Finally she spoke, her voice steady, her expression unflinching. “The disagreement Robert and I had…it was more a quarrel, an almost violent quarrel at that…really a continuation of what took place between him and me on the night you were first summoned to this house…”

They had gone to bed later than usual, Clara Schumann said, both of them exhausted.

It had been a typical day for her: children to get off to school; the day's meals to plan and a shopping list to compile for the housekeeper's trip to the grocer's; four hours of rigorous practice (two before lunch, two after lunch, in preparation for a cycle of nine Beethoven sonatas to be performed over three nights in Vienna the following month). She'd had household bills to examine and pay, a letter to write to her father, dutifully wishing him a happy birthday and adding Robert's best wishes (a lie if ever there was one). Before the children's bedtime, there were little tales of their joys and woes to listen to, bed-time stories to tell, and last-minute promises to make that there were absolutely
no
ghosts lurking in the seldom-visited attic directly above their heads.

Her husband, too, had reason to plead exhaustion. That morning he'd begun in a state of high expectation a new suite of piano pieces to which he'd given the title
Papillons.
Clara could hear him happily humming one of the sprightly opening themes as he came into the kitchen for the midday meal. So excited was he then that he passed up a plate of food set for him, contenting himself with nothing more than a quick cup of coffee and a freshly baked bun before closeting himself again in his study.

But by mid-afternoon, Clara could hear groans and curses, the latter growing louder and more vehement, emanating from her husband's workplace. The piece was not going well, that much was clear to her. What she did not know at the time was that the “A” sound had begun to re-appear, flowing in, receding, flowing in again, receding again, incessant, like waves along a shoreline, distracting Schumann to the point where he could no longer focus on the melody at hand.

Perhaps a cup of tea would help, she thought, but when she tapped gently on the study door, a tray laden with tea and another bun in hand, there was no response. She opened the door to discover he'd gone.

He did not return until after the children were asleep. His clothes reeked of cigar smoke. His breath reeked of ale. He'd had nothing to eat for hours but refused the supper that had been kept warm for him. The day, which had begun full of the brightness of creation, was coming to an end full of shadows. As Clara put it, her husband did not so much undress as
abandon
his clothes on their bedroom floor, after which he collapsed into the bed. She heard him mumble something about his mind and body being sapped of their strength as never before, but this was nothing new to her ears. Whenever he smoked and drank too much, it was always the same complaint.

“And then,” she continued, “after I had slipped beneath the bedcovers…by now I was
aching
for some rest…I hadn't bothered to say goodnight because I believed him to be fast asleep…suddenly he came to life and was all over me. When Robert is aroused, there is no resisting him, so despite my extreme fatigue—”

“Madam Schumann,” I said, beginning to feel uncomfortable in the extreme, “there's no need to go on. I'm a policeman, not a priest, and this is not the sort of confession—”

“Oh no no, Inspector,” she said, her voice loud and overriding mine, “you cannot back away now. It's too late. You said you needed details…specific details—”

“Really, I've heard more than enough—”

“But we've barely scratched the surface,” she protested, “and I'm sure you will find the rest of what I have to tell you not only enlightening but entertaining. I mean, let's be frank: a little prurience is to a detective what honey is to a bee. Is that not so, Inspector?”

I shifted to the edge of my chair. “I don't find your sarcasm entertaining,” I said, “and I prefer to leave the balance of this interview for another time. Now, if you will excuse me—”

“
Wait!
” She had moved forward, standing so close to me now that I was unable to leave my chair. Then, in a more moderate tone, she said, “Please, there is something I want to show you…something you must see with your own eyes.”

I sat back and watched her throw open the bottom drawer of her husband's desk and remove a thick book, its black leather cover bearing in gold letters “Day Book, 1854.”

Handing me the book she said, “Here, look for yourself. Go on, open it.”

“But it's Maestro Schumann's private diary—”

“Since when would that stop a policeman? I thought you have your precious duty to perform. Let me help you, Preiss.”

She snatched the book from my hands, flipped through its pages, her fingers turning them furiously, and settled on the first page of the current month.

“Before you set your eyes on this, let me fill in the scene a bit more. Where was I? Ah yes…Robert is all over me, and the endeavour is proving to be entirely unsatisfactory for both of us. And I feel as though my life's blood is draining out of me, but he will not stop. I say to him, ‘Robert, this is the seventh time this month and again—
nothing
—is happening.' He looks at me, frowning, and begins to protest. ‘It is
not
the seventh, Clara,' he says. ‘Oh, but it is,' I tell him. ‘Don't pretend to be surprised,' I say to him when he gives me a look of disbelief.

“‘How can you possibly be so sure?' he wants to know. And then, despite the partial fog he's in, it dawns on him: almost screaming, he says ‘Clara, you've been snooping in my Day Book…my personal diary!' He jerks himself free of me, and next thing he's standing in his rumpled nightshirt at the foot of the bed. Still screaming, and stamping his foot like a child, he accuses me of violating his privacy. I point out that after ten years of marriage and as many pregnancies, his private thoughts are as much
my
property as
his.

“I admit to him…for the first time, mind you, Inspector…that I now know what all those ‘Fs' stand for in the margins of his Day Book. He plays dumb, says he doesn't know what on earth I'm referring to—”

“What
are
you referring to, Madam Schumann?” I asked, though I put the question half-heartedly. Truth is, I wanted at that moment nothing more than that she should call a halt to this narrative. But that was not be.

She thrust the Day Book back at me and pointed to the margin of the page that lay open before me.

“I have no stomach for this—”

“
Look!
” She jabbed at the margin with her index finger. “Don't turn away, Preiss. You see what looks like an F, although it could also pass for a sixteenth note.”

I nodded.

“And what's written in tiny print beneath it?”

“Unfinished.”

“Yes. Unfinished. I said ‘Robert, what does it mean?' He said it was to remind himself to write an unfinished symphony. Franz Schubert, he said, had written an unfinished symphony, which achieved enormous popularity and he—Robert—proposed therefore to do the same. This was my husband's idea of a joke, you see.”

She turned several more pages and pointed to a similar marginal F, under which “one minute” appeared in similar tiny print.

“Robert insisted it was a reminder that he should get around to composing a Minute Waltz similar to Chopin's, again because the public loved it, and it could be very lucrative. That, too, was Robert's idea of a joke.”

Several pages further on, two more Fs showed up. Beneath one Schumann had penned “Disappointment” in such small script that my nose almost touched the margin as I struggled to decipher what he'd written there. Two more Fs were brought to my attention, one of which had a thick black frame around it, like a miniature death notice.

“Robert began then to offer excuses: it was the onslaught of winter, a season he hates. It was the imminent visit of my father, a person he despises. It was the prospect of another tour, an aspect of our lives he abhors because he finds travel too much to deal with. And then, without warning, he let out a frightening wail. It was this ‘A' sound again, he cried. I told him I thought it was preposterous, that he was allowing this hallucination of his to get the better of him, that it was ruining not only his life but mine as well. And the moment I started to mention his doctors' advice, he flew into an uncontrollable rage.

“Once again, he insisted that he was the victim of a criminal conspiracy…that he was being driven mad. The only way I could placate him was to agree—much against my better judgment—to send for you, Inspector Preiss.”

“And the next morning, what happened?”

“I suppose it was a mistake on my part, for when I took him to task for what I considered his ridiculous conduct the previous evening, once again he flew into a rage and…well, we know the rest of what happened, don't we.”

Giving me that same unflinching look, she said, “Brahms alone is what sustains me. So now that I have finished saying what I have to say, now that I have furnished you with every excruciating detail, I suppose it is up to you to do whatever the law bids you to do, is it not?”

I
arrived back at my office at the Constabulary to find a report routinely filed by my staff at noon daily summarizing the crimes uncovered during the past twenty-four hours and the arrests made. I scrutinized the report, noting the usual tiresome offenses: petty thefts, drunken assaults, indecent exposures in public places. Nothing here that would excite a senior inspector. I was about to toss the report aside when, to my astonishment, one name leapt from the bottom line of the page:
Walter Thüringer.
Opposite Thüringens name appeared the offense with which he was charged: “Receiving stolen goods, to wit, one pair of diamond earrings, the property of one Countess Maria de Cecco of the City of Rome, Italy.” The arresting officer was Constable Fritz Hesse, a recent addition to my staff, who had not as yet been tested in anything serious, such as homicide or rape, but who possessed a bloodhound's sense of smell whenever someone's jewellery went missing.
Bad luck, Thüringer
, I thought. Then, in a sudden fit of compassion, I decided to pay him a visit. I pictured him cringing in horror in one of the tomb-like holding cells in the basement of the Constabulary, sharing his confinement with a half-dozen of Düsseldorf's most unappealing citizens.

Which is exactly how I found the poor devil.

“Preiss,” he cried out, “thank God you're here!”

“I'm known as
Inspector
Preiss in these quarters, Thüringer,” I said, not wanting his cellmates to think he and I were bosom friends, but feeling a bit mean-spirited at the same time. I motioned to a nearby guard to approach. “Release this man into my custody,” I said, “for questioning in the interrogation room.”

I waited for a moment or two while Thüringer composed himself in the small private room just down the corridor from the cells, then fixed him with the most disapproving look I was capable of.

“I know what you're thinking,” he said, “but I swear by everything I hold sacred—”

“Oh please, Thüringer,” I cut in, “save the ‘everything I hold sacred' speech. You're going to need it later. I've read Constable Hesse's report. The diamond earrings he spotted in your shop perfectly fit the description of the ones stolen from the hotel suite occupied by that Countess and her husband, the couple from Rome. My God, man, have you no shame? Our fair city is desperate to maintain its reputation as a cultural mecca for tourists…the birthplace of Heinrich Heine, no less!…and here you and your myriad accomplices turn Düsseldorf into the kind of slum one would expect to find in…in—”

“In Rome?” Thüringer ventured, eager to assist me.

“This is not an occasion for humorous remarks, thank you very much.”

“I was only trying to be helpful,” he said. “I've always tried to be helpful, as you well know, Inspector,” he added, giving me a wise smile.

“Meaning what?”

Thüringer looked over his shoulder. We were the only people in the room, and the door was firmly closed. Nothing short of cannon fire could have been heard through the thick stone walls. Still, the old man wanted to assure himself that there were no eavesdroppers. He leaned forward over the small wooden table that separated us, his bony white jeweller's fingers resting flat on the tabletop. ‘You know, Inspector, how you've come to count on me to inform you of anything suspicious that comes to my attention—”

“Excluding anything suspicious that you yourself are involved in, of course,” I put in.

“Point taken,” Thüringer said. Undaunted, he went on. “I have some information that might be valuable to you, very valuable indeed, my friend.”

“Such as?”

“Well now, it depends.” Again he gave me that wise smile.

“Depends on what, Thüringer? I have only so much patience, and absolutely none when it comes to playing games with people in your current position.”

He sat back and crossed his arms across his chest, looking remarkably self-confident for a man who might well be facing a prison sentence (I was certain Hesse's report was infallible). “First, Inspector, we must make a—what shall I call it?—a bargain, yes, that's a good way to put it, a bargain. The earrings are returned to the woman from Rome, let us say they were waylaid through an innocent mistake or something of that sort, I apologize to the lady profusely and offer her some nice bauble for her trouble. The charge against me is withdrawn. And that's the end of the matter.”

“And what else do you do for
your
part, Thüringer?”

The man paused, peering at me over his pince-nez, no doubt wondering with good reason whether or not he could trust me.

I repeated, “What else do you do for your part? Understand something: it's not often that I take the trouble to visit an accused felon as I'm doing now. Consider this a privilege I'm extending to you, but time is quickly running out.” Again the man glanced needlessly over his shoulder, then leaned forward over the table as before. “Does the name Wilhelm Hupfer mean anything to you?”

I affected a blank expression. “Wilhelm Hupfer? What about him?”

“It has come to my attention—never mind how—that he's a piano tuner, of all things. How much do you think a piano tuner, even the most expert piano tuner, earns?”

“I couldn't begin to know.”

“A man like Hupfer is lucky if his income is enough to supply him with three meals a day and a roof over his head. Piano tuners, even the best of them, are perhaps a step or two above shoemakers. How does a man like Wilhelm Hupfer suddenly manage to become one of my steadiest customers? I'd never heard of the man until a couple of months ago, not so much as a syllable of gossip or anything about him. And suddenly he's making weekly visits to my shop. One day he's purchasing a diamond stickpin. I ask myself, would a fellow like him even own a cravat? Next, it's gold cufflinks engraved with his initials. Then a French eighteen-carat gold pocket watch with Swiss movement. A few days, perhaps a week later, he's back. This time it's a ring, again eighteen carats, the setting for a magnificent sapphire. And that's not all, my dear Inspector. Unlike many of my customers, even the wealthy ones who often pay by giving me a note, Hupfer pays in cash! Yes, nice crisp genuine German banknotes!”

“Does it occur to you that Hupfer may be lucky at cards? Or perhaps a rich uncle has died and left him a fortune? Some Germans…you'd be surprised at the number…have recently made piles of money on the stock markets, not only here but abroad. One must always give a man the benefit of the doubt in such matters, Thüringer.”

A half-smile appeared on the old jeweller's face. “I've known you too long, Preiss,” he said, “and not once have I ever known you to give a suspect the benefit of the doubt.”

“And who's to say this man Hupfer is a suspect?”

“Come, come, Inspector,” Thüringer said, “I'm an old scoundrel, and you cannot fool an old scoundrel. The man
must
be a thief, an embezzler, maybe a blackmailer. These nostrils of mine are never wrong. So, Preiss, do we have a deal? I cannot bear to stay another minute in that hell-hole down the hall. Get me out of here, and I will furnish you with enough solid evidence to back up all the suspicion I've just planted. Look at it this way: I'm just a little fish leading you straight to a possible shark.”

We rose together, and Thüringer extended his right hand. “Deal?” he said.