Murder in A-Major (4 page)

G
eorg Adelmann and I sat down to lunch at Emmerich's Restaurant des Artistes at noon on the day after the concert. As I feared, Dr. Adelmann possessed expensive tastes in food and drink. Presented with the wine list, he reverentially recited the contents, stopping abruptly at a particularly costly vintage. “Ah yes,” he exulted, “a '29 Burgundy! One of the better years. Splendid! You know, Preiss, a good Burgundy
begs
for roasted goose, doesn't it.” Which is what he ordered, explaining that he habitually ate only one meal daily and therefore preferred that it be copious. This disclosure became all the more ominous thanks to a fawning headwaiter who profusely congratulated Adelmann on his admirable choices while cautioning him to save room for a cheese platter and dessert.

“Somehow, I'm not at all startled by this dreadful turn of events in Schumann's career,” Adelmann said. As he spoke, minuscule bits of the pickled beets that he'd ordered as an appetizer flew from his busy lips, landing on the white expanse of tablecloth between us, leaving the once pristine space spotted as if from smallpox. I made a mental note to keep a safe distance from the man throughout the meal. “You see,” Adelmann went on, “from the very moment of his conception in 1809, indeed even
before
that time, the Schumann family was star-crossed. Strange, but some bloodlines seem to have a natural talent for collecting bad luck. They have a kind of magnetism, like lodestone, but unfortunately what they attract more often than not is misery.”

“You mean Schumann was born into poverty?” I said.

“On the contrary,” Adelmann said, “his father and his uncle had established a rather profitable book publishing business in Zwickau—”

I dropped my fork. “Did you say Zwickau, Dr. Adelmann?”

“Yes. In Saxony. You're familiar with the town?”

“Of course. As a matter of fact, I was born nearby. A small town called Zwicken.”

Adelmann sniffed the air. “Zwicken? Zwicken? Never heard of it. I assume, sir, that you were fortunate enough to spend your childhood in a more
civilized part
of the country. At any rate, Schumann's father was an extremely sickly man, but a man of some considerable literary accomplishment. Wrote a dozen or more books, mostly about mythology. By the time young Schumann was old enough to attend school, the family was enjoying some affluence.”

“What about Schumann's mother?”

“She was the daughter of a doctor. When Schumann's father, August, wanted to marry Johanne Schnabel—that was her maiden name—the girl's father gave August a hard time. Insisted the young man get into business first. Put a lot of stress on the poor fellow, which he never quite got over. Life-long stomach pains, sore limbs, headaches, that kind of thing. Not unlike the current situation with Robert and Clara. Strange how history repeats itself, eh, Preiss?”

“How so?” I said.

“No doubt you've heard of the notorious Professor Friedrich Wieck, Clara Schumann's father?”

“Only that he is a piano teacher of some importance. I never heard him referred to as notorious.”

“Then let me set you straight, Preiss. A dreadful human being, that's the best one can say for Wieck. Did his utmost to make Schumann's life miserable. Schumann was a pupil of his, but his playing ability was somewhat hampered by a small right hand. So Wieck devised some sort of stretching apparatus to apply to young Schumann's hand. Pure torture, and in the end not worth a damn. Ruined Schumann's chances for a career as a concert pianist. And as though that wasn't enough, Papa Wieck bitterly opposed his daughter's pending marriage to the seemingly luckless Schumann. Even went so far as to force a court battle over the issue. Lost, of course, and ever since then the acrimony between the two men has been thick enough to chop with a butcher's cleaver.”

“You started to tell me about Schumann's mother,” I said.

“Ah, yes. Again, history repeats itself. She gave birth to five…or was it six?…children in short order. Robert was the youngest. Poor woman spent much of her life, even when times were relatively good, in the shadows of chronic melancholy. Young Robert was the child she felt closest to, especially because at a young age he displayed exceptional musical talent. At the age of seven, he began music lessons with a church organist in Zwickau. No doubt about it, Preiss, the man you and I witnessed going to pieces before our very eyes last night in the concert hall was once upon a time a very gifted child.”

“Then when did Schumann's life take a wrong turn?” I said. “Look, Dr. Adelmann, many men and women blessed with innate talents run headlong into adversity, but they manage to overcome, even to triumph. Take Beethoven, for instance. He became a legendary figure despite becoming stone deaf. My God, he wrote the great Choral Ninth when he couldn't hear a single note of the piece.”

“Ah yes, Inspector—” Here, Dr. Adelmann jabbed his knife in the air to make a point. “But, there are some—and I am one of them—who will go to their graves maintaining that Beethoven's Ninth—the choral part, that is—was a tragic mistake.”

I stared at Adelmann as if he'd just uttered heresy.

“You see, Preiss, the piece is barely singable. It was written at least one whole tone too high. Next time you have an opportunity to hear the piece, listen carefully. If you can prove me wrong, I, Georg Adelmann, will deliver to your doorstep an entire case of Germany's best Moselle. The trouble with Beethoven is that he didn't know when it was time to quit.”

“And it is your opinion that the same can be said of Robert Schumann?”

“Yes, absolutely. The man's a mess.”

“And you attribute this principally to his childhood, then?”

Adelmann suddenly laid down his knife and fork. “If you will forgive my saying so, Inspector, I don't quite see how your inquisitiveness about Robert Schumann's childhood is germane to the purpose of this conversation. As I understood it, you wanted to know more about the man as a full-fledged
composer so
that your friend Miss Becker might—as you put it—better understand the Cello Concerto.”

There was a hint of suspicion in his eyes, something I was not accustomed to. (As a detective, it was I who gave people suspicious looks, not the other way around.) “Please pardon the insatiable curiosity of a policeman, Dr. Adelmann,” I said. “Interrogation is in my blood. My life is punctuated by question marks.”

Still eyeing me with some skepticism, Adelmann said, “I don't know why it is, Inspector, but I have this strange feeling that your mission—how can I put it delicately?—has less to do with your friend's interest in Schumann's concerto and more to do with…” Here my guest hesitated for a moment. Lowering his voice, he said, “More to do with these tales about the Schumanns themselves.”

Hoping my expression looked innocent, I said, “Tales? What tales?”

Adelmann sat back in his chair, as though shrinking away from the subject he had just raised. “I have no wish to engage in gossipmongering,” he said in a sanctimonious tone.

Nonsense!
I thought. Journalists thrive on gossip. Scandals are the condiments that add spice to a journalist's trade, but for the time being I would have to let him pretend he was above spreading such stories. “You are perfectly right, sir,” I said, “and I respect your insistence on being discreet in such matters. Nothing would be more unjust than covering a distinguished couple like Robert and Clara Schumann with a blanket of scandal.”

I had used the word “scandal” deliberately, waiting to see if Adelmann would rush to deny that there was anything scandalous in the air concerning the Schumanns. That he did not do so sent me an important message. At some point, and soon, I would have to subject myself to a second expensive meal with Georg Adelmann in order to delve into what he called “these tales about the Schumanns themselves”.

But for now I would have to be content to learn more about the composer's past rather than his present.

“Schumann's childhood and early youth were blessed on one hand because of his talents,” Adelmann said, “but on the other hand were over-burdened with his parents' ambitions for him and their expectations of him. This ‘on-one-hand-and-on-the-other-hand' pattern applied to everything in Schumann's growing and developing years. He had a close relationship with his father and his three older brothers, which fed the masculine side of his life; but he was also closely attached to his mother and to her more feminine interests. At times, he was a very sociable and outgoing child; at other times, he was anxious and withdrawn. When he was fifteen, his older sister Emilie committed suicide by drowning. Soon after, his father died suddenly. Schumann was devastated by both losses. So much happiness at times, so much tragedy at other times. Schumann's cheerfulness as a child vanished almost overnight. He became taciturn, daydreamed a great deal and, by his own admission, was unsure of himself in social settings.”

Dr. Adelmann paused. Somehow he had managed to consume his plate of food while talking (the tablecloth bearing increasing evidence of this feat) and nodded now with approval as I refilled his wine glass for the third time. For a moment he turned his attention to the whereabouts of our waiter, which I took as a signal that he was ready for one of the desserts that stood tantalizingly on display on a nearby trolley. To my dismay, he selected not one but two—a large bowl of trifle and a generous slice of apple strudel.

Watching Georg Adelmann pitch with gusto into his desserts (he paused only long enough now and then for a noisy sip of his coffee), I was beginning to think that the price I was paying far exceeded the value of the information he was yielding. Wasn't it the same for everyone? I asked myself: friends and relatives come and go, prosper and fail, live and die. I began to fear that the Schumann monograph would prove about as fascinating as a railway schedule and only half as useful.

But just as I was about to consign this luncheon to the wastebasket, Dr. Adelmann redeemed himself.

Studying a large forkful of strudel, he said in a casual way, “You are aware, are you not, Preiss, that some years ago—when he turned twenty-one, to be precise—Schumann conceived the idea that he had produced twin companions, companions of the mind, so to speak? He called one ‘Florestan', the other ‘Eusebius'. Florestan represented Schumann's outgoing masculine side, the social being, the man of action.”

“You mean Florestan, the hero in Beethoven's opera
Fidelio?
”

“Exactly. Eusebius, on the other hand, was named after the Christian saint, of course, and represented martyrdom, suffering, submission. The two ‘spoke' to Schumann, or so he revealed to intimates. They provided a kind of balance to his life and his artistic endeavors, gave him a sense of direction, he claimed. Still claims, in fact.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, Adelmann said, “And as if that were not enough, the poor fellow was much too preoccupied with sex. Obsessed is more like it.”

I wasn't certain I wanted my guest to go on with this particular topic, not at Emmerich's Restaurant des Artistes. God knows I wasn't prudish about the subject of sex. As a police investigator, I had come across just about every kind of sexual activity known to the human species. Still, there were limits to what one discussed openly. “If I may be frank, Dr. Adelmann,” I said, speaking as politely as I could, “I would prefer to hear about Schumann's sexual problems in a more private venue.”

“Come, come, Preiss!” said Adelmann. “I take it, sir, that you are a man of the world and not some naïve country bumpkin. Word has it that between over-indulgence in sexual intercourse with a variety of young women, and presumably an excessive amount of pleasuring himself, Schumann's most private part—his penis, to be specific—is in dreadful condition. You know, Preiss, one cannot be cavalier about where one deploys one's ‘soldier'. The trenches are perilous, and grievous wounds are too often suffered for the sake of instant gratification.”

Pompous ass! Besides, given his obvious dedication to his stomach, my guess was that
his
“soldier” seldom if ever saw active service in “the trenches”.

“Several highly respected physicians,” Adelmann continued, “have speculated—privately to me, you understand—that he probably contracted a form of venereal disease as a young man. How has this affected his marriage? Well now, there's a choice topic for speculation, eh?” Adelmann gave me a wise wink.

As we rose to leave the restaurant, he suddenly tugged at my arm. “I suppose you've heard about Schumann's house guest? Very interesting young man. Composer and pianist. Hails from Hamburg. Been on a concert tour. Apparently stopped over in Düsseldorf. I understand they are very taken with this fellow. You know: kindred spirits, lovers of the romantic movement in music. Like the proverbial peas in a pod, so I'm told. I was introduced to him recently. Quite handsome, even dashing. Tall, blond, eyes like sapphires.”

The description immediately brought to mind the stranger in the conductor's lounge the previous evening. “I believe I may have seen the young man you describe last night, after the concert. Do you recall his name?”

“Of course,” Adelmann said. “Johannes Brahms. I can tell you, his is a name to remember!”

E
arly the following morning—a Tuesday—I arrived at my office wanting nothing more than to close my door, sit back in my chair with my feet propped up on my desk, and catch a half hour's sleep without disturbance. I had spent the previous night and early morning hours in a cell-like bedroom, the walls and ceilings of which looked as though they had been painted crimson by some shamefully inept decorator. The “painter” clearly was the same man who had left similar souvenirs of his artistry in two other bedrooms in this lower-class section of Düsseldorf in recent weeks. The victims, all young prostitutes, had their throats cut after suffering multiple stab wounds. As the investigator in charge, I was under orders from the Commissioner of Police to spare no effort in the search for the killer.

But somehow the eagerness and the energy that, up to now, had flowed so unflaggingly in me, seemed to have leaked through my pores, as though through a sieve. Making my way from that bedroom to the Constabulary, I experienced a weariness far beyond anything physical.
Face it, Preiss
, I lectured myself,
this is what you do to earn your living—and not too bad a living it is—so put your heart and soul into it!

The lecture was falling on deaf ears. Over the course of my stroll back to police headquarters—I passed up a carriage ride, wanting some time to myself—I pondered the reasons for this sudden and uncharacteristic lethargy.

In my heart of hearts, as my career went on, there was this feeling, weak at first but steadily gaining in strength, that there was a tiresomeness about crime that inevitably made the
investigation
of crime tiresome.

What's more, I had grown sick of the locations of crime. The typical sites were tawdry—cheap, sparsely-furnished rooms in flophouses; bordellos with mattresses stained and reeking of every kind of human spillage imaginable; taverns whose ales tasted like recycled dishwater and whose food was repulsive even to the rodents who explored it; alleyways and back streets where footsteps in the dark meant that rape or murder were no more than an arm's length behind. Only in theatrical dramas did these offenses take place in castle corridors and frilly boudoirs, the playrooms of the rich and noteworthy. In real life, evil's preferred domain was the gutter.

Arriving back at my office from this latest investigation, I was in a despondent mood. It quickly brightened, however, when I caught sight of an envelope delivered to my desk just before my return. The handwriting, the imprint on the seal (a treble clef), and the floral scent of the paper, told me this was from Helena Becker.

I broke open the seal and extracted the note. And read:

Dear Hermann
—

Robert and Clara Schumann have extended a warm invitation to the Düsseldorf Quartet to participate in a musical evening at their home this coming Saturday at eight o'clock. The guest of honour will be Franz Liszt, who is once again visiting Düsseldorf en route to Weimar. I gather that a number of luminaries in the musical world will be present. Our Quartet will perform Dr. Schumann's Quintet for Piano and Strings with Clara Schumann at the keyboard. The invitation mentions that each of us may bring a guest.

I can think of no one who might benefit more than you from attending this event. Therefore I shall refrain from further tempting you to accompany me except to add that our hosts will offer a light supper prior to the musicale. (And if you play your cards right, I may offer you further refreshments later in the evening, Hermann.)

Helena