Academy of the Dead

by Christopher Wright

  "That's all rubbish."

  "Have you ever been to a séance?" Ken asked, a smile still on his face.

  "No, have you?"

  "Only once. I had to investigate a medium for a client. It must have been seven ... probably eight years ago. My client was a middle-aged woman and she thought her mother had been murdered in an old folk's home. The police weren't interested, so she went to see a medium who claimed she could contact the mother in the afterlife and ask her the truth. After a couple of séances the medium claimed she was definitely in contact with the mother, but the answers were hopelessly vague. After about ten visits my client suspected the medium was taking her for a ride."

  "And your client was paying every time she went?"

  "You bet. Being charged a fortune, just to hear a lot of nonsense being spoken in a husky voice."

  "I wish I'd been there. Was the medium genuine?"

  "Not that I could see. My client took me along to one of the séances and told the medium I was her brother. I took a camera and flash, just in case anything materialized in the dark."

  "A camera? Was that allowed?"

  "I didn't ask, kiddo. Anyway, nothing showed up. Just this strange voice talking about life on the other side. As far as I could tell it was the medium, speaking from deep in her throat. A sort of creepy ventriloquist act."

  Matt moved closer, intrigued. "How did it end?"

  "I told the medium who I was. She agreed she was getting nowhere and returned the money -- reluctantly. Well, most of it."

  "So was the mother killed in the old folk's home?"

  "Don't ask me, kiddo. I don't investigate murder."

  "But you surely don't believe in that sort of thing."

  Ken shrugged. "I'm open about it. But I'm sure of one thing: offers to contact the dead are an invitation for a grieving relative to lose money. That's when people are at their most vulnerable. Anyway, I've wasted enough time this afternoon with that Martin Smith, so let's not get into discussing his old mother. I've got work to do. Tell me what Blake said when you took the bill round. Is he going to pay promptly?"

  Matt remembered the offer Blake had made at the Academy, asking him to do a bit of investigation on the side. Something to do with missing music manuscripts. But with Ken was in such a bad mood this didn't look like the best time to discuss it. "He didn't really say."

  "You took a hell of a long time to sort that one out." Ken glanced up quickly. "Who's that coming up the stairs now?"

  It certainly wasn't Martin Smith. Matt reckoned he would have noticed if Martin Smith had been wearing high-heels.

  Zoé opened the door and stopped in surprise. "Am I interrupting something?"

  "Nothing," Ken told her. "I could do with a bit of sanity around the place."

  Matt went forward to kiss Zoé. "It's not often Ken gives out compliments."

  "I do if someone's pretty enough," Ken said.

  "Why, thank you." Zoé blushed. "Ken he is a good man, Matt. You are wrong to keep telling me such bad things about him."

  Matt shrugged and briefly told Zoé about Smith's visit.

  "He lives with his mother?" she asked.

  "Sounds like it," Matt said.

  Zoé looked around the office. "Monsieur Smith is a talented pianist, and a good conductor for our little orchestra. If he has lost his post at the Academy it is all your fault, Matt. And yours, Ken."

  "Lady," Ken told her, "don't blame me for this one. I don't know anything about him."

  "I have always thought he is sad," Zoé said.

  Ken stood up and waved his hands to shoo them out of his office. "Look," he said impatiently, "I don't care if he's sad, or mad, or even dangerous. My afternoon's been wasted enough as it is. Go home early, Matt, and leave me in peace. I've got a couple important phone calls to make."

  Matt beckoned to Zoé to come with him. "Let's go before Ken changes his mind." He stopped and looked back into the office. "Shall I lock downstairs door?" he asked.

  "Why would you do that?" Ken asked.

  "Just in case Smith comes back. You never know, he might be sad, mad, and dangerous."

  Chapter Six

  MATT HAD left his bright orange Mini in the service yard behind the office in its usual parking slot. For some reason he looked back over his shoulder as he unlocked the car door to let Zoé in. Maybe it was the thought of Martin Smith hanging about that made him do it. Well, if the stud came back looking for some sort of revenge, Ken would have to deal with him. He'd had bad vibes about this assignment from the moment Blake came into the office, but Ken couldn't see it.

  "Please be careful of my arm," Zoé said, as he held on to her more tightly than he'd intended. "That man outside the restaurant last night, he has bruised it."

  "Right," Matt told her. "I'm going to make sure he's off the streets by tomorrow morning."

  "And how are you going to do it?"

  "I'm ... going to think about it."

  "You thought about it last night. You thought that the police would not be interested in anything you told them."

  "I'm going to ask Father Alban for advice. That was Ken's idea."

  "Father Alban he is a good man, so why would he encourage you to harm a homeless man?"

  "Father Alban works for HAT, and no, he definitely wouldn't encourage me to violence."

  "Ah yes, the Homeless Anchor Trust. Are you sure Father Alban is still here? We have only seen him a few times since our wedding."

  "He'd have come to see us before going back to France. Look, I sometimes feel guilty about homeless people. I start to worry in case one of them is God in disguise, sitting by the side of the road to test me."

  "Then I think you have failed to test."

  "I think we've all failed the test."

  "Except Father Alban."

  Matt pulled Zoé's sleeve up and revealed a greenish bruise on her left forearm. "I don't think God did that to you. More likely the man's a drug addict and doesn't really know what he's doing." He looked at his watch. "Do you think Father Alban would be there now?"

  "Maybe we could see him later. I would like to go home now and have a rest." Zoé patted her stomach. "I think the two of us need to take it easy, and I would like you to come with us."

  "I saw Edward Blake this afternoon. He ... he offered me a sort of job ... on the side."

  "On what side?"

  "It's a saying. It means doing something unauthorized. Blake reckons he's on the trail of some missing Czech music. He's been going through the Academy records in Prague."

  "Records? Do you mean CDs?"

  "I imagine he meant written music. Stuff by Dvorak and Smetana, he said. Maybe Janacek. I don't know. He's going to tell me more about it later."

  Zoé gave a little squeak of pleasure. "Matt, this is the most exciting thing I have heard for a long time. Lost music from Bohemia? I do not think the baby will mind if we go and see Monsieur Blake now."

  "If you're sure." He pulled out his cell phone. "I've got Blake's number now. I'll give him a ring and see."

  Blake sounded a little dubious. He said he was busy, and asked Matt if he could possibly manage the evening, about eight. "We'll need to use the Academy library -- on our own," he explained. "It's closed to students this evening, but I have a key."

  "I'd like to bring Zoé with me if that's all right. We'll come straight to your apartment."

  "Do you know where my apartment is?"

  "Number eight. We saw you there last night, when I brought the film round."

  Blake hesitated. "Best if you come to the main entrance. I'll be waiting. Try not to be early."

  At eight o'clock exactly Matt drove the old Mini up the winding drive with Zoé sitting sleepily in the passenger seat. Her little rest had turned out to be a sound sleep after tea.

  He parked in one of the visitors' spaces and switched off the headlights. The summer was coming to an end and the nights were drawing in more noticeably. Blake said he'd be waiting by the main entrance. Matt couldn't see
a light in any of the windows of apartment eight so presumably Shelley Carpenter was out. It wouldn't surprise him if Blake had told her to move out permanently.

  Blake emerged from the gloom and opened the car door for Zoé. "I hope you're feeling better, Mrs. Rider," he said in his rather deep, penetrating voice.

  Zoé got out quickly, perhaps to prove that she'd fully recovered from last night's ordeal. "Today I have no problem, but thank you for asking."

  Blake nodded, clapped his hands, and looked round as though to make sure no one was watching. "Right, the library."

  The library was not at all the sort of room Matt was expecting. Somehow he'd imagined a large mahogany door opening onto shelf upon shelf of leather bound books. Instead the room looked more like a small sports hall with rows of fluorescent lights which came on with a clatter as Blake flicked the switches. Most of the books appeared to be modern, stacked on gray steel shelving, and nowhere could he see anything that looked like bundles of Academy records dating back over the past hundred years or so.

  "This is what we need." Blake went to the microfiche reader. From his jacket he removed an envelope containing a rectangle of film in a see-through protective cover. "The Academy records for Hana Eisler," he said with a dramatic flourish.

  "Is she a student here?" Zoé asked.

  Blake inserted the sheet of film into the glass carrier. "Hana Eisler was a student in Prague. She disappeared in 1942."

  "Disappeared? Like dead?" Maybe this was where Blake's idea of contacting the departed came in.

  "Dead, Mr. Rider? I have absolutely no idea."

  "It's just that you mentioned something yesterday about being prepared to contact the dead."

  Blake frowned. "Did I? Perhaps I was thinking of contacting Hana Eisler's parents, or even her great grandfather Vasek Tesar." He laughed awkwardly. "Let's concentrate on finding what happened to Hana. She was twelve years old, and as far as I can tell she was the last person to have the music manuscripts."

  "I need a starting point." Did Blake think a PI just stumbled on clues without knowing the background?

  Blake felt in the side pocket of his jacket and removed a black box, the sort of presentation case that jewelers use. He flicked it open and Zoé gasped.

  "It is beautiful, Monsieur Blake."

  Blake nodded. "I borrowed this brooch…" He paused and turned to Zoé. "Do you French call them brooches, or pins like the Americans?"

  "Brooches," she said. "In French it is broches."

  Blake put on a smile. "Brooches it is. I borrowed this brooch from the Academy in Prague. It was still with Hana Eisler's records. She left it there in 1942 and never returned."

  "You think it was a family heirloom?" Matt asked as Zoé reached forward to remove the brooch carefully from the box.

  "Non," Zoé said. "It is not an heirloom. It may have belonged to Hana's mother, but it is not older than that."

  Matt examined it closely. "How do you know?"

  "It is easy." Zoé turned the brooch over in her hand. It was in the shape of a small butterfly with a mix of colored stones making the shape of the wings. The butterfly's body was a single green stone set in silver, with a bright red stone for the head. "It is Art Nouveau. Perhaps French."

  Matt took the brooch from Zoé and held it to the light. For a moment he had a vision of a young Jewish girl wearing it proudly in the city of Prague, her head filled with classical music. Hana Eisler with an Art Nouveau brooch; a gift from her mother.

  Blake retrieved it and replaced it carefully in the box. "Prague was a major center in the development of Art Nouveau. It will have been made somewhere in what was Czechoslovakia."

  "Is it valuable?" Matt asked.

  Blake shrugged. "I have no idea. In any case I have to return it to the Academy in Prague soon. They ... they do not know I have it."

  Matt took one last look as Blake closed the box. "I take it we're not after jewelry."

  "No, not jewelry, Mr. Rider, I have already told you it is music. My belief is that Hana Eisler was in possession of some rare nineteenth century manuscripts when she disappeared. Bohemian music manuscripts that could cause major ripples in the music world today."

  "Hana Eisler." Matt repeated the name aloud. "You really expect me to find out what happened to a twelve-year-old girl? Do you know where she was last seen?" As if that would help. Hana Eisler was hardly likely to be sitting on a doorstep somewhere in the Czech Republic, still holding the manuscripts.

  "Hana Eisler failed to turn up at the Prague Academy on the fourth of June 1942." Blake shifted the glass carrier through several pages on the microfiche, stopped, and adjusted the focus. "The Academy register for June 1942. Hana's name is marked as absent on the Thursday in question. Then follows a handwritten note, added later by her tutor, to say that she failed to appear from that time on."

  Matt leant forward to examine the photographic copy of the page projected onto the screen. It was written in Czechoslovakian. At least, that's what he assumed the language to be, with so many accents over the letters. "I can speak French, but I can't guess at these words."

  "This is not French," Blake said.

  "I know it's not, but if you can speak French you can make a reasonable stab at languages like Italian and Spanish. But I can't see single word here I recognize."

  "Czech is a Slavic language," said Blake.

  Matt looked again. "Are you sure you know what it says?"

  "Perfectly. I speak very little Czech myself, but I've been able to get a few of these pages translated by someone who speaks the language fluently. Next time I go to Prague I hope to get all the pages translated."

  "Maybe we should wait until you've done that," Matt suggested. "There might be all sorts of clues on that film."

  "After World War Two, the principal of the Prague Academy conducted a major search for the missing manuscripts. He had full access to these records." Blake pointed to the microfiche reader. "I doubt if there's much of interest on here."

  "So why show it to us?" Matt asked.

  "Mr. Rider, I merely want to prove to you the existence of Hana Eisler and the music manuscripts. That is all."

  "But you've been getting these records translated. So someone else must know what you're doing." This seemed surprising. "I thought your investigation was secret."

  Blake looked round quickly. Again, he seemed lost for words, but only for a moment. "You are quite right, Mr. Rider. I removed this microfiche and the brooch from the Academy records in Prague without anyone knowing. And I can assure you that the person who did the translation for me had no idea why I needed it."

  "The mother of Monsieur Smith is Czech," Zoé said.

  Blake breathed in quickly. "Mrs. Rider, Martin Smith must not know what I'm doing. Is that clear?"

  Zoé nodded, and Matt rushed to her defense. "There's no need to speak like that. Zoé was only trying to help."

  Blake held his hands up. "Please excuse me. I have been so involved in trying to trace what happened to Hana's manuscripts, that I am sometimes a little edgy. I had no wish to cause offense."

  Matt moved to one of the wooden library chairs and sat down. It didn't really bother him whether anyone else knew about Hana and her manuscripts or not. "What have you found so far?"

  For someone who'd only been able to get a few of the pages translated, Blake seemed to know his way around the microfiche pretty well. He slid the carrier sideways and then forwards, and adjusted the focus on another page. "Here is a letter from Hana Eisler's father, Jakob Eisler. I am told it is a request to the Academy asking them to admit his daughter as a pupil. In it Jakob Eisler claims that his grandfather was Vasek Tesar, a Bohemian musician who was famous in the mid nineteenth century."

  "I can't say I have heard of him, but then I'm not really into Czech music," Matt said. "I'm more of a Shostakovich man."

  Blake breathed in sharply again. "Why do you say that?"

  Matt shrugged. "I just like the way he wrote. I've collected Shostakovich
for years."

  Blake seemed to relax. "Shostakovich, the man who gave equal status to every note. Dissonance, you could say. You're not going to hear much Shostakovich being played in Prague, Mr. Rider. Too many memories of the Communist regime."

  "I know about Vasek Tesar," Zoé said, as she peered forward to examine the screen. "He wanted to revive Czech national music in the 1840s, and was a sponsor of composers like Dvorak and Smetana."

  "I still haven't heard of him," Matt said, "but I guess it's not important." He looked up to find Blake frowning. "Is it?"

  "No, no, I'm sure it's not. I'm not asking you to investigate Vasek Tesar. Anyway, his life is well documented. We know he had a daughter Pavla who carried on the fine musical tradition of the family. But Pavla had a mind of her own and married a Jew. His name was Eisler. Erich Eisler. In the eyes of many citizens of Prague such a marriage was a serious social blunder for Pavla Tesar."

  "When was this?" Matt asked.

  "In 1882," Blake said confidently.

  "Marrying a Jew was a problem in those days? I thought European Jews didn't get a hard time until the 1930s."

  Blake shook his head. "Mr. Rider, you obviously have no idea how the Jews have been persecuted in Europe over the centuries. The situation in Prague was no worse, and probably no better, than what was happening in other European cities. European Jews have been persecuted off and on for over a thousand years. And don't think persecution stopped at the end of the World War Two. The Communists were almost as hard on the Jews as the Nazis were. Perhaps as hard."

  Zoé pulled a chair forward and sat down. "My country France has a bad record of persecuting the Jews." She looked at Matt. "And so does yours, in the Middle Ages."

  "I didn't know." He wanted Blake to get on and tell him what he had to do. "You were talking about missing manuscripts."

  The door opened and Martin Smith, the young stud, stood blinking in the light. He was still wearing his black shiny trousers and red shirt. It seemed to be his trademark. Blake turned round quickly.

  "Yes, Mr. Smith?"

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Blake." In spite of his size Smith sounded tense.

  Blake waved his hands dismissively. "Mr. Smith, if you've come to discuss Academy business you can see me in my office in the morning. And if you've come about any other matter, I have no wish to talk to you."

  Matt wasn't surprised to find Blake speaking like this. Martin Smith had been caught having an affair with his partner. It was a wonder that Smith had stayed to speak when he saw Blake here in the library.