The next day we went to Gentili’s house and knocked on his door. After a considerable time, and only after he had fully satisfied himself as to our identity, and that we were unaccompanied, he let us in.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that as a Jew I have to keep a low profile if a government official is present. Accordingly, I stayed away from the festivities yesterday. My professional activities are being increasingly circumscribed by the actions of my government.”
Holmes raised the matter of the concerto Vivaldi had written for the court of Brandenburg. “Vivaldi had benefactors and patrons across Europe for whom he wrote concerti,” said Gentili. “It is new to me, but it does not surprise me that he wrote for the court of Brandenburg. If the string parts were simple, it is possible that he will have also used it for the girls’ school in Venice at which he worked for many years. He will then have been able to claim a fee for the same work twice over.”
Holmes turned to me. “You will recall, Watson, that I had to discontinue my investigation into the circumstances behind the composition of Bach’s Brandenburg concerti. With this discovery, I wonder whether it is worth re-opening the investigation and claiming the balance of the reward.” He turned back to Gentili and asked him “Would you be interested in travelling to Brandenburg and investigating Vivaldi’s activities there? I would be happy to commission you with this work for, in your investigative skills, I feel a talent akin to my own.”
Gentili flushed with pleasure at Holmes’s words and accepted the invitation with alacrity. “If the results of your trip to Brandenburg did not accord with your expectations,” he commented, “it is perhaps because you did not know where to look.” Once again Dr Gentili did not explain his words.
Holmes and I returned to England. Within a few days, Holmes was back at my door, having arranged another meeting with Dr Gentili. The Italian looked excited after his trip where, backed by a letter from Holmes, asking for access to the Brandenburg archives, he had spent a week amongst the shelves.
“Vivaldi,” said Gentili, “was often known by his nickname of the Red Priest or Il prete rosso. So sometimes, in my searches for his manuscripts in other archives, I have found them filed under the name Rossi. Looking in the Brandenburg court archives for documents under that name I found a letter in Vivaldi’s hand to Johann Sebastian Bach where he tells Bach of a large orchestra in Brandenburg, with outstanding trumpet, keyboard and violin players as well as a patron with a taste for unusual sonorities and musical structures. I found nothing in the payroll records in the archives to substantiate Vivaldi’s claim of the scale and complexity of the ensemble, so I can only conclude that Vivaldi wrote the letter to send Bach on a false trail. When Bach submitted a group of his own concerti that were unplayable by the ensemble in Brandenburg, it was a guaranteed way of making sure that no commissions from Brandenburg ever went to the German master. And that would leave the field open for Vivaldi.”
“Do you have the letter?” asked Holmes.
“Unfortunately, I was not authorised to take the original but I have transcribed its contents here. Vivaldi wrote it in Italian and the court translator made a German version to send to Bach, which is why a copy of private correspondence between the composers was retained in the archives. From what I have seen, Bach was completely taken in by Vivaldi’s ruse. I also found evidence of several payments to Vivaldi in respect of his works although they were paid under the name Rossi. Vivaldi thus had both the means and the motive to deceive the great Bach and he seems to have made the most of the opportunity.”
As my reader will be only too aware, the 1930s was a time of gathering storm clouds in Europe. Holmes submitted Gentili’s findings to the Bach Society, who were dismayed to find out how Vivaldi had made a fool out of their hero and declined to give the findings, which they received under Holmes’s name, any publicity at all. They nevertheless gave Holmes the reward due to him for fulfilling their commission, though whether this was to fulfil the contract, or to attempt to avoid publicity, I would not speculate. The condition for payment - that Holmes should not disclose the discovery to anyone - suggests the latter. In any case, Holmes passed the reward he received to Gentili in such a way that the Italian authorities would not hear of it.
At the time of writing, in early 1950, and after the end of the Second German War, it seems right to bring the story of Vivaldi, Bach and the Vivaldi autographs up to date.
The Brandenburg archives were destroyed in a bombing raid in late 1944, so no original of the letter Gentili discovered there will ever be found.
Gentili returned to Italy after his last trip to London and was barred from working at the University of Turin. He endured difficult years before and during the war. After the conflagration was over, he wrote to Holmes again to thank him for the munificent reward from the Bach Society that had made surviving the war years slightly less difficult. He is now working on cataloguing the vast collection of music in Turin and remains engaged in making new discoveries of works by the great Italian master. Publication of the manuscripts has started with pictures of the two infant boys, Mauro Foà and Renzo Giordano, on the front.
And although Vivaldi himself appears not always to have shone in his dealings with patrons, employees and other musicians, this does not of course detract from the beauty and vitality of his music. In next year’s Festival of Britain, a week of concerts has been planned dedicated to it. The pieces to be played - which provide a good selection of his instrumental works - have been advertised as being the first modern public performances of Vivaldi’s music, although I feel privileged to recall that I heard the first modern private performances of two of the pieces many years ago when they were played by Mr Sherlock Holmes.
A Seasonal Tale
My reader will need no reminding of the extreme cold of the early months of 1895. The winter of 1894/1895 brought only two cases to add to my annals - one in late December 1894, immediately preceding the advent of polar conditions across the country, and one that came our way at the end of March 1895 just as the last frosts were clearing. Holmes was able to resolve neither case to his full satisfaction, but both threw up similar, profoundly existential questions of a type Holmes and I never explored at any other time. Furthermore, these two cases occurred next to one another in the list of cases we investigated and, although their main events took place several months apart, they reached their conclusion within minutes of each other. Accordingly, it makes sense to treat both under one narrative.
The 25th of December 1894 dawned gloomily. Holmes looked out of our window onto the street below and then up at the sky as it at last became light just after breakfast.
“That the Romans felt the need at this time of year for a celebration of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, should not surprise us,” he commented sombrely. “The Stygian darkness in these last days of December is all but unending, and the human desire to seek a pattern in events that are either random or beyond our control almost irresistible. On our first acquaintance, good doctor, I said to you that I get a bit in the dumps sometimes but that I soon get right. This unending dreariness allied to an absence of any stimulating work is just the sort of thing to precipitate such a mood and it is but a paltry comfort that the winter solstice is now behind us.”
The sky was indeed a leaden grey and, as I pointed out to Holmes, although he gave no sign that he had heard my remark, the most colourful thing to be seen from our window was the dun brickwork of the buildings opposite us. It was soon after this exchange that, to my great relief, our sitting room played host to a new petitioner, although the man who interrupted our gloomy observations was the most down-at-heel client we had ever received. Holmes had previously remarked that his most interesting cases tended to come from the needier classes of society, but when I looked at the ragged and aged figure in front of us on that early morning, I confess that I had the lowliest expectations.
“My name is Michael,” he
said after much prevarication and obfuscation, which I abbreviate for the sake of clarity, “and I am a groom at the stables of the great lunatic asylum in St George’s Fields in Southwark. There have been some very strange goings-on over the last two days and I thought I should discuss them with someone, but I had no idea who the right person might be. There is a very big stable at the hospital, but it is largely for the use of visitors coming to see their sick relatives. So a groom always needs to be present as the hospital has visitors at all hours of the day or night and our doctors work some strange hours. I normally work through the night to make sure that all is well.”
“Pray continue,” said my friend leaning forwards in his chair. I could see from his expression that he was keenly interested by what our visitor was saying, even though I could not see where this exposition of our petitioner’s problem was taking us.
“Last night I came into work at nine and found a woman and a man in our stable. They had appeared from nowhere - the groom I had relieved had made no mention of them. Working in the sort of place I work in, you’re used to seeing some strange things, but this was new to me. The couple said that they had been on a long journey, had nowhere to stay and had decided to put up in our stables. She was heavily pregnant and, to my complete astonishment, said she proposed to give birth where she found herself. I called on my superior to explain my problem, but he said there was no room for anyone in the hospital and suggested I saw what I could do to make the man useful. So I set him to repair some of the mangers which needed fixing, and it was obviously something he had done before as he made a right good go of it.”
My reader will understand that Michael’s apparent claim that the nativity story was happening in his stable had already caused me to dismiss him as a harmless prankster, but I could tell from Holmes’s alert poise and bright eyes that he was fully engaged in Michael’s narrative.
“Just after midnight last night,” continued Michael, “the woman - though, in truth, she wasn’t much more than a lass of thirteen or fourteen - gave birth to a baby boy whom she laid in one of the mangers which her husband had repaired while I upped and came here.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, I was hoping you would supply the ‘anything else’, Mr Holmes. A woman giving birth in my stable would be trying enough for anyone.”
Holmes thought for a moment. “Are the couple and their baby still there?”
“They are, sir.”
“Then we must go to the stable now and speak to them. These events you describe from St George’s Field are indeed so out of the ordinary as to require an investigation.”
I was uncertain of whether to accompany Holmes on what seemed to me to be a wild-goose chase on a day when the consumption of the fatted goose at midday was what was uppermost in my mind. He turned to me, however, and said, “Watson, none of the events you have ever written about have been as worthy of your pen as these in Southwark. I would beseech you to join us.”
Faced with an imprecation such as this, I had little choice but to follow. At my friend’s insistence we got into two cabs, although I noticed the driver of the one that took Holmes and Michael was very reluctant to accept a fare as shabby as the groom. Holmes had to insist he wanted our petitioner with him in the cab.
It was mid-morning when we arrived in Southwark and I was surprised as we walked from the cab to the stables to hear the sound of wonderful music floating through the air. I was for a second at a loss as to where the beautiful tones were coming from until Holmes provided an explanation:
“Many asylums,” he commented breezily, “employ talented musicians to organise their music. You will remember, Watson, the rather unusual case of a few months ago when the West Country musician, Edward Elgar, consulted me on creating a musical riddle. Elgar directed music at the main lunatic asylum in Worcester and I have no doubt a musician of similar calibre is directing the music we can hear now.”
The full exposition of Edward Elgar’s consultation with Holmes may form part of a future narrative, but among Holmes’s suggestions to Elgar was that the latter did not need actually to create a musical riddle at all - he merely needed to state that his music contained one and the public would create a mystery and possible solutions for themselves. Holmes further advised that the application of a mystery, however spurious, to the work would increase its marketability. The well-known Enigma Variations was the product of this petition to Holmes by Elgar.
“Yes sir,” said the groom, seemingly impressed by Holmes’s surmise. “The asylum’s musicians have been practising since dawn for their next concert. It seems a strange time to do it, but, as I said to you, strange things happen at strange times in this place.”
We went into the stable, which had none of the odours I would normally associate with such a place. Instead there seemed to be a hint of incense in the air. The couple that Michael had told us about were sitting in the stable in a pool of light cast by a beam of watery December sunshine which shone through a hole in the roof.
“Good morning,” said Holmes. “I am Sherlock Holmes and this is my colleague, Dr Watson. We came to see if you needed any help. Can the medical assistance of Dr Watson be of service to you?”
The wraith-like girl of whom the groom had spoken really was only about fourteen. She had dark eyes which peered at us from olive skin, and she held us in a steady gaze before she said, “I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth. Sunward I’ve climbed, then swooped in tumbling mirth. I have danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings of sun-split clouds, and done a myriad things. And there, where neither lark nor even eagle ever soared, ‘tis there that I have consorted with my Lord.”
The fire, the poetry and the complexity of her statement quite took my breath away and, when I glanced across at Holmes, I saw a look of wonder cross his face too. The girl’s voice was of the utmost serenity and fitted with the glorious streams of music we could hear from the orchestra and choir practice. But the accent was uneducated and, when I saw this young girl seated in these humblest of surroundings, I felt like looking round to check, in case the words had come from the mouth of someone else.
The man, who had similarly dark features, came forwards.
“What are we to do?” he asked plaintively in the same rough accent as the girl. “My fiancée has kept making these weird remarks ever since she fell pregnant and I don’t understand them. I thought the place to take her was an asylum, where there might be someone who would understand her, but they would not make room for her and said we should stay in the stable ... I don’t know what to do.”
After some further discussions, I performed a brief medical examination of both the woman and the baby and established that their condition was normal in every way.
I turned to Holmes and said, “I don’t know what there is for us to do.”
Holmes said, “We must seek some proper medical care for the mother. A stable is no place for someone who has just given birth, and there is clearly more to be worried about than just her physical condition. Come with me, Watson, and we will see whether we can at least get this lady a bed here for a couple of nights.”
It was only on the walk from the stable to the hospital building that I was able to articulate the thoughts which had first stolen into my brain at Michael’s initial and confused deposition, but which were now pounded through my head like a peal of bells.
“Holmes!” I exclaimed. “This truly is the Christmas story. There are too many similarities for it not to be!”
Holmes turned to me with his finger raised to his lips. “As we saw in the case of Jonas Oldacre which you describe in ‘The Norwood Builder’, a detective should always seek an alternative to the obvious explanation. I shall investigate this mystery as I would any other.”
To my relief, the senior medical officer in the ladies’ ward of the hospital was the good Dr Bridge, a man I knew as my old tutor on brain fe
ver from my days as a medical student. He expressed astonishment that anyone heavily pregnant, especially someone making delusional remarks, would have been turned away at the door of the asylum. “We do what we can here to help anyone in need,” he said, “and an extreme case such as you describe, Watson, would certainly be offered help.”
He agreed to take the couple and their baby in for at least three nights, and Holmes and I returned to the stable to bring them the good news.
When we got there, to our consternation, not only had the couple and their baby gone, but Michael had disappeared and his successor as the duty groom was a man who knew nothing about any couple who had been staying in the stable. It is almost certainly irrelevant to the narrative that I now tell, but the music had stopped, while the doors and windows had been thrown open so that there was no trace of the heady perfumes which had wafted round the stalls only a short time previously.
The much younger man who had come on shift was curt and unhelpful. No, Michael had not briefed him of anything special at the shift change. He had spent his time since he came into work cleaning up the mess that had been left by what he regarded as Michael’s neglect of his duties. The new groom had done such a thorough job of this that even on close examination by Holmes, there were no signs of any couple having spent the night in the stable.
The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3 Page 6