The Figaro Murders

by Laura Lebow

  “Filthy goddamn Jew! Think you’re better than the rest of us!”

  A warm, salty liquid came from my mouth. The pianoforte resumed, its player repeating the passage I had just heard.

  “Come on,” I heard my assailant’s companion call. “That’s enough.”

  “In a minute,” my attacker said. He leaned over me, his putrid breath in my face. “One more minute.” He smiled evilly, and reached inside his cloak, pulling out a halberd. My eyes widened.

  “Who’s the better man now, Signor Abbé?” he said, sneering.

  “Come on!” His friend’s voice was more urgent. “Someone will hear us. We’re not paid to kill him!”

  My assailant raised the halberd above his head. The music stopped again. I saw the yellow of his rotten teeth, then a field of stars. I fell into blackness.

  Twenty-nine

  I don’t know how long I lay there before consciousness returned. I gingerly pulled myself up on my hands and knees and groped for my stick, which I found in a pile of trash a foot away. My face felt wet and sticky. I rummaged through my cloak and found a handkerchief. When I pulled the clean cloth away from my face, I saw blood and dirt all over it.

  My entire body groaned as I pulled myself to a standing position. I stumbled as I slowly made my way out of the alley. The few passersby on the now quiet Herrengasse stared at me as I trudged by, but no one stopped to ask if I needed help.

  My stomach churned with worry. How had my assailants discovered that I was born a Jew? I had not practiced that religion for twenty-three years, not since the monsignor of Ceneda, named Lorenzo Da Ponte, had baptized my family so that my father could marry a Christian woman. It was he who had seen that I was given an education. I had eagerly taken our patron’s name, and would always be grateful to him for changing my life. I had never told anyone here in Vienna that I had been born in the Jewish ghetto. I shivered as I wondered who had paid the man to beat me, and how he knew so much about me.

  After what seemed like an eternity of slow, painful steps, I reached the palais. My hands shook as I fitted my key into the lock, opened the door, and entered the foyer. I dragged myself up the stairs.

  “You killed her!”

  The shout came from the left, the baron’s office. I hurried as fast as my aching legs would take me down the hallway. The wide doors stood open. The baron stood in front of his desk, his hands outspread before him. Bohm, both hands holding the old sword that had hung over the mantel, pointed the tip at his employer’s neck.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” the baron said.

  Although his back was to me, I could tell that Bohm’s arms were shaking. The baron winced as the sword tip grazed his cravat.

  “You killed my Anna!” Bohm shouted.

  The baron raised his hands higher. “I know of no one named Anna,” he said.

  “You should have been arrested by now!” Bohm cried. “You should have hung as a traitor to the empire! When they came to me and offered me the money to steal information from your desk, I saw my chance to avenge her! You would be blamed, your career ruined, your life and your family’s lives destroyed, like you destroyed mine.”

  My mouth dropped open. At that moment, the baron saw me. His eyes widened slightly.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, Bohm,” he said. “Who is Anna?”

  “My wife!” Bohm cried. “You killed her. You and your emperor. We were happy, me, Anna, and Antonia, living in the cottage out at Schönbrunn. I managed the grounds for the old empress. She appreciated my work so much she left me a pension of six hundred florins a year in her will. Then you and the emperor canceled all the pensions! I was left with nothing!”

  The baron nodded for Bohm to continue.

  “My cottage, all of the beautiful things the empress had given Anna and little Antonia, I had to sell them all just to move us here to Vienna to find a new position. Anna took it hard. The night before we were to leave, she hanged herself in the kitchen.” He pushed the point of the sword closer to the baron’s neck.

  The baron caught my eye. I made a small gesture. He could not risk a nod, but managed to raise his eyebrow imperceptibly.

  “You allowed that boy to seduce my daughter,” Bohm shouted.

  The baron swallowed hard. He held his hand up. “I did not—”

  “He filled her head with dreams, so he could ruin her!” Bohm said. “It is all your fault!”

  I stepped into the room. “Don’t worry, Bohm! He will pay for all of his crimes!” I shouted.

  Bohm jumped and whirled around. The baron grabbed the hilt of the sword and twisted it out of the valet’s hands. He threw it to the ground and pushed the startled Bohm against the desk, pinning his hands behind his back.

  “Quick, Da Ponte, some rope, in the cupboard there!”

  I ran to the cupboard and flung open the doors. Piles of documents stood neatly on the top two shelves. A pile of rolled maps sat on the bottom shelf.

  “I don’t see any rope—”

  Bohm twisted and kicked at the baron. “You deserve to die for what you did to me!” he yelled.

  “In the drawer, at the bottom,” the baron said. “Hurry!”

  I pulled open the wide drawer and grabbed a coiled length of rope. I ran back to the desk.

  “That chair, bring it here, quickly.”

  I hurried across the room and grabbed a wooden chair that sat in the corner, then dragged it over to the desk. The baron pushed Bohm onto the chair. The valet began to weep.

  “Hold his hands behind the chair while I tie him,” the baron said. My shoulders ached as I pulled Bohm’s wrists together. His anger spent, he offered no resistance.

  “Anna, Anna,” he sobbed.

  “Did you kill my wife?” the baron demanded.

  “No, no. She was innocent. I only wanted you. I swear. I’ve killed no one!”

  The baron turned to me. “Good work, Da Ponte,” he said. He rubbed his neck. “Find Ecker and tell him to send for Troger.”

  I nodded and headed to the door.

  “No, wait a moment,” the baron called. “Before you go, tell me—what did you mean when you said that I would pay for all of my crimes?”

  I stood silently for a moment. I made my decision and opened my mouth to speak.

  Thirty

  “Sir! Are you all right?” Ecker hurried into the room before I could utter a word of accusation. He looked around the room: at Bohm, tied to the chair, weeping uncontrollably; at me, battered and bruised, standing with my mouth wide open; and at the baron, who had picked up his father’s sword and was carefully replacing it in its place of honor over the mantel. “What happened?”

  “I’ll send for Troger,” I told the baron. He nodded, and I fled the room.

  Rosa Hahn was coming up the stairs from the foyer as I arrived at the landing.

  “Signore, what is going on up there? What is all that noise?” She gasped as she saw my face. “What has happened, signore? Who did this to you? Was it the murderer?”

  “It’s Bohm. He’s attacked the baron.”

  “Is the baron all right?”

  “He is fine,” I said. My legs would no longer carry me. I sank to the steps.

  “Signore, you are injured!” She hovered over me.

  “I’ll be fine, Rosa,” I said, waving her away. “Please, would you go into the street and get a boy to run to the Hofburg? Tell him to fetch Captain Troger from Count Pergen’s office. He can ask one of the guards how to find him.”

  She nodded. “Go down to the kitchen, signore. I’ll wash those cuts for you when I return.” She ran down the stairs and out into the courtyard.

  I pulled myself up and slowly made my way down to the kitchen. The large room was empty, but the fire was burning and it was warm. I sprawled in the chair by the hearth and closed my eyes. My mind was in a whirl. Bohm was the spy. He had nursed a grudge against the baron for his role in the emperor’s pension reform, and had come to Vienna to seek vengeance
for the suicide of his wife. Had he planned to kill the baron? Perhaps, at the beginning, when his mind was still clouded with grief at the loss of his wife. The King of Prussia’s agents must have kept watch on the household, and seen the arrival of Bohm as a chance to plant a spy. The valet had cooperated, hoping that he could incriminate the baron and see him accused as a spy for Frederick. When Antonia had lost the child, the sight of her lying deathlike on the bed had made him lose his senses.

  “Now, signore, let me see.” Rosa entered the kitchen. She winced as she looked at my face. “What happened to you?”

  “Some ruffians robbed me in an alleyway.”

  She poured warm water into a bowl, dipped a cloth in it, and gently began to clean the dried blood off my face. My body relaxed as her competent fingers dabbed at my injuries. The water and her touch were soothing.

  “Oh, I’m getting all wet!” she exclaimed. She rolled up the sleeves of her dress. “I have some herbal ointment here, signore. I’ll rub it on these scrapes. Just put your head back a bit. Yes, that’s good.” I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of her fingers dancing over my skin, deftly rubbing the grease into my sores. I inhaled deeply. Her skin smelled like lemons.

  She moved my head to the side, turning it so it faced her inner arm. I opened my eyes for a moment and studied the spatula-shaped dark purple birthmark on her upper arm. Something niggled in the back of my head. Where had I seen that mark before?

  “What has happened with Bohm?” she asked me.

  “He blamed the baron for causing his wife to commit suicide,” I explained.

  “Turn your head to the right, signore,” she said.

  “He had worked for the old empress and she had left him a pension. The baron was one of the ministers who canceled all those pensions when the empress died. He—”

  All at once it came to me. The last time I had seen a mark like that I had been sitting in a similar position, being shaved by Vogel that last day in his shop. My pulse quickened. Look for the woman who spilled the wine, Florian Auerstein had told me when I demanded he tell me what he knew about Vogel’s birth mother.

  I sat up straight and clutched Rosa’s forearm. She jumped back, startled.

  “Madame,” I asked. “Are you familiar with a convent called the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin, here in the city?”

  Her face whitened.

  “You see, I’ve seen a birthmark like yours before,” I said. “It was on the arm of a man who was born in that convent, thirty years ago.”

  She gasped.

  “A man you know well. Johann Vogel.”

  She moaned and swayed, grabbing onto the back of my chair.

  I jumped to my feet. “Wait here, Miss Hahn,” I said. “I have something to show you.”

  I hobbled to the door and up the stairs, my pulse racing with excitement. I had found Vogel’s mother at last.

  * * *

  At the first landing I ran into Piatti, who was wearing a cloak and carrying a valise.

  “Lorenzo, good, I’m glad I bumped into you. I’m taking the coach tonight to Trieste, then on to Bologna. I wanted to say good-bye.” He peered at my face. “Good Lord, what happened to you?”

  “I can’t talk right now, Tomaso,” I said. “What time are you leaving?”

  “In a half hour. I was just going to wait in the library until my carriage came.”

  “I’ll be up in ten minutes,” I said. I climbed the stairs to my room, grabbed Vogel’s box, and hurried back down to the basement. Piatti had told me that Florian spied on everyone in the house, especially the women. He must have been peeping at Rosa while she was undressing one day and had recognized the birthmark as being similar to Vogel’s.

  I turned into the kitchen.

  “They told me he was dead! They told me he was dead!” Rosa, her face red with anger, beat her fists against the chest of the man who held her by her upper arms.

  “Calm down! You know I did what I had to do at the time!” Urban Rausch said. “I wasn’t ready for marriage thirty years ago.”

  “You told me you would marry me after I had the baby!”

  “I remember no such promises,” Rausch said. “I told you I would pay for you to have the baby at the convent.”

  “No!” Rosa shrieked. “You told me we would marry! After the baby was born, you never came back. The nuns told me the baby had died. I was all alone, with nowhere to go.”

  “Nonsense!” Rausch said. “I paid the abbess very well to make sure that you were offered a post working at another convent. Get control of yourself! I am not to blame for your lifetime of unhappiness!” He pushed her off him. She stumbled and fell to the floor, sobbing.

  Rausch noticed me at the door. “What are you gaping at, Da Ponte?” he asked. His mouth contorted in an ugly expression. “You couldn’t mind your own business, could you, you goddamn Jew! I should have ordered those men to kill you, not just beat you.”

  I stared at him. “How did you know I was born Jewish?” I asked.

  “I carry on a small private practice in addition to my research. I have patients in high places. When you came here, I asked around about you. I knew you were spying on me, trying to prove that Vogel was my son.” His laugh was harsh. “Apparently everyone in Vienna knows that the theater poet is a Jew passing as a priest!”

  Rosa pulled herself up onto the chair. “You had him beaten, you lied to me—all to protect your reputation so you could marry that Heindl woman,” she said.

  “I’ve been a poor relation to my ward and her husband too long,” Rausch said. “Always having to beg for funds to complete my manuscript, to buy books for my research. Franziska supports my work. I wasn’t going to let it come out that Vogel was my son. I’ll admit I made a mistake when I was a student, carrying on an affair with my mother’s chambermaid, but why should I still have to pay for that? Franziska would have broken off our engagement if the news had come out. I’ve done right by you. I took a risk, bringing you here and getting you this job when your convent was closed. And didn’t I give you hundreds of florins to make up for the past?”

  “Florian told me my son was still alive,” Rosa whispered.

  “He saw your birthmark and remembered that Vogel had one of the same type in the same place,” I said. I turned to Rausch. “The baron had the records from the convent where Vogel was born. He must have gone through them and found Vogel’s birth certificate, with your name and Rosa’s on it.”

  “Yes,” Rausch admitted. “He showed them to me one evening. I was astonished that the result of my little mistake was actually here in this house, threatening my future. We both agreed that it would do neither of us any good if my past came out. He burned the birth certificate in the library fireplace.”

  “Florian must have been eavesdropping,” I said.

  “He told me there were records that showed my son was still alive,” Rosa said. “He teased me, wicked boy! He refused to tell me what he knew.”

  “That’s why you were searching the baron’s desk that evening,” I said. She blushed. I turned to Rausch. “The boy must have told the baroness about it. She insisted you admit your paternity.” Rausch shook his head.

  “Don’t lie to me, Doctor. I overheard your argument with her. A few days later, she was dead.”

  “You think I killed her?” Rausch was indignant. “I loved her!”

  “You encouraged me to lend him the money,” Rosa cried. “You wanted him away from here, in case I found out—and then you urged me to press the lawsuit against him. My God! I sent my own son to prison!” She began to weep again.

  “Why are you crying?” Rausch said. “You are not so innocent in all of this.” He laughed. “You lusted after him! Everyone in the house could see your desire all over your face. You never even recognized that he looked a bit like you, in his nose and his lips, or that he had my hairline.”

  As I stood there, their voices receded. Rausch’s mention of recognition renewed the niggle in the back of my mind I had had the o
ther night. I had seen something that I recognized, something that didn’t make sense—

  A moment later my mind was inundated with images. Neat, cramped rows of handwriting in a small notebook. Pages from my libretto, covered with comments. A red-faced man rushing into the library. A quizzical eyebrow as I chatted in the courtyard. A worn, carefully repaired coarse cloak, its hood covering a small, delicate head.

  I slipped out of the room and climbed the stairs. I now knew who had murdered Florian Auerstein and Caroline.

  Thirty-one

  I stood in front of the library door, my heart pounding. I quietly pulled open the door. The sun had set, and only a small lamp on the table lit the room. Although the windows were closed, the heavy velvet drapes had not been drawn. Tomaso Piatti stood at one of the tall bookcases, his attention deep in the baron’s collection. He drew out a volume and stuffed it into his valise.

  “Tomaso,” I said.

  He started, but quickly regained his composure. “Oh, Lorenzo, it is you! Why are you standing there in the shadows?”

  I glanced at the valise.

  “All right, you’ve caught me, my friend. But you must feel the same as I do. These magnificent books are wasted here. In all the years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen the baron read a single book. He won’t miss these.”

  “You killed Florian and Caroline,” I said.

  Piatti sighed. “Ah, Lorenzo. I wish you hadn’t come up here after all. Things would have been much simpler if you had fallen in front of that carriage the other day.” He closed up the valise. The tic in his left eye had disappeared.

  “You were blackmailing Caroline.” I pulled the little notebook out of my pocket.

  “I was right after all. I knew you had it,” Piatti said. “I looked everywhere in your room for it. How did you know it was mine?”

  “I didn’t. I assumed it was Florian’s. He dropped it that day in the library. I only realized a moment ago that it actually belonged to you. Everyone told me how sloppy Florian was. Even you told me that the music assignments he turned in to you were full of inkblots. The notes in the book were too neat to be his. I recognized your handwriting, from the comments you wrote on my libretto.”