The Moonlit Garden

by Bomann, Corina

  All she had to do now was find Thornton’s office. She marched down the long corridors, the muted sounds of violin, cello, and piano music reaching her from behind the doors. She even came across an opera singer working on an aria.

  I should have phoned, she thought. He won’t be too pleased about me simply turning up like this.

  After wandering past a few doors, she finally spoke to a young woman who had clearly just been to a music lesson, as she was carrying a violin case under her arm.

  “You’re best to go round that corner; Mr. Thornton’s office is halfway along the left-hand corridor,” the young woman said. Lilly thanked her and continued.

  The door was open, which she took to be a hopeful sign, but as she entered, she realized it was only a lobby—complete with secretary. She was blonde and looked around forty, and although she was very attractive, she had all the charm of an icicle.

  “Hello. I wanted to ask if it would be possible to speak to Mr. Thornton,” she began, trying to ignore the fact that she had cold feet about this. “My name is Lilly Kaiser.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the secretary asked sharply.

  “No, I don’t, but I’ve just come from Ellen Morris’s institute. It’s about a violin I’d like to show to Mr. Thornton.”

  There was no doubt from the dragon’s glare she gave Lilly that she thought her boss’s time could be better spent than by looking at some old violin.

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Thornton is very busy at the moment. The best I can do is to make you an appointment for April.”

  Lilly thought she must have misheard. April? In Germany you could get an appointment to see a medical specialist sooner than that!

  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have left London by April. Is it not possible to speak to him sometime this week or next? I only want him to take a look at the instrument, nothing more.”

  The secretary’s expression didn’t melt in the slightest.

  “Then you’ll have to find someone else. Mr. Thornton’s calendar is completely full this week and next.”

  Lilly sighed, wondering how she could engineer a meeting with Thornton so he could examine her violin. Perhaps it would be worth lying in wait for him in the parking lot.

  “What’s up here?” came a voice from behind her.

  Lilly whirled round. Thornton was leaning on the door frame with a boyish smile on his face. It seemed his secretary had only just noticed his arrival, as she breathed in sharply, but she soon started in again.

  “This lady would like to make an appointment with you,” she gasped out, but his eyes had already betrayed his recognition.

  “Well, if it isn’t my recent companion from the Berlin flight! Do you want to arrange lessons with me?”

  The blood shot to Lilly’s cheeks. She was so embarrassed that words failed her. Thornton gave her an encouraging wink, then looked across at his secretary, who seemed at a loss as to what was happening.

  “Yes, I mean, no, I . . . I’m here about something else,” she managed to say. “I promise I won’t keep you for long, but I’m afraid I can’t stay in London for long, and I’d really appreciate it if you could help me.”

  Thornton regarded her for a moment, then turned to his secretary. “How does it look, Eva? Do I have anything urgent?”

  From the corner of her eye Lilly could see that Eva was also blushing now, which made sense when she replied, “No, Mr. Thornton, your next appointment is at half past one.”

  “Great! Have you any objection to me taking you for something to eat in our award-winning cafeteria, Mrs. Kaiser?”

  “Thank you, that’s very kind.”

  Forcing herself not to throw the secretary a malicious glance, Lilly followed Thornton.

  “I must confess that ‘award-winning’ was a joke,” Thornton said as they strolled down a long corridor, “but the food here is actually very good. I recommend the steak and mashed potatoes.”

  Lilly felt as if she were back in her college days as she stood before the service counter with a tray. At the same time, she was touched by the way Thornton mixed in with his employees and students for his meals. Her university rector would never have been seen in the cafeteria.

  Lilly was not particularly hungry but nevertheless went for the steak he’d recommended, which turned out to be rather good.

  “So, how can I help you?” Thornton asked after swallowing a hearty bite of steak.

  Lilly pushed her plate to one side and took out the photos. “You know Ben Cavendish, who works for Ellen Morris? He knows you and thinks you can help me with this.”

  “Fire away!”

  “You remember the violin you kindly stowed in the overhead bin on the plane for me?”

  “Yes, the one you were seeking an expert opinion on.”

  Lilly nodded and pushed the photos over to him. “This is it.”

  Thornton frowned briefly. “You don’t have it with you?”

  “No, Ellen’s got it. She’s going to examine it. I’d like to know who it used to belong to so I can perhaps find out how it came to me. It was handed over to me as a kind of inheritance.”

  Thornton leafed through the pictures. When he came to the one showing the back of the violin, he stopped short.

  “My goodness,” he murmured, laying the photo almost reverently on the table in front of him. “I thought it had been destroyed.”

  Lilly raised her eyebrows. His words had no meaning for her—at least not yet. “Don’t tell me you know this violin!”

  Thornton nodded, staring at the rose for a few moments in silence.

  “Come with me,” he said finally.

  “Where to?” Lilly asked.

  “To our archive in the basement. Unless you want to polish off the rest of your steak.”

  Lilly had lost the meager appetite she’d had. Her heart was beating wildly, and her face felt flushed. She jumped up so fast she made her chair rock dangerously, but she reacted quickly and managed to grasp it before it fell and drew the attention of the whole cafeteria to her.

  “Take it easy.” Thornton smiled. “What I’m about to show you isn’t going to run away.”

  Embarrassed, Lilly gathered up the rest of the pictures and followed Thornton out of the cafeteria.

  “There was a time when disobedient pupils would have been threatened with being locked up down here,” Thornton remarked as the elevator carried them down. “Nowadays that wouldn’t scare anyone, since there are some very interesting things down here. Ancient recordings, instruments, sheet music, pupils’ files, and the like.”

  Sheet music. Lilly felt like whipping out the photocopy of the sheet music on the spot, but she controlled her impulse.

  “And photos?” she asked instead.

  “Yes, a lot of photos. We regularly employ restorers who bring battered instruments back into good condition, and we keep photographic records of all of them. And of course all of our collections are digitized. At the moment we’re busy making MP3 recordings of wax cylinders and old shellac records. That’s not such an easy task since these machines sadly don’t have USB ports.”

  Lilly laughed—the thought of a gramophone with a USB port was so absurd. There had once been an old gramophone in her shop, and she had always regretted not keeping it for herself.

  “Here it is!” Thornton indicated a glass door with “Archive” on it in antique lettering. Inside, it was anything but an old dusty storage area. The air was kept at a pleasant temperature and smelled of old paper and wood.

  “I hope you’re not too cold down here. As well as old instruments, recordings, and photos, we’ve got a collection of sheet music, some of it very old. Some items even date back to the time before the Great Fire of London in 1666. I have no idea how they managed to survive the fire, but it’s absolutely fascinating to hold in your hand, for example, an original from Henry VIII’s time, and play the composition.”

  “I can imagine,” Lilly said, practically bursting with enthusiasm. “I also get
very excited when I’m offered a really old piece.”

  “What was the oldest piece you ever had in your shop?”

  “A seventeenth-century bureau. The owner had found it in a barn and thought it was worthless. I had it restored and sold it at a very high price. It really was a wonderful specimen; it wouldn’t have been out of place in a museum.”

  “That could well be, and it’s a good thing that museums preserve these treasures. But objects were originally made to be used—just like musical instruments. It makes my heart bleed to hear of someone placing a valuable Stradivari in a safe in Switzerland so it’s never played. Apart from the fact that this isn’t good for an instrument, the best virtuosi in the world would kill to be able to play it. And there’d be no better way of getting big names into the audience.”

  Thornton opened a cupboard and took out a kind of index-card box. It didn’t appear to contain much, but the name “Rose Gallway” was printed on the front.

  “Unfortunately, this is all we have,” he said apologetically as he took out a photo. “The violin that’s come into your possession once belonged to a former pupil of this conservatory. I’m sure of it.”

  The picture showed a young, dark-haired woman in a high-necked, severe-looking white dress. Her features were a little faded, but it made the violin in her hand all the clearer. Lilly found the way she held it very unusual, turning it so the back could be seen. Musicians generally always posed with the fronts of their instruments showing. It was as if she wanted to show that her violin was something special.

  “For many years now we’ve collected photos and paintings of the men and women who studied here. They’re usually holding their instruments, which means we can readily identify them if they’re still in our possession.” Thornton tapped the photo lightly. “This young woman was a minor legend in her circles. She was one of the best violinists of her age. Sometimes, though, when stars shine too brightly, they soon burn out. Rose Gallway was one of those for whom fame was all too brief.”

  “What happened?”

  Thornton shrugged. “No one ever really got to the bottom of it. She was on a concert tour and disappeared without a trace. The newspapers at the time indulged in wild speculation. There was talk of abduction and murder—some even say that she married the ruler of some exotic kingdom, but nothing certain was ever discovered. What we do know is that she played a most remarkable violin.”

  “My rose violin,” Lilly said without moving her gaze from the photo. “Did Rose Gallway have any children?”

  “No one knows. As I said, she simply disappeared. And the violin materialized in the possession of another young woman. Helen Carter.”

  Lilly needed a moment to take this news in. Her violin had belonged to a famous violinist! But how had it come to her?

  “Who was this Helen Carter?”

  “The daughter of an English couple who lived on Sumatra. Helen was also a very famous violinist, who suffered a dreadful accident at the height of her career. She survived but never played again. All trace of the violin was lost during the Second World War. We’ve always been convinced that it was destroyed during the London air raids. Obviously we were mistaken.”

  “Did this Helen Carter have any children?”

  “Yes, but they were killed together with her and her husband during the war, in an attack off the coast of Sumatra.”

  “What’s my connection with the violin supposed to be?” Lilly realized immediately that she had spoken her question out loud. “Um . . . I mean, I don’t have any connection with Sumatra,” she added, a little embarrassed. “My mother and grandmother are from Hamburg. Neither of them ever said anything about a violin.”

  A thought was forming on the edge of her mind. Until now she had always thought of the violin in connection with herself. But what if Peter . . .

  “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to follow the violin’s story back through its history if you want to find that out,” Thornton said, driving out her speculation for the moment. “Perhaps it came into someone’s hands during the war. Perhaps they saved it from the ship on which Helen and her family were sailing. The name Rodenbach doesn’t happen to feature anywhere in your family tree? That was the family name of Helen’s husband.”

  Lilly shook her head. “No, not that I know of.” She suddenly remembered the copy of the music in her bag. “There was something else in the violin case.”

  She took out the copy and handed the page to Thornton. He had no sooner looked at it than he took a step back and sank down on the edge of a nearby desk as if he suddenly felt faint.

  “‘The Moonlit Garden.’” His voice was little more than a whisper.

  “Is it possible that Rose Gallway composed it? Or perhaps this Helen Carter.”

  Thornton said nothing for a few seconds, but his eyes drank in one note after the other, as had Ellen’s. Perhaps he now had the melody in his head.

  “If this composition really was by one of those two women, it would be a sensation,” he said finally, looking up from the music.

  “The piece sounds quite exotic, so if you’re saying that Rose Gallway was from Sumatra . . . ”

  “You’ve heard it?”

  “My friend played it last night on the rose violin.”

  Thornton took a deep breath. “I’d love to do that, too.” He considered briefly, then said, “How about a deal, Mrs. Kaiser?”

  “A deal?”

  “Yes. I’ll help you with your investigation if you allow me to play your violin just once.”

  Lilly raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But your appointment calendar is full, and—”

  “And I’m interested in finding out something about one of our former pupils,” he completed her sentence for her. “There are gaping holes in the biographies of both Rose Gallway and Helen Carter. And then there’s this composition. As yet we don’t know that either of these women also composed music. But if they did, experts would be delighted to hear of it. And I would have contributed to shedding some light on the puzzle.”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “If we dig around a little in the past, we’re bound to come up with something.”

  “All right, then, Mr. Thornton, if it’s not too much trouble,” Lilly replied, causing her new partner to smile and offer her his hand.

  “Call me Gabriel.”

  “Only if you call me Lilly.”

  “I think I can manage that. And I can assure you that it thrills me to be working on this project. We’re not going to give up until we know how this violin found its way to you. And which of those two women composed this piece. Oh yes, may I take a copy of the music?”

  Lilly nodded with a smile, wondering what the piece would sound like when he played it.

  That evening Dean was out. After Ellen and Lilly had eaten with the children, they settled down to enjoy a bottle of French red wine that Ellen had brought back with her from a trip to Paris.

  Enfolded by the warmth from the open fire and pleasantly relaxed by the wine, Lilly reported in minute detail on all that Gabriel had told her. The whole situation still seemed unreal to her, but she was now forming a plan in her mind, with stages she could aim for one by one.

  “You made the right decision in accepting his help,” Ellen said, staring pensively into her wineglass. “If anyone can find out who composed ‘The Moonlit Garden,’ it’s Thornton. But it sounds like there are serious gaps in the records.”

  “There must be some information somewhere,” Lilly replied.

  “Yes, and you never know, perhaps this Rose has descendants. Perhaps you’re even one of them?”

  Lilly shook her head. “No, I can’t be. Look at me, red haired and freckled. This Rose had jet-black hair and milk-white skin. And I haven’t the slightest musical talent. You’d be more likely to be a descendant of one of them. You’ve got dark hair, and you play the violin.”

  “Nonsense,” Ellen replied drily. “The old man came to you, not to me, so it must be something to
do with your family.”

  “Or perhaps there’s a connection with Peter.” Lilly saw Ellen looking at her uneasily. “It’s a possibility, isn’t it? The elderly man could have been looking for him, found out he’d died, so came to me. I was his wife, and so . . . ”

  Lilly felt a pressure in her breast weighing her down. She suddenly wondered how well she had actually known her husband. Did the mystery lie not in her family but in his?

  “Did you get hold of Sunny?” Ellen asked, clearly trying to divert their attention from Peter. On the way home, Lilly had told her about the video surveillance camera. Ellen finished her wine but kept the glass in her hand, as if reading something from the dregs.

  “No, not yet. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave it till tomorrow now. But if she succeeds in playing through the video and finding the right spot, I can show it to my mother. Perhaps she’ll recognize the man. And if she doesn’t know him . . . ”

  It occurred to Lilly that at least two years had gone by since she had been in touch with her parents-in-law, although they had always gotten along well. Perhaps not well enough to continue their relationship now that Peter was no longer alive.

  “Then that only leaves Per and Anke.” Not only had Ellen guessed her thoughts, but she clearly also remembered the two of them.

  Lilly nodded. “Yes, Per and Anke. Who knows what they’d have to say if I suddenly turned up on their doorstep and told them this story.”

  “They liked you, Lilly—you know that. Perhaps they still do. They probably understand that you can’t always be coming over for Sunday afternoon coffee. Peter’s life came to an end, but not yours.”

  “Yes, and you can’t imagine how often I’ve wished it could have been the other way around.” Lilly sighed deeply, and the two sat in silence for a few minutes.

  “Did Thornton say what he wants to do next? Did you exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses?” Ellen resumed eventually.

  Lilly nodded. “Yes, we did, but I’m sure it will be a while before he finds anything out. Can I use your computer to check my e-mails? If I’d known it was all going to turn out like this, I’d have brought my laptop.”