by Sarah Rayne
‘I don’t know where he would have got it, but émigrés bring whatever they can carry. Whatever they’ve salvaged. You’ve only got to look at some of today’s people fleeing from Syria and Aleppo and all those other bombed-out places. They carry their belongings on handcarts and in wheelbarrows, poor sods. It’s heartbreaking to see the news clips. I can see Stefan – or whoever brought him to England – tumbling stuff into boxes, gathering up everything that had belonged to his family without necessarily looking at any of it.’
‘Yes, that’s true. He might not have known the music was even there.’
Toby looked across at the music, then said, ‘If it’s the real thing, how much d’you think it’s worth?’
‘Difficult to say. But a handwritten score of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony recently sold at auction for about four million pounds.’
‘Four million?’ said Toby, his cherubic face shocked. ‘You did say four million?’
‘Yes. It was an all-time high for any musical manuscript, I think, and the Siegreich’s not in that kind of category. But, if it’s genuine, Stefan would be in line for a very large pay-out.’
‘He’d live out the rest of his life in utter luxury,’ said Toby. Then: ‘Phin, is all this really taking you back to Stefan’s family?’
‘I’m certainly curious about his parents,’ said Phin. ‘But I was thinking of Giselle. I’d like to know who she was, and why her name’s in the painting.’
‘She might just have been the painter’s chère amie. It might even have been a name he conjured out of nowhere because he thought it looked good on the canvas. She doesn’t have to exist and, even if she does, she doesn’t have to be the villainess of the piece.’
‘If there’s a villainess at all, I’d rather cast Giselle than Christa in the role.’
‘Oh, you’re obviously heading for a fateful end,’ said Toby, promptly. ‘Never fall for a villainess. Yes, you may well laugh, but it’s good advice. Give any villainess you meet a very wide berth, Phineas Fox, because at best she’ll strangle you with her cloak or stab you with her jewelled dagger, and at worst …’ He paused for dramatic effect, and Phin waited.
‘At worst,’ said Toby, lowering his voice thrillingly, ‘you’ll die the death of the Black Widow Spider’s mate, and trust me, that’s a shrivelling fate in the worst possible way. If you take my point.’
‘It’s taken,’ said Phin, grinning.
‘Well, good.’ With an air of changing tack, Toby said, ‘Look here, you said the music looked as if it had a military flavour to it. Except for that chord?’
‘Yes. That’s massively out of pattern.’
‘So the finished article would have been intended to include – um – trumpets and drums and things?’
‘Yes. It would have been the kind of music the Führer’s military bands played.’ He frowned, and heard himself say, ‘They sometimes marched past infirmaries that held captured British airmen, deliberately playing German marches to emphasize their ascendancy over the wounded men.’
‘But,’ said Toby, ‘is that music we found – and the music that’s in the painting – is it written for those instruments? Should I say scored for them? I wouldn’t know a quaver from a quintet and, as far as I’m concerned, to score means something quite different.’
Phin grinned again, then said, ‘It could have been intended to be transposed. Some instruments do need transposition. The clarinet, for instance. But it isn’t necessary to transpose for every instrument, although different ones give different sounds from the same note – a double bass, for instance, sounds an octave lower than music written in concert pitch. What we’ve found could be the core composition.’
‘Written for the piano? Written on the piano?’
‘Well, a lot of the greats worked without any musical instrument at all. Bach, Beethoven, Mahler – most of them – could think in music notation. But I’d guess this was written with pen, paper and, yes, with a piano.’ He discovered he was looking at the portrait, visualizing the painted hands moving across a keyboard.
Toby stood up. ‘How about finding something to eat?’ he said, firmly. ‘I don’t know about you, but all this delving into the past is making me extraordinarily hungry. Let’s forage in Stefan’s fridge and freezer.’
The foraging produced frozen pizza, cheese, bread, and ham, and was accompanied by a spirited, albeit erratic, rendition from Toby of ‘The Fire Ship’. But over the meal at the kitchen table, he suddenly said, ‘You know, villainesses and Black Widows aside, we still haven’t found a reason for Christa’s banishment.’
‘Not yet. Is there any mustard for this ham? Thanks.’
‘Supposing he saw the music when the boxes were brought down?’ said Toby. ‘Would he have made a connection to Christa, d’you think? I mean a Nazi connection.’
‘And thrown the portrait out because of it? I shouldn’t think so,’ said Phin. ‘He’d have been too young to know about the Siegreich at the time – it sounds as if Christa would, as well. And I’m fairly sure that the details of Hitler’s invasion plan weren’t generally known until years later. I only know because I was researching the exiled musicians. In fact, I only know about the Siegreich because my work takes me into musical places. And even there, the Siegreich’s more of a legend than anything else. I wouldn’t have thought Stefan would know about it.’
‘Nor would I. Ah well. I wonder if there’s a bottle of vino anywhere to go with this banquet.’ Toby got up to investigate the cupboards again. ‘Stefan’s quite partial to a glass or two of wine. Yes, here we are. Now then, corkscrew … Oh, and I think I’d better check phone messages as well as post. I’ve only just thought about that. Look for a corkscrew while I do it, would you – the answerphone’s only just out in the hall.’
The answerphone was on the carved oak chest, and Phin, uncorking the wine, saw through the open kitchen door that Toby’s hand hesitated over the Play button. Speaking as lightly as he could, he said, ‘Are you afraid of hearing a ransom demand for Arabella?’
‘It sounds mad, doesn’t it? But you do hear weird stories, and Arabella does get into such complicated situations,’ said Toby, and pressed the Play button with decision.
But the phone’s messages held nothing more than a polite voice reminding Mr Cain of an optician’s appointment, and then a man’s voice announcing itself as Marcus Mander, thanking Mr Cain for the excellent supper party the previous week, and expressing a hope that his goddaughter had managed to successfully clean the kitchen floor where the crème brûlée had bubbled out of the grill pan.
‘At least they got as far as crème brûlée,’ observed Toby, re-setting the machine and coming back to the kitchen. ‘I’ve known Arabella’s dinners to plunge into disaster over the starter.’
Toby had suggested Phin should have the bedroom that was usually Arabella’s. It overlooked the gardens behind the house, and there were rather endearing traces of Arabella herself in the room. When Phin hung up his jacket, a faint drift of perfume came from the wardrobe, and a silk scarf, vividly crimson and purple, lay on the edge of the dressing table, with a crimson-tinted lipstick on it, as if the owner had been trying to match the colours. A pair of shoes, purple and black patent leather with impossibly impractical high heels, stood under the dressing table, one lying on its side, suggesting the wearer had kicked them off with a sigh of relief and abandoned them as unwearable.
The bed was comfortable, but Phin was wide awake. He could not stop thinking about the music they had found. Was it really the Siegreich? Even the word conjured up the sounds of marching feet and that sharp straight Nazi salute, and cheering crowds, shouting the infamous cry. Sieg Heil. Hail victory.
Inevitably, with those images, came the memories of his grandfather. Phin smiled. He would never cease to be grateful to his grandfather for drawing him into the world of music – the music his grandfather had reached for in an attempt to make blindness bearable. He had taken the young Phineas to concerts with him, encouraging him to
listen and understand the music. ‘You’ll enjoy this one,’ he would say. ‘It’s Beethoven – splendidly dramatic.’ Or, ‘It’s Mozart – listen to the patterns he makes.’ Always, before the concerts, he would say, ‘And you’ll keep hold of my hand, Phin, so I don’t make a spectacle of us by tripping over the stairs.’
Phin would never forget his grandfather’s absorption and pleasure in those concerts, and the way the blindness had almost ceased to matter at those times. It had been as if the old man could see the music in his mind – as if it made patterns for him against the perpetual darkness.
He sat up, punched the pillow, and lay down again. It was a little after midnight. Greymarsh House was not entirely silent, in the way that most houses – especially old ones – never were entirely silent after dark. There were small rustlings from overhead, and the occasional gentle creak of roof timbers contracting in the cool night air. He found these sounds unexpectedly friendly. Arabella must often have lain in this bed listening to them.
He got out of bed and went to the window, drawing the curtain slightly back. A thin mist had risen from the marshlands beyond the house; wisps of it clung to the trees, lending a fantastical quality to the scene. It was exactly how any self-respecting garden in a remote marshland house should look at such an hour.
Had it been chance that had caused the composer of that music – Giselle’s Music – to place that ugly discordance – the chord of evil, the diabolus in musica – at its core? Or had it been a last act of defiance – a sly, snook-cocking gesture to the people who had been torturing the music out of him? And had any of those torturers realized what had been threaded into the music’s heart?
Moving quietly so as not to wake Toby, Phin pulled a sweater over his pyjamas, slid his feet into shoes, and went out of the bedroom and down the stairs into the sitting room. The Siegreich lay where he had left it. It had probably been a bit careless to leave something so potentially valuable strewn around; although Phin did not much care if the entire burglar population of Romney Marsh levered up a window and reached in to pilfer the thing, it could be worth a great deal of money to Stefan Cain. He picked it up, and carried it with him into the dining room, thinking he would stow it in his suitcase later.
The boxes from the attics were where he and Toby had left them, and Phin lifted them on to the table. Was there anything in here that he had missed earlier, or to which he had not paid sufficient attention? He did not really think so. And yet …
The warmth from the stove had permeated in here, and when he switched on the old-fashioned standard lamp it felt as if he had stepped into that fragment of the past more completely than before. As he began to sort through the boxes’ contents, he again had the sensation that he was thrusting his hands, wrist-deep, into that lost era. Christa’s era. And Giselle’s, also?
But the boxes still appeared to contain only trivia, which once somebody must have thought worth keeping. Here were the old parish council notes found earlier – a thick bundle, tied up with string, the typeface blurred with age and slight damp. Phin leafed through them to see if anything lay between the pages, but there was nothing.
The magazines, which were mostly gardening publications, did not yield anything, either. The second box held the German textbooks, which he and Toby had thought would be from Stefan’s adult language teaching classes. Phin shook each one, but nothing fluttered from the pages. In novels, people often came upon an overlooked train ticket between a book’s pages, which gave away the criminal’s journey to the murder scene. Or a left-luggage ticket, leading to the discovery of a dismembered body in a trunk. Phin did not think left-luggage departments actually existed any longer, and in real life when you went through old papers, all you got were tiny shreds of old, flaked paper, and dust that got grittily on to your skin, and empty envelopes.
Envelopes … An empty envelope lay on top of the magazines. Would anyone bother to put an empty envelope in a box? It was not significant of anything – other, perhaps, than somebody not bothering to throw it away.
Or might it be indicative of somebody finding the contents so astonishing that the envelope had ceased to matter, and had dropped, unnoticed, back into the box? There was no stamp on it and no name or address – only a smear of ink on one corner. Phin frowned and bent over the envelope. It was ink, certainly, but it looked like a mark from a modern blue biro. He considered this, and an image began to form in his mind of somebody casually looking through these boxes when they were carried downstairs. Of that somebody – he would assume it had been Stefan – rummaging through the magazines and the parish minutes, perhaps smiling reminiscently at the sight of the German textbooks. And picking up an envelope that looked as if it might contain a letter …? Absent-mindedly using the point of a biro to unseal the flap …? Then what would he do? He might read whatever was inside the envelope here in the dining room, or he might take it into his study.
Phin got up and went through to Stefan’s study, switching on the desk lamp. The pale oblong where the portrait had hung above it was clear. Was this what Stefan would have done? Had he come to sit at his desk – the place where he was used to working – to read a letter from his past life, a letter he had only just found? Phin thought he might well have done that. But what would he do after he had read it? Depending on the letter’s contents, mightn’t he put it in the desk drawer, until he decided what to do with it or what to do about it?
He took a deep breath and slid open the drawer. It came open easily, as if often used. Inside was a miscellany of odds and ends: several biros, a couple of books of stamps, a small Filofax, a pocket calculator.
And a half-folded sheet of old, slightly discoloured paper. Only the first few words were visible, and they were in German. Phin had a smattering of German, because it was a language that was often useful in his work. But it did not need any particular knowledge of the language to see that this was a letter. A letter that halfway down referred to Christa.
Phin spent several minutes reminding himself all over again that this was Stefan Cain’s property, and that it might be part of something very private indeed. If he could not translate the whole letter himself, there were online translation websites, and any one of them would be enough for such a short piece of text. But could he go that far without Stefan Cain’s permission? Or even Toby’s? Then he reminded himself that this house had been broken into, that Stefan himself had been attacked and was in hospital, and he gave in, put the box back in the corner of the room, switched off the light, and took the letter up to his bedroom. Halfway up the stairs he remembered the Siegreich and went back for it.
Closing his bedroom door so that Toby would not hear him moving around, he put the Siegreich in the zipped compartment of his case, then set the laptop on Arabella Tallis’s dressing table, and called up an online translation website. He could probably have taken a reasonable swing at the translation, but by this time he did not trust himself to do so with sufficient accuracy.
Letter by letter, he typed the note into the site. He checked twice to make sure he had done this accurately, then waited for the translation. For such a short piece, it came up quickly. There was no date on it, and the translation was literal, of course, making no allowance for the difference in phrasing between German and English. But it was easy to juggle the words into an English pattern, and in effect, the note said:
My dear Velda,
It was good to hear from you. After so much sadness and loss – in both our lives – it is important to stay close to the family we have left.
I have thought for a long time as to how – and even if – I should answer your question about Giselle. I could wish you had not asked it, but you have asked it twice now, and so I think that you are owed the truth. Half-understood facts can fester for years – speculation can be dangerous and damaging to those who come afterwards.
Even after so long, I cannot write the word that should be used for Christa, although I fear it is a word that may be used about her in the future.
The truth is that Christa was responsible for Giselle’s death inside Sachsenhausen.
That is as much as I can bear to write, but you will understand the word I cannot and will not use about Christa.
Forgive me for being the one to tell you this shocking information. I know it will be deeply hurtful, but I also know you will ensure Stefan never knows about it.
I often think of you and I am glad you are still living in Lindschoen. I have such good memories of my visits to you and Giselle there – in the days when we had no idea of the tragedies that were ahead. I remember so well how we would spend evenings in that house in that square with its beautiful and appropriate name. Are those old lamps still there? They used to cast such a radiance over the old stones, and I loved that. It all seemed magical and special. In my memory, it all still is.
I hope to hear that all is well with you.
Very much love to you,
Silke.
Phin stared at the screen for so long that the screen-saver kicked in, and the room darkened. So, here it was at last. Proof that Christa Cain had indeed been a villainess.
Christa Cain had been painted smiling and holding the music of her victim. Giselle. And the word that the unknown Silke could not and would not use was ‘murderess’.
FOURTEEN
Phin, drinking coffee with a thin dawn streaking the skies, had spent most of the night trying to consider Silke’s letter objectively.
Clearly it had been written after World War II – the reference to Sachsenhausen indicated that – although it was impossible to know how long afterwards Silke had sent it. As for its content …