by Ted Riccardi
“Monsieur Abbé, I shall be happy to, but I shall need to have direct access to Herr Wagner and his family. And since I am not a physician, I request that my colleague, Dr. Watson, accompany me. His experience should be of great aid to us.”
“That can be easily arranged. Fortunately, Monsieur Holmes, Cosima and her husband have expressed the desire to improve their own English as well as that of their children by having two English speakers live with them for a time. On my recommendation, those persons could be you.”
“This would mean a trip to Venice.”
“The family is at present occupying large quarters in one of the old palaces off the Grand Canal, the Palazzo Vendramin. There is more than adequate room for you, and you would lack for nothing. In addition, I am willing to pay you whatever you wish, including your expenses. I am not the King of Bohemia, Monsieur Holmes, but I assure you that I can afford to pay you whatever fair sum you require.”
“I accept your offer, Monsieur Abbé. Nothing keeps me in London at present, and since I have never visited Venice, nor Italy, for that matter, I shall be happy to leave as soon as possible. I see one very large problem: Wagner, if memory of my files serves, is a person with many enemies. Despite his bourgeois life, as you put it, he has managed to offend so many people that even the first task, the narrowing of the range of suspects, will be a formidable one. There have been many enemies, like Meyerbeer, for instance.”
“Meyerbeer was one of Wagner’s many stupidities. Meyerbeer never hurt anyone, least of all Wagner, and, poor man, he is dead these many years. But you are right. Wagner’s enemies are legion. I myself, however, do not know anyone who would go so far as to kill him. I must, therefore, have your judgement of his condition as soon as possible. If I am correct in my suspicion, then we must protect him by finding the culprit.”
“You shall have my judgement about Herr Wagner’s condition within a day of my arrival in Venice. As to identifying the culprit—that will be a more difficult matter, but not an impossible one. All crimes are preceded by similar ones, Monsieur Abbé, and I have learned that there is nothing really new under the sun. The history of crime, if well known, can provide us with much useful information. Already, I can think of three cases that bear interesting similarities to this one.”
“No doubt,” said Liszt, “one of them is the case of Mozart and Salieri.”
“A most interesting case, that one, but Salieri’s guilt is the concoction of the Russian poet Pushkin, who, I suspect, may know who the real culprit was. That Mozart was poisoned is clear to me. That Salieri did not murder him is also most obvious, but more of that at another time.”
“Then I shall telegraph my daughter at once, informing her that I have discovered two wonderful young Englishmen who will be delighted to stay with them for a time in order to aid them in their study of the English language. And what names shall I give them?”
“Since I shall need to examine him, I shall also go in the guise of a physician. Tell Frau Wagner,” Holmes said with some amusement, “that a Dr. John Watson of London is prepared to spend several months with them in Italy. He will be accompanied by his friend, Anthony Hopkins, also a physician.”
As I listened, the two made their final arrangements, and Holmes bade the great pianist good-bye. The Abbé bowed gracefully and, like some enormous falcon readying itself to take flight, swiftly turned and left the room. Holmes began at once to make the preliminary preparations for our extended trip to Italy.
“Do you really think it will come to pass?” I asked.
“I can assure you that it will. Liszt is in earnest and will stop at nothing to catch the poisoner. And neither will we.”
The following morning we received a note from Liszt saying that the Wagners would be delighted to receive us and that we should proceed to Venice as soon as possible. He had reserved two berths on the Orient Express and notified the Wagners directly that we would be arriving in Venice by train on the morning of seven February.
Holmes paused for a moment t to light his pipe, and I took the opportunity to interject with a certain merriment, “I am amused that you are traveling under my name.”
“It was an immediate choice, safe and convenient, old boy. Neither my exploits nor your chronicles of them are as yet widely known on the Continent, and should either of our names have appeared in Europe at this early date, it was still unlikely that the Wagners would have been cognizant of either. Because of his revolutionary past and his contact with police and their agents, however, there exists a remote chance that Wagner might have heard my name. Yours would have been unknown to the police of any country, and is, unlike mine, a common one. By using your name, I have the advantage of speaking convincingly about Dr. Watson’s career without having to invent an imaginary past for myself. And so, I shall begin by holding my left arm rather stiffly, this due to a Jezail bullet received in the shoulder in the campaign in Afghanistan that shattered, if I remember correctly, the clavicle and the subclavian artery.”
“Well done, Holmes, if I may say so myself.” He had, as he spoke, suddenly assumed my posture, and though we looked not at all alike, I had the feeling that part of me at least had suddenly appeared across the room, so convincing was his portrayal.
Holmes smiled and let out a puff of smoke.
“The Orient Express,” he continued, “leaves London early in the morning and arrives in Venice the following evening, with stops in Paris and Milan. I shall use the uninterrupted time between Paris and Milan to review carefully what I know of Wagner and his career. I have fished out my folder on musicians. You may want to read through it as well. His is, on the surface at least, an extraordinarily complex life, for he is not only a composer, but a political revolutionary as well. In 1848 he participated, with Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, in the famous Dresden uprising. As a result he was banished from most of the German states by the authorities and was forced to take up residence in Switzerland—in Zurich, among other places. He still feels forced to wander a good deal. Until Ludwig of Bavaria provided him with adequate support he had no peace. It was only in this way that in the latter part of his life he has found the measure of tranquillity that he requires for his work. Despite his success, a life of travel has become a habit, and he often longs for the climate of the south, particularly that of Italy, where at one time or other he has lived in Palermo, Naples, Siena, and now Venice. His life has been filled with friendships, love affairs, and sworn enemies. There is no end of possible suspects, no end to motives, real or imagined, for the killing of Wagner, if indeed that is what is happening. His marriage to Cosima in itself has only added to the number of his enemies, including her former husband, von Bülow, who, despite his ardent support of Wagner’s music, must bear him a deep and continuing grudge.
“To add immeasurably to the problem, we are required to chase our quarry in Italy—in Venice in particular—where poison has, over the last five hundred years, become so perfected as a weapon of murder that only those who are perpetrators of a crime are aware of its success. My monograph has barely touched the Italian industry, which is worthy of several monographs in itself. The case of Cardinal Tosca was a later example of this kind of skill. But even in my early experience at the time, the murder of churchman is a far simpler affair to resolve than the murder of artists. And so, if it is poison in the case of Wagner, it could come from almost anyone associated with him, from a dissatisfied servant to a rival composer. As to the means of administering the poison, that would also have a wide variety of possibilities. Wagner has suffered a variety of ailments, is known to take large doses of medication carelessly, and therefore may indeed be poisoning himself.”
After this review of the situation, Holmes decided to put the matter out of mind until we had met Wagner and examined him. The train ride was uneventful. We were delayed by snow at the Simplon Pass for several hours, but the engineer easily made up some of the time once we had arrived in the Italian plain. After the stop in Milan, the train proceeded to Veni
ce, where we descended at about nine in the morning. Our only travel companion had been a young Turkish diplomat, who was returning to Istanbul. We bade good-bye to him and alighted from the train.
I at first saw no one in the crowd whom I recognized, but as it thinned out, I saw the unmistakable figure of Frau Cosima Wagner, standing there with her children and a servant, waiting.
“Madame Wagner, I believe? I am John Watson, and this is my colleague, Anthony Hopkins.”
Frau Wagner greeted us in French, and with a smile, extended her hand and proceeded to introduce her children one by one who, each in turn, curtseyed and said in stilted English, “Welcome to Venice and to our house, Dr. John and Dr. Anthony.” To which the young boy, Siegfried, added: “My father could not come. He is composing his music.”
We walked quickly from the station to a waiting phaeton that brought us in minutes to the canal. There we boarded a gondola and began the ride to the great palazzo that served as the Wagner home. Holmes and I immediately abandoned all hope of seeing the Italian sun that day. It was as cold and damp as London, and the mist was impenetrable. We saw little at first, but when we reached the Grand Canal we perceived enough to understand why Venice was justly famous. There, arising like fantasies in the fog, were the bridges, the palazzi, and the churches, as if floating just above the water.
“If Wagner has lived in straitened circumstances in the past,” said Holmes in English, “his present life shows no sign of it.”
The Wagner quarters in the old Venetian palace were sumptuous. We entered a large ornate vestibule and from there the servants led us to our quarters. We rested for a short time, and then, late in the afternoon, summoned by our hosts, we descended the central staircase and entered the large drawing room where tea was served daily to guests and friends. As we entered, Richard Wagner himself sat at the far end of the room, a smile on his face as he talked to his children. As soon as they saw us, they rushed towards us and pulled us to their father.
“Look, Papa, here are our new Englishmen, Herr Doktors John and Anthony.”
“Welcome to our home,” he said. “I trust you have found your quarters to your liking.”
“Indeed, they are splendid and we are most honored to be your guests.”
“Forgive me for not rising, but I have had painful spasms in my legs and elsewhere for the last half hour, and it is difficult for me to stand.”
It was in these very first few moments that Holmes and I independently concluded that Liszt’s intuition had to be taken with the greatest seriousness. Wagner was not in good health, and as we observed him carefully, it appeared quite likely that one of the great composers of the century may have indeed been deliberately poisoned, possibly over many years. It also appeared at first glance that the poison had done by this time a good deal of its work, that in all probability one of the poisons was arsenic, and that he did not have long to live. Even without examining him closely, we judged that there was much damage to the liver and other internal organs, damage that was probably irreversible, and that the only hope was if we could find the source of the poison immediately.
As the evening wore on, I kept on observing him. He was a very short man with a head too large for his body. This disproportion gave him a dwarf-like appearance at times. His hair was thin, his eyes sunken, his skin jaundiced and grey, and his abdomen horribly swollen. He breathed with difficulty, and often closed his eyes and abandoned the conversation.
That evening the many guests eventually left and only Holmes and I and a family friend, one Paul Joukovsky, a painter, remained. Despite the late hour, Wagner’s mood suddenly improved. He rose slowly, and with surprising vigour, walked over to Holmes and, taking his arm for support, led him to the room where the family dined in private.
As they walked, the composer said, in heavily accented French, “I know you and Anthony are here to help us practise our English, but I understand that you are also a physician. I need your medical advice as well, for as you can see, I am very ill, far more ill than I want Cosima to know.”
Holmes told him quietly that we were available to him at any time.
As we entered the dining hall, a servant announced the arrival of Monsieur Liszt, who entered almost immediately. Wagner greeted him with affection but motioned Holmes and me to sit to his left, Joukovsky to his right, and Cosima and the children at the other end. Liszt sat with his daughter. The conversation flowed without cease, and while all tried to speak in English, it was not long before everyone was speaking German, the only language that everyone at the table, including Holmes, shared.
I took careful note of Wagner’s hair, which appeared to be extremely dry and brittle. His skin was grey, his eyes dilated, and there was a thin black line that ran around his lips.
Holmes noticed that Wagner had worn white gloves until they had arrived at table, and when he removed them Holmes noted that his hands were covered with red patches. His fingernails were broken, and the skin on his fingers appeared rough, to have been scrubbed hard, as if he had tried to wash some stains away vigorously.
“How long have you mixed your own ink?” asked Holmes.
“How on earth did you know that?” replied Wagner in surprise.
“No matter. As a doctor, I must pay attention to details.”
“Yes, I have always done so. It has been one of my peculiar habits, Dr. Watson. I rule my own paper and write the first drafts of my compositions myself. It is only when they are completed to my satisfaction that I send them to a copyist who prepares the version for printing. The ink is wonderful. It has a sweet taste at first, but then it leaves me with the taste of sour milk in my mouth.”
At the end of the meal, we returned to the drawing room, where Liszt sat at the great Erard and played almost without stop for two hours. He began with the Chopin Fantaisie-Polonaise, following it with several etudes by the same composer.
Then, at Cosima’s request, Liszt played his own transcriptions of Wagner’s operas, those of Tristan und Isolde and Tannhäuser. He followed this with some of his arrangements of the songs of Schubert and Schumann. The last, a song called Widmung, or Dedication, left Wagner and his wife in tears.
Then, again at Cosima’s request, Herr Wagner stood up and announced that, if Herr Liszt were willing to accompany him, he would sing parts of his last opera, Parsifal. Liszt agreed without hesitation, and so they began.
I sat across the room staring at these three people—Wagner, Liszt, and Madame Wagner, transfixed by the music. Later that evening Holmes told me that it was then that he knew that the violin would forever remain nothing more than an avocation, for the realisation came that he could never venture into the celestial realms of music that we were fortunate to enter that night. Liszt, whom I had heard in performance in London, outdid himself by the sheer beauty of his playing. And despite his infirmities, Wagner sang beautifully and strongly. Who, after all, could have sung Parsifal more convincingly than he?
When it was over, there was a silence, then quiet words of praise from Cosima, Joukovsky, and the two doctors. Herr Wagner announced that he was exhausted and wished to retire. He left on Cosima’s arm, and after a few moments we all went to our rooms.
Our work had only begun, however. Shortly after we entered our quarters, there was a knock. It was Liszt. Holmes bade him enter and said quietly, “Your suspicions are correct. Unless I am sadly misled by his symptoms, Wagner has been poisoned. The effects of small repeated doses of arsenic are obvious, but I suspect the use of at least three others. I am afraid also that the damage has been done and that he may not live much longer.”
I told Liszt that to make absolutely sure we would have to perform certain tests.
Liszt flung his hands up in despair. “Richard will agree to no tests. I had hoped that I was wrong. Are you sure?” he asked.
“Not completely, but all the signs are there. Who is the doctor?”
“A man named Kurz,” said Liszt, “but he is away and will not return for several weeks.”
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“Then there is nothing to be done except for Hopkins here to examine him thoroughly. And for us to find the source of the poison immediately.”
“I shall aid you in any way I can.”
“Who else, besides those of us who attended dinner this evening, lives here?”
“Just the servants, whom you have met. They are people I have known for many years. They are simple folk with no grievances.”
“And Joukovsky?”
“Beyond reproach. He is devoted to both Cosima and Richard. And besides, he is a very recent acquaintance.”
“Then the source is outside, but the poison enters and is administered to him.”
“But how?”
“I have one idea, but it is only a possibility. Before I pursue it, I must explore the house. I must be able to do it without interruption or fear of discovery. I also wish to disclose what I know to Herr Wagner himself. Perhaps he knows who would hate him enough to kill him.”
Liszt’s face grew grave for a moment. Then he replied: “You may proceed as you like with your inspection. I shall tell Cosima. On the other point, however, I think that it would be useless. Richard is very unbalanced when it comes to his enemies, and he will try to fill your head with irrational accusations. He began to create enemies in his youth, and he has never ceased doing so. In his early days, he was a rude, excitable Saxon, and he attacked people in fits of anger if he did not get what he wished. Sometimes he attacked them in print, signing the articles with a pseudonym. He also borrowed money from countless people and never returned it. He seduced the wives of his friends, insulted the most powerful musicians in Europe like Spontini and Meyerbeer, and has never ceased to show contempt for anyone to whom he took a dislike. Were you to tell him that he was the victim of someone’s poison, you would do no good and would ruin Cosima’s life, since he would confide in her immediately. Please, Monsieur Holmes, I implore you, on this point, please follow my advice. If, as you think, Richard does not have long to live, let him die in peace without the knowledge that his life has been taken from him. I want to know who the culprit is, and I want that person punished if possible, but I prefer to let my friend die in whatever peace is available to someone like him. When you discover who the poisoner is, then we can decide what to do.”