Vienna in Violet

  “And that, gentlemen, is all we have,” Nordwalder concluded.

  “Why have you sent for me?” the count asked.

  Nordwalder deferred to Millstein. “Timmerich was operating on my instructions.”

  “To do what?”

  “To keep track of Franz Schubert.”

  “I see. Does this Schubert own a pistol?”

  “Like our fishermen, he’s too poor,” Nordwalder said.

  “Perhaps he borrowed or stole one.”

  “Perhaps, but we don’t think so, do we, Captain? Millstein, why were you shadowing Schubert?”

  “Well,” Millstein began uncomfortably, “we thought that Schubert could shed some light on … on what happened to the your wife, Count.” Both Nordwalder and von Neulinger paid close attention. “There was a song sung that evening, written specifically for that occasion, and—”

  “Now I understand,” said the count to Millstein’s relief. “You think Timmerich possessed this song when he was shot.”

  “No. We haven’t found the song yet,” said Millstein. “Timmerich watched Schubert to see if he tried to dispose of it. Perhaps the song has been destroyed in spite of our efforts. Schubert may still have it somewhere.”

  Von Neulinger shook his head. “The music is unimportant.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Millstein.

  “We don’t need to see the notes. We need the words.”

  “How do you know this, Herr Count?”

  “Millstein,” Nordwalder interrupted with a hint of exasperation, “are you adept in the science of harmony?”

  “I know nothing about it,” Millstein answered.

  “Nor does any other guest at the soirée awaiting a special song. But we all speak German, don’t we?”

  Millstein nodded. Nordwalder thought, with satisfaction, that he perceived a slight blush.

  “Please continue, Count.”

  “I know Michael Vogl, the man who sang the song. Let me ask him what he sang.”

  “That may not be the wisest course,” said Nordwalder.

  “Vogl won’t lie to me. He wouldn’t dare. We all heard him sing. If anything clashes with our memories …”

  “I see your point,” said Nordwalder, “but do we want to alert Vogl at this stage? I suggest a less confrontational approach.”

  “As you wish, Herr Doktor. Still the song probably has little relevance. Why not clear this matter up?”

  Nordwalder thought for a moment. “Come back at four. I am meeting with the English before that. Let’s wait until we hear what they say. If nothing comes from the meeting, summon Herr Vogl. Now back to Timmerich. Aside from his work, what do we know about him? How does he stand in regard to the ladies?”

  Unconcerned with Timmerich’s reputation, as the dress rehearsal for The Empress of the Common came to a close, Michael Vogl attempted to salvage his own in the eyes of one lady. He rejected the stratagem of direct apology to Kunegunde or a straight-forward explanation of his actions, selecting instead indirect flattery.

  “I think the finale went rather well, don’t you?” Since the third act finale was all choral, Vogl thought himself on safe ground.

  “I don’t know,” the girl replied. “I always slur the words in the vivace section.”

  “‘Warmth and comfort shall reside / With Hernando’s lovely bride?’”

  “I sang ‘loving bride’.”

  “Ah, so. Well, that is what rehearsals are for. You’ll be perfect tomorrow. In any event, the chorus sounded glorious to me.”

  “Can I believe that?” Kunegunde said, without a trace of humor. It had the effect of a much longer soliloquy, and Vogl responded carefully.

  “Why not? I don’t lie for pleasure.”

  “But this morning…?”

  “This morning, I was thinking of the greater good.”

  “Mine?” Kunegunde started to blush, but she did not look pleased.

  “To some extent, but …”

  “Herr Vogl,” Kunegunde interrupted angrily, “Don’t patronize me. I am responsible for myself. I was perfectly prepared to accept the consequences of my failings this morning.”

  “But I wasn’t!” Vogl sought to stem the tirade.

  He succeeded. Kunegunde let Vogl continue.

  “In the normal course of events, Schmidt assesses a small fine.”

  “Then I’ll pay it. Herr Schmidt can dismiss me from the company, if he likes. I won’t object.”

  “But someone else might.”

  “Who? You? I reject any special protection from you.”

  “I was thinking of La Donmeyer.”

  “Frau Donmeyer? Why should she care what happens to me?”

  “I daresay Anne-Marie is utterly indifferent to you, but consider the incident from her point of view.”

  Kunegunde became attentive.

  “La Donmeyer has performed in The Empress of the Common many times, as have most other members of the company. She doesn’t need another dress rehearsal. She lives for attention. Who knows how long she might have prolonged the incident this morning without my intervention? Others might have egged her on. By speaking as I did, I made her reconsider. The others followed her lead. Natürlich.”

  “But you blamed someone else for my transgression.”

  “Actually, I blamed no one, Fraülein. Two alternative Katarinas, each suspects the other. Now, to escape suspicion, they’ll behave like perfect angels throughout the run of the show.”

  “This is all too subtle for me, Herr Vogl. I guess you knew what you were doing, but I don’t approve of it.”

  Vogl wasn’t sure he fully approved of his behavior either—then or now. But he was in too deep to admit as much. “Let’s say no more about it.” Vogl hoped that he had accomplished as much as he could with Kunegunde, but he added, “I am off to meet Franz Schubert. Would you like to join me?”

  “Schubert?” Kunegunde’s blush resurfaced in full glory. Vogl felt that he could write a small monograph on the variety and expressiveness of Kunegunde’s blushes. “He won’t mind?”

  “Why should he mind?”

  “He seems so wrapped up in his music.”

  “Thus it falls to his friends to distract him.”

  “I don’t distract him. He never talks to me.”

  “He is always shy around women, but he likes you well enough.”

  “Well, if I’m not imposing …”

  “Fraülein, we’d both enjoy your company.”

  With that, Vogl offered his arm. To his great relief, Kunegunde took it.

  Chapter Forty

  Before his interview with Thomas Bellingham, Nordwalder formed a plan to squeeze out more information than the tight-lipped English usually divulged. It required delicate maneuvers within various ministries and the nerve-wracking business of keeping Baron Hager in the dark. But the upshot was that he, Nordwalder, surrounded by a cadre of ill- and mis-informed technocrats, bureaucrats, flunkeys, spies, and counterspies, now posed as a potential platinum “merchant.”

  Like Tagili the departed Russian, he had enough scientific and economic information to make credible offers to buy or to sell, as circumstances suggested, without being made privy to any real negotiations.

  Nordwalder carried a letter requesting a personal interview with Bellingham. It implied that English commercial interests were affected by Eugénie von Neulinger’s death. Bellingham was the Englishman in whom she was most likely to confide.

  When informed of the letter, the English planned a counter strategy of their own, which from their perspective was also ingenious. Pyotr Tagili’s untimely departure essentially ended the attempt to gain control of Russian platinum. With the Germans out of the way, there was less urgency to compete in the platinum market. Lord Wollaston had what he needed for experimental purposes. Neither Russia nor France possessed the immediate capacity to turn platinum into the force Wollaston predicted. Since the “Avenue von Neulinger,” to use the ambassador’s words, had come literally to a dead
end, there was no one in Austria whom they could trust.

  Nonetheless, if the Austrians wanted to prolong the negotiations, there might be some benefit for the Crown. Austrians were always up to something. The British needed someone to feel them out, and Lord Bellingham would serve their purposes admirably. “Since B. knows nothing of value, he’ll tell them nothing of value,” the ambassador recorded in his journal.

  Thus, for the meeting, they provided Bellingham with two clerks and one interpreter. Bellingham appeared as their lone empowered negotiator. Both clerks were expert in German. One was an expert in financial dealings, the other an expert in military matters.

  The session began auspiciously. After the initial formalities, Nordwalder left most of his entourage outside, while he and one clerk and one interpreter sat closeted in a room with Bellingham and his reduced forces.

  The discussion soon slowed to a crawl. An unexpected language barrier impeded almost every step. For example, Bellingham opened with, “You want to know about that evening at Jennie von Neulinger’s. Deuced unpleasant business.”

  Nordwalder’s interpreter, unfamiliar with the word “deuced,” told his boss, “He remembers two nasty transactions.”

  Several minutes passed before the confusion was resolved.

  The eventual translation of Bellingham’s “He’s to hang fire for a bit, I understand” told Nordwalder what he already knew. The Russian Tagili was presumably back in Moscow. Since Tagili left Vienna three days before, he could not have shot Timmerich. Nordwalder’s interest in Tagili, never very serious, dwindled into extinction.

  Still Nordwalder persisted. In the end, he received the information he sought—a sufficient explanation of how Schubert’s music fit into “the platinum muddle.”

  “I suppose there’s no harm in telling you,” Lord Bellingham said, “since the whole affair has been knocked into a cocked hat.”

  The last phrase came to Nordwalder through his interpreter as “this poorly-dressed affair,” but Nordwalder had learned by then to ignore the most non-sensical portions of Bellingham’s discourse.

  “You see, it all boils down to Tagili. He’s the only one who knows how quickly the platinum can be extracted and shipped abroad. But Tagili’s a hard-nosed chap, probably with unclean hands.”

  Nordwalder restrained himself from asking about the Russian’s scratched, smutty nose.

  “The czarists wouldn’t throw in with us unless we—not to put too fine a point on it—tossed them a sop. Since the entire show is speculative, we refused to advance Tagili a farthing. Instead we offered a share of future profits. Of course, my superiors required completely clean hands in the matter and instructed me to leave them entirely in the dark. That’s when I asked Jennie to tender our offer.”

  “And how much did you offer?”

  “One fifth of all proceeds for the first year, but Jennie overplayed our hand. I should have known she’d want to get her own fingers in the pie.”

  “The countess purveyed your offer through Herr Tagili’s food?”

  “Good heavens no!” said Bellingham. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  Eventually, an understanding of all the hands, and their hygiene and of “fingers in the pie” emerged. Before the session was over, the Austrian and British interpreters were well on the way to becoming close friends.

  “Now where were we? Ah! Jennie’s idea—I don’t know why—was to present our offer in a song. But, in the event, she offered Tagili only an eighth of the profits. I suppose she expected the Russian to haggle, but he merely became huffy. Then Jennie was found dead the next day. With her killer still at large, poor Tagili got the wind up, and immediately set sail for Moscow.”

  Nordwalder lost a moment trying to envisage a water route from Vienna to Moscow before determining that Bellingham’s statement was the result of either deep Russian duplicity or pure English idiocy. In either case, Tagili had gone, propelled in some manner by Schubert’s song. “Danke, mein Herr,” he said. “I now have a great deal to consider.”

  The contest between the Austrian investigators and English diplomats resolved into a spirited stalemate, a result which satisfied Nordwalder.

  Nordwalder’s deliberations on his bigger game began on the coach ride back to the ministry, manifested by the redistribution of his retinue. Against protocol, he sent all his English speakers in one coach and ordered them “without delay” to explore the nuances of Lord Bellingham’s remarks.

  The session with Bellingham yielded positive results. Everything in Bellingham’s manner, everything Nordwalder gleaned from their conversation, suggested that the struggle for platinum led to abandoning the negotiations, not to murder. Nordwalder’s strategem had produced the desired result without having to include Baron Hager in the game.

  With platinum off his plate, association with Zdenka Merlinbeck lost the taint of unwanted political repercussions. Back in his office, he drafted a series of letters to the effect that the timberland around Graz required Count Merlinbeck’s constant attention throughout the coming spring.

  Delay, delay, delay! Why this intolerable delay? There is there no word of disturbance, yet Schubert’s demise should have occurred hours ago. Is he still alive? Impossible! But think: imagine the worst. The toad, the slug survives the pruning of the garden. What then?

  There is still time to tie up the loose end. This inconvenience is not insuperable. But no more subtlety. This evening, or tomorrow morning, one can provide something along the lines of Timmerich’s treatment.

  You survive my venom, Herr Schubert? Very well. How will you withstand a pistol ball in your heart? All will be well.

  Chapter Forty-one

  At the Café Lindenbaum Franz Schubert worked incessantly through the morning into the middle of the afternoon on his piano fantasie without noticing the tumbler of wine on his table. He didn’t notice it when he put down his pen and stood up to stretch, as it was hidden from his view by mounds of paper. Myriad musical notions for his composition asserted themselves in his head with such insistency that they collided. He needed time to assimilate them, to designate them to proper places. He looked around the dark room for someone to talk to, but he saw no one he knew.

  Unwilling to pass time idly, Schubert decided to take on the onerous task of drawing staff lines on blank foolscap. The task was pure drudgery, but over time it saved a significant amount of money. Usually he waited until necessity forced him to draw the lines and chose a time when he had no energy for anything else, but his fantasie pressed him. He’d be grateful for the extra sheaves then.

  When he sat down, his eye fell on “Die Sonne und das Veilchen”, which had come back from von Weber. Why not prepare a copy of the song for a publisher? This task, too, was laborious, but the song wasn’t very long, and copying it wouldn’t interfere with the permutations of “Der Wanderer”. Only when preparation for this task neared completion did Schubert notice the tumbler.

  He didn’t remember ordering it, but that didn’t surprise him; nor did the wine’s odd color disturb him. More than once he had mistaken a beverage cup for his inkwell, though never vice versa. The results were never catastrophic to his health or taste. He vaguely remembered leaving von Schwind’s without money, but he could have been mistaken. He ran his hands over his pockets. The gesture convinced him that he had started out with a few coins, ordered and paid for the wine, and forgot about it. At last he picked up the tumbler. Muttering “An die Musik” to the empty place across from him, he brought it to his lips.

  “Starting without me, Schwammerl?” boomed the cheerful voice of Franz Schober.

  “Ah, Franz! Just in time to join me,” Schubert said placing the glass back on the table, untasted.

  “I thought you’d never ask. What do you have for money?” This was one of Schober’s standing jokes. It had its customary effect. Schubert brushed his hands futilely over his pockets and shrugged.

  “No matter,” Schober continued insouciantly, “I’ll find a waiter. No, not that
one, he knows me. I passed a fellow on my way back here who looks like a novice. Wait for me.”

  Schober had plenty of money, but as he often explained to Schubert, there were principles involved. According to Schober, “Artists experience life more intensely than the common man, and we deserve respect and admiration on that account. The petty customs of the unenlightened branches of mankind do not bind us. If money must pass from artists to ordinary men and women, it should go to pleasures greater than alcohol.” According to this reasoning, Schober concluded that every free drink validated his beliefs.

  Whenever Schubert attempted to act according to Schober’s philosophy, the results were regrettable. For instance, the coffee house two doors down no longer admitted Schubert unless he showed them cash in hand. He thus concluded that Schober was the greater artist.

  But today, Schober’s greatness did not prevail. He returned empty handed, looking grim. “He’s coming,” he said bitterly, seating himself across from Schubert, producing florins from his pocket. The waiter arrived. Schubert was amused at the way he hovered and eventually extorted his tip from Schober.

  “Our novice waiter is an artist in his own right,” Schubert commented. “Lord knows, wangling weh-weh from you is an art.”

  “Such are the trials of the man misunderstood,” said Schober, affecting an air of gloom before dispelling it with, “so how did you find von Weber?”

  “There was no difficulty. He was waiting for me at Salieri’s.”

  “My friends insist on tormenting me,” Schober complained theatrically.

  Schubert relented. “He’s remarkable. One sees the mark of his genius at every turn.”

  “I followed him for a week, around countless turns, and I saw no such mark.”

  “You prove my point,” said Schubert with a laugh. “Only the true genius can distinguish the notesmith from the wordsmith at first glance. Weber is both.”