Vienna in Violet

  “What is it?”

  “Heinrich no longer needs to be a playwright. He had things to say, and he set them to paper. Now they’re out of his system.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Intuition mostly,” Vogl confessed, “infused with experience. Did he ever show you the manuscript?”

  “I know nothing about it. I believe that Heinrich conceived of the play to spite me. He knows I disapprove.”

  “It’s called—was called—Phaedrus. It chronicles a young man’s complaints about the condition of the world, a world redeemed, temporarily, through love, the subject of almost every play these days.”

  “I will take your word for that, Herr Vogl. Why is Heinrich’s play unworthy to join the others?”

  “He wants to change it. Again, I won’t bore you with details. Heinrich no longer sees the world in the sentimental terms that characterize Phaedrus. When he asked me to review his play, he was a soul in torment. Since then, the cloud has lifted. Phaedrus sprung from Heinrich’s emotions. He now exercises his reason.”

  The count stopped pacing and turned to look at Vogl. “Enough about Heinrich. If, as you say, playwriting is ‘out of his system’, I am indebted to you. You said two promises.”

  “The other is only implied. You see, I have learned something about Herr Schubert’s song, ‘“Die Sonne und das Veilchen”’, the song commissioned for the soirée.” Vogl paused.

  “Continue.”

  “Schubert altered the text.”

  “That’s interesting,” said the count.

  “He changed the word ‘fünf’ in the last line to ‘acht’. I can only guess why five violets matter more than eight violets, yet the change caused Eugénie to accuse me of ‘ruining everything’.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said the count, who became very still.

  Vogl pushed onward. “I give you this information first, as you will best know how to use it.”

  “Danke. Have you anything else you wish to tell me?”

  “No, your Excellency. I have fulfilled the purpose of my journey.”

  “Good. Now I have a question for you: How do you wish to die?”

  This thunderbolt did not catch Vogl completely unprepared, but when he actually heard the words, he was taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Scoundrel, choose your weapon! I have a complete selection here. What will it be? Pistols? The saber?”

  “Neither, your Excellency. I have no chance against you.”

  “You prefer, then, to be found floating in the canal, like some miserable cur?”

  “I prefer not to die,” said Vogl gently, raising a hand to forestall a response from the count. “I suspected that coming here might be dangerous for me, so I came armed.” Vogl’s hand reached under the lapel of his coat. “For a weapon, I chose the pen.”

  In the graceful, practiced manner with which he customarily traversed a stage, Vogl swept by von Neulinger and dropped three sheets of paper, folded into thirds on the table behind him. Vogl inwardly thanked his acting experience for masking the agitation he felt. The count spun around to observe the maneuver.

  “I present you with a copy of a letter I’ve composed. Will you read it, or should I tell you what it says?”

  Except for a slight narrowing of his eyes, von Neulinger remained immobile.

  “The other copies are sealed and bear the instruction ‘to be opened in the event of my death’,” said Vogl, “‘or after my unexplained absence of more than forty-eight hours’. The contents explain my theory of why you murdered your wife.”

  The count reacted to these words by unconsciously clenching and releasing his right fist.

  “There is, of course, no doubt that you did it, or about how you did it. No one hindered you.” Vogl supported this partial bluff with all the confidence he could command.

  “Doktor Nordwalder believes that death occurred late at night,” said the count, retrieving his voice, “while there was still enough snow falling to obliterate any tracks.”

  “Doktor Nordwalder is a brilliant investigator, no doubt, but he does not realize that you killed Jennie. He found no evidence of escape because no one tried to escape.”

  “Preposterous! An intruder, lingering after the soirée murdered Jennie while the rest of us slept.”

  “There was no intruder, and if the contents of my letter register the truth, you were not asleep. You waited to see your suspicions confirmed, and then you acted. You slashed Jennie’s throat and tossed the saber out her window.”

  The count made no further attempt at denial. Vogl expected none. Aristocrats did not bare their souls to commoners. “The baffling question is why you did it. The answer must be pride. You couldn’t let Jennie make a fool of you.”

  “She never did that.”

  “She never intended to do that,” Vogl corrected, “but we both knew Jennie. She demanded her own way regardless of the cost, and she believed she could get whatever she wanted.”

  “What could she want that I didn’t supply?” asked the count. The attempt to match Vogl’s studied self-assurance did not succeed.

  “What Jennie always wanted—what she lived and died for—power. Not exclusively the vicarious power of influencing men such as yourself behind their thrones. She wanted to be an empress. Instead she worked with what we supplied her. Allowing her to take a hand in the negotiations over platinum was a stroke of genius on your part. However,” Vogl again raised his hand to forestall the count’s interruption, “it wasn’t enough. Jennie wanted to gain ascendancy over you as well. And to that end, she made a fatal miscalculation. She enlisted your son.”

  “Leave Heinrich out of this!” The count clenched both fists.

  “He figures prominently in my letter,” Vogl continued quietly. “Somehow Jennie ensnared Heinrich—to a degree that was intolerable—for both of you.”

  “For both?” For a moment, the count’s animosity abated.

  “Here I have the advantage of you. Heinrich’s play. Did not Jennie encourage him to write it?”

  “Suppose she did,” said the count. “The theater is not a suitable career for Heinrich. Yes, Jennie and I had words about it. But a nettlesome domestic dispute over my son’s literary aspirations hardly justifies her murder.”

  “Nor was it the precise cause,” said Vogl. “One has but to note the title of the play to see why you decided to stop Jennie.”

  “The title?”

  “Phaedrus. It is not a common name. I haven’t run across it in the works of the ancients.”

  “You’re the scholar,” said the count.

  “But the name is suggestive. Phaedrus is the masculinization of Phaedra. Phaedra was an unfortunate woman who, against all her inclinations, found herself in love with her son-in-law!” Vogl let the remark hang.

  “Disgusting,” said the count after a moment.

  “Yes, and how insensitive of Heinrich to invoke the legend. As I say, I don’t know anything specific about Jennie’s encroachment into Heinrich’s soul, but the encroachment was continuing. Here ‘Die Sonne und Das Veilchen’ makes its unfortunate appearance.”

  “Stop this madness, Vogl. Doktor Nordwalder informs me that the song contained arcane information about platinum.”

  “I’m sure it did. The ploy certainly bears Jennie’s mark, but your Excellency, we both know never to underestimate Jennie’s inventiveness. This time, Jennie underestimated you.

  “Here’s what my letter says,” Vogl continued under the count’s glare. “You may correct any misstatements.”

  In spite of himself, the count nodded.

  Vogl continued, “You witnessed Heinrich’s developing fascination for Jennie. Heinrich, given his youth, couldn’t adequately conceal his feelings. Jennie noticed them. So did you. Thus Jennie encountered her final temptation. She seized the opportunity to dominate your household. With Heinrich in her thrall, through him she could manipulate you. In the letter, I take a charitable view suggesting she only desired to further his
artistic aspirations under your nose and against your wishes. She knew the risks. Knowing that you were on the alert, she proceeded with utmost caution. When she undertook the platinum negotiations, I presume with your blessing, she came to a number—five.

  “I accept Doktor Nordwalder’s conclusion that international platinum concerns hinged on that number, but Jennie outfoxed herself: the number held significance for Heinrich also. It identified an hour when Jennie expected him. In terms of time and secrecy, ‘five’ is most suggestive. At five in the morning everything is still. By eight in the morning, everyone is up. Heinrich could not expect a private audience then. So Jennie had me leave a note for him on the table downstairs telling him to go away. He would arrive at eight and find the note. She didn’t expect you to read it and deduce its implications.”

  “A most imaginative account, Herr Vogl,” said the count, “but not very credible.”

  “I hardly believe it myself,” Vogl said almost affably, “and I only committed it to paper after you attempted to poison Franz Schubert.”

  “Schubert the flunkey?”

  “Schubert the composer, Schubert the pianist, Schubert my friend.”

  “Herr Vogl, you astonish me. Schubert’s life is insignificant. One doesn’t get on in the world with friends of so little consequence.”

  “Your Excellency, Franz Schubert possesses something which neither you, nor I with all our worldliness and—ruthlessness—can ever aspire to: a unique talent. In posterity, his life may amount to more than yours and mine put together. If he dies betimes, who knows how much great music the world loses?”

  Von Neulinger’s voice displayed contempt. “If you say so. To me, Schubert has nothing to do with anything.”

  “But he does. Franz Schubert altered Jennie’s text. Her ‘five’ became Schubert’s ‘eight’. Only he knew the song’s original lyrics. Removing him prevents the change from coming to light.”

  “I’m sorry to burst your bubble, Vogl, but Schubert has been under continual surveillance since the day my wife died. We carelessly returned his music to him, and Nordwalder wanted it back. Do you suggest that Doktor Nordwalder and the Ministry of the Interior condoned the destruction of their only hope of retrieving the song?” The count’s eyes remained fixed on Vogl’s letter.

  Vogl followed the count’s gaze to the pages on the table, hoping that his performance was convincing. “You escaped Nordwalder’s notice somehow, not a difficult maneuver for one in your privileged position. Nordwalder wanted the music, but you wanted to destroy its composer. Safety was not your chief concern. To you ‘Die Sonne und Das Veilchen’ remains a source of shame, a chronicle of your weakness, the legacy of your perfidious wife. It must disappear from the earth”

  “Accepting your absurd premise for a moment, why are you so certain that I tried to harm Schubert? My son could have an equally strong desire to dispose of him.”

  “Not Heinrich. He didn’t come back to the house from the time he left the soirée until eight the following morning—long after Jennie died. I met him on the stairs.”

  Silence reigned for several minutes. Then von Neulinger said, “Very well thought out, Vogl. Ingenious. Of course you can’t prove any of this nonsense.”

  “No, your Excellency, I cannot. Nor do I want to.” Vogl returned the count’s steely gaze. “Only my death or disappearance gives credibility to my writing.”

  Again silence hung in the air. This time, Vogl broke it. He spoke softly. “Your Excellency, I am an actor, trained to observe and to empathize. Before composing my letter, I imagined myself in your painful position. Having felt my own humiliation at Jennie’s hands, I can envisage your rage at her cruelty. I respect the importance of the von Neulinger name. What greater shame, even as unsubstantiated gossip, than to be constantly reminded that your wife was carrying on with your son? If it is any consolation to you, from my observation of Heinrich, I don’t think that the possible horror we both imagine actually occurred. Today, unlike two weeks ago, Heinrich walks about like a man with a clear conscience.”

  The count acknowledged the remark with a slight bowing of his head.

  “But, Herr Count, we face a terrible impasse. For the sake of public order and your family’s honor, Jennie’s death must be avenged. As her long-time friend and victim, I fit the role of the murderer neatly. However, I decline the role. Hence, my letters, and hence I make this pledge to you. Once I am freed of suspicion, all copies of the letter, except the one I leave with you, will be destroyed. I have kept the ones destined for the newspapers—forgive me if I don’t tell you which ones—and Doktor Nordwalder at my lodgings, to be mailed out this evening unless I reclaim them personally. The others have gone to trusted, sensible friends who will not open them prematurely. I will do everything in my power to preserve your family’s reputation. That’s the best I can do.”

  There was more silence. Eventually the count said, “You have done enough, Herr Vogl. Now I must act. I remember saying on the morning that my wife was found that whoever killed her would feel the full extent of my anger. I will keep that vow. Now go!”

  With his firm military stride, the count went and unlocked the salon’s door.

  “Auf wiederseh’n, Herr Vogl.”

  “Auf wiederseh’n, your Excellency.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  On the evening of Tuesday, February 26, 1822, at the moment Count Georg Von Neulinger ended his life with a bullet to the temple, Doktor Ignatz Nordwalder was at the home of his friend Kurt von Merlinbeck, seeing him off on a trip to the mountains of Graz.

  “It will be chilly at first,” he counseled Merlinbeck, “but soon it will warm up, and everything will be different. Don’t worry, Kurt. I will look after affairs here,” he finished with a cynical smile.

  Merlinbeck suffered a dutiful farewell kiss from his wife, and when the coach pulled away he reached into his greatcoat for the bottle concealed there. He paid no attention to his wife and superior entering his house together.

  The week following Merlinbeck’s departure was more hectic than Nordwalder anticipated. While becoming better acquainted with Zdenka, he labored to justify Count von Neulinger’s suicide as the action of a man “deranged by grief.” Eventually Nordwalder explained to Captain Millstein that the count, after skillfully tracking down Timmerich, who had forced himself into the countess’s boudoir and murdered her when his advances were rebuffed, was cheated of proper revenge by Timmerich’s untimely accidental drowning. “How much this disappointment contributed to the count’s momentary madness, we will never know,” he concluded.

  Millstein managed to commit the explanation to paper and see it published in appropriate places.

  The narrative was not completely convincing. For one thing, how did Timmerich ever come to know the countess in the first place? Nordwalder casually instructed Captain Millstein to add Timmerich’s name to Eugénie’s final guest list, posthumously. If suspicions of some other explanation lingered elsewhere, no one came forth to voice them.

  Fixing this and other details took diplomatic skill, cajolery and coercion, but the stability of Metternich’s Vienna remained what it always was, and Vienna looked like Metternich and Baron Hager expected it to look.

  Heinrich von Neulinger, at the decisive moment, was finishing up a latish dinner at his lodging. He barely knew what he was eating, because he was enthralled in revising Prince Flamminius’s Triumph (previously Prince Phaedrus’ Ordeal). Never before and never again would he come as close to resembling Franz Schubert. Within weeks, he abandoned his play, indeed all his artistic longings. Over time he became a worthy inheritor of the von Neulinger establishment, although his service to Austria never achieved the notoriety of his father’s works. It is said that providing for his family, which grew to include a wife and five children, consumed most of his time.

  But that was the future. On this late February evening, Michael Vogl was on the stage of the Hofoper, singing his short first act solo in The Empress of the Common. Kunegund
e Rosa managed to leave the maypole intact. She stood within a few feet of Herr Vogl echoing his sentiments as Bildman’s score required—“She’s approaching fast! The gate is passed! She’s here at last!” Anne-Marie Donmeyer’s entrance, predictably, created a great sensation, and the little dog, “Schmutz”, was rewarded for his squirming in her clutches with the customary gales of laughter and applause.

  Many of Vogl’s friends and acquaintances were in the audience, among them Thomas, Lord Bellingham, who “at the drop of a hat” decided to “take in the play as his swan song” to the city he “planned to leave on the morrow forever.” No Austrian serving or spying at the embassy fully deciphered Lord Bellingham’s utterance. To everyone’s relief, he didn’t sing. He “left all that to professionals.” And he did enjoy the flawlessly executed maypole dance near the end of the first act.

  The audience also included many members of Vienna’s artistic community, both old and young. Oddly, three in one party were named Franz. The young playwright Franz Schober, who rarely attended the theater as a spectator, was there in the company of his friend, Franz Seraph von Bruchmann and his sister Justina. Schober joined the party at the last minute “in the spirit of adventure,” and found himself enjoying the on-stage performance just as much—exactly as much—as Justina did.

  On Justina’s other side, sat the third Franz, the up and coming composer, Franz Schubert. He, too, rarely attended the theater—he could rarely afford tickets. This time, however, he was the guest of Michael Vogl, upon whom Kunegunde Rosa had prevailed to sponsor the outing.

  Perhaps the most eminent member of the audience that night was the composer Carl Maria von Weber, whose own opera Der Freischütz, was to open in a week and take Vienna by storm.

  As the curtain descended, smiles were to be seen throughout the audience and on the boards. Franz Schober and Justina Bruchmann exchanged whispers of delight; Michael Vogl and Kunegunde Rosa signaled silent mutual congratulations for their so far flawless contributions to the performance. Franz Schubert caught Carl Maria von Weber’s eye and the men traded the cordial smiles that can only be fully understood by two people who recognize and respect each other’s genius.