The Legacy of Erich Zann and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

by Brian Stableford

  “Zann was even more unorthodox as a composer than Locatelli, whose work was shunned during his lifetime and remained virtually unplayed until Paganini revived it. In order to scrape a living while he continued his scholarly studies and indulged in esoteric composition, Zann found quotidian employment in the pit of a theater on the Boulevard du Temple—the Ambigu, as it was then called. It can hardly have been convenient work, for he was living in a garret in the Rue d’Auseuil, but he had no objection to long walks, and probably preferred to keep the two aspects of his life separate.”

  Dupin paused to glance out of the window impatiently. We had crossed the two arms of the river by the Pont Saint-Michel and the Pont du Change and were continuing northwards toward the Boulevard du Temple. The nag that was hauling us was by no means as fine a horse as the two animals tethered to the Prefect’s carriage, so our progress was more stately than rapid.

  “I don’t know the Rue d’Auseuil,” I put in. “Where is it?”

  “All this happened before the July Revolution of 1830,” Dupin said. “Paris had many unnamed streets in those days, and the popular names by which they were known were not always the names formally attached to them by Louis-Philippe’s assiduous bureaucrats in the following decade. The Rue d’Auseuil is no longer the Rue d’Auseuil, and has never been the Rue d’Auseuil in any official sense, but that is the name by which it was known then. As to its whereabouts, it zigzagged precipitously up the slope of a butte on the bank of the Bièvre, which was sheer on the face overlooking the stream—do you know the Bièvre?”

  “No,” I confessed.

  “It’s one of the tributary rivulets of the Seine, which has been swallowed up by the city and has degenerated into an open sewer—although I don’t believe that it will remain open for long. It will be roofed over, like other such tributaries, and will become a sewer in truth as well as in metaphor. The butte is close enough to the heart of Paris to have a view of the Val-de-Grâce, albeit one spoiled by intervening factory chimneys, but is far enough away for the fountain at Mulard to be within walking distance. It’s a long trek from there to the Boulevard du Temple, but Erich Zann was prepared to make that journey on foot every day—much to the mystification of his immediate neighbor in the orchestra pit of the theater in which he earned his crust, Paul Palaiseau.

  “As Palaiseau tells the story, he soon assessed Zann as an undeveloped genius, like himself—although Zann was, in fact, by far the cleverer of the two—and he attempted to befriend him on that account. Zann was a difficult man to befriend, though, and not only because he was unable to speak. I do not know whether he was born dumb, or became so as a result of some catastrophe, but if the condition that affected his speech also affected his hearing—as is the case with so many deaf-mutes—it did not do so in any ordinary fashion, for he had a tremendous ear for music, if not for social conversation. He had no real friends, although he was on tolerably good terms with his landlord, a cripple named Blandot, and he also became an object of fascination to one of his fellow tenants in the house in the Rue d’Auseuil—the author of the deposition to which Monsieur Groix and I made reference earlier.

  “Zann did, however, confide certain documents, including a testament, to a well-known notary, Bernard Clamart, and he certainly tolerated the acquaintance of Palaiseau and the author of the deposition, even though he did not encourage it, at least to begin with. Perhaps he had a profound and earnest desire to make friends, but had learned to be very wary of other people until he felt he knew them well. It was almost unheard of for him to strike up an acquaintance on his own account, although he did make the effort to seek me out. He came to see me in search of a certain very rare book, after which he had enquired—by means of a written request—at the Bibliothéque du Senat. One of the librarians there had informed him that I possessed the only copy still known to be in Paris. I was an habitué of the library in those days, and was sometimes drawn into conversations about rare and esoteric works.”

  “Was it a book on violin music?” I asked, remembering that he had made a casual reference to having been taught to play the instrument during in his boyhood.

  “Only indirectly. It was, in fact, the infamous Harmonies de l’Enfer, penned in the fourteenth century by an Averoignean heretic monk, who attached the unlikely signature of ‘Abbé Apollonius’ to the manuscript. A few copies were privately printed in the eighteenth century—directly from the original, it’s said—allegedly at the instigation of Count Cagliostro, before the latter’s expulsion from France on the trumped-up charge of involvement in the affair of the queen’s necklace.”

  I glimpsed the suggestion of a connecting thread to Tartini’s Devil’s Sonata, and said: “Had Zann’s old master read this Harmonies of Hell volume?”

  “It’s very unlikely. I doubt that Tartini had any competence in Old French, and I’m quite certain that Zann would not have been able to make head nor tail of the text, if I had been willing to lend it to him—which, of course, I was not. I was, however, sufficiently intrigued by his interest to volunteer to read him various key passages—translating them as I went into modern French, and then, to the best of my ability, into German—in exchange for private performances. At that point in my life, I did not have the marked distaste for violin music that I subsequently developed. For that reason, Zann came to the Rue Dunôt on several occasions, and we developed a friendship of sorts. Thanks to my observational and interpretative skills, I gradually acquired an unusual facility in interpreting the meanings of his improvised sign-language, and he obviously came to think of me as the one person in the world to whom he could really, as it were, talk.

  “In spite of the relative ease with which I decoded his substitute-speech, I was rather surprised when Zann asked me to go with him to the Rue Serpente, in order to act as his interpreter while he made an alteration to his testament. Previously, Paul Palaiseau had been its sole beneficiary—unknown, I believe, to the violinist himself at that time—and Bernard Clamart its only executor. As a result of the visit on which I accompanied him, Zann added my name as a subsidiary beneficiary, and accepted the notary’s suggestion that he should nominate a reserve executor, in case Clamart should predecease him. As Zann knew no one suitable, Clamart suggested the name of a young magistrate, who has since risen considerably in the world, and whom you know as the present Prefect of the Parisian police.”

  “But what did Zann have to leave, if he was living in a garret and playing as a hack in the Boulevard du Temple?” I asked.

  “There was only one item of real significance: his violin. In his youth, Giuseppe Tartini had lived for a while in Cremona, as a neighbor of Antonio Stradivarius, who was a friend of his father. Stradivarius had given the ambitious boy two instruments that he regarded as inferior to his best work, and did not want to sell. One of them—the better of the two, which was only regarded as inferior because it did not quite measure up to Stradivarius’ exceptionally high standards—Tartini passed on to one of his more prestigious pupils long before he met Erich Zann, but the other Tartini came to regard as spoiled, or at least peculiar. It was not defective, in any simple sense, but it was undoubtedly strange, and apparently unreliable in performance. Tartini tried it out and then put it away in favor of the other; apparently, he had almost forgotten its existence until he showed it to Erich Zann, who proved so skillful in the violin’s use that Tartini made him a present of it.

  “By that time, of course, Stradivarius was world-famous as a violin-maker beyond compare—although I understand from my eavesdropping that Paganini prefers a Guarneri—but the instrument that Tartini gave Zann was not recognizable as a Stradivarius by the ear of any connoisseur, and had no documentation of its provenance, so the Italian did not consider it a gift of any great value. Zann, however, knew what a treasure it was, and of what the instrument was capable, in the right hands. He valued it immensely, and evidently wanted to make sure that it would pass into the hands of a musician who would treasure it, once he was dead. Alas, he knew n
o one better than Palaiseau, who must have contrived to persuade Zann that the two of them had more in common than they really had, and that he, like Zann himself, only needed the right instrument to bring out his true genius.

  “Palaiseau did, indeed, inherit the instrument—somewhat to his surprise, I think, but also to his great delight—and did appreciate its value. Unfortunately, he found the Stradivarius as difficult and as unreliable as Tartini had, and eventually abandoned his attempts to master its eccentricities—somewhat to my relief, I must confess. He continued to use his former instrument in performance, initially because he thought the Ambigu unworthy of a Stradivarius, and then because he could not imagine that the director of the orchestra would tolerate his uncertain use of the latter instrument. He kept it as a rather frustrating ornament, and might have sold it had he not been unable to convince anyone of its origin—until recently, apparently.”

  “I dare say that the director of the renamed theater was delighted to advertise and exploit Palaiseau’s claim, even in the absence of proof of provenance, in connection with the current production.” I put in.

  “No doubt,” Dupin agreed. “The last time I had an opportunity to ask Palaiseau about the instrument—which was, admittedly, some years ago—he claimed that he would never play it in public, because it went out of tune far too persistently and far too swiftly to be trusted with any piece but the briefest of capricci, and that he had even given up trying to play it in the privacy of his lodgings, for fear of annoying his neighbors. His answer was probably dishonest. He was, I suspect, moved to lie to me by a baseless anxiety.”

  “What anxiety?” I asked.

  “Palaiseau thought—and probably still thinks—that I was jealous of him, and had wanted the Stradivarius for myself. He has long imagined that I was direly displeased with Zann’s decision to leave the instrument to him, and probably thought it best when he last spoke to me about the matter to do his utmost to persuade me that the violin really was valueless and useless, even though he had not yet given up hope of mastering its difficulties.”

  “But if the only thing of value that Zann had to leave was the violin,” I remarked, “and that went to Palaiseau, what was the subsidiary bequest that he left to you?”

  At that moment, however, the weary nag finally succeeded in drawing the fiacre to a halt outside a gloomy edifice in an ill-lit side-street off the Boulevard du Temple, not far from the infamous site of Fieschi’s atrocity, and Dupin was already jumping down, rooting in his pockets for a few coins with which to pay the driver. In the end I had to make up the balance of the fare, and by the time we had presented our credentials to the sergent de ville posted to keep watch on the door of Palaiseau’s building, in order that we might be allowed to ring the bell, I had quite forgotten that the question had been asked, let alone left unanswered.

  We were admitted to the building by a concierge so ancient in appearance that she put me in mind of one of Jonathan Swift’s Struldbruggs. Her mind was obviously still sharp, though, for she recognized Monsieur Dupin, even though—according to his own testimony—she could not have seen him for several years. She greeted him by name, politely.

  “It’s good to see you again, Henriette,” he replied, although I could not imagine that he was sincere. “Tell me, does Monsieur Palaiseau have many visitors now that he has found fame at last?”

  “Not at this time of night, you may be sure,” the crone replied. “And if, by visitors, you mean ladies, no. He knows the meaning of decency, does Monsieur Palaiseau, even if he is forever scraping away at that infernal fiddle of his. It was bad enough before he and Monsieur Bazailles started working together, and it became even worse when they began their rehearsals for the play...although I’m half-persuaded that the child who sings for them sometimes really does have the voice of an angel. Mademoiselle Deurne, alas, does not.”

  “Bazailles and both of the sopranos have been here more than once, then?”

  “Oh yes, several times—and the director too, and Monsieur Mephistopheles the baritone, and other singers in the cast—but no visitors, if, by visitors, you mean ladies. I don’t count Mademoiselle Deurne in that category, although there are rumors in the neighborhood suggesting that I should—but none coupling her name with Monsieur Palaiseau’s, I’m glad to say. Those who do come always come by day, as decent folk should, and they don’t come alone...except for Monsieur Bazailles and Monsieur Mephistopheles, once or twice. They never stay past dusk, except for the proprietor of the theater, who’s only half a dozen strides from his own house—well, they wouldn’t, would they? Not around these parts.”

  “Not if they’re wise, my dear Henriette,” Dupin agreed, “but the world has no shortage of fools.”

  Somehow, Dupin had kept a sou back from the sum he had given the coachman, and the concierge seemed glad to receive it. It was as if she were unused to receiving any larger sum, when anyone bothered to tip her at all.

  “Would you be so kind as to consult your program notes for me, old friend,” he asked, “and tell me the name of the actor who plays the Devil before—and presumably after—the boy replaces him in Monsieur Soulié’s play?”

  I took the notes out of my pocket, and squinted at them. There was enough candlelight filtering through the grille of Henriette’s lodge to allow me to read the name.

  “Monsieur Hood,” I said. “An Englishman, fresh from Drury Lane. He’s a fine baritone though—not many to match him on the French stage, outside the Opéra and the Comédie-Française. That’s doubtless why he was imported—and it doesn’t matter in the least that he has a strong English accent, even when he sings, since he’s playing the Devil.”

  “Thank you,” said Dupin.

  The staircase that led from the central courtyard of the house to Palaiseau’s first-floor apartment was a wooden one, external to the hull of the building, and seemed rather rickety. When Dupin knocked on the door it was opened almost immediately. Palaiseau was obviously expecting someone to call, in spite of the fact that his usual visitors always left before dusk, and no one but a fool would be abroad in the vicinity of the Boulevard de Crime at such a late hour.

  5.

  I had somehow expected Palaiseau to be almost as ancient as the concierge, having vaguely envisaged him in the role of an old hand in the theater orchestra taking Erich Zann under his wing. In fact, it must have been the other way around, for the man who blinked at us from his doorway was no older than Auguste Dupin and definitely younger than Bernard Clamart. He evidently fancied himself as something of a dandy, for his hair was carefully curled and powdered, and he was still wearing his orchestral frock-coat, braided trousers and polished black shoes, although he must have had abundant time since finishing the evening’s performance to change into a dressing-gown and pantoufles.

  “Oh, it’s you, Dupin,” he said, although he did not seem unduly surprised, or unduly displeased. “I was half-expecting to see an inspector from the Sûreté. I’ve been promised protection, by no less an authority than Monsieur le Préfet himself. Someone might be after my violin, it seems, and the locks on my door and cabinet will not be enough to keep him at bay, since he’s a reckless cut-throat. Come in, come in. Who’s this?”

  Dupin went in, as he was bid. As I followed him, he told the violinist my name—which, of course, Palaiseau did not recognize.

  “Does he know our business?” Palaiseau asked, in a gruffly conspiratorial manner. “We swore an oath, remember?”

  “I’ve begun to explain the situation to him on the way here,” Dupin said, as he led the way into the apartment’s sitting-room. “I think the oath is redundant now, don’t you? The cat is, as the Americans say, out of the bag.”

  “If you say so, Dupin,” the violinist said, agreeably, as he ushered us through the vestibule into the central corridor of his apartment. “I’m happy to take your lead in the matter. It’s good of you to come to make sure that I’m all right—or are you simply making enquiries on behalf of Monsieur Groix? He must be short-
handed when it comes to mere criminal activities, with so much political ferment in the air.”

  “Monsieur Groix knows that I’m here,” Duping said, ambiguously. “He will follow when he can, though, to question you formally and perhaps to make further arrangements for your protection. In the meantime, you may talk quite freely in front of my friend, who has my complete confidence.”

  The sitting-room into which the violinist escorted us was almost as surprising as Palaiseau’s own person. Either Palaiseau’s landlady employed a first-rate housemaid, or Palaiseau was one of those fussy dandies who could not abide anything to be out of place or dusty. The room was magnificently neat; even the hearth, where a log fire was blazing, seemed conspicuously free of stray ashes, and the brass fire-irons were gleaming in the reflected firelight as if they had been freshly polished.

  There were only two armchairs by the fire, but Palaiseau only seemed slightly irritated as he offered them to us, as the laws of hospitality obliged him to do, while he fetched a stiff-backed dining-chair from the next room for his own use. He did not offer us wine, tea or tobacco.

  “You are here about this Clamart business, I take it?” the violinist asked, suspiciously.

  “Yes,” said Dupin. “Did the Prefect’s messenger tell you about the grave, too?”