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

by Brian Stableford

  “Yes, albeit rather cryptically—but the Prefect is famous throughout Paris for his economy with information. Zann’s body has been unearthed and the coffin smashed—did they find anything in the coffin?”

  “There was nothing in the coffin to find,” Dupin said. “You know that.”

  “Do I?” Palaiseau countered. “If you strain your memory, you’ll remember that you, Groix and the physician were the only ones who saw the dead man’s face, except for that poor fool who was with him when he died. You had already sealed the lid of the coffin by the time that Clamart and I arrived at the graveside, allegedly for fear that we might suffer the same fate as the other, although why the two of you thought that you had better resistance to the threat of madness than Clamart or I possessed, I have no idea.”

  Dupin closed his eyes momentarily, as if to consult the distant memory. “That’s true,” he agreed, eventually. “It had not occurred to me that you might not have taken our word for it that the manuscript to which the deposition referred had been lost in its entirety, and that no documents of any sort had been found in Zann’s rooms. Have you, perchance, confided that doubt to anyone else?”

  “Certainly not,” said Palaiseau, stiffly. “The five of us swore an oath, and I’m a man of my word. Besides which, I’ve never even met the man who’s been asking questions all over the city—Paganini, that is. He’s a concert performer, too grand to hobnob with hard-working players like myself.” There was a distinct note of envy in his voice; I inferred that Palaiseau was able to tolerate his own obscurity while there were no virtuoso violinists on conspicuous display in Paris, but that the occasional presence in the capital of an authentic maestro aggravated the sore spot left by the ambitions to genius he had once entertained on his own behalf.

  “Excuse me, Dupin,” I said, “But I’m afraid that I haven’t quite contrived to catch up yet. What does this deposition you keep mentioning actually contain? All you’ve told me is that it was given by Zann’s fellow tenant.”

  “The man in question was with Zann when he died,” Dupin explained. “The experience was evidently very disturbing. Instead of summoning a physician immediately, as he should have done, or even a policeman, as he might well have done, he came to see me, because he found my name and address on a piece of paper that the librarian at the Bibliothéque du Senat had given Zann, inscribed beneath the name of the book that the dumb man had written down to facilitate his enquiry. Having seen the word Enfer, Blandot’s other tenant was intent on persuading me that Zann had been fending off the legions of Hell, with no other weapon than his violin, but that the Devil had come to claim his soul regardless. He wanted me to supply him with some kind of amulet to ward off the Evil Spirit, and seemed disappointed to learn that I was only a humble collector of books, not a wizard at all.

  “I took him to see Clamart, who summoned the magistrate, and I left the two of them to make the formal arrangements for the official certification of Zann’s death by Maître Fourmont, while I accompanied the frightened man back to the Rue d’Auseuil. Because he refused to go back into the room, I went in to examine the body and to await the arrival of Clamart and the physician. The magistrate came too, but he had no clerk with him, so he left it to Clamart to take an official deposition from the witness while he came with me to assist Fourmont in attending to the body. The tenant claimed in his sworn statement that Zann had died of sheer terror, and had continued to play his violin long after he was dead. Those of us who read the deposition concluded that the man had been driven mad by Zann’s sudden demise, but that its publication might stir up an unwelcome sensation, especially if rumor were to surface about Zann’s reasons for leaving Austria.

  “The physician was at first inclined to confirm the opinion that Zann must have died of fright, for he really did have a terrified expression imprinted on his livid features but Groix persuaded him easily enough that it was not an appropriate official cause of death. Fourmont eventually agreed to record the cause of death as heart failure. It could not be denied, though, that the expression on the dead man’s face might easily have proved distressing to anyone not used to the transformations that corpses sometimes undergo as their muscles stiffen into rigor mortis. When the coffin arrived, we sealed the lid, and had it transported to Père Lachaise. Palaiseau is correct in remembering that Groix and I were the only ones to see the dead man’s face, apart from Fourmont and the witness, because Clamart was downstairs all the while. He is thus correct in claiming that he does not know for sure that nothing was placed in the coffin with the body before it was interred, in an umarked grave, in Père Lachaise.”

  “But why was the grave unmarked? And why was the burial secret—apparently without the benefit of clergy?”

  “Zann was an Austrian refugee, a Protestant and a reputed Diabolist.”

  “Are there no Protestant cemeteries in Paris?”

  “Yes—but we were enthusiastic to suppress the tenant’s wild tales of diabolism, and thought it more discreet to complete the burial quickly and discreetly. The man had no living relatives, and no one to miss him except for Blandot and Palaiseau.”

  “It seemed wisest to be discreet about the Stradivarius, too,” Palaiseau put in. “I was the only other member of the theater orchestra who knew what it was, and at that time, I was reluctant to have it noised about that I possessed such an instrument.” He did not explain why he had recently changed his mind.

  “All in all,” Dupin added, “it seemed best to avoid publicity. Groix, in his capacity as a conscientious magistrate, had no alternative but to file the tenant’s deposition, whereupon it became part of the national record, but there are few better ways to make sure that no one ever reads a document than to place it in the veritable graveyard of documents that constitute the Archives of State. One day, perhaps, it will be found—and it might then be skillfully revised by a story-teller’s hand into one of the horror stories that you delight in publishing in your American magazines, in order that its substance might hide in even plainer sight. I hope that will not happen, though, at least until the present century has ended. At any rate, Palaiseau received Zann’s violin, as was his legal due, and the five of us swore an oath to say no more about the affair.”

  It had become increasingly apparent to me that there was still a part of the secret that Dupin was deliberately keeping from me, and I became rather annoyed with him. “There’s obviously something more than you’ve confessed behind your desire for secrecy,” I said, a trifle peevishly, “If you’re not going to tell me everything, I wonder why you bothered to tell me anything at all.”

  “I said much the same thing to him myself all those years ago,” Palaiseau put in, eagerly, “but he told me that what he, Groix and Fourmont had seen in Zann’s room was better passed over in silence, even within the bounds of our little conspiracy. He said that what Zann had desired of me was to cherish his beloved violin, and that I had best do that discreetly. Whether he confided any more than that to Clamart, I don’t know. Now, it seems, he suspects that I have been talking—but what, in all honesty, could I say?”

  “You have been talking,” Dupin told him, flatly. “You have ceased to be discreet and have started boasting about your possession of the Stradivarius, even if you haven’t explicitly identified it as Erich Zann’s instrument. The question is, what else have you talked about?”

  “What else could I talk about?” Palaiseau insisted. “I could repeat the madman’s ravings, of course, but what good or harm would that do me or anyone else? If anyone has been talking recently about whatever you saw in Zann’s room, it must have been you or Groix, since Fourmont is dead...unless it was the madman, or Blandot, Zann’s landlord.”

  “Blandot and his other tenant are both dead,” Dupin reported, flatly. “For some years the latter spent his time roaming the streets of Paris, claiming to be looking for the Rue d’Auseuil, but to be unable to find it—and, indeed, he seems never to have found his way back to Blandot’s house, although anyone in the quart
er could have directed him to it. Perhaps he was mad; at any rate, he died seven years ago, to the Prefect’s certain knowledge.”

  “Perhaps he was mad?” Palaiseau queried. “I saw no room for doubt, when he came to see me, to implore me to destroy the violin.”

  “Did he do that?” Dupin asked. “I didn’t know. I was never entirely convinced that he was truly mad, if there is a true sense of the word. It seemed to me that he had simply lost his sense of direction. There are people who think that I am mad, though, so I always feel entitled to be suspicious of judgments of that sort, given that I am the sanest man alive.”

  Palaiseau did not seem convinced of that, but he evidently had questions of his own that he wanted to address to Dupin. “Do you believe that whoever killed Bernard Clamart will come after me next, Monsieur Dupin?” he asked, abruptly. “Is it the Stradivarius that he is after?”

  “If it were the violin,” Dupin countered, “Why would he—or she—go to Clamart at all? Anyone who cared to read the program notes for your theater’s current production would know that you have it in your possession.”

  “He was the will’s executor. Perhaps the murderer wanted to see the will, in the hope that there might be some grounds for a legal challenge to its terms. We don’t know for certain, after all, that Zann had no relatives—and our motives for keeping the burial quiet might have been misconstrued, if he had.”

  “Why kill Clamart, though, if that was the reason for his visit?” Dupin asked, posing the question of himself as much as to Palaiseau.

  “Perhaps Clamart refused to show him the will, or became so suspicious of the enquirer’s motives that his visitor thought it politic to silence him?”

  Dupin shook his head, slowly. “Clamart was so lacking in suspicion of his visitor’s motives that he allowed him—or her—to move behind him and pick up the murder weapon without so much as a backward glance.”

  “Why do you keep saying or her?” Palaiseau wanted to know. “Do you think Clamart was killed by a woman?”

  “I don’t know,” Dupin suggested. “At any rate, it seems to have been someone of whom he had no fear—but his pocket-book was stolen, which suggests that whoever killed him knew him so slightly that the information therein was worth stealing.”

  “Or the money he kept in it, in the form on banknotes,” Palaiseau suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Dupin admitted. In a slightly different tone, he added: “My address will have been in the book, of course—and yours.”

  “So you do think that he—or she, if you insist—might come after me?”

  “My present judgment is that he or she is more likely to come after me. I thought it best to compare notes, though. Are you perfectly certain that you have not given anyone any information that might have set this train of events in progress?”

  “Perfectly—unless I have been talking in my sleep.”

  I was sure that the violinist had meant this last remark purely as a joke—but Dupin had told me more than once that jokes are an unreliable means of psychological defense, and had commented earlier that evening on the frequency with which remarks uttered in jest contain significant truths. Like a flash, he retorted: “Who might have heard you, Palaiseau, if you had talked in your sleep?”

  “Why, no one!” the other replied, slightly befuddled by the question. “I have no wife, as you know full well, nor even a housemaid of my own.”

  “Then there’s only one thing for it!” Dupin said, rising abruptly to his feet. I did likewise, but we seemed to have been too quick off the mark for our host, who remained seated. “What’s that?” Palaiseau asked. “Are you going in search of Groix to ask him for protection?”

  “No,” Dupin replied. “I’m going to the Rue d’Auseuil.”

  “The Rue d’Auseuil?” Palaiseau queried. “But you just said that Blandot is dead, and reiterated your claim that nothing was found when Zann’s attic room was searched. Blandot couldn’t have stolen anything from Zann’s rooms—he was a cripple who couldn’t climb the stairs of his own building. Or do you think that Zann might have taken advantage of Blandot’s infirmity to hide something elsewhere in the house? What is it, exactly, that you’re looking for?”

  These questions seemed to me to be more interesting in themselves than any answers Dupin might have given, in that they revealed significant details concerning the focus and extent of Palaiseau’s curiosity. Apparently, the violinist thought that there might be something to be found, apart from the violin, but did not know where or exactly what it was.

  “I’m not looking for anything,” Dupin replied—although he surely could not have expected Palaiseau to take his word for it—“but someone else clearly is. If he does not come in search of me tonight, or fails to find me, he will surely go to the Rue d’Auseuil. He might well have been there already; if so, I need to know about it, and to examine any traces he has left. The Prefect did not think of sending anyone to the house, since it has been boarded up for years, and there is no one there in need of protection, but it is an obvious target for a speculative treasure-hunter. Unlike your house and mine, it has no watchman posted outside, so it might seem to the thief to be the most attractive target, for the present. If you’re certain that you haven’t said a word to anyone, and cannot give us any clue to the identity of our adversary....”

  Dupin made as if to get up and stride to the door, but I knew that it was a bluff. He knew full well that Palaiseau had more to tell, and was trying to provoke him.

  The musician stood up too, as if belatedly remembering his duty as a host. “Don’t go yet,” he said, swiftly.

  “I must,” Dupin retorted. “Unless you have some information to impart that will put me on the track of the solution to the mystery, I must go elsewhere in search of clues.”

  “I haven’t said a word to anyone,” Palaiseau hastened to say, trying to sound teasing, “but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have my own suspicions—and there’s something I need to show you.”

  Dupin sat down again. “In that case,” he said, suddenly becoming patient again—thus making it obvious that his threat to leave had been a mere ploy—“show me.”

  “Very well,” said the violinist, leaping to his feet. “I will.”

  6.

  Palaiseau came back into the room less than a minute later, proudly holding a violin and a bow. He held the instrument up, as if to display it, but did not offer it to Dupin so that the great analyst could actually take it into his hands.

  “Do you recognize this instrument?” the violinist said.

  “It’s Erich Zann’s violin,” Dupin said. “What does your present employer call it? The Lost Stradivarius.”

  “He’s a fool,” Palaiseau said, shortly. “You and I know that it was never lost, even though it might have been, so to speak, in hiding—but successful advertisement has its own protocols. Now listen.”

  Without further delay, Palaiseau put the instrument to his shoulder, and positioned the fingers of his left hand very carefully before bringing the bow into play. Dupin was watching him carefully—and I thought, rather apprehensively.

  As the musician began to saw away, I reflected that the music seemed pleasant enough to me, although it hardly seemed to be the sort of threnody that the angels of Heaven might be expected to sing. As someone who fell noticeably short of a connoisseur, however, I reserved my judgment. Even if Palaiseau was simply showing off, in order to demonstrate to Auguste Dupin that he really was deserving of Erich Zann’s legacy, he was entitled to make his demonstration.

  When he had been playing for a few minutes, Palaiseau’s instrument seemed to go slightly out of tune, although he did not pause in his playing, and did not even frown in annoyance. The effect did not seem to last long, for the melody was soon restored, albeit in a darker vein. What had formerly been a pleasurable refrain now became rather ominous, although I was not at all sure how the transition had been worked—or, indeed, whether it was a real transition rather than an artifact of the ear of an in
expert beholder. I am not unaffected by music—who is?—but I have always considered myself slightly tone-deaf, in that I seem to be immune to many of its subtler effects. I have seen people moved to tears by music, and roused to literal exultation, but I have never had such a strong reaction myself. Nor am I expert enough in the theory of music to put names to all its effects, so I am unable to offer an accurate description here of exactly what Palaiseau was doing as he played. I can say with confidence, however, that there were no trills, nor any other conspicuous ornamental effects.

  I closed my eyes for a while, trying to isolate the music within my head, free from other potential distractions, and I gradually surrendered to its dark charm in spite of the hint of menace that I perceived within it. It seemed to me that the music became increasingly voluptuous, suggestive of strange sensuous delights, but also more plaintive, as if access to those delights were being weakened by impuissance, spoiled by ennui or undermined by spleen.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw that Dupin was watching Palaiseau like a hawk, as if on the lookout for some tell-tale sign—of what, I could not imagine.

  Eventually, Palaiseau drew to a close. “Well?” the violinist said, placing the violin and the bow very carefully on a sideboard and looking down at them in an almost reverent fashion. “Did you hear that? Do you understand its significance?”

  “To the first question, yes, I did,” said Dupin. “To the second...no, not exactly. Is that the music you play while the Devil, in his guise as an angel, sings his pretended abstract from the Heavenly choir?”

  “No,” said Palaiseau, turning his back on the violin and returning to his dining-chair. “It’s from the first act, when the protagonist of the play addresses himself to the girl he loves, and she responds in song—but the two pieces do have common themes, for reasons to do with the symbolism and aesthetic balance of the play. This is no standard Boulevard de Crime melodrama, you know; it’s a piece well worthy of the Stradivarius. The point is, did you hear what the instrument did as the piece progressed?”