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

by Brian Stableford

  “I noticed that you succeeded in changing the tuning of the violin part-way through the piece, with only a moment of discordant transition—a moment that could presumably be covered up in an orchestral performance by the clever deployment of another instrument. That’s not entirely new, however, although you might think that it proves your originality as well as your ability. I’ve heard Zann do something similar.”

  “No you haven’t,” said Palaiseau, tersely.

  “I can assure you....”

  The violinist cut him off. “I don’t doubt that you’ve heard it, Dupin—what I doubt is that you heard Zann do it, any more than you heard me do it.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Dupin said: “Ah! You’re trying to persuade me that the Stradivarius is making the transition of its own accord—that all you’re doing is, so to speak, playing along with it.”

  “Exactly,” Palaiseau confirmed. “Not that I’ve let on to that fool proprietor, or even to Bazailles. He didn’t compose the piece, you understand, until he’d heard the trick. He played along in his way, just as I did in mine—except that he’s now convinced that I’m a genius to compare with Paganini and I certainly wouldn’t care to disabuse him. Don’t look at me like that—I long ago disabused myself of any such notion, when I couldn’t begin to duplicate Zann’s skill with the instrument. I’d never realized, while he was alive, what a fiendish instrument it is. I know now...but the Fiend, it seems, has finally learned to tolerate me, or at least to find a use for my long-idle hands.”

  “Are you claiming that you’ve made some kind of diabolical pact?” I asked.

  Palaiseau turned to look at me, in a distinctly unfriendly fashion. “Do I look like a man whose every wish has been granted?” he asked.

  “To be perfectly honest,” I said, “I thought when you took your bow two nights ago that you looked like a man who has had one of his dearest wishes granted. You received a standing ovation, from the cast as well as the audience, and seemed to revel in it.”

  “Yes,” the musician admitted, “I do enjoy the applause, the recognition, especially when I’m summoned on to the stage to take a bow, which is a rare privilege for an instrumentalist. It’s not until I get home, to my lonely apartment, that the knowledge that I don’t really deserve the applause begins to eat into me.”

  “I can’t help feeling that you’re exaggerating, Palaiseau,” Dupin said, “and I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove. I’m entirely willing to take your word for it that the Stradivarius alters its tuning while it is being played, presumably as a result of the stresses placed upon it by playing—but as you don’t want to claim that you’ve made a pact with the Devil, you presumably don’t believe that the retuning process is to be reckoned supernatural. If all you’re trying to prove is your own cleverness, in being able to turn the violin’s odd behavior to your own advantage, by having tunes composed, so to speak around the fault, then you have my sincere congratulations. If you’re asserting more than that, please state what you mean, honestly and plainly.”

  The violinist looked at Dupin with mingled disappointment and hostility. Clearly, he had hoped for a different response—presumably a more credulous one.

  “The retuning doesn’t happen all the time,” Palaiseau said, dully.

  “In that case, you’ve evidently mastered both sides of the problem. You’ve helped to develop pieces that use the transition, when the note-structure induces it, but you’ve also helped to develop tunes that don’t induce it.”

  “Is that really all that you believe that Zann was doing in his own compositions?” Palaiseau asked.

  “I said nothing about Zann’s compositions,” Dupin countered. “We’re only concerned, for the present, with your own performances, are we not? Or are you really trying to persuade me to believe that the Stradivarius is performing, employing your hands as its obedient instrument?”

  “I don’t know!” Palaiseau complained, his voice rising in pitch as he squirmed in his chair, glancing sideways at the violin lying quietly on the sideboard. “I honestly don’t know!”

  The artistic temperament is a strange thing, I thought. Perhaps Giuseppe Tartini actually managed to convince himself that Il Trillo del Diavolo was a pastiche of the Devil’s own work, rather than a product of his own excited mind.

  “Does it really matter?” Dupin asked—a trifle cruelly, I thought. “After all, it’s only supportive music, though, is it not? If my friend’s report of the plot of your play is accurate, it’s the boy soprano who takes on the real burden of persuading the audience that the climactic song is Heavenly—and Mademoiselle Deurne must surely play a similar role with respect to the piece you’ve just played.”

  “I don’t just play for those two pieces,” Palaiseau replied, a trifle stiffly. “I play all the protagonist’s pieces. The actor merely pretends to play. There are nine violin pieces in all, three in each act. The boy only sings one, and Marilla—Mademoiselle Deurne, that is—only sings one to the accompaniment of the solo violin. She sings one other with the full orchestra, and one without any instrumental accompaniment at all.”

  “But how many of the nine pieces you play on the protagonist’s behalf take advantage of the instrument’s tendency to retune itself?”

  “Just the two,” Palaiseau admitted. “I’m deeply grateful that it no longer shows any such determination to do so at other times, although I’m quite at a loss to explain its docility.”

  Dupin sniffed, evidently feeling that he had already explained that irregularity, at least to his own satisfaction. “How does all this help us determine the identity of the treasure-seeker who violated Erich Zann’s grave and murdered Bernard Clamart?” I asked, thinking that I ought to make an attempt to defuse the accumulating tension.

  “I’m not sure that it does,” Palaiseau replied, defiantly, “but I wanted Monsieur Dupin to hear it anyway.”

  “I’m glad that you did, my old friend,” Dupin said, apparently agreeing with me that some mollification was necessary. “It might well be a significant piece of the puzzle. Can you think of anything else that might help me?”

  “I doubt it—but you might conceivably be interested to know that Monsieur Bazailles only appears on stage at the end, to take his bow along with Monsieur Soulié—and he did not arrive at the theater last night, or the previous night, until it was time for him to take that bow.”

  I almost broke into laughter. It did not seem at all strange to me that a composer should eventually tire of hearing his work played night after night, or that he should eventually learn to trust the instrumentalists to repeat their performances flawlessly. Why should the composer become a suspect merely because he was not present at the Délassements-Comique the time of the murder? Was Palaiseau, I wondered, deliberately trying to steer Dupin on to a false trail? If so, he had no chance of success, for Dupin was too clever to be manipulated in such a matter.

  “Why do you suspect one of your colleagues at the theater of being the guilty party, if you have said nothing to anyone?” Dupin asked, casually.

  “Because I cannot suspect myself,” Palaiseau retorted, “and Bazailles is as completely under the instrument’s spell as I am. I merely help it to play—he helped it to determine what it should play. Erich Zann once played both roles, but neither I nor Bazailles is quite as versatile as he was.”

  “Are you suggesting that the violin is the true author of this heinous crime?” I asked, incredulously.

  “I am merely giving Monsieur Dupin information that might be relevant,” Palaiseau said—disingenuously, I thought. “The violin obviously could not be responsible, in the sense that it had a mind of its own, capable of entertaining a motive for murder and carrying out such a deed—but in the sense that it can and does cast a spell, I do believe that it might be implicated, in a deeper sense than merely being an object of the criminal’s desire.”

  “But it has not cast a spell for the last fifteen years,” Dupin pointed out. “Or, if it has, it has done so
rather ineffectively. Would you like to come with us to the Rue d’Auseuil, and to bring the violin? Would you like to play it—or to help it play, if you prefer—in Erich Zann’s old room?”

  The expression on Palaiseau’s face was impossible to read by candlelight—impossible for me, at any rate, but I suspected that it must be ugly. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t. Not that I believe the madman’s assertion that it was something that Zann was trying to hold at bay with his playing that struck him dead, let alone he continued to play long after he was dead. My superstition, if that’s what it is, doesn’t extend quite as far as that.”

  “You’d prefer to be left alone here, then, with the violin—and no one to protect you, until Groix and Lestrade arrive, but a sergent de ville posted in the street?” Dupin still seemed to be testing the water, to see whether Palaiseau was really prepared to let him leave.

  “I’d certainly prefer that to carrying the Stradivarius through the streets of this quartier at dead of night,” Palaiseau countered, “or the quartier where Zann lived, for that matter. Robbers love winter, for the long hours of darkness, and there’ll be hundreds on the prowl in rise tonight, if not thousands. You’d be better advised to stay the night here, and not set off to the Rue d’Auseuil until after dawn.” He hesitated, then added: “Do you, perchance, have the all-important envelope about your person?”

  “What envelope?” Dupin parried.

  “The envelope that Clamart gave you—the one that Zann left you in his will. Oh, don’t look at me like that—I didn’t get the information hot off the press from Clamart’s killer. Fourmont told me years ago, just as he told me what you and he saw through Zann’s window—the reason why the Rue d’Auseuil acquired its name. Why should he not, given that we were both parties to the oath? The poor fellow needed to talk to someone. Groix became effectively inaccessible once he was appointed Prefect, and Fourmont considered you to be dangerously eccentric—which is why, when Clamart tried to fob him off by telling him that you were the one who received the secondary legacy, and thus the only one privy to the real facts of the case, he came to see me instead.”

  Dupin came to his feet, abruptly. “That’s what I wanted to know!” he exclaimed. “Thank you, Palaiseau, for clearing that up. And thank you for keeping your word, for I know now that you gave nothing away...unless you talked in your sleep, in answer to the wrong questions.” He saw my puzzled expression then, and immediately clarified his deductive process: “Whoever violated the grave and killed Clamart presumably had no idea that I had the envelope containing Zann’s scores, until Clamart told him—or her. I didn’t know, until just now, that Palaiseau ever knew that I had the envelope, but now I do know that he had that information, I know that he cannot have been the person who set this monster loose—not wittingly, at any rate.”

  “I already told you that,” Palaiseau reminded him.

  “Yes, and I apologize for not quite being able to believe you—for I knew that you, like Fourmont, have always mistrusted me, and might well be wary of telling me the truth. I can see now that the reason you are not overly afraid that you might be the murderer’s next victim is that you really do suspect Bazailles of Clamart’s murder. You know that he has already had every opportunity to do you harm and steal your violin, but has not taken any such opportunity, so you do not fear him now. Be warned, though—if the murderer really is one of your fellow players, your immunity will only last as long as the other requires the play to be performed. And to answer your question, in case anyone asks you while you sleep, no, I do not have the all-important envelope about my person, or anywhere else. It no longer exists: I burned it fifteen years ago. It broke my heart to do it, but it was necessary. I let Clamart and Groix know, but I did not see the need to inform you or Fourmont.”

  “Why, then did Clamart tell Fourmont that you had it?” Palaiseau asked.

  “He didn’t,” Dupin pointed out. “He merely said that I was privy to the facts of the case. He knew that I had seen and read the scores, for that was why I had decided to get rid of them.”

  Palaiseau looked at the Chevalier for a moment or two, and I wondered how resentful he might be that Dupin had not handed over the scores to him, if he did not want them for himself. Eventually, though, all he said was: “I believe you when you say you burned them, because I know what kind of man you are—but no one else will believe it.”

  “I know that,” Dupin replied. “I know it only too well—and I know, too, that it might cost me my life, if this murderer comes after me.”

  7.

  It is not as easy to find a fiacre in the Boulevard du Temple at dead of night as it is on the Quais, and when we actually took our leave of Palaiseau I believed that Dupin’s intention was simply to wait for Monsieur Groix to collect us in his relatively luxurious carriage. Indeed, I half-expected him to knock on the door of Henriette’s lodge and ask whether we might sit by her fire rather than standing out in the cold, but he did not even glance in that direction, and the old woman did not come out or appear at her grille, which was now dark. Instead, Dupin really did set about searching for a cab.

  “Shouldn’t we wait here, as we agreed, in order to bring the Prefect up to date?” I asked.

  “With what?” Dupin countered. “We have deduced that Palaiseau hasn’t talked, or the murderer would have come after me directly rather than going to Clamart after searching the coffin. We have obtained no other significant clue.”

  I was startled by that, for it seemed to me that Dupin had spent a long time in conversation with the violinist, and surely would not have done so merely to obtain a single clue. He was still holding something back—and now, it seemed, he intended to hold it back from the Prefect of Police, as well as his closest friend.

  “You don’t believe that Monsieur Bazailles is implicated, then?” I said, warily.

  “Perhaps he is—but Palaiseau’s vague suspicion is certainly not sound evidence of any such implication. I want to know whether Clamart’s murderer has been to the Rue d’Auseuil—and, if so, whether he went there before or after the murder. If he has not, or has only been there this evening, then we will know that he did not know where Zann once lived until he had talked to Clamart.”

  “Another datum that he could not have got from a loose-lipped gravedigger,” I remarked.

  “Indeed. I also want to know whether, if this mysterious person has been to the house in the Rue d’Auseuil, he has spent time gazing out of Erich Zann’s window as well as searching his mansard. With any luck, the dust will be thick enough on the floor to have preserved a detailed record of any visitor’s movements.”

  I half-expected that we might have to walk as far as the Champs-Élysées to find a cab, but we were fortunate. The restaurants with which the theaters were interspersed had not yet disgorged the last of the post-performance diners, and there were one or two fiacres still waiting by their side-doors in the hope of picking up late fares.

  Dupin had no money at all on him now, but he had such an unshakable trust in my financial stability that he did not even bother to ask me whether I would be able to pay the coachman on arrival.

  “Rue d’Auseuil,” he said to the driver.

  “Where?” that worthy queried.

  “The street on near side of the sheer butte overlooking the Bièvre,” Dupin explained. I got the impression, however, that there had been more surprise than ignorance in the coachman’s reaction. He looked at me, as if to confirm that Dupin was, indeed, sane—and perhaps for confirmation that I was good for the fare. I nodded, confident, at least, of the answer to the second part of the tacit enquiry.

  As the horse moved off, at the same weary pace as the nag that had brought us to the Boulevard de Crime, I said: “I still feel lost in the midst of a maze that seems to be increasing in complexity all the time. Did you really burn this mysterious envelope for which the murderer appears to be searching, or did you merely tell Palaiseau that in order that he might pass the information along, now that you’ve freed
him from the terms of his oath?”

  Dupin ignored the specific question. “I apologize for keeping you in the dark,” he said. “Had I taken the opportunity earlier to talk abut Erich Zann, when your description of the play triggered my memory, you would have been better equipped to understand all this—but I had my reasons for discretion, as you are now aware. The business is so tangled that I hardly know where to begin the process of disentanglement, but it is usually best to tackle such problems by beginning at the beginning, and this affair began, so far as I was concerned, when Erich Zann asked to borrow my copy of the Harmonies de l’Enfer and I made the counter-offer of a verbal translation, in return for private performances of his music. I was unduly curious in those days, and not yet wholly rigorous in my thinking.

  “The author of the Harmonies de l’Enfer signed himself Apollonius in honor of Apollonius of Tyana, although he added the title of Abbé as a primitive shield against accusations of heresy. Unfortunately, almost everything the modern world knows about Apollonius of Tyana is derived from a fictitious biography written by Philostratus, who tried to promote a cult by advertising the sage as a miracle-worker, in frank imitation of the manner in which early Christians represented Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, the original Apollonius was a neo-Pythagorean philosopher, who attempted to elaborate Pythagoras’ notion that a proper understanding of the nature of the universe required to be sought in terms of the hidden virtues of numbers and musical harmonies, and the parallels between them.

  “In recent times, of course, the uses of mathematics in producing representations of the universe, in matters of precise measurement and the formulation of scientific laws, have proved spectacularly successful, but such endeavor has been severed from its once-intimate connection with the concept of harmony. Although musicians like Johann Sebastian Bach have continued to find mathematics useful in the understanding and composition of music, the contribution of music to the understanding of reality has been minimized, and some of the key properties of music—in particular, the ability of music to represent and communicate emotional states, appealing to aspects of mind more fundamental than consciousness itself—have long been abandoned by the majority of philosophers as unfathomable mysteries, unamenable to rational analysis.