Aria to Death

by Nupur Tustin

  “Albrecht.” Fabrizzio echoed the name. “He—”

  “Is a friend of Kaspar’s,” Johann put in. “From the Hofburg. It was he who prevented the theft of the music.”

  Fabrizzio swallowed hard as he attempted a nod. His eyes zigzagged wildly around the parlor.

  Haydn ignored him as he took his leave of the widow. “We are indebted to you for your hospitality, Frau Dorfmeister, but we must be on our way.”

  The widow escorted them to the door, but Fabrizzio seemed oblivious to their departure. Haydn had just followed Johann out of the parlor when he felt a tug on his sleeve. He turned around.

  Fabrizzio shut the parlor door behind them.

  “It was a set of operas that Wilhelm Kaspar was supposed to receive, Herr Haydn.” He glanced around as though afraid of being overheard. His voice lowered to a whisper. “The operatic works of the great Claudio Monteverdi.” He took a deep breath. “Have they been found, do you know?”

  He paused, but began to speak again before Haydn could respond. “Is it possible they even exist?”

  Haydn regarded him for a space. “If they do, they will be found, no doubt,” he said.

  Fabrizzio searched his features, but Haydn kept them deliberately impassive.

  “No doubt.” The scholar quietly acknowledged the point before returning to the parlor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The better part of the journey had been spent in silence, filled only by the muted sounds of the city’s traffic and the horses’ steady clip-clop against the cobblestones. But now Johann broke in upon the Kapellmeister’s thoughts.

  “This chest appears to be quite sound.” He rapped his knuckles against the worm-eaten wood. It rang clear, producing a warm, robust tone. “I would not have expected it, the entire surface is so ridden with holes.”

  “It is most fortunate,” Haydn replied, rousing himself with difficulty. His thoughts were still on the music scholar they had met. The questions Fabrizzio had put to him had been most strange. What could he possibly have meant by them?

  His mind turned on the question as he watched Johann examine the old casket. His younger brother was twisting the box around as he slowly ran his finger down its surface from the top to the decorative brass edges that capped the corners at the bottom.

  “Not a square-inch of space has been spared. Yet the wood sounds so resonant, few luthiers would hesitate to fashion an instrument from it.”

  But when the Kapellmeister did no more than murmur a response, Johann twisted his head sharply to regard his brother. “You seem rather preoccupied. What is it?”

  Haydn drew in his lower lip and began chewing on it. Was his mind running away with nonsensical imaginings? There had been a time—not too long ago—when he would have given the strange behavior he had encountered that afternoon no more than a moment’s consideration.

  He had ceased to be quite so blind. But was he now guilty of reading too much into every insignificant happening?

  He tapped out a rapid rhythm on the carriage seat as he felt his way to a response. “I was wondering whether Fabrizzio might have had an opportunity to inspect Kaspar’s bequest prior to this afternoon. He seemed so—” Haydn paused.

  Unsurprised, he had been about to say. Although now that he thought about it, that was not true. There had been a flash—a very brief flash of … shock, astonishment? Something of the kind, coupled with … anger? But the young man had recovered almost instantly.

  “Ready to accept what the bequest consisted of,” he finished, aware of his brother’s eyes on him.

  He held his breath as Johann tilted his head to regard him, eyes narrowed, brows drawn together. But he had misread the look, apparently, for when his brother spoke, it was only to say: “Are you thinking Amelie might have shown it to him? Kaspar did not. He was quite adamant on the subject?”

  Haydn pursed his lips. “No, Kaspar did not. And Amelie could not,” he quietly added.

  Johann’s eyes opened wide at that. He expelled a breath, the air trapped in his throat coming out in a rush. “No. No, of course not. She did not even know Kaspar had hidden it. How then—You cannot think he broke into the house? Not last night, surely? The evidence—”

  “Not last night, perhaps,” Haydn agreed. “But the night Kaspar was killed.” His mind returned to the marks around the lock on Kaspar’s bureau. It was safe to say Kaspar had not ventured out without his keys.

  Nor left his bureau unlocked.

  “The Countess of Kuenberg saw a man going up—a young man, from the sound of it. What if she was mistaken about the night on which she saw him? She is old and no doubt forgetful, but she is not completely in her dotage.”

  Johann stroked his chin. “And Kaspar’s keys were taken, but”—he turned toward Haydn, eyes opened to their fullest extent—“I thought you said the note was—”

  “It was not in Herr Anwalt’s hand,” Haydn interrupted quietly. “I had an opportunity of seeing it on some documents that lay on his desk. Kaspar’s lawyer knows more than he was willing to reveal. But it was not he who lured Kaspar to his death.”

  “But Fabrizzio’s surprise seemed genuine enough.”

  “Feigned, I have no doubt of it.” Haydn’s expression as he turned to Johann was grim. He had met the man who had orchestrated his friend’s death and seen no more than a young popinjay. How could he have been so blind? “It must have been he who staged the initial robbery. And I, like a fool, suspected Herr Anwalt.”

  “But what could Fabrizzio want with Kaspar’s bequest? He seems to know nothing of the value of the madrigals. And he was at pains, Kaspar said, to point out that any operas the bequest might contain were quite possibly not even authentic.”

  Haydn drummed his fingers on the carriage seat. “He is after the operas. I know not why other than that they are valuable.” He stared at the brocade draperies on the carriage window. “He seems quite certain they exist, which means that they must. But he has not found them. That is to our advantage.”

  He glanced down at the casket on Johann’s knees. “I was wondering why Wilhelm Dietrich had chosen to keep that old worm-eaten thing, much less store his scenari in them,” he remarked.

  Johann’s eyes followed the Kapellmeister’s gaze. “Are you sure it is wise to take these to Papa Keller’s house, brother. If you are right about Fabrizzio, it was he who arranged for those ruffians to attack us. Who knows what he might be capable of.”

  A smile hovered on Haydn’s lips. “Ah, but he has no clue where the operas are. And coxcomb that he is, it will never occur to him where they are hidden.”

  * * *

  “There you are, husband! Where have you and brother-in-law been this entire day?”

  Maria Anna herded the Kapellmeister and Johann across the courtyard, flapping her hands in the direction of her father’s house as though she were rounding up a flock of restless fowl. She opened the door. “Come in, then. Come in. We have no time to dally.”

  “But what is amiss, Maria Anna?” Haydn could not prevent an aggrieved note entering his voice. He had been set upon by scoundrels and nearly killed, but his wife had taken no more notice of his bandaged head than she did his music.

  She led them into the kitchen and turned around. “What have you been doing to yourself, husband?” she said with a frown, her eyes going toward his injured head.

  “Brother was attacked and most grievously injured,” Johann replied. “The thieves were attempting to make off with Kaspar’s bequest.” He set the casket on the table.

  Maria Anna merely grunted. Her gaze moved to the worm-eaten casket. “Is that what that thing is? Kaspar did not think very much of his bequest, did he? Let it remain in the kitchen.” She raised her eyes toward Haydn. “If that is woodworm, you must know the infestation spreads to everything.”

  Something stirred in Haydn’s head as she spoke, but the thought was gone before he could catch hold of it. “We shall have to get the scores and scenari out of that chest before long,” he murm
ured to Johann. Although for some reason he did not believe the documents were unsafe there.

  “You may do it later,” Maria Anna’s tone had sharpened. “More urgent business awaits you at the moment. The music you left on your night-table, husband?”

  “What of it?”

  Fear clenched at Haydn’s heart. His wife was referring to the L’Orfeo Her Majesty had purchased. He had made the mistake of leaving it on his bedside table.

  God forbid that Maria Anna should have used the paper to curl her hair or for some other such preposterous business! No amount of money, even if he had it, would be adequate recompense for its loss.

  “It is safe, I hope.”

  Maria Anna, as was her wont, ignored the question to ask one of her own. “Where did you come by it? Therese was quite beside herself when she saw it.”

  Haydn’s head swam. Had the opera been stolen? From the convent no less? His gaze flickered toward his brother.

  “It is a work Her Majesty recently purchased, sister-in-law,” Johann replied, but his voice was filled with misgiving. “She requires that brother examine it and authenticate it for her. Why do you ask?”

  Maria Anna stared at them both.

  “It is the paper that Therese noticed.” She paused. “It appears to be the very same that was stolen from the convent.”

  * * *

  “Did Her Majesty tell you whom she had purchased the music from, Joseph?”

  Therese’s face looked white and drawn. Her sapphire-blue eyes flitted back and forth, like a pair of frightened starlings, between Haydn’s visage and Johann’s. The Empress’s vellum-bound score of L’Orfeo lay on her lap.

  “It was a gentleman from Italy. A physician. Dr. Goretti.” Haydn’s voice faltered as he volunteered the information. “He seeks a position at court,” he added, not quite knowing why. It could make no difference surely.

  “An Italian! From the imperial court. Oh dear God! Would that it were merely a coincidence.”

  Therese’s head sank into her slender white hands. Haydn’s gaze rested on her fingers, long and beautiful, as they massaged the smooth white skin between her eyebrows.

  She raised her head a few minutes later. “The scribe we hired—the man sent to us from the Hofburg—was an Italian. A well-dressed gentleman with a neat beard.”

  “An Italian?” Haydn repeated with a glance at Johann.

  They had not met the physician, and the reason for it returned to his mind. For a man who seeks a position at the imperial court, he spends very little time here, Baron van Swieten had said.

  Therese nodded. She sat on the very edge of her chair like a bird poised for flight. “The documents we had him copy for Her Majesty included letters from Mantua—”

  “From the Gonzaga court?” Haydn was stunned, but the last vestiges of doubt as to the identity of the scribe were beginning to vanish. Who else could it be but Goretti?

  But Therese was speaking again. “The letters were to our foundress, the Empress Eleonora. She was from Gonzaga, the daughter of Duke Vincenzo.”

  “Monteverdi’s patron,” Johann said. “Were there letters from the great master as well?”

  Therese nodded again. “Letters from Venice, seeking the Empress Eleonora’s support for a position in Vienna.” She turned to Haydn. “But the letters from Mantua were from Alessandro Striggio, the Duke’s secretary. When her husband, the Emperor Ferdinand, sacked Mantua, Eleonora sought to bring as many of the Gonzaga musicians and as much of the music as she could to Vienna.”

  “The essence of the story Baron van Swieten told us was true then,” Haydn remarked to Johann. “It must have been during the siege that the music owned by the Gonzagas made its way to Vienna.”

  His eyes fell on the scores on Therese’s lap. “The L’Orfeo, I suppose, belongs, to the convent.” He had had his misgivings about it, for all that it looked authentic. “One of the documents the scribe copied?”

  Therese’s face, already pale, turned white. “It was not something he was meant to. But he must have. From the printed score the convent has. I recognized the diamond-shaped notes of the printed scores from the time.”

  Haydn’s eyes widened. How could he have failed to notice the significance of that? He had noticed the oddly shaped noteheads. The madrigals he had borrowed from the Prince’s library had similarly shaped noteheads as well. “Dr. Goretti sold them to Her Majesty as manuscript scores in the great master’s. I thought it unlikely, but …”

  “It is not just the shape of the noteheads. The paper itself”—she held it up to the light—“has not the knots and clumps of older paper.”

  “No, it does not,” Haydn said quietly. The paper was smoother, with the ribbed pattern so common to modern paper. How had he not noticed that either? “And the vellum—”

  “The same soft vellum we keep at the convent. The ink all fresh and new.”

  “And there is his hand, too, do not forget,” Maria Anna put in.

  “It was his hand that confirmed my suspicions,” Therese said. “For all the care he puts into copying his exemplar, he cannot disguise it entirely. He has an odd way of forming his n’s—with a little circle on the top left. It is a habit he seems unable to rid himself of.

  “Why, we saw those selfsame n’s on that scrap of paper Maria Anna found in your pocket.”

  “The scrap of paper—” Haydn turned wildly toward his wife. Was Therese referring to the note found on poor Kaspar’s body?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Maria Anna reached into her pocket and drew forth a fragment of paper. “How came you to know Therese’s scribe, husband? You were introduced to him at court, I suppose.”

  A knot of sickness was beginning to swell within Haydn’s stomach—whether from the effects of the blow he had received to the area or the news he had just heard, he knew not. He took the scrap and stared at it.

  Maria Anna repeated her question, a little more impatiently this time.

  “No, no, we have not met him yet,” Haydn said, still staring down at the shred of paper. It was bad enough to discover that the physician was a forger but that he was a murderer as well … What would Her Majesty say to that?

  “Oh, Joseph!” Therese wrung her hands. “What if he was sent by the Emperor, just as we have suspected all along?”

  But Haydn was too intent on calling to mind all the small scraps of information he had received to reassure his sister-in-law on the subject. He saw now that he had been too hasty in condemning the music scholar. Fabrizzio’s shock at the news of Kaspar’s death must have been genuine after all.

  It was Johann who answered Therese: “I doubt the Emperor had any hand in the man’s doings, Sister Josepha. Dr. Goretti’s reasons were his own.”

  “To what end? What can he possibly have against Therese’s convent?” Maria Anna demanded gruffly.

  “Nothing at all,” Johann replied. “The convent is merely unfortunate in being drawn into the affair for its connection—albeit remote—to a Mantuan composer the Empress is interested in.”

  “Claudio Monteverdi.” Therese’s voice was hushed. “But other than the L’Orfeo and his madrigals, the convent has none of his music. And even the L’Orfeo survives only because it was printed to commemorate the occasion. They were stolen, I believe. The Gonzaga court had no copies, and consequently none came into our hands.”

  “He means to pass off his own works as those of the great master’s,” Haydn roused himself to speak.

  “His own works?” Therese repeated, brow wrinkled, but Haydn’s words were clearly beginning to make sense. Her eyes opened wider. “Sister Mariana’s music—Of course! The care he took to simulate her hand plainly tells the tale!”

  The realization that the convent was in no danger of being closed down seemed to bring with it a great sense of relief, for she was able to smile. “Although why he thought anyone outside the convent—”

  “He did not,” Haydn interrupted abruptly. “It was merely a test of his skills. He could not have
known it would make its way back to St. Nikolai. The works of Monteverdi were all he was interested in. It would be a simple matter, he knew, to authenticate the L’Orfeo. After that, who would look too closely at anything else he brought?

  “And, therefore, his great interest in acquiring Kaspar’s works,” he said more to himself than to anyone else.

  The physician so desirous of obtaining Kaspar’s bequest, he had offered his services in exchange for it. It could be none other than the Italian charlatan who had insinuated himself into the Empress’s good favors.

  And if he had penned the message that took Kaspar out on that fatal night, it would explain his knowledge of Kaspar’s death before anyone had even been informed of the matter.

  But Haydn would need more than mere supposition to convince Her Majesty. He turned to Therese.

  “We have not met the man, but I know where he may be found.”

  * * *

  “Her Serene Highness’s necklace?”

  Clara Schwann put down the gown she was mending as soon as Rosalie and Greta broached the subject.

  “Oh, it was the most beautiful thing you ever saw! Tiny flowers with petals made of pearls clustered around an emerald center. The pendant, an emerald in the shape of a teardrop, set in a gold frame studded with diamonds.”

  Greta’s mouth fell open. Her voice dropped to a throaty whisper. “Why, even a paste replica of the thing would be quite magnificent!”

  “And, so it is,” Frau Schwann replied, taking up her mending again. “But what of it? It is worthless compared to the real thing.” Her needle flew in and out of the soft rose satin folds. “And Lord knows where that may be!”

  She let out a heavy sigh. The sound seemed to fill the servants’ hall, empty save for the three women sitting by the fading light that filtered through the eastern window.

  Rosalie glanced over at Greta. She would wager every kreutzer of the gold gulden Frau Dichtler had given them that the necklace was in Madame Chapeau’s warehouse. But would it be wise to get Frau Schwann’s hopes up before they had even succeeded in retrieving it?