Aria to Death

by Nupur Tustin

  But clearly no such scruples troubled Greta, for she had no sooner caught Rosalie’s eye than she blurted out: “Never fear, Frau Schwann! We know where it is.”

  The lady’s maid raised her head.

  “You know where it is? But how? Where did you find it?”

  She turned from Greta to Rosalie, studying each girl’s features intently.

  “Where is it now?”

  It was Rosalie’s turn to sigh. If only Greta weren’t so impetuous! She reached over and gently placed her hand over Frau Schwann’s soft, plump palm. “We haven’t found it. Not yet, at any rate. But we think Frau Dichtler must have taken—”

  “You think she took the necklace?” The lady’s maid drew back, startled. “Why, that is quite an accusation!” But it was clear she did not find the insinuation quite so dreadful.

  Her surprise had already fled, replaced by a watchful curiosity.

  “I am sure of it,” Rosalie declared. She began to recount the details of the frayed rope, their fruitless search, and the theft of the necklace in Leopoldsdorf.

  “I never mixed a packet of sleeping powder in my decoction of valerian tea!” Frau Schwann indignantly interrupted the narrative. “Why should I do such a thing?”

  “Well, that is what Frau Dichtler said,” Greta informed her.

  “And the rope couldn’t have been frayed when we set out for Leopoldsdorf,” Rosalie added.

  “It most certainly was not.” Frau Schwann sat upright, her lips tightly pursed. “I always see to such things.”

  “Then it is just as I suspected.” Rosalie turned toward Greta. “She sent us off on a wild goose chase and used the opportunity to steal the necklace. Only she didn’t know it was a replica.”

  “Well, she found out soon enough,” Frau Schwann said gloomily. “The Princess told her everything. And after that, the wretched woman kept on at Her Serene Highness to have another replica made.

  “Let me take it to Madame Chapeau, she says. Madame can make a replica twice as quick as one of the jewelers in the Kohlmarkt, and at a third of the cost.”

  “Madame Chapeau!” Rosalie gasped. “She wanted you to go to Madame Chapeau? Why that is where I followed her this afternoon. It was Madame’s assistant who came here, thinking to take your position.

  “Of course, she had no idea you were still here. Madame was quite furious with Frau Dichtler when she found out.”

  “My position! Why, what have I done to hurt the wretched woman that she is after my position?” Frau Schwann shook her head. “Well, of course, Her Serene Highness would hear nothing of it. Whoever has heard of Madame Chapeau?” The lady’s maid concluded with a sniff.

  “And very wise of her it was, not to send you,” Greta agreed. “You would’ve come back with two replicas if she had. Madame Chapeau deals in stolen goods. She is the only fence in the city who takes items of such great value. That’s what my cousin Otto says, and he should know.”

  Rosalie nodded. “But what happened, then? Was it Frau Dichtler who suggested the necklace be taken to the bank for safekeeping?”

  “No, but she insisted upon accompanying me to the bank. Wouldn’t let the necklace case out of her sight. Wouldn’t even trust me with it for the few minutes it took her to get her reticule from her room. But when we left the palace grounds. Why, then, she couldn’t get rid of it fast enough!”

  “So, that was when she exchanged the necklaces,” Rosalie said. “Before you left the palace.” She looked at Frau Schwann and Greta. “The little urchin who accosted you didn’t have time enough to do it. She must have found a way to hand the necklace to him or to …”

  She wrinkled her nose. Could even such a woman as Frau Dichtler persuade a police guard to join in her skullduggery?

  A few moments of silence followed. Then the lady’s maid spoke.

  “But if the necklace is with Madame Chapeau, how will you get it back?” she wanted to know. “She is hardly likely to give it to you. And it will cost a pretty penny to buy it back, I can tell you that much.”

  Rosalie exchanged a small smile with Greta. “Oh, I have a plan. If all goes well, we shall have it back tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “The idea is preposterous!” Therese said. She drew herself back and stared up at Haydn as though suspecting him of having gone quite mad. “It would never work.” She turned toward Johann. “Would it?”

  The movement and the question irritated Haydn more than he cared to admit. The Therese of old would have fallen in with his plan instantly. Might even have commended him for his resourcefulness. Yet now she looked toward Johann as though he were the elder brother!

  Johann glanced briefly at him before replying. “If brother thinks it would …” he began stalwartly, but Haydn had caught the momentary hesitation before Johann voiced his opinion.

  “It is not one of your better ideas, you must admit, husband.” Maria Anna’s glance roved toward the Kapellmeister’s bandaged head. “Some of your brains must have fallen out when you received that blow.”

  His wife’s last words, muttered under her breath, and her support of Therese’s opinion irritated Haydn all the more.

  “It must be made to work. It is the only way,” he insisted. “I cannot approach Her Majesty with mere speculation. Surely, you can see that.”

  Therese sighed, the long-drawn, heavy sigh of a weary mother dealing with a fractious child. “How Joseph? If Reverend Mother Catherine were to find out—” The thought made her shudder.

  Her slender fingers kneaded her forehead. “The convent is all I have known these ten years. It is all I have.”

  “There is a striking resemblance between sister-in-law and you,” Johann pointed out. “In figure and form you are almost alike. And with a wimple covering her hair, who knows, but we may yet…”

  Therese raised her head. “There is the matter of our voices. My duties include singing with the choir, sometimes taking the solo part.” She looked over at Maria Anna, plucking nervously all the while at the embroidered cover on the armrest. “I beg your pardon, sister, but—”

  Maria Anna brushed aside her words with a wave of her hand. “Our voices would give us away. Try as I would, I could never sing like my younger sister, brother-in-law. I crow like a jackdaw, or so husband puts it,” she ended gruffly.

  There must have been something in her eyes, for she repeatedly dabbed at the corners with her handkerchief.

  “Is that your sole objection to the plan?” Haydn asked, although he had not until this moment considered it. It was true Maria Anna’s singing—Was that a tear glistening in his wife’s eye?

  But he had never meant to hurt her with his words. He only spoke the truth about her failings as she did of his. Surely—

  But Therese had begun to speak, and he turned his mind to attend to her.

  “My dispensation to be out in the world is almost come to an end. Reverend Mother Catherine would grant an extension if I needed it to complete the task she has entrusted me with. But to attend a funeral…”

  She wrinkled her nose. “If the Emperor were to hear of it somehow. You know how he walks about among the people like a common citizen.”

  Haydn nodded. He had heard quite enough of the Emperor’s odd ways from his father-in-law. And even the Prince had let fall a word or two here and there.

  “If His Majesty were to see anything, he would but see my wife at a funeral. Why should that seem strange?”

  “But then, there is the matter of the Reverend Mother. There is no deceiving her?”

  “Can you not have developed a sore throat?” The notion had just entered Haydn’s head, and he blurted it out.

  “What!” Therese and Maria Anna spoke at the same time.

  “A severe hoarseness that prevents singing of any kind for an indefinite period,” Haydn elaborated on his plan. “Maria Anna will be able to simulate that, won’t you?” He turned toward his wife. “You may even develop a pain in your joints that prevents you from playing the keyboard.”

>   The sisters looked at each other.

  “I suppose it would work,” Therese conceded. She glanced up at Haydn. “Are you sure this physician of yours will be at Kaspar’s funeral? It will be a waste of our effort if he is not?”

  “I am quite certain of it,” Haydn replied grimly. “As long as you are certain you will recognize your scribe when you see him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “What an unusual chest this is,” Papa Keller commented, reaching out to touch the walnut wood chest Kaspar’s widowed aunt had sent home with Haydn. “So full of holes, to be sure! What are they for, Joseph?”

  “It is simply an old worm-eaten casket, Papa,” Maria Anna replied somewhat testily.

  It was the custom in Papa Keller’s home to linger at the kitchen table long after the evening meal had been eaten. Maria Anna had voiced her displeasure on the subject, albeit in a more subdued fashion than was her wont, but Papa Keller had insisted Haydn and Johann remain with him at the table. Therese had retired for the night.

  “I wish you would get rid of it, husband,” Maria Anna continued as she bustled about the kitchen, putting pots and pans away. “Haven’t I told you, the infestation spreads to everything?”

  “Woodworm? Nonsense.” Papa Keller burst out before either Haydn or Johann could respond. “That chest is not infested with woodworm.” He tapped at the wood with his pipe. “Listen to that! The wood is still sound.”

  Haydn exchanged a glance with Johann. “How can you tell, Papa?” he asked.

  For an old worm-eaten thing, the chest was much sturdier than either of them had expected it to be. He would have agreed with his father-in-law. Yet the tiny holes that pricked the surface of the walnut wood were evidence to the contrary.

  “Why, you have only to look at the holes!”

  Papa Keller tapped his pipe against the chest again. “Each one the same size and shape, about an eighth of an inch to a whole inch from its neighbor. What worm could make holes like that? And the wood so solid all over!”

  He turned the casket around, knocking his knuckles on every side.

  Haydn drew the chest closer to himself and peered at it. “I do believe you’re right. These holes are so finely shaped, the worm in question must have been apprenticed to a carpenter!”

  “And where there are holes the wood is always soft and rotted through,” Johann said. “I should’ve remembered that. It is what Father always said, although I confess my mind was usually too lost in my music to pay much attention to anything he said about how he selected the wood for his hubs and wheels. We none of us intended to follow in his trade after all.”

  “No, we did not,” Haydn quietly agreed.

  He had caught the sadness in his brother’s voice. Their father had no illusions about his sons’ ambitions but had, nevertheless, sought to impart some of his own rough wisdom through the mundane tools of the wheelwright’s trade.

  “Ach! Children never mind their parents. Until it is too late, of course.” Papa Keller brushed their remarks aside. He took a deep draught of his pipe. “Now, why did the old merchant want those holes in his casket, I wonder?”

  Haydn’s head jerked up at the question. “That question is quite easily answered, I believe,” he said softly.

  * * *

  “It was to make us think the chest was worm-eaten.”

  “Nonsense!” Papa Keller’s hand and the pipe it held swept the air in a peremptory dismissal of Haydn’s suggestion. “Only a fool would be deceived by those holes.” He brought his pipe back to his mouth and drew deeply from it. The wisps of smoke hung in the air before finally dissipating.

  “Only a fool who had never worked with wood.” Haydn’s lips twitched at Papa Keller’s gruff repudiation of anyone who had the temerity to think otherwise. “I ought to have known it as soon as we discovered the contents of the chest. But the presence of the holes, so like worm-eaten wood, made a fool of me.”

  He smiled at Johann. “Had we attended more closely to Father’s lessons, we might have seen through old Wilhelm Dietrich’s ruse.”

  “Yes, but what was the point of it all, husband? What treasure does that chest contain?” Maria Anna sounded impatient, but did not bother to glance up from the stove she was rubbing down. “Surely not the operas the old merchant claimed to own?”

  “Always in his cups, as I mentioned to you, daughter,” Papa Keller interjected before Haydn could respond. “There was never a drink that didn’t fill the old man’s sails to bursting.”

  “It may not have been mere talk,” Johann replied as he opened the chest. He carefully brought out the madrigals Kaspar had inherited and then lifted out the scenari and the old leather volume Haydn had thrust at the bottom.

  “More old papers,” Maria Anna sniffed. How she could have known what they were without troubling to look around, Haydn did not know.

  He held up the leather volume Johann had set next to him. “The Merchant of Venice. A play by Shakespeare, an English playwright, not more than a few years older than the Italian master, Claudio Monteverdi. It was a play that Wilhelm Dietrich so loved, he called attention to it in his will.”

  “Not something he would keep in an old, rotten chest, I’ll warrant.” Papa Keller pulled the pipe from his mouth.

  “And he had no other copy in his library,” Johann added. “The one on his shelves was in reality a lever made to look like a book.”

  “And what was the point of that?” Maria Anna demanded gruffly. “Merely an old man’s tomfoolery, I’ll wager.”

  Haydn rolled his eyes. The subtleties of the situation were lost on a woman like his wife. But then Maria Anna’s interest in theatre was as deep as her interest in music.

  “It was a reference to the play, Maria Anna. Only a man of character would look beyond the casket’s appearance to its contents.”

  Maria Anna turned around. “Only a fool would look twice at an old, worm-eaten chest, husband.”

  “But it is not worm-eaten, daughter!” Papa Keller objected again. He indicated the leather volume in Haydn’s hands with his pipe. “Are there worm-eaten chests in that play, then?”

  Haydn’s face broke into a wide smile. “No, the chests in this play are not worm-eaten, but the ruse it employs is just as clever.”

  He turned the pages to the scene in question.

  “Portia is a wealthy young woman, all alone in the world. Her father, fearing that after his death men may seek her hand solely for the sake of her wealth, seeks to protect her.”

  “So, he sets a task for any suitor who comes to court her,” Johann took up the story. “Any man who wishes to marry Portia must choose one of three caskets. The first is made of gold, the second of silver, and the third of lead.”

  Papa Keller took his pipe out of his mouth. “Gold, of course. It is the purest of the metals.”

  “Ah, yes!” Haydn responded. “But it is not the casket itself that we are concerned with. It is what lies within. The playwright tells us to look beyond the outward appearance of men to the inner being.”

  “Ach so! The leaden casket, then, I suppose.” Papa Keller jabbed his pipe in the direction of the chest Haydn had brought home. “And that is it, I take it?”

  Haydn nodded. “I am convinced it holds the key to Kaspar’s bequest.”

  Maria Anna snorted. “Then, it is fortunate, no one thought to throw the thing away.”

  Haydn turned his head to look at her. “Wilhelm Dietrich’s widow could not bear to throw it away. It was one of her most cherished memories of him.” His own wife, he supposed, would hasten to discard all he owned after his death.

  Maria Anna sniffed again, but continued to polish the ceramic tiles on the stove. “It will not bring her husband back. Still, if it contains the operas you spoke of, it cannot be a bad thing. Amelie has need of money, I am sure.”

  “It does not contain the operas, sister-in-law. We—”

  Maria Anna whipped around. “It does not contain the operas? Then of what use is it?”
<
br />   “It does not contain them so much as conceal them,” Haydn explained.

  * * *

  “Oh, you speak in riddles, husband!” Maria Anna threw her hands up in the air. “I thought you said the operas were not in that casket.”

  “They are not,” Haydn repeated quietly. “Not where anyone would find them, at any rate.” He ignored Maria Anna’s snort and gently pulled the scenari toward himself. The paper was thick and strong still, but was nevertheless too old and too precious—for his purposes, at any rate— to bear rough handling. “Here is the proof that the old merchant was not lying when he claimed to possess all the operas of Monteverdi.”

  “What is it, then?” Maria Anna wanted to know. Her eyes shifted curiously toward Papa Keller, who had reached across the table for the casket and was beginning to poke and prod at it as he swiveled it around.

  “Each of these is a scenario—”

  “Scenario?” Maria Anna demanded.

  “A brief account of the opera.” It was Johann who volunteered the information. “They were printed specially for the audience to allow them to follow the story.”

  “Ach so!” Maria Anna nodded. “Well, it is an excellent notion, in my opinion. Who can be expected to understand anything when the actors insist upon singing in Italian?”

  “The audience, it so happens, was Italian as well, Maria Anna,” Haydn pointed out. His cheeks ached from the effort of holding in his laughter. But it would never do to highlight his wife’s ignorance. He saw Maria Anna squinting down at him and restrained himself still further.

  She came closer to the table, sponge in hand, still squinting suspiciously at her husband. “Well, well, and so what if they were? They are all cold in their graves now. Although why anyone would trouble to keep one of those, I don’t see. Once you have seen the opera, what need would you have of the story?”