Aria to Death

by Nupur Tustin

  Haydn stepped through the doors. The soft summer air caressed his features, flushed from the long drive to Schönbrunn. They had made excellent time, if Luigi, despite having a head start of ten minutes, had only just arrived at the imperial summer palace.

  A vista of marble statues, neatly trimmed hedges, and areas of soft verdant lawn stretched out before him. The faint breeze was fragrant with the scent of a myriad flowers. He took a deep breath and, aware of Johann’s anxious eyes on him, reluctantly returned his attention to the matter at hand.

  “The Italian physician is within, I take it?” He turned in the direction the footman had indicated.

  A small section of yellow was visible through the trees in the sunken Privy Garden. The Cavalier Wing, he supposed. It had been built to accommodate members of the imperial staff. Although he doubted the physician was deserving of that honor.

  “Her Majesty must esteem him greatly.” Johann softly voiced the thought in Haydn’s mind.

  “He himself would have preferred a suite in the Belvedere,” the footman confided, his voice low.

  “With Count Kaunitz, the Imperial Chancellor?” Haydn turned to stare at the man, startled by the temerity of Goretti’s hopes.

  But the footman, made aware of the impropriety of his remarks, glanced away. “You will find the Herr Doktor in the first floor of the building that faces the Kastaniensaal,” he said, his features impassive.

  “Very well.” Haydn pressed a gulden into the servant’s hand and strode across the terrace, with Johann close behind, to the steps that led down to the Privy Garden.

  They had but emerged from the grassy verge onto the road fronting the Cavalier Wing when a heavyset, panting form nearly collided with them.

  “Haydn!” Kapellmeister Georg Reutter peered up at his former pupil, his heavy jowls quivering. “Is that you? What brings you here, my boy? And with your brother, too!” His penetrating blue eyes turned from Haydn to Johann. “Has this anything to do with that parcel of scores the Italian persuaded Her Majesty to buy?”

  Haydn exchanged an uneasy glance with Johann. “I am afraid it is much worse than that.”

  “Worse? What do you mean, worse? Well, don’t just stand there like a blockhead, boy! Speak.”

  Haydn exchanged another glance with Johann. He was Kapellmeister to the most powerful noble family in the Empire, but here in the presence of his former teacher’s glaring eyes and furious features, he was reduced to a mere schoolboy. Johann gave him an imperceptible nod. It would be as well to take the older man into his confidence.

  “Kaspar—the violinist who was recently killed—”

  “I do know who he was, boy! I am not entirely a dolt,” Reutter broke in impatiently. “What about him? Get on with it.”

  “Have you heard of his bequest?” Johann asked softly.

  “The operas his uncle supposedly left him?” Reutter’s eyes narrowed as he nodded. “That young turkey, Albrecht, gabbed on about it endlessly. I imagine the entire world knows by now.”

  Haydn turned to his brother. “Then, that must be how Dr. Goretti learned of the bequest.” He turned back to his former teacher. “He has pursued it relentlessly.”

  “Why should he not?” Reutter demanded. “I knew that nincompoop had nothing other than the L’Orfeo he sold Her Majesty. And that was no doubt copied from the printed copy in the imperial library. I could tell from the diamond-shaped notes.”

  “The imperial library has a copy of the printed score?” Haydn could scarcely credit his ears. “Was Her Majesty not aware of it? Or His Lordship, Baron Gottfried, for that matter?”

  “I could’ve informed her of it had she cared to seek my opinion. But no, Her Majesty is so taken up with this foreign nuisance, she takes no heed of those who have served her well for countless years before this nobody showed his face.” Reutter’s eyes bore into Haydn’s. “I trust you were able to see through the deception, my boy?”

  “Yes, yes, indeed.” Haydn hoped his nut-brown complexion would prevent Reutter from detecting the color rising in his neck and cheeks. He should have detected the deception the moment he set eyes on the score.

  “If Goretti copied the score from the imperial library—” Johann began.

  “Then, Therese was right. He is not the scribe,” Haydn completed the thought. “It is merely another matter that appears to be tangled up with this,” he explained in response to Reutter’s enquiring glance.

  “But what of his n’s?” he murmured, recalling the scribe’s strange writing. “Are you certain you have seen the printed score in the library, Herr Chormeister?”

  “Well, not with my own two eyes. But it must be there. Where else could he have obtained the score? Do you suppose he composed the music himself?”

  “Oh, we are well aware of his abilities in that direction,” Johann said with a smile. He went on to recount the anecdote Albrecht had regaled them with earlier.

  “To be fair, anyone could’ve been fooled,” Reutter acknowledged gruffly. “I myself considered it to be a work by Vivaldi with errors introduced perhaps by an inept copyist. Or by Fabrizzio himself.”

  “And what convinced you otherwise?” Haydn pressed his case close to his stomach. The notion that had just entered his head was causing a discomfiting heaviness to swirl around in his abdomen.

  “He wrote something similar in my presence,” Reutter replied. “I challenged him to it when he insisted he had written the work he showed Goretti that night at the wine tavern.”

  Haydn drew in a heavy breath. Dear God, surely they had not followed the wrong man? If only he had listened to Therese. “His n’s, Herr Chormeister”—he pulled out a sheet of paper from his case and formed an inverted u, then drew a large circle on the left arm—“were they anything like this?”

  * * *

  Rosalie’s fingers itched to examine the hatboxes. The hats within those were unfinished, Sabina had said, sweeping them aside to clear a path to the flat round containers in which Madame Chapeau’s establishment stocked its jewelry.

  She absently fingered a pair of earrings she had withdrawn from one of the boxes open on the worktable before her. At any other time, she would have marveled at the design: blue forget-me-nots with gold-tipped petals surrounding a tiny gold center.

  She curved her finger around the long gold hook on the back of the ornament, twirling it as she pretended to inspect the hats.

  There was not one without a gem of some kind affixed to its crown or to the ribbons wound around it. All precious, according to Sabina. Yet she had exhibited no unease at their inspecting one of those.

  “This white one with the flowers is nice enough,” Gerhard said, plucking it gently off its hook and extending it to Rosalie.

  “Greta might like that.” Rosalie glanced down at the carnation pink flowers that were embroidered around the wide brim of the hat. Were the pink sapphires on the pink ribbon genuine? She reached out to touch them.

  “Sabina will take those off, never fear,” Gerhard reminded her.

  Rosalie nodded. Why had Sabina agreed to all that work? It must have required fine workmanship to attach the gems to the hat. Would it not be even more difficult to remove them without damaging the delicate fabric?

  Her gaze shifted to the hatboxes. Sabina had been strangely reluctant that they should inspect them, yet the lids still sat ajar. The white-and-green hatbox Gerhard had accidentally bumped into was all the way at the back now.

  Rosalie reached for the hat in Gerhard’s hands and inspected the flowers on it. Sabina had spent the last half-hour trudging up and down the stairs, carrying hats, jewelry boxes, and dresses up to the store.

  But she had not returned after the last time she’d gone up, and Rosalie had heard the dry swish of a broom. And now the wet thump of a mop being applied to the floor and dragged across. If only she could rid herself of Gerhard’s presence for a few minutes—just long enough to examine the hatbox Sabina had set out of reach.

  “It is a pretty hat,” she said,
turning her face up to Gerhard with a smile. “But”—she cast her eyes ruefully down—“it doesn’t go with these blue earrings. If Sabina has some blue flowers to attach to the hat, perhaps…” Rosalie let her voice fade away, as though fearful the milliner’s assistant would cavil at the additional work.

  Gerhard took the bait. “It is but a question of asking her, lass,” he said briskly, and taking the hat from her, he bounded up the stairs.

  Rosalie waited until he was out of sight, then whipped across to the pile of hatboxes. Stretching over the mound, she reached across to the green-and-white one and pulled the lid toward her. It was surprisingly heavy.

  Heart thumping with apprehension, she turned it over. She was no seamstress, but her sharp eye detected a bulge within the lining. She pressed her fingers lightly along the interior.

  Yes, there was undoubtedly something concealed within the lining. She ran her finger along the inner edge. The bumps, small, hard, and uneven, continued all the way around. A necklace?

  She felt around the circumference again, trying to ease up the lining. Sabina’s voice rising in annoyance and the wet thump of a mop being set down startled her and she nearly dropped the lid.

  Rosalie raised her eyes anxiously up to the ceiling, hoping Gerhard could keep Sabina grousing about the alterations a little while longer. But the sound of footsteps crossing the floor above suggested the tavern keeper and the milliner’s assistant were about to descend the stairs to the cellar.

  She cast her eyes down, searching feverishly for some kind of opening, and found it at last. A loose thread in the hem around the lining. She looked around for a pin or needle, but finding nothing of the kind, used her fingernail to pry the stitches up.

  A light footfall was followed by a heavy creaking. Sabina had set foot on the top step. Rosalie had just time to slide the necklace out and shove it into her pocket when she heard Gerhard’s heavier footstep.

  Another creak. And a third. Growing steadily louder and closer.

  Was there a paste necklace she could push into the open lining? She had been alone long enough for Sabina to accuse her of theft if the lid was discovered to have been deprived of its contents.

  The sharp tap of Sabina’s heels and the heavy thumping of Gerhard’s boots rained down from above, interspersed with the loud groans of the wooden steps flexing. She cast her eye around in desperate search of inspiration.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “You scoundrel, you!” Luigi’s angry snarl was clearly audible through the heavy paneled door of Goretti’s bedchamber. The loud thud Haydn heard next as of a body being slammed against a wall quickened his pace. “Do you still say that snuff box is yours?”

  Haydn burst through the door. Luigi’s right hand was around Goretti’s throat, his face inches from the other man’s. “For shame, man! Would you kill a man and rob him, too?”

  For a brief moment, the Kapellmeister found himself unable to move. Then the choking sounds emanating from the physician’s throat and his bloodshot, bulging eyes galvanized him to action.

  He rushed toward Luigi, gripped him by the waist, and pulled hard. “Let him go!” he panted. “It was not he who killed Kaspar.”

  “No? How came Kaspar’s snuff box into his possession, then?” But Luigi’s fingers had already loosened their grip. The physician shook himself free and coughed deeply just as Kapellmeister Reutter puffed in through the door, breathing noisily in short, heavy gasps. Johann waited behind him.

  The crisis averted, Haydn leant heavily against a chair standing conveniently awry in the middle of the room. The rapid fluttering of his heart slowed, and his mind took in the disarray of their surroundings. The chair on which he rested belonged to the heavy oak desk that stood by the window.

  Kaspar’s golden snuff box balanced precariously on its side on the edge of the carpet, close to where the tussle had taken place on the other side of the window. Haydn retrieved it, then searched the floor for the lid with its twin emblems. He found it facing upward under the desk, partially concealed behind the front leg.

  “Even if Kaspar’s name were not etched into the underside of the lid,” he said, approaching the armchair in which Goretti sat huddled, “there can be no doubt it belongs to him.” He held the lid out to the physician, but the other’s eyes remained stubbornly lowered, his head sinking deeper into his chest.

  “There are only a handful of these in all of Vienna, commissioned by His Serene Highness, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. Few people in the Empire would fail to recognize the double-headed Habsburg eagle or His Serene Highness’s griffin.”

  Haydn paused. “Kaspar was never without his snuff box. It was on him the night he was murdered. What do you know of his death?”

  Goretti emitted a hoarse sound, then cleared his throat. “I know nothing about it,” he croaked. He cleared his throat again and raised his head at last. “You have manhandled a visitor to the imperial court. Her Majesty will hear of it, never fear!”

  “Will she now?” Reutter strode into the room and took a menacing stance over the physician’s armchair.

  Goretti sank deeper into his armchair looking for all the world like a fox cornered by a pack of hounds. But his eyes continued to blaze defiantly up at them, and the corners of his mouth began to twitch into a sly grin.

  The thought of his hunting gun flashed into Haydn’s mind, and his grip on the snuff box hardened. “I doubt Her Majesty will have much concern to spare when she learns she was deceived into buying a copy of a printed score from her own library.”

  The physician’s cheeks turned gray. “The L’Orfeo is not from her library, I swear it. That at least is authentic.” His eyes desperately surveyed them.

  “I do believe he speaks the truth, gentlemen,” Johann spoke softly. “Or thinks he does.”

  * * *

  Rosalie wiped her clammy hands on her apron just as Sabina’s heels clattered onto the cellar floor. The curls at the nape of her neck felt damp and limp; a slow trickle of perspiration made its way down her neck.

  She reached up to wipe it as Sabina approached the worktable, a baleful glare on her face. Gerhard was close behind her.

  “She has blue flowers of a kind, lass.” The tavern keeper’s voice boomed through the cellar. “See, if they will do.”

  “They are purple hyacinths, and they had better do.” The hat in Sabina’s hands made a dull thump as it landed on the worktable. She walked over to the second worktable, her heels tapping sharply, and tugged open one of its drawers. “It is all I have at the moment.”

  She returned to the first worktable with a fistful of the satin flowers and scattered them over its surface. “It will take me a good half hour or more to remove all the gems and to replace every flower with these,” she grumbled. “And all for a few gulden—”

  Rosalie let out the breath she had unconsciously been holding. She had thought Sabina was eyeing her suspiciously, but the milliner’s assistant appeared to have noticed nothing amiss. Her plan might work after all.

  “There is no need—” she began.

  “No need!” Sabina sputtered, hands on her hips. “No need for what?”

  “I meant that there is no need to make any alterations,” Rosalie amended hastily. “The purple flowers don’t go with the earrings any more than the red flowers. But”—she pointed to the hat rack—“the straw hat with the tiny green leaves and the white edelweiss will go beautifully with this paste necklace and earring set.” Rosalie lifted the case up.

  Sabina stared down at the earrings of green paste and the necklace with its pearl petals and emerald pendant. Her nostrils seemed more pinched than ever. Her face appeared whiter than a meadow of edelweiss.

  “That necklace and earring set?” Her head twisted around toward the hatboxes behind her.

  Rosalie held her breath. But the lids all sat properly askew, as though weighted down at one end. Gerhard was peering into the case in her hand.

  His soft whistle of admiration startled both women.
<
br />   “Madame Chapeau has outdone herself this time. I have never seen beads that looked more like pearls, and the emeralds are not half-bad either. They look genuine enough for all that they are paste, don’t they lass?”

  He tilted his head up toward Sabina. “You can keep the additional gulden I promised you for the alterations. The necklace alone is worth it.”

  * * *

  Kapellmeister Reutter hauled an armchair over the carpet toward Goretti’s seat, and dropped into its cushioned interior with a muffled thud. “You had best tell us all, man,” he grunted.

  “I know not about the Proserpina, but the L’Orfeo is by Monteverdi. That is indisputable.” Goretti sat up straighter, his face still ashen. “Even I know the music.”

  Haydn frowned. Once the L’Orfeo had proven to be a mere copy, he had not thought to more closely examine the Proserpina. There had been no need. The paper, the vellum, and the ink told the tale. Could the convent, unbeknownst to itself, have the score for Proserpina as well? His pulse quickened at the thought.

  His attention returned to the physician. “Where did you obtain the scores?”

  “You had best tell us all you know or you will get another taste of my fist,” Luigi growled. He thrust his face menacingly close to Goretti’s.

  The physician drew back, wincing. “It was at the bookseller. The one on Singerstrasse.”

  “Surely not Herr Dahl?” Johann turned to Haydn. “He would not knowingly foist a copy on an unsuspecting stranger. The scribe must have deceived him as well.”

  “Scribe? What scribe?” Goretti stared up at Haydn, half-rising in his eagerness to receive an answer. He collapsed back into his armchair when Luigi growled at him: “Never you mind what scribe!”

  “Was it Herr Dahl who sold you the score?” Johann asked at the same time as Haydn said: “How many more such scores did he claim to have?”