The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  LOVELY REQUIEM, MR MOZART

  Robert Barnard

  * * *

  THE COMMISSION CAME into my life accompanied by Mr Lewis Cazalet. The arrival of that gentleman was announced by Jeannie, my unusually bright and alert maid of all duties.

  “There’s a wee mannikin to see you. Says he has a proposal, something to your advantage.”

  I did not jump up with the alacrity I would once have shown. My position as piano teacher to the Princess Victoria brought me, as well as great pleasure, none of it musical, a great number of prestigious pupils. I stirred reluctantly in my chair, only to have Jeannie say: “Don’t hurry. Let the body wait.”

  I nodded, and went to the piano and played a showy piece by my friend Clementi, sufficiently forte to penetrate walls. Jeannie came in as I was finishing.

  “He’s walking up and down. He’s a mite … unappetizing.”

  I raised my eyebrows, but I relied on Jeannie’s judgement, and told her to show him in.

  The gentleman whom she ushered in was not short, but there was a sort of insubstantiality about him: he was thin to the point of meagreness, his gestures were fluttery, and his face was the colour of putty.

  “Mr Mozart?” he said, taking my hand limply. “A great honour. I recognized one of your sonatas, did I not? Your fame is gone out to all lands.”

  I was not well disposed towards anyone who could confuse a piece by Clementi with one of my sonatas.

  “Mr … er?”

  “Cazalet, Lewis Cazalet.”

  “Ah – a French name,” I said unenthusiastically. That nation had virtually cut the continent of Europe off for twenty years, the very years of my prime, when I could have earned a fortune.

  “We are a Huguenot family,” he murmured, as if that was a guarantee of virtue and probity.

  “Well, let’s get down to business. I believe you have a proposition for me.” We sat down and I looked enquiringly at him.

  “Perhaps as a preliminary—” No, please! Spare me the preliminaries! “I should say that I am a man of letters, but not one favoured by fame and fortune like yourself.” Did my sitting room look as if I was favoured by fortune? “As a consequence I have been for the last five years librarian and secretary to Mr Isaac Pickles. You know the name?”

  I prevaricated.

  “I believe I have heard the name mentioned by my son in Wakefield.”

  “You would have. A great name in the North. Immensely wealthy. Mr Pickles – his father was Pighills, but no matter – is one of the foremost mill-owners in the Bradford district. He is, in newspaper parlance, a Prince of Industry.”

  “I see,” I said. And I did. A loud vulgarian with pots of money and a power lust.

  “A most considerate employer, and generous to boot on occasion. I have no complaints whatsoever.”

  “That’s good to hear. In sending you to see me this, er, Pickles has some end in view, I take it?”

  Mr Cazalet hummed and hawed. Then he suddenly blurted out:

  “A Requiem. He wishes you to write a Requiem.”

  “Ah. I take it you mean a requiem mass. Is Mr Pickles a Catholic?”

  “He is not. His religion is taken from many and is his own alone.”

  “And the person for whom this requiem is to be written?”

  “Is immaterial.”

  “I assure you it is not. If it is for His late Majesty King George IV it would be very different to what I would write if it was for the Archbishop of Canterbury, for example.”

  “I would imagine so!” He hummed again, let out something like a whimper, then said: “It is a requiem for his wife.”

  “I see. Mr Pickles was a devoted husband, I take it?”

  “Mr Pickles is the complete family man – affectionate, but wise … I must insist, however, that the information I have just given you remain completely confidential. Com-plete-ly.”

  “It will. But there must surely be a reason for this request?”

  He looked at me piteously but I held his gaze.

  “The lady in question is still alive.”

  I sat back in my chair and simply said “Phew.”

  In the next few minutes he confided in me the facts of the case. The wife in question was sick, sicker than she herself recognized; the doctor was certain her illness was terminal, but would not commit himself to a likely date. All the uncertainties of the commission would be reflected in the fee, and there was one further condition that Mr Pickles absolutely insisted upon.

  “That is that you tell no one of this commission, tell no one that you are writing a Requiem, tell no one when it is performed that you wrote it, and give total and absolute rights in the work to Mr Pickles, along with all manuscript writings.”

  “I see,” I said. “And the fee he suggests that he pay me?”

  “The fee he is willing to pay you is fifteen hundred pounds.”

  Fifteen hundred! Riches! Good dinners, fine silk clothes, rich presents for my children and grandchildren. O wondrous Pickles!

  “Say two thousand,” I said, “and I am Mr Pickles’s to command.”

  * * *

  I was not deceived by the conditions. Mr Pickles was an amateur musician who wanted to pass my work off as his own. When his wife died he wanted to impose on the world by pretending that the superb Requiem that was performed for her was written by his good self, divinely inspired (rather as that arch imposter Samuel Taylor Coleridge tries to pretend that his poems were in fact written by the Almighty, with himself acting merely as amanuensis). And it would all be in vain: every society person with any musical knowledge would know it was not by him, and anyone of real discernment would guess it was by Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.

  The only fly in the ointment was spelled out for me by the Princess Victoria at her next weekly piano lesson, where she murdered the works of lesser men than I (I had learned the lesson of not encouraging her to her painful operations on works of my own). When she had screwed out of me the reasons for my lightness of heart (unusual, even with her delightful presence) she said:

  “He seems a very dishonest man, Mr Mozart.”

  “Distinctly devious, my dear.”

  “Devious! What a lovely word. If he can rob you of credit for the music, he can hardly be trusted to pay you for it.”

  It was something I resolved to bear in mind.

  From the start Mr Pickles showed he had learned lessons from the negotiations of Mr Cazalet.

  “The fee I’m offering,” he said to me in his Hyde Park mansion, “is two thousand pounds. Subject, naturally to some safeguards.”

  Two thousand pounds, as asked for! I wouldn’t like to say how long it would take me to earn that amount by more legitimate pursuits. Kensington Palace paid me thirteen and sixpence an hour for my lessons with the Princess. We were sitting on a superb sofa, which must have been in Mr Pickles’s family since the time he started to make a fortune from his niche in the cotton industry, which was warm underwear. I could have done with a pair of his long combinations now: this luxurious sofa was about half a mile from the nearest of two fires in the high-ceilinged drawing room of his mansion. I got up and strolled over to his fine grand piano, much nearer the fire. I played a few notes.

  “This will need tuning,” I said. Mr Pickles was outraged.

  “I assure you it is just as it came from the makers.”

  “That is the problem. Pianos go out of tune.”

  “But the finest singers and pianists have used it,” he neighed, like a child wailing. “My musical soirées are famous.”

  “Mr Pickles, I played for King George III when he was a young man. I know when a piano needs tuning.”

  He backed away at once.

  “Yes, yes, of course. But we haven’t gone over the cond– the safeguards.”

  “For a fee of two thousand pounds I accept those without question. If I understand Mr Cazalet they are that you will own the piece absolutely, my name will not be attached to it, nor will I verbally lay claim to it. I s
uggest you might like to call it the Pickles Requiem, and state on the title page that it is ‘by a gentleman’.”

  Mr Pickles almost purred.

  “Yes, yes. They have a ring to them. ‘The Pickles Requiem’. In memory of my late wife, of course.”

  “Of course. I didn’t realize that your wife had died since I talked to Mr Cazalet.”

  “She has not. I refer to her proper designation when the great work comes to be performed.”

  “I see.” (But I didn’t.)

  “I want the piece to be sung within a week of her death, as a direct statement of my grief and sense of loss.”

  “Of course, I quite understand … You might find it advisable to let the orchestra and choir rehearse as much as possible in advance.”

  “Ah yes, I see. Well spoken, Mr Mozart. It must be done in the most tactful way possible.”

  “Totally secret, I would suggest. The public prints take any opportunity for ridicule … Now I think our business is over?”

  “You accept my conditions? And will compose the work entirely in this house, and leave the manuscript and any notes here always?”

  “I do accept, and will write the piece as you stipulate.”

  We shook hands on it. I had not thought it necessary to mention that nothing in the “safeguards” prevented me from writing out a second copy at home when I was satisfied with a movement.

  On the following evening a message arrived from Pickles Palace (as I called it in my mind) with the news that the Danish couple I had recommended, Hr Bang and Dr Olufsen, had been and tuned the piano. No expense spared, obviously. I felt quite sure Mr Pickles noticed no difference.

  I began work next day. An anteroom next to the drawing room was assigned entirely to me – the lowly room being chosen not to downgrade my position and purpose in the household but to give easy access to the piano. I say “began work” but I had begun work on it in my heart before Mr Cazalet had closed the front door. It was to be a work not full of grandeur, still less grandiloquence, with no trace of suffering or hellfire. It was to be gentle, gracious, kind on the ear – a feminine Requiem, you might say, for the wife of a wealthy industrialist who must surely be his superior in manners, knowledge of the genteel world, and kindness.

  On my third day of working in Pickles Palace, when I was just completing the Sanctus, which I had decided to write first, I had the honour of a visit. I was sitting in the great drawing room, with welcome spring sunshine coming through the high windows, and trying things over on the piano, which was now a superb instrument and sounding like one. I was conscious after a time that I was not alone. I looked round in the direction of the door towards the hall, and saw a figure standing near the fire.

  “Very beautiful, Mr Mozart. Very lovely.”

  The voice came as if from a great distance. It was genteel – no, aristocratic – and it proceeded from a slim, graceful yet commanding woman of perhaps thirty-five or forty, elegantly dressed in a loose-fitting day gown. What a contrast she made to the mighty Pighills himself!

  “I am honoured by your approval. Do I have the pleasure of—?”

  “Mercy Pickles,” she said, distaste creeping into her tones. “I hope you will create one of the great ecclesiastical musical works. It should have a life beyond the immediate one marking the death of my husband’s mother.”

  “Mo—?” I pulled myself up. “I suppose all composers would like to think their works will last.”

  “He is very fond of his mother,” she said, in the same distant tones she had used hitherto. “She used to make the mill-children’s gruel and beat them when they went to sleep. Naturally he’s devoted to her, but I found her less than charming.”

  “A wife seldom gets on with her husband’s mother,” I said.

  “When my father sold me, at the age of sixteen, to a man more than twice my age, his mother made it her business to make my life an endless swamp of misery. When she suffered the onset of senility I made it my business to return her treatment in kind. It palled after a time. There was little joy in mistreating someone so far removed from the world that she could not appreciate the fact that she was being mistreated. Now all I wish is that she would hurry up dying.” She stopped, possibly feeling she had said too much. “And then we can all hear your wonderful Requiem.” She thought for a second, then said: “Take care, Mr Mozart.”

  She glided from the room. “Take care” is a popular form of farewell that sat ill with her aristocratic air. But perhaps she meant it to be taken not as a courtesy but a warning.

  My first encounter with the Pickles sons was no less confusing, but even more thought-provoking. I was playing over a first sketch for the Libera Me section – a grand, sweeping theme with a hint of yearning – when the doors of the drawing room opened and two young men began a progress across the great expanse of the drawing room, talking loudly. I went on playing. The voices rose to a crescendo. I was intrigued and stopped playing to listen. The voices immediately ceased. I was impressed: they knew enough about music to notice when it stopped. They turned round and saw me.

  “You must be Mr Thingummy.”

  I waited. I am not a Mr Thingummy.

  “Mozart.”

  It was the taller of the two. He pronounced it Mo-zart instead of Moat-zart, a deplorable English habit. However I bowed – a reward for a good try. They began over towards me.

  “You’re the johnny who’s teaching my father composition.”

  “Well, not—”

  “You’ve got a hard job on your hands. You’re starting from scratch.”

  “Typical of my father,” came from the shorter boy. “Wasting our inheritance on futile projects. Who will believe that he wrote it?”

  “And who would believe,” chimed in the older boy, “that he’d lavish all that money and time on a damned librarian?”

  “A damned what?” I couldn’t stop myself saying.

  “Faithful servant and all that. But a piece of music? Choirs and solo singers, orchestral johnnies, the whole caboodle. For a book-duster? It should be a case of, when he dies, slipping a ten-pound note to his widow.”

  “He’s not married, Jimmy,” said the other. “Not at all, if you get me.”

  “Well, in that case you’re ten pounds to the good.” The pair turned and resumed their marathon.

  It was around this point in the execution of the contract that Mr Pickles began to take a more active interest in the progress of my composition. I found one afternoon when I went to play over the day’s inspirations that cups and jugs of chocolate had been set out on a small table, and I had no sooner begun playing than a footman came in with napkins and biscuits (biscuits are my weakness but the servants so far had not remembered to offer me any), followed a second or two later by Mr Pickles, who sat himself down and – to be fair to him – listened. At the first pause in the playing he called me over.

  “Mr Mozart, you must be in need of refreshment.”

  I bowed my head briefly, and made my way over. He had poured into my cup some of the fragrant refresher, while pouring himself a cup from the other jug. Made with the finest Brazilian coffee beans, he explained. It was a country with which his mills had strong financial links. The drink was slightly bitter-tasting but acceptable.

  “So how is it going, then? Are you well on the way?”

  I had the reputation for extreme facility in the writing of my scores. It was a reputation fully justified when it concerned my pieces written to order for members of the aristocracy or the theatre. Still, four weeks for a full-scale Requiem was ridiculous.

  “I have five movements well advanced, either on paper or in my head,” I said. “I have fragments of ideas for the other nine sections. Time will tell which are usable.”

  “Ah yes. This question of time—”

  I was so daring as to interrupt him.

  “Great work is not done in days. Remember, sir, I have strong connections with Kensington Palace. If the princess on whom all our hopes turn hears this is a w
orkaday piece that anyone could have written she will not attend. But if it is a work worthy of Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart then she will come if I persuade her, and I will not need to say anything about my participation in the piece.”

  “Oh my!” said my patron, as if he could barely comprehend the joyful possibility. “A magnificent prospect! A wonderful culmination to our mutual collaboration.”

  What a mutual collaboration was I could not guess. All we had was a willingness to pay money on one side and an eagerness to accept it on the other, a purely commercial transaction.

  So things went on. Now and then Mrs Pickles came in, usually listened for a time, then went out possibly with a banal compliment, sometimes with a barbed remark about her husband or his family, depending on her mood. The boys (James and Seymour were their names, the second being his mother’s family name) came either singly or together, greeted me with “Hi” or “Good morning”, and sometimes added a sarcastic comment, such as “Earning your daily crust, eh, Mr Mozart?” I didn’t like them. Their father was at least fond of music, even if he knew nothing about it. The boys were simply vessels, without learning or achievement. I heard from the servants that they were both very deep in gambling debts.

  The course of my time with the Pickleses changed one afternoon at the beginning of May. I had been forced, on my way out of Pickles Palace, to make a quick visit to the privy, the nature of which I won’t go into. I was just washing my hands in the bowl of lukewarm water renewed every hour by a lower footman, when I heard two voices passing along the corridor outside. One was Mr Cazalet, whose work in the library prevented my having much to do with him while I was in the house, and the other was his, and temporarily my, employer, Isaac Pickles.

  “The uncertainty is playing on your mind, I fear, sir.”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly all right. Masterpieces are not made in days, or even months, as Mr Mozart says. But I worry a little about him. He is not a young man. He looks increasingly ill every time I see him.”