Between the Thames and the Tiber

by Ted Riccardi

  Holmes agreed reluctantly to Liszt’s wishes, for he wished to question Herr Wagner in a thorough manner. He then told him that he wished to examine as much of the household as he could and that he would need about three hours.

  “And when would you like to perform your investigation?”

  “There is no time like the present, as they say, Monsieur Liszt. If you will stand guard, I shall hurry through the public rooms, but I shall need time in Wagner’s study. Should he awaken, you must prevent him from entering.”

  “That will be difficult but I shall try. Perhaps Hopkins can distract him should he awake. Perhaps he can offer an examination to Richard.”

  Leaving Liszt and me on a bench in a dark corner of the hall, Holmes began his investigations. The least important would be the kitchen, for if he was sure of anything by now, it was that Wagner was not eating poisoned food. The murderer harbored no anger toward the rest of the family, since they appeared to be in very good health. No, the murderer appeared to be interested in Wagner alone. Poisoned food would have been a danger to all, and also would have raised immediate suspicions, particularly if one of the children had been taken ill. And we ourselves had partaken of the food and watched carefully to make sure that Wagner partook of nothing that the rest did not. After an initial hour of investigation, Holmes returned.

  “If Wagner is not ingesting the poison,” said Holmes, “then he is either inhaling it or receiving it through his skin. After examining the kitchen I went directly to his study. It was not a large room, but it was filled with the many things of a long life. Books and musical scores lined the walls. There was an upright piano at which he composed, and a large desk.

  “The desk immediately caught my eye, for there were the things with which Wagner worked on a daily basis: his pens, rulers, and paper. Of the latter, there were two piles, an enormous one of blank music paper except for the lines and staves which he had drawn in himself; the other, slightly smaller, on the top of which had been written in Wagner’s own hand:

  Die Sieger, Ein Buddhistische Buhnenfestspiel in Drei Akten von Richard Wagner. Zu Meine Geliebte Savitri gewidmet; that is, The Victors. A Buddhist Music Drama in Four Acts by Richard Wagner. Dedicated to my beloved Savitri.

  “The latter appeared to be a work that Wagner had just finished, of which the world knew nothing as yet. I could see that it was a voluminous score and appeared to be complete, including the full orchestral parts. The ‘Savitri’ of the dedication was not otherwise identified.”

  The only other object of note on his desk, said Holmes, was a curious wooden box about ten inches square, with doors on one side. On opening them, a rather crude figure of the Buddha appeared. On each side of the figure was a small terra cotta cup, each filled with a grey-black powder. A third cup stored behind the figure contained an oily liquid. It was out of these powders, mixed together with the oil, that Holmes surmised that Wagner made his special inks. He took samples of each of the powders, leaving the oil till later.

  Holmes had examined the study not a moment too soon, for just as he finished, we heard a shout from the Wagners’ bedroom. I disappeared into my room, watching from my door as Wagner appeared suddenly in the hall, staggering, shaking, sobbing with fear. Cosima was close by him. Liszt suddenly appeared from the shadows where he had been keeping watch.

  “He has not slept well. He has been pursued all night by nightmares and hallucinations,” said she to her father.

  Liszt helped to calm the shaking composer. They led him to a small sitting room off the hall. In a moment, Liszt appeared at our rooms.

  “He needs your attention,” he said.

  Holmes and I followed Liszt into the sitting room. Wagner had stopped shivering and appeared calmer. I felt his pulse, which was quite rapid and irregular, and listened to his heart and chest. I gave him a light bromide with water. In a few moments he seemed improved. He insisted that he be allowed to dress and meet everyone for a very early breakfast.

  “My dreams have become fearful over the last year,” said Wagner, as Holmes and I sat with him. A few moments later, as the dawn came up, he had recovered sufficiently to discuss what had happened.

  “And they maintain their reality into a wakeful state, so that I am unable to shake the mysterious phantoms that I see. Forgive me for sharing such intimate perceptions with you. In sleep, I was beckoned by Kundry, who told me to follow her into the forest. As I did so, she turned into a malevolent ogress, who began tearing at my flesh. It was at this point that I began to cry out, to push her away. I awoke, but she remained, now in the room beside the bed. Only the forest had disappeared. As Cosima responded to my terror, she left, and I staggered into the hall. What lies behind such nightmares I do not know. Dr. Watson, if you have any medical advice, I shall be grateful to receive it.”

  “Herr Wagner, I should like to examine you briefly this morning. But, as to my immediate advice, I would counsel you to stop all work, particularly composing, and not to enter your study for one week. You will begin to see improvement immediately.”

  “You ask what no one has asked before: the impossible. How can I sit with the music running through my head unrecorded?”

  “Herr Wagner, if you do as I say, you will enjoy both physical and mental improvement immediately. Otherwise, there will be further deterioration in your condition, and your hallucinations will only grow worse.”

  “Perhaps, Herr Doktor Watson, I can use my influence to prevail upon my husband to take your advice,” interjected Cosima.

  “If you insist, my beloved, then I shall do it.”

  Holmes and I followed Wagner to his chambers, where we made a thorough physical examination. Holmes took minute pieces, without Wagner’s being aware, of his hair and fingernails, both so brittle that samples were easily taken. The chief areas of concern were the irregular action of the heart, and his enlarged abdomen, which was due to swollen organs, in particular the liver and spleen. In addition, Wagner suffered from a meteorism that had forced the chest cavity to contract, a motion that had a further deleterious affect on his heart.

  We left Herr Wagner, having administered another sedative, and brought the samples to my room, where Holmes, the better chemist by far, spent the day with some modest chemical equipment he had brought from London and a few necessary chemist’s tools from a shop near Piazza San Marco. The tests of Wagner’s hair and nails showed that heavy doses of arsenic had now passed throughout his body. We then tested the samples of ink powders that Holmes had taken from Wagner’s desk. The powders were each a different poison: arsenic, belladonna, curare, and, finally, meranic acid, a deadly poison that also creates severe hallucinations, extracted from a rare fungus and used, to the best of my knowledge, by veterinarians to kill mercifully sick and dying animals. It was used only in Switzerland, where the fungus was readily available. And so, we had ascertained, beyond a doubt, that Wagner was not naturally ill but made ill by a set of chemicals, each of which contributed to his strange and numerous symptoms.

  Holmes communicated our findings to Liszt immediately. “We must find the source of the ink powders,” he said, “and we shall have our culprit.”

  Following Holmes’s wishes, Liszt made quiet inquiries among the servants, and learned that the packages of ink arrived regularly from Germany, from a firm in Dresden. Wagner had given the servants instructions that the packages were to be sent wherever he was, and, as in all things, his instructions had been followed to the letter. The firm was known as E. Windisch and Company, and had been recommended by Wagner’s brother-in-law, Hermann Brockhaus, a professor of Oriental languages at Leipzig.

  “Monsieur Liszt,” said Holmes, “I believe that our work here is now done. We must go to Dresden to find the poisoner. We cannot delay.”

  “You are right, but you have been here for only a few days. I do not want to reveal anything to the Wagners unless we feel that his condition will improve. Do not forget the ostensible purpose of your visit. The poisoner will have no suspicions as
yet. Delay your departure for a few days.”

  It was by then the twelfth February, if memory serves, and we spent the afternoon with the children, who took us to Piazza San Marco to see the church and the Doge’s palace. Liszt and the Wagners remained at home. After the brief tour, the children were content playing with the great flocks of pigeons in the square. Holmes and I sat there, as so many have, contemplating the proportions of this most beautiful of piazzas.

  It was about four o’clock when one of the servants appeared to tell us to remain there, for a special concert of Wagner’s music to be held in the piazza had been hastily arranged, and the Wagners were on their way. A military band began assembling in the square, and Holmes and I raced to the canal with the children. In a very short time a gondola appeared bearing Franz Liszt and the Wagners. Wagner looked resplendent in his black beret and velvet jacket.

  “Come, join us, my dear friends. The concert was announced only a few hours ago without my knowledge. I hope it is better than the one last March in Sicily,” said the composer as he alighted onto the pier, his breath coming in short gasps.

  We sat with the Wagners in front of the Doge’s palace. The band was hardly an orchestra, but a Venetian brass ensemble. They had chosen selections from Rienzi, Tannhäuser, and the prelude to the third act of Lohengrin, all of which they played rather well.

  Wagner was deeply moved. The last pieces were Wotan’s Farewell from GÖtterdämmerung, and the overture to Parsifal, which, despite the absence of strings, was orchestrated in such a way that the Master was pleased. At the end of the performance, following his lead, all applauded the band warmly. After greeting the conductor, a Signor Torelli, and the members of the band, they returned home.

  At supper, Wagner discoursed about many things, including some statements of Bismarck, which he considered wise, and about Undine, the famous novel by La Motte Fouqué, as a suitable subject for a music drama. He had read it as a child and had so covered his copy with blotches of ink in reading it that, when confronted by his angry father, he quickly invented a clever excuse. He blamed the blotting on the dark child of a Moorish merchant, who lived nearby. He said that the black boy had cut himself and drops of his dark blood had stained the book. In a final discourse, he compared Undine to Kundry and to other heroines, then rose and announced that he would retire early since he had slept little the night before.

  In the morning, Wagner let it be known that he would not breakfast with the family, but that he would meet everyone at lunch. In a brief meeting in which I administered another sedative to him, he told us that he would enter his study only briefly but would not stay. Holmes admonished him, saying that above all he must write nothing. It was a sunny morning, and we went for a long stroll in the city.

  It was probably just after the hour of noon that Wagner must have rung the warning bell that was near his desk. Frau Wagner rushed to him, only to find that he was barely conscious. Because we were absent, a local doctor was summoned. When we returned, Joukovsky informed me that Wagner’s condition had taken a grave turn. We sat with the chilren for a moment, but before I could see him, the doctor appeared and informed us that Herr Wagner had expired a few minutes before. He had suffered a massive hear attack, but had not suffered greatly. At the end, his face, we were told, was filled with peace and nobility. Frau Wagner had held him in her arms in his last minutes. She announced through the doctor that she would remain with her husband and would not appear until his body was to be moved for burial at Wahnfried, their home in Germany.

  On the following morning, the remains of Herr Wagner were brought by gondola to the railroad station. The bearers of his coffin were Joukovsky, Holmes and I, and several Venetian young men, who claimed to be disciples of the great musician. Frau Wagner, attired and veiled in black, rode with her husband and the children. Joukovsky, Liszt, and Holmes and I followed in a separate boat.

  The news of Wagner’s death spread rapidly and the Venetians had come out in great numbers. At the station, Holmes and I bade farewell to the family. We watched as the mournful group boarded the early-morning train for Germany. Our own left several hours later, and we had time to visit the attending physician, Dr. Vattimo, and read the report that he had prepared: all of it was consistent with our diagnosis. Wagner’s diseases—Bright’s disease, erysipelas, swollen liver, and a gradually failing heart were all consistent with the slow, methodical poisoning that eventually overpowered him. Clever, and most vengeful, for he suffered constant pain and discomfort while alive.

  Holmes had surmised that the poison had been delivered mainly through Wagner’s fingers, by the ink that he used. Stored in powdered form, the composer mixed it religiously every morning and spent long hours ruling his music paper. He would then write for several hours. By the evening he would be saturated with small quantities; unable to sleep, he would pace about, then fall into a sleep of terrible dreams. The dosage was precise, and Holmes judged that the poisoning occurred intermittently at first, then regularly over two years. The murder was committed not only by one who hated him, but one who knew poisons and knew them well.

  There was only one clue: the ink company in Dresden, And so, later that very day, having wired our plans to Liszt and asking him to join us in Dresden, Holmes and I boarded a train for Germany.

  The trip was uneventful, but by coincidence we shared the compartment with someone who had arrived in Venice with the specific purpose of visiting Wagner. She was a Mrs. Burrell, a woman from Philadelphia, who described herself as one of Wagner’s American disciples. She was one of many American visitors, mainly female, who came in along stream to meet the Master, as they referred to him. He never refused to see them. She had come to invite Wagner to New York and Philadelphia to conduct performances of his own operas. She also had arrived too late.

  Mrs. Burrell was a vivacious and intelligent woman of about twenty-five who had lived in Germany when she was a child. Her father was an American doctor who had served as Wagner’s physician before his return many years before to America. She had never met the Wagners, for she was a mere infant when her parents left for America, but a letter from her father had elicited a reply saying that his daughter was welcome at any time. This fact increased her disappointment at the composer’s death. She now planned to write a biography of Wagner and to invite two of his close associates, Anton Seidl and Hans von Bülow, to America. She had a long list of people she was going to visit, in Leipzig and Dresden, prepared for her by her father, as well as letters of introduction from the leading conductors of America.

  We descended at Munich, bade farewell to Mrs. Burrell, and boarded a train for Leipzig. There we stayed for a day with the Brockhauses, to whom Liszt had provided an introduction. The Brockhauses themselves were busy preparing to leave for Bayreuth and the funeral. Ottilie Brockhaus, Wagner’s sister, tearfully questioned me closely about her brother’s last days, for she was the closest to him, and he had spent many hours in the quiet, rich, contentment of their home. Hermann, her husband, a large fat man, was a celebrated scholar of Sanskrit, and it was through him that Richard Wagner obtained many of the Buddhist texts that he had learned of in his reading Schopenhauer. Like many professors, Brockhaus liked to talk, and he and Holmes engaged in long dialogue about innumerable things pertaining to the composer. Holmes informed him in detail of Wagner’s last days, and Brockhaus expanded on his experience of Wagner, his difficult ways, and his creative genius. Holmes noted that Wagner took his own work so seriously that he used special inks that he himself prepared for the writing of his texts and scores.

  “Yes,” Brockhaus answered, “Richard was particularly careful in the preparation of his scores. Because his music is so difficult technically, not only for singers but for the orchestra as well, he made his scores models of clarity in order to minimize the number of possible errors before they went to the publisher. It was upon my recommendation that Richard came to use the firm E. Windisch. The firm is owned by the father of one of my students, and they were always pr
ompt in serving him, I gather. We of course use their inks in the books published by our family’s company.”

  “For some projects of my own, I should like to consult the Windisches. I was deeply impressed with the Wagner scores. Perhaps you could inform Herr Windisch that I should like to meet him,” said Holmes.

  “Easily done, Herr Holmes. I shall give you a letter and send a wire to him today. Because of your interest in Wagner, you may also want to meet one of his employees, Nathalie Planer. She has been in Windisch’s employ for several years now. She is the younger sister of Minna, Richard Wagner’s first wife. Although she and Richard have been out of touch for many years, she would, I am sure, appreciate hearing from you about your visit during his last days.”

  I saw that Holmes could barely contain his excitement in hearing Brockhaus’s last words. Casually spoken, they may have delivered a significant clew to the solution of the mystery. No one, not even Liszt, had ever mentioned the name of Nathalie Planer to him. With Brockhaus’s letters, we left by train for Dresden the following morning, where we arrived just before noon. From the station we went directly to the Hotel Metropole, a small inn recommended by Brockhaus, and then walked directly to the firm of E. Windisch. Herr Windisch received us warmly.

  “The world has lost its greatest composer,” he said, “and we mourn for his family and for the world.”

  “You are right, Herr Windisch. The loss is irreparable. I gather that you have working for you a relative of Wagner’s through his first marriage, one Fräulein Nathalie Planer.”