Aria to Death

by Nupur Tustin

  The Dutchman pulled the corners of his mouth into a grimace. “And his knowledge of music is equally deficient, according to Kapellmeister Reutter!”

  Haydn’s eyes drifted toward Johann. His old teacher could be quite pigheaded in his views. Was there any truth to his impressions? He turned toward van Swieten.

  “How came he by these scores, then?”

  The imperial physician spread his hands. “It is a question I have often asked myself. At best, it is a chance occurrence that he seeks to capitalize upon. At worst…” he shook his head. “I would take you to him, but he is nowhere to be found. For a man who seeks a position at the imperial court, he spends very little time here!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Luigi glugged down the last of the wine and plonked the bottle unsteadily on the oak barrel between them.

  “Joseph was right, then?” The Konzertmeister retained his grip on the wine bottle. The close, stale air within the Seizerkeller, the vast quantity of wine he had consumed, and the heady fumes of wine and smoke were beginning to tell on him. “About that physician of yours being a no-good charlatan?”

  He enunciated his words with care, but his voice, even to his own ears, sounded slurred and slow.

  “… Such a vast sum of money! I was sorely tempted, I can tell you that.” Wilhelm Kaspar was speaking again. Luigi opened his hazel eyes wide, forcing himself to pay attention.

  “If it were not for the man’s desperation—why, he was quite ready to set down the money then and there in exchange for the entire parcel of scores—I might’ve been persuaded…”

  Luigi’s eyes flew open, jolted to alertness by a hand shaking him.

  “Are you quite all right?” Wilhelm Kaspar’s brown eyes gazed anxiously into his own. “It may be time for us to leave, my friend.”

  Luigi staggered to his feet. “Best get back to my lodgings,” he mumbled.

  It was the pounding at his door that aroused him the next morning.

  “Herr Tomasini!”

  Luigi buried his head in his pillow, willing the ruckus to go away.

  “Herr Tomasini!” The urgency of his landlady’s summons, reflected in the sharp rising of her voice, dispelled the last mists of slumber. He forced himself out of bed and opened the door.

  “What’s amiss?” Luigi frowned down at the plump woman who stood at the door, a tray of coffee in one hand, the other, clenched into a fist, ready to strike at the door again.

  It was the man-servant behind her, vaguely familiar to Luigi, who responded.

  “It is my master, Herr Tomasini.” He thrust a card into Luigi’s bewildered hands. “He is gone!”

  “Kaspar!” Luigi stared down at the card. “Kaspar is gone, you say?”

  * * *

  “Did your master not return home at all after—” Luigi frowned as he strode down the street. Had Kaspar accompanied him to his lodgings or had they parted ways at the Seizerkeller?

  “He set out early in the evening for the Seizerkeller—” Wilhelm Kaspar’s aged servant scurried after Luigi, sounding breathless.

  “Yes, we met at the wine cellar.” Luigi slackened his stride to allow the servant to catch up to him. If only he had not indulged so freely last night, but an entire day with the infuriating La Dichtler was enough to drive a man to drink! Even the tavern had barely provided an adequate refuge from her presence.

  “Master returned home late, Herr Tomasini. Barely an hour before he was to have retired for the night. It must have been the message that sent him rushing out again—”

  “Message? What message?” Luigi stopped short. Kaspar had made no mention of a message, had he?

  Kaspar’s servant swallowed a few gulps of air before responding. The streets had been washed that morning as always, but the dust was already rising from them. Luigi resisted the urge to press a sleeve to his nostrils.

  “It was delivered shortly after my master came home. He had no sooner read it than he set out again. Told me not to wait up for him. But I was to keep the door unlatched, so he could let himself in.”

  Luigi frowned. “The message was delivered after he returned home from the wine cellar, then?” The coffee he had hastily gulped down—lukewarm by the time his landlady had served it to him—had done much toward reviving his senses. But he still felt lightheaded.

  “What did it say? Who was it from?” he demanded when the servant nodded.

  Wilhelm Kaspar’s man-servant scratched sheepishly at his thinning gray head. “Master did not say, Herr Tomasini. And even if I could read, I wouldn’t know. He scrunched the note up and put it in his pocket as soon as he’d read it.”

  He peered anxiously at Luigi, who was tugging at his beard pensively. “It is not like him to be out all hours of the night, Herr Tomasini. Not like him at all.” He paused, then continued in a rush, “I would not have troubled you had I not feared for his safety. But Herr Haydn was not at Wallnerstrasse, and they told me there—”

  “It is quite all right, Rudi.” Luigi set off down the street toward the Tuchlauben at a brisk pace. A police guard would have to be found and the night watchmen questioned. Where could Kaspar have gone so late last night?

  A commotion down the road attracted his attention. He was about to head down one of the side streets on the left toward the Graben, and thence to Kohlmarkt, when he caught a glimpse of a white uniform trimmed with blue

  “There appears to be some trouble up ahead,” he murmured. “But no doubt one of the police guards can be persuaded to help us.”

  “The street was blocked this morning.” Rudi panted heavily from the exertion of keeping pace with Luigi. The servant drew a deep breath. “I had to go past Petersplatz to get to your lodgings.”

  The crowd milling around the Seizerkeller had begun to disperse by the time Luigi and Kaspar’s man-servant arrived at the wine cellar, sent firmly about their business by two of the police guards. A third supervised two watchmen as they carefully began to hoist a makeshift litter carrying the supine body of a man onto their shoulders.

  “Beaten and left to die, poor soul,” a stout woman observed to Luigi. “By robbers, the guards think.” The woman sighed. “It is a common enough occurrence, I fear,” she added, evidently in response to Luigi’s horror-struck gaze.

  The Konzertmeister found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the man on the litter, his plain brown suit of clothing scuffed and torn, his arms and neck covered in lacerations, and his brown-gray hair matted with blood. His mouth felt parched. He attempted to shield the aged servant behind him from the grim sight, but Rudi’s dim eyes were already widening in horrified recognition.

  “It is my master!” He turned a stricken face toward the Konzertmeister. “But why would anyone harm him? Poor man! He had nothing worth stealing.”

  * * *

  “Do you know this man?” The servant’s strangled cry had caught the police guard’s attention. Holding up a peremptory hand to halt the watchmen, he turned from Rudi to Luigi, his sharp blue eyes scrutinizing both men.

  Luigi swallowed. “Wilhelm Kaspar—he is a violinist.” He swallowed again. His throat felt hoarse, and he cleared it noisily before beginning again: “At St. Michael’s Church, but he plays on occasion at the Kärntnertor Theater and at the Hofburg.”

  “One of Her Majesty’s musicians, then?” The police guard appeared perturbed at the thought.

  “On occasion, yes.” Luigi nodded. “He fills in when asked to. But it is at the church that he is employed.” His eyes were drawn toward the litter again. Through Kaspar’s torn clothing, he could make out the gaping tears in his skin and the red-tinged flesh. Kaspar’s nose appeared to be smashed in; and his eyes… A wave of nausea overcame Luigi and he averted his eyes.

  “Such brutality!” he murmured, more to himself than to the police guard. “Who could have done such a thing?”

  “Who else but the thieves that plague this city? We found this purse discarded by the way side.” The police guard held out a small, scuffed leather p
urse in his hands.

  “That is Master’s purse!” the servant cried. “But he had little enough money to carry in it, poor man.”

  The police guard shrugged. “Had he a little more, his life may have been spared.”

  The callously uttered words enraged Luigi. “Are the thieves here grown so desperate that they would fall upon a man not rich enough to steal from? Are they so bold that they would kill a man for being too poor to have more than a few florins in his purse? Look at his clothes, man! Did he look like a man worth stealing from?”

  He had, quite without thought, taken a step toward the police guard, his fists clenched. It was a mistake. The two guards who had been dispersing the crowd moved forward, rifles at the ready.

  “Then, perhaps, he was a thief himself and received his just deserts.” The first police guard’s tone had hardened. Old Rudi, Kaspar’s servant, was shaking his head vehemently, but the guard continued on relentlessly. “Or, was it the wine”—he threw a contemptuous glance at the wine cellar—“that drove him to violence? A drunken quarrel between friends that took his life?”

  “For shame! Would you sully a dead man’s name? Master never stole a kreutzer in all his life; nor ever drunk himself into a stupor.”

  One of the other police guards thrust himself in front of the first guard. “Poldi meant no disrespect, did you now, eh Poldi?” He frowned at his colleague. “But when a man is found beaten to death, his purse emptied of its contents and tossed to the ground…” He lifted his shoulders and spread his palms out in an eloquent gesture. “Did he have nothing worth stealing, then?”

  “Luigi tugged at his beard. “Only a snuffbox,” he said, remembering the box inlaid with precious stones Kaspar had been twiddling with the previous evening. “A tiny thing of rare beauty, but still…”

  “Then that was what they were after, my good sir,” Poldi’s colleague asserted. He gestured in the direction of the litter. “See those bruises and tears on his wrists? He must have resisted them.” He shook his head. “A mistake our good citizens too often make.”

  “No, no…” Luigi could feel a vein in his head throbbing painfully. There was something very wrong here, but the police guards seemed blind to it. If only Haydn were here.

  “You had best come with us to the police station,” Poldi said in a gruff voice. “If you have any knowledge of this matter, the Herr Inspektor will wish to be informed of it.”

  Luigi nodded mutely. He withdrew a pen from his pocket and a sheet of paper, scribbled a hasty note, then pressed it into old Rudi’s hands. “Take this to Wallnerstrasse and have someone send it to Herr Haydn. Tell them it is most urgent. I will go to Baden myself, once my business at the police station is concluded, and convey your mistress back to town.”

  * * *

  “What an unusual collection of portraits! This one is particularly striking, Johann.” Haydn drew his brother’s attention to an exquisite pastel of a child clutching a doll to her breast. It was, like all the drawings in the room, by the Genevan artist, Jean-Étienne Liotard.

  Johann, studying a portrait of a young boy in profile, was about to respond when the door behind them opened.

  “Gentlemen!” The imperial physician leaned briefly against the door to regain his breath. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said at last, “but I am not as limber as I used to be.” He entered the room followed by a tall young man whose left arm hung stiffly by his side.

  “I had hoped Kapellmeister Reutter would be able to place one of his more experienced musicians at your disposal, but”—he gestured toward his companion’s bandaged arm—“without the use of his bowing arm, Albrecht here is no good to the orchestra, and the Kapellmeister is hard pressed to spare any of his men at present.”

  “I am sure he will do admirably, Your Lordship.” Johann directed an encouraging smile at the young musician standing, head bowed, at Baron van Swieten’s side.

  “How came you by your injury, young man?” he continued, once the Baron, having made his introductions, had left.

  “A knife wound from a brigand, I am afraid.” Albrecht shrugged ruefully, seating himself at the gold-upholstered chaise Johann had indicated with a brief motion of his hand. “They were after my friend’s inheritance, although how they could have known anything about it when the will had just been read, I will never understand. If it were not for the lawyer who rode with us…” he shrugged again.

  “This friend of yours—” Haydn scanned the young man’s narrow face. It was scarcely possible, he thought, for two men to have experienced the same sort of robbery. “This friend would not happen to be a man by the name of Wilhelm Kaspar, would he?”

  Albrecht’s hooded eyes opened a little wider. “The very same! I had no conception Kaspar was acquainted with a man so eminent as yourself. Why, it must have been you Herr Anwalt was referring to when he suggested Kaspar have his bequest evaluated.” He hesitated briefly.

  “If I may be so bold as to ask, are the scores genuine?” His eyes darted eagerly from Haydn to Johann.

  “It is too early to tell,” Haydn responded lightly. Albrecht, he feared, was too young to be discreet, and Kaspar’s inheritance had already attracted quite enough attention. “The will had just been read, you say?” The words had caught his attention. He frowned, trying to recall whether Kaspar had made mention of the fact in his letter.

  Albrecht nodded. “That very evening. Why, even Herr Anwalt knew not what Kaspar’s bequest consisted of. That is why it was so odd—”

  “Odd indeed!” Haydn’s lips had tightened. The entire circumstance was so odd, he would have to pay a visit to the lawyer once they were back in town.

  Johann’s cough drew his attention back to Albrecht. The young man was staring at him in open curiosity.

  “Dr. Goretti, I take it—” Haydn began.

  “Is still in town, no doubt.” Albrecht looked apologetic. “Baron van Swieten takes great exception to his prolonged absences, but they are for an entirely worthy cause.”

  “Indeed?” Johann’s eyebrows were raised.

  “He lends his services at the hospital run by the Brothers of Mercy. There is not much he can do here—” The young man’s eyes slid to the floor, intent on the red carpet at their feet. “His views are…” he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, apparently still having trouble raising his eyes.

  “You are in agreement with his views, then?” Johann directed an amused glance at Haydn

  Albrecht turned red. “I am no medical man, of course,” he said hurriedly. “But if there is a way of preventing, even eradicating, a disease as fatal as small pox, I think… that is to say… well, it is worth a try.”

  “And what of his musical abilities?” Haydn could not help probing. The Italian doctor appeared to have made quite an impression on young Albrecht. Had he been equally successful in bamboozling the young violinist as to his musical abilities?

  But a sharp rat-a-tat sounded at the door before Albrecht could respond. The imperial physician rushed into the room, a folded piece of paper in his outstretched hands.

  “An urgent summons from the city, Herr Haydn.” He held the note out. “The servant who brought it seemed so distraught, I thought it best to deliver it myself.” He peered anxiously at Haydn. “Not ill news, I hope…Your wife…”

  “What is it, brother?” Johann asked when Haydn glanced up from the note, his usually nut-brown cheeks a sickly shade of gray.

  “It is Kaspar. He was…” He rose to his feet. “We must return to the city at once, Johann.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Beaten to death,” Johann repeated in a low, shock-dampened tone. He looked up from the note delivered to them not above a half hour ago. His eyes, like his brother’s, had drifted toward the carriage window.

  Haydn swallowed hard, attempted speech, but the words he sought had trouble moving past the lump in his throat. In the end, he could do no more than nod mutely.

  How could Kaspar be dead? Who had killed him? And in so b
rutal a fashion? A misty, tear-moistened image of the fountains in the Court of Honor rolled before his eyes. The carriage sped through the main gate. Before he knew it, they were traveling across the drawbridge over the River Wien.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw his younger brother’s gaze return to the note Luigi had sent them.

  “A squabble outside the wine cellar?” Johann said. The pianissimo of doubt swelled to a crescendo of disbelief. “But who could pick a quarrel with a man so mild as Kaspar?” He raised his eyes and squinted anxiously at the Kapellmeister. “You don’t suppose it had anything to do with his bequest, do you?”

  Haydn’s fingers tightened on the windowsill. It was what he had supposed from the moment he had read his Konzertmeister’s message.

  “I am afraid it is the only conclusion that can be drawn,” he said quietly, turning to his brother. “If there was a dispute, it was over his bequest—quite obviously valuable judging by the interest it has garnered since he inherited it. If he was set upon by thieves, it could only have been the very same who attacked his carriage.”

  On the very the day the will was read, he murmured to himself.

  But Johann nevertheless caught the words. “Your suspicions seem to be drawn toward the old merchant’s lawyer, brother. But—”

  “I am more than ever convinced the robbery was staged, Johann. The will was read that very day. The men who attacked Kaspar’s carriage knew what to get their hands on. And Herr Anwalt appears to have used the attempted theft to persuade Kaspar to entrust the music into his own hands.”

  “Yes, brother, but Herr Anwalt had no more idea than anyone else what Kaspar’s bequest consisted of. Kaspar told us so himself. Besides, what reason could there be to distrust a man so well acquainted with the family? Surely, you are—” Johann checked himself abruptly.