Aria to Death

by Nupur Tustin

  “Who are you and what business do you have here?” To Haydn’s ears the voice sounded like the dry crackling of an autumn leaf.

  He moved the chest to one side and found himself staring into a pair of age-dimmed, blue-gray eyes surrounded by innumerable wrinkles of brown, shriveled skin. They held his gaze with an unmistakable air of authority.

  He gazed back, unable to tear his eyes away. A vague impression of an excessively thin figure seated in a wheelchair seeped into his mind. A woman, judging by her plain, black gown.

  “I am Joseph Haydn,” he replied, too startled by the encounter to take exception to her imperious manner. “Kapellmeister to His Serene Highness, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy.” He indicated his brother behind him. “My younger brother Johann, also in the Prince’s employ.”

  “Haydn?” She squinted up at him, uttering the name as though she knew him. There was something familiar about her person, although Haydn had no recollection of ever having met her. “Joseph Haydn,” she said again. “The boy who croaks out his solos?” She cackled.

  The sound brought out a harried-looking middle-aged servant from the apartment behind her. “Oh there you are, Your Grace! It is time for your nap. I have your medicines all ready.” She looked up at Haydn. “Her Grace—”

  “Is the Countess of Kuenberg,” Haydn said, recalling the woman whose complaints about his singing had resulted in all his solos being given to his brother Michael. There had been a shrewish quality about her even then, when she had served as the Empress’s lady-in-waiting, and it appeared not to have improved with age.

  “Her Grace means you no harm, sirs. She is old and takes every little change as cause for alarm. Let these gentlemen pass, Your Grace. They must be here to offer their condolences to the poor widow upstairs.”

  “Oh stop fussing, Katherl,” Her Grace said sharply, but she withdrew her walking stick. “It is not young Joseph here who scares me. It is the ruffian and that scandalous woman who have me fearing for my life. Is not the musician who lives above us dead?”

  “Wilhelm Kaspar?” Haydn enquired, interested despite himself. The Countess’s sharp tongue had always been accompanied by equally sharp ears and eyes. “He was killed, Your Grace. It happened just outside a wine tavern.”

  The Countess grunted. “Well then, I suppose it could not have been those two. Although, I tell you, I have yet to see a more ruffianly pair. They acted brazen enough, but I saw the way they were looking over their shoulders.”

  “Looking over their shoulders?” Haydn repeated. Had someone really attempted to break into Kaspar’s apartment, then? There would have been no reason to be furtive had they simply intended to pay the widow a visit. Yet all the evidence pointed to the robbery having been staged.

  “Yes, looking over their shoulders.” The Countess’s dry croak broke into his thoughts. “Isn’t that what I said? Clean the wax out of your ears, boy!”

  “When did you see them?” Johann asked, speaking for the first time.

  “I doubt she saw anyone at all,” Katherl, the maid, murmured. “She is often restless at night. The pain keeps her from sleeping, and the numerous potions make her imagine things.”

  “I imagine nothing.” The Countess banged her stick on the floor. “I saw those two, I tell you! Why, it was just last night. Long after every decent soul was abed.” With a grunt, she turned her chair around and began to wheel herself back into her apartment. “I am tired now. Leave me alone.”

  “Last night?” Haydn repeated. It would have been impossible to enter through the door last night. The keys stolen from Kaspar’s person would not have opened the new locks. Had someone—Amelie, perhaps—let the strange couple in?

  It was an unsavory thought, and he chose not to dwell on it.

  Katherl was still standing before him. She waited until her employer had gone indoors before turning to him.

  “Last night,” she began in a low voice, “was one of the few nights Her Grace slept well. She was in such pain, I mixed some opium in her hot chocolate. She fell into a deep sleep from which she only awoke this morning. I did hear steps late at night, but it must have been one of the young men in the garret, returning home after a serenade.”

  Haydn nodded. It was not an uncommon means of earning a few kreutzers for an impoverished young man. He had done it himself, there being no dearth of patrons willing to pay generously to have a young musician serenade a wife or daughter on her name day. But the information did nothing to ease his qualms.

  * * *

  Rosalie was quite out of breath by the time she reached Wallnerstrasse. She had barely paused to catch her breath under the stone portico of the building at the corner when she caught sight of a familiar figure in a silk-lined straw hat making its way down the street.

  The wide brim sweeping around the hat shielded the wearer’s features, but there was no mistaking the provocative swaying of Frau Dichtler’s hips as she swept down the street.

  She had made it back not a moment too soon, and just as she suspected, the soprano was on her way somewhere. Greta had insisted the necklace was already at a pawn store. They would be wasting precious time if they foolishly returned to the palace.

  And who knew when another unforeseen half-day would present itself for them to retrieve the necklace? Better do it right now.

  Good thing, she hadn’t given in to Greta. She would still be traipsing the city in search of that necklace instead of simply letting Frau Dichtler lead her to it.

  The soprano’s visitor from earlier that afternoon followed close behind, still wearing her scarlet hat with its raised crown and dyed ostrich feathers. She hurried to keep pace with the singer, for Frau Dichtler, despite the care she took to sway her hips from side to side, managed to set up a tremendous pace.

  Rosalie shrank back against the wall as the woman’s head turned this way and that to scan her surroundings, but she needn’t have worried. The marble columns that surrounded the portico, running from ground to ceiling, sheltered her from the woman’s wary gaze.

  Rosalie watched the women go past, then waited a while before poking her head out from under the portico. She crept out and began walking after them. She could walk as fast or faster than Frau Dichtler, dressed as she was in a simple dirndl. But God forbid, the woman should consider hailing the many cabs that slowed down as they coaxed their horses past the two well-dressed ladies walking briskly on.

  And God forbid that either one of them should turn back and see her, she thought, as the soprano’s friend began to twist her head around. Rosalie quickly stepped under the colorful awning of a stall selling bonnets, capes, and ribbons to avoid her gaze.

  “The lace shawl,” she said to the hat-woman whose eyes had brightened at seeing what looked like a possible customer. “I feel a slight chill, and it will do nicely enough for a day such as this.” She pointed to the garment in question. It would also do very well to conceal her person from prying eyes, she thought.

  She waited impatiently while the hat-woman brought down the shawl. Her eyes slid anxiously toward the swiftly-receding bustles of Frau Dichtler and her friend.

  “No need to wrap it.” She slapped a few coins down on the wooden counter. “I intend to wear it.”

  Frau Dichtler and her friend were almost out of sight by the time Rosalie had draped the shawl over her head and pushed her way through the crowded streets. It was late afternoon, and all of Vienna seemed to be out enjoying the fine day.

  She followed the two women around twisting alleys and lanes, too intent on keeping them in sight to pay attention to where she was going. She fervently hoped Frau Dichtler intended to return to the castle after her errand. It would take her hours to find her way back to Wallnerstrasse on her own.

  A couple of turns later, she caught sight of the two women disappearing through the door on the left of the main entrance of a building. She paused to take stock of her surroundings. There would be time enough to scout out the establishment Frau Dichtler and her friend had entered.
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  Beyond the buildings that lined the street on either side, she could see the twenty-foot- high walls of the city and the arched opening of the Carinthian Gate culminating in a triangular roof. Why, it was not above a week that they had entered the city through those very gates.

  Rosalie frowned. What business could Frau Dichtler possibly have in this quarter of Vienna, so far from the palace?

  * * *

  “I doubt marriage would have improved her disposition,” Haydn said, recalling his old teacher Reutter’s observation regarding the Countess of Kuenberg. He stepped out from the dim interior of Kaspar’s building into the bright warmth of the afternoon sun. His eyes blinked several times in rapid succession as they adjusted to the glare.

  It had been several years since he had seen the Countess of Kuenberg, but the effect of his unexpected encounter with her, all these years after his dismissal from St. Stephen’s, remained the same. She still chafed every fiber of his being like a garment of horsehair.

  “I suppose not.” Johann came up to stand next to him. “She was always a sour-tempered woman. But why let thoughts of her spoil your temper now, brother? She is an old woman, barely in control of her faculties.”

  “She seemed to know what she was talking about,” Haydn replied. He stepped out from under the portico and glanced up. The sight that met his eyes made him draw in his breath in a quick, sharp hiss.

  “Can Amelie be so lost to all sense of propriety that she allows a stranger to treat her with such familiarity?”

  The man he and his brother had passed on their way down stood close behind Kaspar’s widow by the broken window. The couple seemed oblivious to the world below them. Haydn watched in disgust as the man lightly brushed a wayward strand of hair from the widow’s cheek, his fingers lingering against her skin.

  “He may not be a stranger,” Johann said, looking up just at that moment. “A cousin, perhaps, consoling her in her time of grief.”

  Haydn shook his head. For all his wisdom, his brother tended to be remarkably guileless when it came to relations between men and women. “There was nothing cousinly about his touch or her response. I could have sworn her lips parted. In a wanton desire she should not feel,” he continued to mutter, “when her husband is barely cold in his grave.

  “Why, he is not yet in his grave.” He straightened up as he recalled the bitter, hard fact.

  “Let us not be so quick to judge, brother,” Johann admonished him. He gestured toward the chest Haydn was gripping hard against himself. “And let us hasten to the palace. It cannot be safe to be standing around in this crowded place with an object of as much value as this appears to be.”

  Haydn allowed himself to be propelled down the busy street. It was but a short walk to the Esterházy palace on Wallnerstrasse. Still, he wished they were in his carriage rather than being pushed and jostled by the coaches and people thronging around them.

  But he had offered Albrecht the use of his vehicle to convey Kaspar’s body to the undertaker. And who knew how long it would be before Albrecht returned?

  Haydn’s thoughts returned to Amelie’s visitor. There was something familiar about the dapper figure in his coat of brown velvet. He said as much to Johann.

  “It is as I said, brother. He is a relative, no doubt, of either Kaspar or Amelie. You must have seen him at their house.”

  But although Haydn could have sworn he had encountered the man before, he was quite sure it had never been at Kaspar’s apartment. Nor, for that matter, had he seen the man on any prior visit to the city. His mind dwelt on the stranger’s dark beard, trimmed to a neat point; his large, lustrous brown eyes, far too beautiful to belong in a man’s face. Where had he seen those features before?

  It had not been too long ago, he was sure of that. In his mind’s eye, he vividly saw those eyes staring at him, darting away every time they caught him looking back.

  It was only when they arrived at the palace that he remembered.

  “It was at the wine tavern, Johann!”

  “What?” Johann stopped, turning slowly to look at him.

  “The Seizerkeller. That is where I first saw him. His eyes seemed to be drawn toward us. He was staring at Kaspar the way a spider contemplates the fly it wishes to feast upon.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Johann regarded him for a space. “The tavern was dimly lit. Can you be certain it was the selfsame man you saw?”

  “I could not help but notice him. His behavior struck me as most suspicious. He seemed to be doing his utmost to listen to our conversation.”

  “And Kaspar was talking about his bequest at the time.” Johann frowned. His eyes wandered sightlessly around the inner courtyard. A thought must have struck him as he contemplated the facts, for his eyes opened wider and he turned sharply toward Haydn.

  “How did Amelie come to make his acquaintance, then? If the man were known to Kaspar, surely he would have approached us.”

  Haydn gnawed pensively at his lower lip. “I should have drawn Kaspar’s attention to him. He was seated between Luigi and myself and had only to turn his head a few degrees to see the man.”

  “Then most likely they were not acquainted.” Johann must have seen something in Haydn’s features, for he concluded the assertion on a tenuous warble. “Surely you are not suggesting that they were?” he demanded when the Kapellmeister remained silent.

  Haydn continued to gnaw at his lip, not sure himself what he was suggesting.

  “Most likely they were not,” he conceded. “Kaspar could hardly have spent the entire evening without turning his head. And if he had, he would not have failed to see the man.”

  He strode briskly toward the palace doors as though the matter were satisfactorily settled. Yet his mind refused to dismiss it so easily. Something about the stranger’s manner had suggested he had no desire to call attention to himself. Would a man unacquainted with Kaspar have any need to be so furtive?

  Johann fell into step beside him. “Then however Amelie came to know him, it cannot have been through Kaspar.”

  “Most likely not,” Haydn agreed. Now, why did he have no trouble believing that? If there was a possibility that Kaspar knew the man, why should he not have introduced him to his wife. Unless…

  Haydn stiffened. Unless he were a business connection, a man interested in acquiring Kaspar’s bequest. Even so—

  “Who could have made Amelie known to him?” Johann’s words echoed the question ringing in Haydn’s mind.

  “And more importantly,” he replied quietly, “when did she make his acquaintance? After Kaspar’s death?” God forbid that it should have been before!

  * * *

  Rosalie slowly approached the building the soprano had entered with her friend. As she drew closer, she noticed the large glass windows on either side of the narrow door and the colorful displays of hats, jeweled pins, silken scarves, and lace stoles all draped over swathes of crimson velvet cloth.

  A millinery?

  It seemed fashionable enough, but what woman of society, accustomed to frequenting establishments on the Graben and the Kohlmarkt, would come all the way here?

  The milliner—Madame Chapeau, read the sign above the door—also sold small items of jewelry. Beautiful brooches in jeweled colors lay nestled among the silks and laces on display.

  Rosalie forced her eyes away from the dazzling array. Frau Dichtler was leaning over the counter, deep in conversation with a middle-aged woman.

  The Madame herself, no doubt, Rosalie thought, taking in the woman’s large green eyes and the glossy ebony curls that fell upon her bare shoulders, framing a face that was still beautiful. Frau Dichtler’s friend stood behind the counter, arranging bolts of fabric on the shelves behind her.

  Where was the necklace? Try as she might, Rosalie could see nothing. What should she do now? Rosalie had not stopped to consider the question when she followed Frau Dichtler. For all she knew, the woman was doing nothing more dubious than discussing the latest styles.


  There was no question of entering the establishment. Everything in it was beyond the means of a maid such as herself. And she could scarcely pretend Her Serene Highness had sent her. The Princess was unlikely to patronize an establishment so far from the fashionable center of town.

  Still, standing out here on the street was doing her no good. She edged closer to the door. Would it be possible to open it just a crack? She would have to do it very carefully so as not to make the bell above the door ring.

  But if she could overhear some parts of the conversation… Well, who knew what that might yield. She was at the door now. She looked over her shoulder. No one seemed to be taking any notice of her.

  She stretched out her hand, about to reach for the handle when she noticed the tiniest crack between the door jamb and the frame. Ah! What a bit of luck. The door wasn’t closed all the way. She slowly inserted her finger in the crack, letting it widen until the sound of voices came to her ears.

  * * *

  “It turns out Herr Rahier’s interest in acquiring music wasn’t feigned.” Luigi tapped the encircled article in the newspaper in Haydn’s hands. “I found your missing copy of the Diarium in his office.” He stood by the harpsichord, hazel eyes searching the Kapellmeister’s features for a response.

  But Haydn, who had just entered the Music Room with Johann, was still perusing the article his Konzertmeister had indicated.

  “The operas of Monteverdi?” Johann took a quick peek over Haydn’s shoulder before going over to his brother’s desk with the ivory-inlaid chest containing Kaspar’s bequest. “That cannot be a coincidence,” he remarked, setting the chest down.