Beethoven's Tenth

by Richard Kluger

  “Translation?”

  “The very friendly Frau Reinsdorf—I think your Berlin visit officially ended her period of mourning. She phoned the States last night—I’ve just heard the tape. You should, too.”

  “Play away,” he said. “I’ll get Clara on the line as well.” This is what they heard:

  unidentified: H’lo.

  hilde reinsdorf: Do I have Mr. Jacob Hassler’s residence?

  jake: Yup. But he’s not buying anything tonight.

  hilde: Would you be Mr. Hassler himself?

  jake: Would you be the queen of England?

  hilde: Excuse me?

  jake: Just get on with it, lady—you’ve got ten more seconds.

  hilde: Yes, all right. This is Hilde Reinsdorf, Mr. Hassler. We met at Mr. Roth’s home actually—the dinner party for the panel of experts who examined the manuscript you found? My late husband was Dr. Emil Reinsdorf—I’m sure you’ll recall him—from Berlin—

  jake: I don’t think you’ve got the right party, lady.

  hilde: This is definitely the number Emil gave me—Area Code nine-zero-eight—

  jake: Okay, what is it you’re selling, Mrs. Reinhart?

  hilde: [Pause.] Oh, I think I see—you don’t want to speak with me—

  jake: Do we have something to speak about?

  hilde: Yes, we do, Mr. Hassler—and there’s no need to be rude to me.

  jake: Okay. What’s on your mind—madam? Is that better?

  hilde: In case you were not aware, my husband told me about his understanding with you. I wanted to let you know that I expect it to be honored in full—in the event you thought his death somehow changed things.

  jake: [Pause.] I don’t know about any understanding with your husband.

  hilde: Oh, but I’m sure you do, Mr. Hassler. I have a memorandum between the two of you—with both your signatures on it.

  jake: Lady, you must have me mixed up with some other guy.

  hilde: I see. Then perhaps you’ll have no interest in the other reason for my calling you, either.

  jake: Finally!

  hilde: My good-for-nothing nephew—he knows everything, I’m afraid, and was close to Emil—he’s become exceedingly greedy. He’s threatening to—what is the expression?—blow the whistle on our arrangements if the Cubbage concern doesn’t pay him off for his silence. He’s a quite proficient liar, and unless he’s bought off or stopped—which is not within my power—he’ll wreck everything.

  jake: [Long pause.] What’s all that got to do with me?

  hilde: You of all people have the most to lose—and if you lose, I lose as well. Emil explained it to me quite clearly during the last stage of his cancer.

  jake: [Pause.] Anything else?

  hilde: I understand that there’s been a quite substantial offer made by one of the recording companies for the property in question. Perhaps the matter can be reopened at your end—unless, of course—well—I hesitate to say it—

  jake: Say what, lady?

  hilde: [Pause.] You do something forceful about my vile nephew.

  jake: Take a hike, lady—and don’t call me back, ever, okay?

  [Click.]

  “Wow,” Mitch said softly, trying to focus on the mind-blurring evidence of the German widow’s masterful duplicity. “Please play the tape for Gordy Roth in New York. I think we’re finally getting somewhere, Johnny.”

  Clara rewarded him with a rapturous embrace. “And don’t gloat, you beast!”

  “About your precious Hilde? I made a lucky guess.”

  “Lucky, my foot. I’m just a gullible twit.”

  “But delectable.”

  They devoted the next hour trying to fit the pieces together anew. Hilde’s deceitful answers during their visit to her home were now a matter of record, even if inadmissible in court. Her outreach to Jake raised two big questions: How much did she know about the whole Tell apparatus, and how deeply was she involved in its workings? But what exactly did the tapped phone conversation reveal about a deal between Emil and Jake or Felix’s connection to it? And while Jake had admitted to nothing on the phone with Hilde, his credentials as an innocent primitive were now gravely suspect. His end of the tapped exchange strongly hinted he was a far cannier character, if not yet a self-incriminating participant, in whatever racket was now unraveling. The biggest stunner for Mitch was the apparent existence of a written agreement between Jake and Emil. “When Felix spoke about an alleged deal, I just assumed he was referring to an arrangement Emil had supposedly made with C&W,” he told Clara, “and had nothing to do with Jake handing over a piece of the action to the Reinsdorfs—or Emil promising to cut Felix in on it after the auction went off. Maybe Emil didn’t want Felix to know the whole truth.”

  “But why,” Clara wondered, “would Emil have told Felix about any deal he might have made? Just because he was the Reinsdorfs’ heir apparent? I don’t buy that. There had to be something more going on.”

  Mitch agreed but had no explanation to offer. “And why did Felix lead me to think Emil’s deal was with C&W,” Mitch asked, “or threaten to claim it was if we didn’t pay him off?”

  “That ’s easy,” Clara said. “Because C&W has money, and Felix was angry at his uncle for refusing to promise him a legacy—and if you want my guess, Hilde played dumb when Felix confronted her after the funeral, so he saw himself being shut out of the action altogether—no inheritance and nothing from Emil’s deal with Jake—which is why he’s turned on C&W to buy him off or he’d force you to cancel the auction.” It gushed out in a single, mind-flooding torrent.

  “Impressive,” Mitch said softly. “If you only had a brain.” Then he phoned Gordy and brought him up to speed on the day’s startling developments.

  The lawyer emitted a long, low whistle. “Well, the tape of Hilde’s phone conversation with Jake pretty well explains the call I got this afternoon from Owen Whittaker. Right after she contacted Jake, he must have got in touch with Owen, who tells me Jake has suddenly changed his mind about taking the Syzygy Records offer of ten million, if it isn’t too late. I told him it probably was, but I could ask—only how come Jake’s getting cold feet over the auction? The guy’s already got a million-dollar guarantee from us. Owen said, ‘He’s a bird-in-the-hand kind of guy.’ I said I thought Jake was being shortsighted—but now I see his game. Jake must figure the whole business is about to come unglued, so he’d better grab whatever he can.”

  “Sounds right,” said Mitch. “The thing is, listening to the tape of his responses to Hilde, I can’t tell whether Jake really had a deal with Emil—and there’s not a clue in there about what it was, if it was. You’ll have the tape in the morning—listen to it yourself.”

  “Will do. Now get your backsides stateside, fella—we’ve got to huddle about whether to pull the plug before the bidders show up.”

  “I’ve got to pay just one more visit here,” Mitch said, “and then we’ll head back.”

  Gordy was silent for a moment.

  “The thing is,” he said, “now that I think about it, none of all this byzantine scheming you’ve uncovered tells us anything about whether the William Tell Symphony is bogus or not.”

  “Roger to that,” said Mitch. “Ciao, pal.”

  .

  just before the appointed hour for their revisit to Margot Lenz’s apartment, Clara had a phone call from her father advising that Gladys Hoitsma had just slipped on their stairway and broken her hip; emergency surgery was required. Her mother’s health and father’s angst took precedence over the Tell crisis, and she told Mitch, “Go ahead without me—I’m not really needed, and I can’t hang up on Daddy.” He had badly wanted her on hand for her female instinct appraising Margot’s responses—Clara’s input from the first had been invaluable to him—but there was no postponing his appointment with Margot.

  She
appeared rather more drawn than Mitch remembered from their earlier visit. Perhaps it was just the blinding brightness of the midwinter day that afflicted her with a fixed squint as she led him into the living room with its wrap-around picture windows. The glare off the lake caused her to slip on the tinted glasses clipped to the chain around her neck.

  He began by apologizing for his renewed intrusion on her privacy but explained that it was his company’s responsibility to get to the bottom of all the circumstances surrounding the Tell manuscript. “Earlier we pressed you about your brother’s possible involvement with the creation of the symphony and his troubled history,” said Mitch. “We’ve now confirmed the nature of your relationship with Felix Utley—sorry, but under these circumstances it’s our job to spy—so we need to ask you about his and his uncle’s part in this whole Beethoven matter.”

  Margot nodded assent. “I haven’t done very well with the leading men in my life,” she reflected after hearing him recite the particulars of Felix Utley’s extortionate assault on Cubbage & Wakeham. Her words hinted at victimization but were spoken with a matter-of-factness that did not detract from her grave dignity. Her father, Margot revealed, while a dutiful paterfamilias, had distanced himself from his children as if they were little incubators of vicious microbes sure to do him in. Her brother had been an endearing loon and an infuriating chameleon, whose shortcomings, at least, stemmed more from illness than ill will. The same could not be said of Margot’s husband, a desiccated husk who went through all the motions of cohabiting—among them the begetting of their two daughters—with exquisite manners but none of the substance of companionship. An adjunct lecturer in cardiology at the University of Zurich with a few patients, he was away from home three weeks out of four as a consultant for a pharmaceutical giant—“or so he tells me,” Margot said. When in town, Dr. Leonidas Lenz made a show of squiring her to upscale restaurants, concerts, the theater, and the Platypus Club—anything to avoid intimacy with his wife, who came to suppose that the cause must be her dwindling charms.

  It was inevitable, “and only human,” she added without apology, that she would derive comfort and stimulation from her brother’s close friend, Felix, a far more attentive and kindred soul than her spouse. “There were times I thought he adored me—even when he was using me, though I was a willing participant at all points.”

  She turned sharply to Mitch and added, “Do you understand that I had no choice, when you first asked me, but to deny my relationship with Felix? I have two young girls, I run a substantial business, and my aging parents are of the old school—an open marriage to them is no marriage at all. My role as de facto head of our family would have been imperiled if I had not taken every precaution to hide my—our arrangement—”

  “Sounds as if your husband would have had little justification for objecting,” said Mitch.

  “He was skilled at making me feel the inadequacies were wholly on my end,” Margot replied, “and, being a slave to propriety, I couldn’t risk scandal. Dr. Lenz, not a man of independent means, lives both off me and against me—he made it clear long ago that he would take it out on me emotionally and financially if he ever discovered indiscretions on my part. He felt my brother’s antics were the source of quite enough humiliation for one family, though he would never bestir himself, of course, to try to get Ansel the proper medical attention.”

  “Whereas Felix showed genuine compassion for Ansel?” Mitch inferred.

  “Up to a point. My husband thought that our acquaintance was largely concerned with Ansel’s problems—and so it was—until Felix displayed and I welcomed a deeper form of caring. It was a new sensation for me.” Aside from its novelty, consorting with Felix rather than what she termed “a more socially suitable” lover held two advantages for Margot. He made no objection to the necessarily hermetic nature of their affair, while she, as a high-visibility executive with powerful connections, could keep him under her thumb for a relatively small price. Or so she thought. “Felix, I’ve only lately come to understand, is a true predator—he knew he could destroy what was left of my marriage and probably bring me down as a businesswoman of rectitude. Promiscuity is not a Swiss virtue. So he’s come to assume I’m in thrall to him—which is no doubt why he’s attempting to browbeat your firm into paying him off without fear that I’d tell you everything I know if you came to me.”

  “And will you?” Mitch asked, stirring at the prospect of genuine enlightenment that had eluded him since the beginning of the Tell puzzle.

  “As best I can—and before it gets worse.”

  Margot glanced out toward the lake for a time and then began her story, a recital all the more remarkable for its dispassionate self-censure.

  One evening two years earlier, Felix had told her—“in strictest confidence”—a tale so improbable that Margot knew it could not have been invented. His Uncle Emil, having long sneered at Felix’s musical accomplishments, had recently approached him on a matter of pressing importance. A presentable stranger who claimed to be a lawyer representing unnamed clients had stopped by the Reinsdorfs’ apartment with an old manuscript purported to be a long-lost tenth symphony by Beethoven, bearing his signature on the title page and celebrating the exploits of William Tell and his freedom-loving Swiss countrymen. Astonished and incredulous, Emil nevertheless recognized the plausibility of such a work’s existence—the maestro, after all, had once been invited to compose incidental music for a Viennese staging of Schiller’s drama about Tell—and asked their visitor to relate all he knew about the manuscript’s history.

  The stranger said he knew little. It had reportedly been hidden for many years at an obscure repository in Czechoslovakia until the Second World War, when Nazi soldiers ransacked the place and, while suspecting the composition attributed to the supreme genius of classical music was a counterfeit, carried off the Tell sketchbooks. The two bulky volumes, perceived more as curiosities than precious documents, became underground refugees throughout the war, constantly changing hands for modest sums. In time they reached metropolitan Germany, where they were picked up as a trophy of war by a wealthy industrialist, a favorite of the Reich, who held onto them after peace returned.

  The family’s second postwar generation, supposing the manuscript was almost surely a sham, chose to dispose of it and hired a friendly attorney to attend to the transaction. Knowing of Emil Reinsdorf’s transcendent standing among Beethoven scholars, the go-between brought the ragged manuscript to the Berlin musicologist before any other potential purchaser and offered it to him for 100,000 British pounds. After studying it for a time, Margot related, Felix’s uncle concluded that the work was almost certainly the product of Beethoven’s hand and, digging deep into his savings, bought it for a quarter of the asking price—for him a considerable investment.

  Pondering what to do with his treasure, in need of editing and completed orchestration, Emil decided that its messy condition and murky provenance made the work unsuitable for conventional tests of its authenticity—repair work to cleanse the text and a far simpler and more compelling scenario for its rediscovery would be required. Any traceable involvement on Emil’s part, moreover, exposing him as the prime promoter of the find, might cast suspicion on the purity of the work and undermine his standing as the chief arbiter and high priest of Beethoviana. The project had to be carried out at arm’s length—and yet under Emil’s control. Which, Margot said, was where Felix came in.

  Since the symphony was conceived as a tribute to the great Swiss folk hero, what could be more natural, Emil reasoned, than for the work to be found hidden in Switzerland accompanied by a few documents that established a credible link between its presence there and Beethoven’s—and, at the same time, accounted for its abandonment? Given all the mechanics and logistics involved in the staggering challenge, he chose his nephew—a skilled, knowledgeable musician and his only living blood relation—to share the secret and a portion of the labor and rewards. While Emi
l devoted himself to editing and transcribing the painstakingly cleaned-up manuscript, Felix’s job was to arrange for bringing the restored Tell to the world’s attention.

  “And that’s how I became embroiled in it as well,” Margot related. She had once mentioned to Felix that her family held a lien on the Hassler house next door, which would pass into the Erpfs’ hands at Otto’s death—a disclosure Felix remembered after his uncle had come to him with the Tell. The perfect hiding place for the resuscitated manuscript was at hand. After Felix had visited the Zurich Canton Registry and found the birth record of a Hassler family daughter of a suitable age to fit the scenario, Emil invented the Nina, Archduke Rudolph, and Hans Nägeli letters as key elements in the soon-to-be-staged drama of discovery.

  “But how could someone of your high intelligence and standing in the community,” Mitch challenged her, “permit your family to become mixed up in such a reckless scheme?”

  “A good question,” Margot conceded. “I let Felix convince me the risk for me and my family was nil. All I personally had to do was place the manuscript and the few other related documents in the Hasslers’ attic trunk and let nature take its course.” It never occurred to her, she said, to question the authenticity of the manuscript or those “related documents.” Emil, after all, was thoroughly acquainted with virtually every detail of Beethoven’s life and work, and other experts would be called on as well to judge the legitimacy and merit of the restored symphony. The dormant treasure would be found when Otto died—he was rapidly failing and not expected to survive long—and the household contents would pass into the hands of Limmat Realty, making the Erpfs, as a practical matter, the sole proprietors of Beethoven’s lost Tenth Symphony. “Such a heady notion,” Margot recalled almost wistfully. For its troubles, her family was to share in the spoils—the Hassler house would become a profitable mecca for music-lovers from all over the world—though the bulk of the revenue was to go to Emil and Felix.