Beethoven's Tenth

by Richard Kluger

  His custom-made shoes resting on the edge of his oversize desk, Harry seemed to sink deeper into his chair with each nail Mitch had hammered into the Tell’s coffin. The emerging evidence that C&W was masterfully manipulated from the first—by somebody or other—had now reached critical mass and left Harry’s smart-aleck tongue a badly diminished weapon. “So we’re forced to conclude,” Harry grumbled, “that the entire Zurich story is just that—a fable from start to finish. Furthermore, the alleged original sketchbooks from which our alleged masterpiece was allegedly derived are likewise kaput—but actually existed until Frau Reinsdorf trashed them at Emil’s instruction—right?”

  “We don’t know that, of course,” Gordy said. “We just have her word for it. There may never have been any original sketchbooks or a lawyer named Osterweil—only the supposedly restored versions of the alleged originals that are sitting downstairs in our Safe Room vault.”

  “And when I asked Clara to phone Hilde back from our hotel in Zurich,” Mitch added, “to see if by some chance she still had the cancelled check for the purchase of the manuscript from this Osterweil guy, she said Emil thought it would be best to pay him with cash—so no record of the sale would exist and potentially conflict with whatever plan he might eventually hatch for staging the discovery of the restored symphony. Cute, huh?”

  “Adorable,” said Harry. “Okay, let’s get our last joker in here and dispose of this b.s.”

  Jake Hassler’s face was downcast as he trudged into the C&W library the next morning, along with his wife and lawyer. The old cedar box found in his grandfather’s attic—was even that part of the story true?—sat in the middle of the conference table, waiting to bear witness to its present owner’s veracity. But his sin, if any, was not unmitigated, Jake’s solemn features seemed to insist as he listened to Mitch spell out everything the auction house now knew about the William Tell Symphony. “Oh, geeezz,” Jake winced, dripping anguish.

  “The floor’s all yours,” Gordy told him.

  Jake took a couple of deep breaths before launching in.

  “First off, there wasn’t any damn ‘understanding’ between us,” he said after clearing several frogs from the rear of his throat. “That scumbag Emil made me do it.”

  The sightseeing bus C&W had hired for its panel of experts’ Sunday outing had just left the Princeton Battlefield site, Jake recounted, when Emil slid into the seat beside him. “There were only about a dozen of us on board, mostly spread out, and he spoke real low so as not to be overheard. He asked me how I thought the panel would vote, and I thought, ‘Holy shit, he shouldn’t be bringing that up with me—of all people.’ So I just shrugged and looked dumb—which I’m good at. So then he says he’s talked to his expert buddies, and it’s his guess that they’ll all go along with him if he says he thinks this Tell Symphony is for real. But if he votes no, he says, the Tell is down the old crapper. So what did I think of that? I said I guess he’s the big knockwurst, all right, and he laughed—he had this real bad kind of horror-movie laugh—and says he’s got a problem, a real big one, that maybe I can help him out with. I said, ‘Try me’—a big mistake.”

  Emil told him, said Jake, that he had an advanced case of lung cancer, probably wouldn’t live all that much longer, and didn’t have much to leave his dear wife, who deserved not to suffer a miserable widowhood—“and did I get the picture? Which got me sick to my stomach right off, but I managed to look even dumber and shook my head. And he says, ‘Okay, let’s cut the shit, Jacob—fifty-fifty, you and me. Come to my hotel on Tuesday night, and we’ll sign an agreement letter. If you don’t come by, the game’s over. If you go to the auction house or the cops, I’ll tell them it was you who tried to bribe me to vote in favor of certifying the symphony as genuine Beethoven, so you can forget any funny stuff.’” Jake threw up his hands and appealed to his listeners. “What the fuck was I supposed to do? This mean old prick had me by the proverbials—so I figured half of something is a lot better than all of zip.”

  “What you should have done was come straight to us,” Harry said.

  Jake’s head began to bob rapidly. “I was afraid that without him, the game was over.”

  “Did Reinsdorf say anything to you to indicate that he thought the manuscript might be a fake?” Gordy asked.

  “No way!”

  “So you thought he was just taking advantage of you?” Gordy gave him the out.

  “Damn straight. But I figured the way he was hitting on me wouldn’t be hurting anyone except me—and Daisy here—who, by the way, I never said boo to about any of this, or she’d have marched my ass in here pronto.”

  “The trouble is,” Gordy pounced, “nobody was twisting your arm after you learned that Mitch here wasn’t ready yet to okay the manuscript because he still felt the Nina story was too thin. So you became actively involved in Emil’s put-up job—right?”

  Jake lowered his eyes in abject defeat. “I guess,” he said morosely and exhaled a great sigh. “I figured this creep was my partner, whether I liked it or not, and he knew everything there was to know on the subject, so what was there for me to lose by calling and asking if he had any bright ideas, maybe, while there was still a little time left? He says to give him a few days and watch the mail but never to phone him again because you could never tell.” Soon the Nina #2 batch arrived from Berlin—in German, of course—except for the short note supposedly written by Ansel, explaining how the items had been separated from Nina #1 and its accompanying letters, along with Emil’s instruction to Jake to say the material had been mailed to him from London after Ansel’s death. “And if you guys asked to see the envelope to check where it really come from, I was supposed to say there was no return address and that, like an idiot, I just put it in the garbage.” Jake crossed his arms over his chest. “So then I got right on it and had the new stuff translated fast by my neighbor who knows German pretty good, and then I had Owen here call you to say that I had big news for you guys.”

  His lawyer gave Jake a stern look.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jake added hastily, “Mr. Whittaker here had nothing to do with any of this shit—especially my deal with old Emil. It was all my dumb-ass thing—but what could I do?”

  “But by then you had figured out that something was fishy?” Gordy pressed.

  “I didn’t know how it all fit together, but, like you say, I knew it sure smelled to high heaven if he could just pull this document stuff out of a hat. Only, well, Emil wasn’t the only one with big needs. Daisy’s lost her business over that friggin’ chandelier accident—she’s out looking for a situation to bring home some bucks—and what I’m pulling down at the lumberyard doesn’t get us too far, not with a sick grandchild we’re helping and grown kids with needs—”

  Harry let Jake’s crestfallen apologia hang heavy in the air for a moment.

  “But you knew then, when you brought us the second Nina batch, that it was a three-dollar bill?” he asked.

  Jake shot a sideways glance at his attorney, who betrayed no emotion. “I guess,” he said.

  “That means you were scamming us, Jake,” Harry said, concluding his examination.

  “Basically,” Daisy Hassler now spoke up sweetly, “he’s a very decent person.”

  Harry tossed her a stare of blistering contempt. “So decent that he’s cost our firm the better part of six million dollars. Will he make it up to us?”

  Daisy pursed her lips in thought. “The thing is, most of that money was probably spent before Jake knew the score. And, anyway, how come all your super experts didn’t clue you in about this second batch of Nina stuff being a load?”

  “That doesn’t let Jake off the hook, though,” Gordy said.

  There was no disclaimer. “Are you going to press charges?” Owen asked.

  “Is there some reason we shouldn’t?” Gordy asked back.

  Whittaker strummed his fingers on the tabletop. �
�The Hasslers don’t have any money to speak of—and sending Jake to jail probably won’t do much to help your P&L statement. I think he’s genuinely sorry for what he innocently got everybody into and didn’t see any easy way out. He’d be more than willing to try to atone for your loss in some fashion or other.”

  “For example?” Harry asked.

  “Jake used to be a master carpenter before he hurt his back, which is okay now. He could spend every weekend doing whatever your company needs to have done around this office—or in your own homes—or wherever.”

  Harry looked interested. “Lolly and I were talking the other night about reconfiguring the second floor of our place in Southampton. Of course, that’s a four-hour drive or better from the far side of Jersey—”

  Jake shrugged. “It’d only be once a week—if I stayed over—in the attic or somewhere.”

  “I think we’d better keep Jake away from attics for the duration,” Harry said, and then turned back to Whittaker. “How long would Jake’s services be available to us?”

  “Whatever it takes,” the lawyer said. “Right, Jake?”

  “Whatever,” Jake said, resigned to his fate. When he and Daisy were shown the door, the cedar box was returned to him with all its discredited contents. The next day, Jake splashed generous amounts of kerosene over the box and tossed a match on top. And then another.

  .

  at harry’s suggestion, the loaded lords and ladies who had pledged serious money to purchase the Tell manuscript at auction and donate it to Lincoln Center were advised confidentially three days ahead of time that the remarkable discovery was about to be publicly disclosed as a dud—or, at any rate, uncertifiable as the genuine work product of Ludwig van Beethoven. At the same time, these public-spirited citizens were urged, as a gesture of exemplary benevolence, to contribute half of their pledged amount to the general fund of the nation’s leading center for the performing arts. And some actually did.

  As a result, Cubbage & Wakeham was permitted to hold its press conference in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, where a small army of media representatives heard Harry read aloud his company’s mea culpa. It began by stating that “in the wake of findings during the final phase of our firm’s authentication process,” the Tell manuscript could no longer be classified as “probably a composition by Beethoven,” as earlier evidence had strongly indicated, so the planned auction of the document had been permanently shelved. Harry read on:

  …While not judged a forgery in the conventional sense, the two composition sketchbooks comprising the manuscript were found to be, at best, an artful restoration of what may in fact have been an original Beethoven work that was lost and damaged. Nor is there reliable corroborative evidence—beyond anecdotal reports—about the origin and subsequent history of the documents from which the so-called William Tell Symphony is said to have been derived, even though the character of the music and the musical handwriting are highly suggestive of Beethoven’s.

  It now appears that a scholar who came into possession of the manuscript acted to refine and convert it into a presentable form, yet acted in a reckless and unconscionable manner, notwithstanding his apparently sincere belief that the work is authentic. Indeed, this conviction should have made it all the more imperative for him to have left the problematic manuscript untouched and turned it over to responsible, objective investigators to assess.

  Cubbage & Wakeham’s investigation has determined, furthermore, that the circumstances of the Tell’s discovery in Zurich were likely staged. But our firm does not plan to lodge criminal charges because the apparent principal perpetrators are deceased. Nor will our company seek punishment for several others who abetted the nefarious effort since no money appears actually to have changed hands under false pretenses.

  A brief statement, issued by Cubbage & Wakeham’s ad hoc panel of experts, chaired by Dr. Macrae Quarles, executive director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, whose group had originally found the Tell sketchbooks to be “probably authentic,” reads: “Upon reconsideration of the further evidence now presented to us in its totality, we are forced to conclude that this work, however much musical merit it may have on its face, has likely been adulterated by artful tampering—and perhaps even ingeniously counterfeited in its entirety—and thus stands irreparably discredited as the original work of Beethoven’s towering genius.

  The so-called William Tell Symphony must thus be categorized as a highly accomplished curio and consigned to the precincts of illegitimacy.”

  During the hour-long question period after his announcement, Harry managed to dodge reporters’ innuendos that C&W had acted prematurely in scheduling the auction of a document not yet thoroughly vetted. “We had every reason to believe we were acting responsibly and appropriately,” said Harry. “Our decision to withdraw the manuscript from public auction is, we believe, testimony to the vigilance and integrity of our staff. Things happen—unscrupulous people are always with us, sad to say—and Cubbage & Wakeham are ever on the alert for them.” To repeated pleas that he name the chief villain in the piece, Harry held fast. “De mortibus,” he said without elaboration. “To quote the immortal words of the Beatles’ farewell, ‘Let it be.’” When asked what lesson his company had learned from the unhappy episode, Harry paused briefly, then said, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever—except when it’s not. Thanks for coming by.”

  In an age when celebrity and notoriety had become interchangeable, Cubbage & Wakeham was well rewarded for its painful pursuit of the truth in the Tell matter. During the month following the cancellation of the auction, the debunked symphony was headline news around the world, featured on Sixty Minutes, Frontline, and countless talk shows on TV and radio, parodied on Saturday Night Live, and treated as a masterful deception in a Time cover spread. Sleuthing on its own, Time guessed that the recently deceased Emil Reinsdorf may well have been its perpetrator, but neither C&W nor the surviving (and well-paid) members of its panel of Beethoven experts would let on. Several of Dr. Reinsdorf’s colleagues at the Berlin Conservatory, however, said it would not entirely surprise them if he had been implicated. Jake Hassler declined to pose for the media but issued a short statement written by Daisy, indicating that their family had thought it best if the now notorious manuscript never again saw the light of day.

  The conscientious manner in which Cubbage & Wakeham conducted its Tell investigation helped the firm attract an unprecedented number of new clients. In the first several weeks after the debacle, the auction house was hired to sell the furnishings, fine arts, and jewelry for thirty-seven estates with an average estimated revenue potential of $22.8 million. It also beat out several larger rival firms for the right to handle the sale of a collection of eighteen certified masterpiece paintings, likely to draw bids totaling in excess of $400 million. The gross commissions to C&W for handling these transactions were expected to pay many times over for the expenses Mitchell Emery had incurred in his vain quest to authenticate the Tell symphony.

  Accordingly, spirits were buoyant at the regular monthly strategy meeting of the C&W staff held on the first business morning in May. Sedge Wakeham, joining the session as usual by conference call from London, reported that his favorite Hyde Park flowers, the blue moon roses, were about to bloom.

  “I nipped over there after lunch at the club—just a ten-minute stroll, you know—though the Park Lane traffic is getting worse by the month—” Their eyes rolled upward as the firm’s British principal nattered on a few more moments, but suddenly they all converged on the speakerphone as their numbed ears heard Sedge delivering a weighty piece of news.

  “My boy Oswald has decided on neurosurgery for a career and the devil with the family business,” Sedge advised them. “And neither of my nephews has the gray cells to run the show at this end—one’s into horses, the racing sort, and the other sleeps a great deal.” And so, given his advancing age, Sedge had decided to seek a London buyer
for his half of the business. Under the partnership’s long-standing bylaws, either party wishing to sell needed the approval of the other, lest the successor partner prove uncongenial, and if said approval were withheld, the remaining partner was obliged to buy out the selling partner at the same price the latter had been offered. “But I suspect you’ll be pleased with the chap I’ve found for you,” he told Harry. “Let me put him on the line to say hello to all you lads and lasses.”

  “Hello, all you lads and lasses,” the crisp voice parroted the muzzy one, “and a specially fond greeting to my son-in-law, who knows nothing of this arrangement but also has the power—after you, of course, Harry—to quash the deal.”

  Mitch thought at first he was hearing things. A moment later, though, it all made wonderfully nutty sense. “Is that really you, Piet?”

  “You’ve caught me red-handed, son. But before you fire me, be assured that this was Sedge’s idea—Gladys and I wouldn’t have dreamed of intruding on your turf otherwise. The fact is, my mandatory company retirement is right around the corner, so we’ll have time on our hands and a certain familiarity with the arts—and Cubbage & Wakeham’s balance sheet appears robust enough.” There was a brief pause to allow for a pleased outcry from Piet Hoitsma’s listeners. “And Harry, if you’re not disenchanted with the idea on the instant, we’ll be flying in tomorrow to talk over the details.”