In the dining room the news had already circulated among those present. The kitchen maids cried, and the footmen hung their heads. The two opera singers from Vienna whom Wolfgang and I had met at the table the night before were there — Frau Wentzl (who says she’s twenty-five but must be at least a decade older) and her redheaded companion Fraulein Putz, who is very thin for her profession. Both women were talking at once and expressing their distress. The dark-faced Italian in the group, a Signor Marini from Florence, stood aside from the others and looked uncomfortable. We hear he’s a gambler and only comes into his own after the dinner hour, when pipes and playing cards are brought out. The only sanity was shown by our traveling companion from Switzerland, Monsieur Provins.
He helped Mademoiselle LeBoeuf to sit and asked the maids to fetch a physician.
“It’s impossible,” the poor woman wailed. “There’s no physician within fifty leagues, and what good would it do anyway? My poor brother is dead, and no cure can bring him back.”
“Then,” I said, “we must at least fetch the police.”
This suggestion was even more distressing to Mademoiselle LeBoeuf. She cried out that this had always been a respectable establishment and that calling the gendarmes would only bring a bad name to the Reine Margot.
“I’m an unmarried lady, and my brother and I lived by this inn,” she wept. “What would happen if we had no more visitors? The pension he received after he left service as gardener at court wouldn’t allow us to live on it. No, Herr Mozart. I know how kind you are, and how you and your dear wife and family delighted us with your music during your last stay — wouldn’t you consider trying to find out who killed my brother without calling the police?”
I exchanged a puzzled look with Monsieur Provins, who’s a well-to-do merchant and a man of common sense. He said, “She’s not wrong, Herr Mozart. We can’t risk her losing her livelihood.”
Well, my dear Anna Maria, you know that I’ve always been a man more concerned with arpeggios them intrigue. You’d suppose I’d have right away told the good woman that I had no idea how to investigate a murder. But her tearful face and the anxious expressions of those around me convinced me that I ought, if nothing else, to give it a try.
At this point I realized that little Wolfgang had disappeared from the room. Aware of his childish curiosity, I immediately walked out into the rose garden, and sure enough he was there observing the body. Hands clasped behind his back, he seemed to be gravely considering how this jovial man who’d been bouncing him on his knee the night before could now be lying cold with a common kitchen knife in the middle of his back.
Before I could reach him and take him away from the victim, Wolfgang kneeled and took the rose from the dead man’s hand.
“The night dew kept it alive,” he commented, showing me the large-headed, dark pink flower. “Look, Papa, it’s so heavy it cannot hold its face up. Have you ever seen such a large-headed rose?”
Within minutes, standing with her in the sitting room, I reassured Mademoiselle LeBoeuf that I’d do my best.
“But if you want to help,” I added, “you must make sure that I have a chance to speak to all those who could be suspected of doing away with your poor brother. Please tell me what happened last night after Wolfgang and I retired.”
The woman dried her tears. “Well, Herr Mozart, you and the boy went upstairs early because of his stomachache. The married wenches and footmen live in the village, so they walked to their homes shortly after supper. The two unmarried servants sleep in a room two doors down from mine, and I’d easily hear if either of them slipped out. You recall that Signor Marini was showing card tricks to the company. The two ladies were sitting together and giggling — which is extraordinary considering how they’d been at each other’s throats until that afternoon — and Monsieur Provins smoked his pipe by the fireplace. All of them were still in the dining room with my poor brother, who loved the company, when I left to go to bed.”
“So, in theory, any of them could be suspects.”
The suggestion came to her as a tremendous shock. How she could not have thought of it is beyond me, but she opened her eyes and mouth wide.
“Why would any of our guests kill the innkeeper?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But unless you can come up with smother suspect, I fear that we must look among them.”
She said nothing for a little while. In the meantime Wolfgang, who’d been sitting on a bench dangling his legs with the rose in his hand, asked for permission to look at Monsieur LeBoeuf’s books. There were only a few on the shelf, and Mademoiselle LeBoeuf assured me that there was nothing improper there for a child — some of them were religious tracts, others were notebooks from his old profession, and there was an illustrated version of Perrault’s fairy tales.
“You can look at the fables, dearie,” she told Wolfgang kindly, and in a moment our son was deep in the drawings of wolves and fairies.
Armed with her permission to interrogate the guests as I saw fit, I began with the two garrulous singers from our own country. As I mentioned, Frau Wentzl tries to look younger than her age. She uses a great deal of powder and black silk beauty spots on her face and neck, and wears English-style dresses rather long and skinny at the waist — the type I heard you say you like the least.
“Well!” She looked at me straight, upturning her nose. “That I should live to hear a Salzburger accuse me of murder!”
I assured her that such wasn’t the case, and that I had nothing but admiration for her exquisite vibrato. May the Lord forgive me, that was quite an untruth, but she was captivated by it. Rather more sweetly she explained to me that Monsieur LeBoeuf had for a long time adored her from afar, and that this had elicited the envy of others. “Of course I was so much younger than he,” she added, “and so much better introduced, but he was a landed proprietor after all. I might have paid attention had he insisted a little more. Now, alas, it’s too late. But at least others will not get him either.”
This last statement immediately suggested that I should interrogate her traveling companion, Fraulein Putz. I did so only after ensuring that little Wolfgang was not troubling our hostess.
“Don’t worry, Herr Mozart,” her teary voice answered. “He’s as good as an angel, looking at my poor brother’s books.”
Fraulein Putz spent most of the time of our conversation adjusting her red curlets under her muslin cap. I noticed that she too wore much face powder, and that one could see long scratches underneath it, as if she’d been in a catfight. I recalled what Mademoiselle LeBoeuf had said about their recent argument, and Frau Wentzl’s spiteful words about rivals.
“I’m sure I don’t know why you even bother to speak to me, Herr Mozart,” she said. “It should be obvious to you that there’s only one person among us who would have had an interest in killing Monsieur LeBoeuf.”
“Really?” I asked. “Who could this person be?”
“Why, of course the Italian! Haven’t you seen him play cards with the old man and beat him every time? I expect our host owed him a small fortune by last night. He probably refused to pay, and they got into a fight.”
“If it’s so, why wouldn’t Signor Marini have escaped?”
Fraulein Putz laughed into her lacy handkerchief. “And go where? This is France, not Italy, and since none of us owns horses, he’d have had to awaken the stableboys or hitch a post himself.”
She was right in that none of us could easily leave the Reine Margot. I was curious about the scratches but decided against asking about them just then. I briefly joined the servants in the upstairs bedroom where they’d laid Monsieur LeBoeuf on his bed. Monsieur Provins had sent for a priest and now sat at the foot of the bed with a contemplative look.