Thüringer loved it whenever I teased him, and chuckled amiably; anyway, both he and I shared this truth: he really was an old rascal. Brahms made an effort to be amused. “Well, Inspector,” he said, “I will leave here with a lighter wallet thanks to Herr Thüringer, and a lighter heart thanks to you. I bid you a good day, sir.” Buttoning his coat, he said to Thüringer, “May I count on the engraving being done by this time tomorrow?”
His hand over his heart, the jeweller replied, “You have my word on it.”
I waited for young Brahms to depart. Turning to Thüringer, I said, “I need a favour, my friend.”
“Name it,” the old man said.
“That locket you just sold…are you acquainted with the buyer?”
“Johannes Brahms? Yes. A musician of some note- no pun intended-from what little I know of him.”
“The inscription you're to engrave on the back of the locket-”
“Yes, what about it?”
“I need to know what it says, Thüringer.”
Thüringer took a step back, and his face took on a shocked expression. “But you must know, my dear fellow, that such things are confidential. To reveal to you what I'm to engrave would be like opening someone's private mail. I have my ethical standards about such things.”
Quietly, I said, “Thüringer, listen to me. Priests have ethical standards. You are not a priest. Do I make my point? Now then, Thüringer, what's to be engraved on the back of that locket?”
“You are placing me in a terrible dilemma,” the jeweller protested.
“Then permit me to resolve your dilemma at once,” I said. “In return for your cooperation, I will see to it that the next police inspection of your inventory of antique pieces is conducted by Inspector Hermann Preiss, rather than by someone with-uh-keener sight.”
Without another word, Thüringer handed me a slip of paper that he'd just deposited in a drawer behind one of the display cases.
“Whose handwriting is this?” I asked.
“His, Brahms's.”
I read aloud: “To dearest Clara, my life's blood.” Below these words was a single initial-J.
I handed back the slip to Thüringer. “Thank you,” I said. “You have my word that no one will hear of this. Now then, there's a set of pearl earrings in the window-”
I purchased the earrings (yes, by coincidence, they had just gone on sale at a considerable discount) and placed a small white card inside the gift box. It read: “To dear Helena, whose ears hear what mine cannot.”
Then, the Beethoven manuscript. Leaving Thüringens, I decided it was time to give myself a gift, albeit a modest one, nothing more, in fact, than a half-hour or so at my favourite coffeehouse, Schimmel's. A good strong cup of coffee, a slice of Black Forest cake, and a chance to browse through the latest arts journals from Berlin were precisely what I needed to free my mind from the Schumann affair.
The coffee turned out to be fresher and stronger than I could recall from my past visits. “That's because it's imported direct from Colombia,” Schimmel explained to me with great pride. “The British,” he went on, “get theirs from somewhere in Africa, which proves of course that they know absolutely nothing about coffee.” The Black Forest cake, too, was perfect. I sat back, stretched my legs, and snapped open the first newspaper at hand, Berliner Kunstzeitung. Lazily, I scanned the headlines. Then my eyes dropped to the lower section of the front page, and my few minutes of rest and recreation came to an abrupt halt.
Beneath a photograph of a familiar musical figure, I read: FRANZ LIZST ACQUIRES RARE BEETHOVEN PIANO MANUSCRIPT.
Chapter Twenty-One
So, Preiss, this is how you kept your promise, is it?” It was the morning after Franz Liszt's acquisition of the Beethoven manuscript was reported in the Berliner Kunstzeitung, and Robert Schumann had just stormed into my office and hurled his copy of the newspaper across my desk.
“My promise, Maestro?” I said, knowing perfectly well what he was referring to.
“You allowed that devil Adelmann to get away with it, didn't you? Was it carelessness, or am I to believe that you, too, have joined the ring of conspirators?”
Calmly, I said, “Let me explain, please. I had a meeting with Georg Adelmann-”
“Ah, so you do recall the promise you made me, after all-”
“Please, allow me to finish. I met with Adelmann and yes, he has the Beethoven manuscript…or rather, had it.”
“And you got him to admit he'd stolen it, then?”
I took a deep breath. “Not quite, I'm afraid.”
“I thought you were the cleverest detective in this part of Germany. Don't tell me you actually saw the manuscript but failed to confiscate it from him!”
I took another deep breath. “Correct on both counts. I saw it, and I did not confiscate it.”
“But why? Why?”
Schumann had been standing all this time, leaning somewhat menacingly over my desk, as though he were ready to pounce at any moment. “I think, Maestro, you had better be seated,” I said.
“Don't treat me like a child or like one of your moronic criminals, Preiss. I don't need to sit.”
I rose from my chair and spoke sharply now. “You will be seated, sir, or this meeting is over. Sit!”
I watched Schumann slowly lower himself into a chair on the other side of my desk. There was, suddenly, something child-like and pathetic about the way he did this, and for a second or two I felt remorse at having shouted him into submission. In a steady voice I began again. “I have to tell you, Dr. Schumann, that when the subject of the Beethoven manuscript came up, Adelmann, without the slightest reluctance, went to a cabinet in his study and produced it. This was not the conduct one would expect of a thief. Indeed, he had a ready explanation as to how he came to possess it. Do you wish me to go on, sir?”
I imagined that Schumann would demur. Contrary to my expectation, he gave me a contemptuous smile. “Go on, Preiss,” he said without hesitation. “What did that overstuffed rodent tell you?”
“I warn you, sir…what follows is neither pleasant to say, nor will it be pleasant to hear.” I hesitated to go on, hoping Schumann would volunteer the explanation and spare me the embarrassment. No such luck.
“I told you to go on,” he said. “What more do you want, a fanfare?”
“I must be blunt, then,” I said. “Adelmann insists that you gave him the manuscript in return for his pledge.”
“Pledge? What pledge?”
“Not to disclose certain sexual activities you apparently engaged in…in your younger years.”
Schumann let out a forced laugh. “Certain sexual activities, you say? Well, thank God I wasn't born a eunuch, if that's what Adelmann's alluding to. What red-blooded German doesn't sow a few wild oats with the fairer sex in his youth, eh? Yes, I did enjoy the odd fling or two with women. Maybe more, in fact.”
“Adelmann was not speaking about affairs with women.”
Schumann's eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Preiss?”
“Please understand, Maestro, it's not a matter of what I am saying.”
“Yes, yes, now get on with it. Well?”
“Apparently, in the course of his research into your past, Adelmann came across-or claims to have come across-several of your male friends…he used the term ‘friends’…it is Adelmann's description, not mine…with whom it is alleged you indulged in homosexual activities with some frequency-”
At this point, I anticipated his vehement denial. Instead, Schumann's face became an expressionless mask. I was certain it concealed the truth. Quietly, I said, “I warned you this would be upsetting.”