Clara moved close to the Klems, hovering over the piano tuner, then boldly set her own finger down hard on the middle A key. “Oh dear, this will never do. Get out your tuning fork and do what must be done.” She stooped, picked up Hupfer's satchel, and handed it to him. “The fork, Willi-”
Slowly, Hupfer unfastened the belt that encircled the leather satchel. The bag fell open, each half revealing tools neatly arranged, each tool in a specially fitted holder. The piano technician's face darkened. “That's very odd,” he muttered. “For some reason it's not here.”
“The tuning fork?” Clara Schumann said.
“Yes. I must have left it in my shop.” Hupfer shook his head, as though angry with himself. “I cannot believe-” For a moment he fell into an awkward silence, then abruptly got to his feet. “I do apologize,” he said, addressing everyone, “but if you will bear with me, I will dash back to my workshop and-”
“There's no need to go to the trouble, Hupfer-”
I had slipped suddenly into the parlour from the adjoining study and called out to him. Sliding doors separating the two rooms had been left open sufficiently that I had been able to spy on his actions since the moment of his arrival. “Here…here is your tuning fork,” I said, holding it up so that it was in plain sight.
Hupfer pretended to be disgusted with himself. “Ach! How careless of me! I must have dropped it somewhere in my rush to get here.” He turned to Clara Schumann. “Whatever would we do without detectives!”
“Thank you, Herr Hupfer, for the compliment,” I said. “By the way, would you like to know where I found it?” I watched Hupfer's face for any sign of unease, but to my surprise I saw none.
“What does it matter where it was found? The important thing is, it was found.”
He started toward me and reached for the fork, but I swiftly drew back my hand, placing the instrument beyond his grasp. I gave him a quizzical smile. “Aren't you the least bit curious, I mean about how I came upon your tuning fork?” I said.
“Please, Inspector, we have no time for games.”
“We? You mean you have no time for games. Very well, Herr Hupfer, I too have no time for games.”
“Good,” Hupfer said. “The tuning fork, please.”
“But first let me tell you where I found it-”
“I said it does not matter!”
“In the apartment of Georg Adelmann, Hupfer, that is where I found it. Perhaps you have an explanation for your presence in his apartment, bearing in mind that among the myriad treasures with which Adelmann managed to surround himself, the one thing he never got around to was a piano.”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” Hupfer said. “Come to think of it, I can't even be certain if what you're holding in your hand is my tuning fork. All tuning forks look alike.”
“There's one distinguishing feature. Allow me-” I struck the tuning fork firmly against the edge of Helena's wooden music stand.
“That's it!” Rudy von Schirach exclaimed, “that's the A we tuned to at the musicale.”
“You're sure, von Schirach?” I said, not taking my eyes off Hupfer.
“Sure?” von Schirach said. “I'd wager my Guarneri del Jesu on it!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
We were in the interrogation room deep in the bowels of the Constabulary, just the two of us, Wilhelm Hupfer and I, he perched uncomfortably on the edge of an unforgiving wooden bench, facing me, the same bench on which some forty-eight hours earlier Walter Thüringer (now at least in one sense my key witness) had bought his freedom by informing me of Hupfer's lavish acquisitions. Ever since my first exposure to this room as a fledgling detective, I have regarded it as a windowless, dank entranceway to Hell, a checkpoint where one's criminal credentials are finally certified before one makes that final passage into the eternal fires. Indeed, in the flickering gaslight that provides the only illumination, even visiting saints take on the look of sinners.
Not that Wilhelm Hupfer was a visiting saint. Far from it.
“The tuning fork, Hupfer…you tampered with it, didn't you? Fixed it so that it would be just sharp enough that someone like Schumann would go out of his mind hearing it, remembering it, isn't that the truth?” Putting this question to Hupfer, I made a point of holding the fork almost touching his nose. “Look here, Hupfer. See, one prong has been shaved ever so slightly. One can barely notice it. In fact, you actually have to run a finger along each prong to discover that one is different from the other.” Rudy von Schirach had demonstrated this for my benefit, and now I was inviting Hupfer to test the instrument. “Here, see for yourself-”
“No no no! Von Schirach is wrong!”
“You knew, didn't you, Hupfer, that Schumann suffered from auditory hallucinations, because you have been in contact with the doctor who was treating him, Dr. Möbius? And you knew that these hallucinations would be aggravated if you mis-tuned his pianos, isn't that correct?”
“I know nothing about such mental nonsense,” Hupfer said. “Besides, I've never heard of Dr. Paul Möbius.”
“Oh, so you know his first name is Paul?”
“Did I say Paul?”
“Not only did you say Paul, but let me remind you that one morning recently, as I was leaving the doctor's residence, you were making your way into that same house. Why?”
“I have absolutely no recollection of that,” Hupfer said. But all the classic signs of lying were now showing up: the biting of the lips, the shifting of the eyes, the veins beginning to stand out at the man's temples.
I said, “Tell me, why did you kill Georg Adelmann?”
“I did not murder Adelmann!” he cried out. “You must believe me!”
“And why should I believe you, Hupfer? You've already lied to me twice: once about the condition of the tuning fork, and a second time about your acquaintanceship with Dr. Möbius. So why should I believe you?”
“Because I will now tell you something, and you will know I am speaking the truth.”
“Go on,” I said. “I'm waiting.”
“I am not a murderer, Inspector. I had absolutely no reason to kill Adelmann. I don't even recall meeting the man, although our paths might have crossed…maybe at Schumanns’, maybe elsewhere, who knows. But yes, there was a plan to destroy Schumann, and I confess I was part of it, though I did not originate it, I swear to God.”
“Then who did?”
“Wieck…Madam Schumann's father…it was all his idea. Wieck and Dr. Möbius, those two had become close, close enough that Wieck knew all of Möbius's theories concerning hallucinations, especially Maestro Schumann's. And I became involved because Wieck figured out that Schumann, being as sensitive to pitch as he was, would be driven out of his mind by a combination of his own mental problems and my ability to manipulate the tuning of his pianos. Which explains why Schumann complained constantly that the A sound kept running through his head.”
I wanted to know how Wieck would have possessed the technical knowledge required to concoct his scheme.
“Anybody who has been around pianos as long as Wieck learns a few basic principles about sound. For example: a normal human has a hearing range which extends all the way from one vibration per second to twenty-thousand. When a piano is perfectly tuned, A vibrates four hundred and forty-times per second. But then there are what we call ‘partials’. If you press the key for A above middle C on an instrument that is properly tuned, yes, you hear the fundamental A-440, but that is not all. You should also hear a series of partials that are multiples of four hundred forty…such as eight hundred eighty, thirteen hundred twenty, seventeen hundred sixty, twenty-two hundred, and so on right up to a fifteenth or even twentieth partial.”
“In other words,” I said, “if I depress a single key, the result is an entire chord of partials?”