Morley Torgov - Murder in A-Major

Obeying instantly, the driver turned about in his seat, a worried look on his weather-beaten face. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, “I did not mean to drive so fast. Please excuse-”

“No, no,” I said, “that's not it at all. I need to walk.”

“But, sir, the Constabulary is at least three kilometres-”

Paying no heed to the fellow, I abruptly dismounted. “Kindly convey my thanks to the Baron.”

“But, sir,” the driver said, rolling his eyes skyward, “any moment now those clouds are going to open up and-”

I dug into my coat pocket and found several coins, which I pressed into the driver's palm. “Rain does not dare to fall on police inspectors, but I thank you for your concern.”

I watched him turn about, shaking his head as though I were mad to make him abandon me under a threatening sky. I began to walk, at first with a slow, measured pace; then, gradually, the pace accelerated until, a half-kilometre from the Constabulary, I had launched into a full march. So absorbed was I in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed that my hat and coat were soaked and the insides of my shoes wet from sheets of water being flung across my path by winds off the Rhine.

Reaching the Constabulary, I ignored the perfunctory greetings from the guards posted at the entrance and bounded up the four flights of stairs to my office in record time. To an orderly stationed in the corridor outside my office I called out that I was not to be disturbed for the next hour under any circumstances.

“Does that include the Commissioner?” the startled orderly inquired.

“It includes God!” I shouted back, slamming my office door behind me. Then, on second thought, and to make certain I was left alone, I locked my door, something I rarely if ever did.

I removed my soaked hat and coat and tossed them carelessly over the nearest chair. Who cared that, once dry, they would look slept in? I could feel my stockinged feet swimming inside my shoes but this, too, did not matter.

I sat myself down at my desk and found a large sheet of stationery, which I laid flat before me. I reached for a pen, dipped the nib deeply into the well for an ample supply of ink, and printed out in large block letters:

ROBERT SCHUMANN MURDERED GEORG ADELMANN

I sat back staring at what I had just written, the pen still in my hand. I pondered the words, holding the paper now at arm's length, feeling for a moment as though I were a child who had just learned to write and was staring in wonderment at my first-ever sentence.

I placed the paper flat in front of me again, replenished the ink on the nib, and ran a heavy line through the sentence. Underneath it, I then printed, again in large block letters:

ROBERT SCHUMANN KILLED GEORG ADELMANN

It was all beginning to make sense to me now.

I recalled that Schumann had agreed with Liszt about the piano having been mis-tuned. To prove it to himself, Schumann somehow must have got his hands on Hupfer's tuning fork, probably lifting it from the unsuspecting technician's tool bag. Satisfied that the fork had been deliberately tampered with, Schumann must have fallen into one of his rages, the fires within him ignited beyond extinguishing when he next discovered that his Beethoven treasure was missing. Clara would have stoked the fires further by pointing to Adelmann as the culprit, based on the information I had passed on to her about the journalist's penchant for stealing. The sequence of events led to one conclusion and one conclusion only.

Another dip of my pen into the inkpot. Another fresh sentence:

FLORESTAN KILLED GEORG ADELMANN!

Florestan: Robert Schumann's inner man of action. Or so Schumann would have me believe if, at this moment, he were standing in my presence grimly facing a criminal charge. But Schumann was not here, was he? No, he was cooped up in a secure private room in an asylum in Endenich. Or was he? Cooped up, that is? Perhaps it was more to the point now to think of him as being conveniently tucked away. Oh yes, he had protested mightily against being taken away the other morning, begging me to intervene, no doubt knowing full well that I could not or would not interrupt the process of his removal. I recalled the sudden acquiescence as he was escorted by his two attendants to the carriage, the way he made such a point of rushing back into the house to retrieve his own tuning fork, making sure this did not escape my notice. As he rode off that morning, was Florestan contentedly smiling to himself?

Slowly, deliberately, I folded the sheet of stationery in half, then in quarters. I began tearing the paper into strips, so many strips that when I was finished I had created a small pile of thin paper noodles, not unlike the thin noodles that lingered in what passed for soup in my threadbare childhood. I threw the pile into an envelope which I stored in the inner pocket of my suit jacket, next to Hupfer's tuning fork.

On a fresh sheet of paper, in my most meticulous penmanship, I wrote the following report to the Commissioner:

March 12, 1854

Sir:

I beg to report that, to date, the identity of the person responsible for the slaying of Georg Adelmann has not been ascertained. Unfortunately no suspect has come to light nor has a murder weapon surfaced. Nor have I located any witness or witnesses despite a thorough canvass of the immediate neighbourhood. In the absence of scientific means of detecting how crimes of this nature are committed, I can only pledge to you that I shall continue with all due diligence and despatch my investigations in the hope that the perpetrator is apprehended and brought before the bar of justice for due conviction and punishment .

Respectfully ,

Preiss, H., Senior Inspector

Despite the discomfort, I donned my hat and coat, still damp right through to their linings, and left my office, brushing past the orderly, curtly informing him that I would be gone for the remainder of the day, and instructing him to deliver my report.

A fog had begun drifting across the city from the river, coiling itself around the ancient buildings that lined my route to the same bridge from which Robert Schumann, or Florestan, or Eusebius…make your choice…had leapt into the chilly waters of the Rhine. Once at the bridge, I determined with satisfaction that not a soul was in sight. It was as if the inclement weather had been made to my order.

From the inner pocket of myjacket I took the envelope and Hupfer's tuning fork, the latter still carefully wrapped in a handkerchief. I paused for one more glance from one end of the bridge to the other to assure myself that I was alone. I leaned over the cold, wet masonry of the railing, holding the envelope and tuning fork (now unwrapped) in a firm grip. I opened the palm of my hand and released the contents. I watched the metal fork touch the black rain-pocked surface of the river without so much as a ripple and immediately disappear. The envelope also touched the water unceremoniously, but it was captured by a wave and swiftly carried away, reminding me of paper boats I made as a child. Before long, it too was out of sight.

I left the bridge at a brisk pace, each clack of my heels against the paving stones like the sharp steady beat of a metronome, the tempo reflecting a sense of urgent unfinished business. I flagged down the first cab that came in view and called out my destination. The driver, noticing my bedraggled appearance, gave me a skeptical look, as though I couldn't possibly reside in the fashionable neighbourhood to which I had directed him.

“You live there, sir?” he asked.

Insolent bastard. “Of course I live there,” I replied.

Properly silenced, the driver returned to his business. I settled back in the cab, grateful at last to be out of the unrelenting downpour, and began pondering the acts I had just committed back at the bridge. That I had willfully broken the law by doing away with incriminating evidence was of course beyond question, and yet in the expected tide of self-condemnation, I felt not the shallowest ripple of remorse. Instead, what consumed me more than anything else at the moment was the irony of my situation. I was drifting without restraint from the safe narrow confines of inspection into the dark uncharted spaces of introspection, searching for reasons that would justify not only what I had done…but what I was about to do.