Frank Tallis: Death And The Maiden

‘Quite sure.’

Liebermann pulled up a stool next to Rheinhardt, sat down, and stroked the edge of the paper. All the notes had straight stems and the heads were neatly executed. Beneath the vocal stave Goethe’s poetry shadowed a melody which was ostensibly in C minor but swiftly slipped through a series of bold modulations. Rheinhardt turned the sheet over and held its extremities to stop the paper from curling. In the bottom right-hand corner was a date. 1 September 1863.

‘Eighteen sixty-three,’ said Liebermann. ‘The year he died.’

‘His last song?’ Rheinhardt ventured.

‘Possibly,’ Liebermann replied.

‘I’m very fond of ‘Hope,’ said Mathias. ‘I wonder if this setting is as affecting. You sing, don’t you, Rheinhardt? Would you care to give us a flavour …?’

‘Not now, Professor.’

‘Come now, don’t be shy. I’m told that you have a fine singing voice.’

‘With respect, Herr Professor, although I also am eager to hear Freimark’s swansong, given our purpose right now, I would very much like you to proceed.’

‘As you wish,’ Mathias grumbled and shuffled back to the coffin. Rheinhardt released the paper and allowed it to curl. He rolled it up tightly, replaced the ribbon, and pushed it back in the box. As the lid fell, Rheinhardt caught Liebermann’s eye. The young doctor looked feverish with excitement.

‘We’ll find a piano later,’ said Rheinhardt under his breath.

‘You do realise,’ said Mathias, ‘that the chances of discovering anything significant are vanishingly small.’

‘Yes,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Even so …’

The professor picked up a femur and studied its ballooning terminus and the Greater trochanter : ‘I’ll clean the bones and take a closer look at them in due course; however, if the facts you have presented me with are correct, then much will depend on the condition of Freimark’s cranium.’ Mathias put the femur back in the coffin and lifted the hollow white skull. He held it in both hands and stared into the eye sockets. ‘My poor, dear fellow. That it should come to this.’ Mathias sighed and held the skull beneath the electric light which hung over the dissection table. ‘See here,’ Mathias said. ‘A very substantial insult, radiating fractures, located in the right parietal bone and a smaller, centrally placed insult, located in the frontal bone. The right zygomatic arch is also cracked. However, the occipital and temporal bones are intact, as are the maxilla.’ He paused and ran his finger over the parietal injury. ‘Interesting.’

‘What is?’ asked Rheinhardt.

‘Come closer. What do you see?’

‘An indentation, some splintering.’

‘And what about this?’ Mathias poked his finger into the damaged area.

‘What about what?’

‘It’s a right angle, Oskar,’ said Liebermann.

‘Straight edges,’ said Mathias. ‘Most unusual. Now, it’s perfectly possible that a man falling off the Schneeberg might land, unhappily, on a rock, the tapered summit of which just happened to be square-shaped; however, most natural structures are irregular or rounded. Ergo: I would suggest that this parietal insult was produced by a mallet or hammer.’ The professor turned the skull around. ‘The other injuries are unremarkable.’

Rheinhardt had heard Mathias’s words and understood their meaning. Nevertheless, he felt an irrational desire for confirmation. ‘Freimark was killed with a hammer?’

‘Or a mallet. Yes.’

‘He was struck down first,’ said Rheinhardt, ‘and then pushed off the mountain?’

‘That is very likely,’ said Mathias. ‘Congratulations, gentlemen. I must admit that I was rather sceptical about this escapade. I thought that you might be wasting my time. But I was wrong. I do not know how you came to suspect foul play, but your methods have been vindicated. Again, congratulations.’

‘Professor Mathias,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Why do you think it was that no questions were raised after the original autopsy? Why didn’t the pathologist mention an anomalous impression on the skull in his report?’

‘Why?’ Mathias responded. ‘Because he never saw it, most probably. He didn’t undertake a thorough examination — and why should he have? Accidental falls are common enough in lower Austria. The cause of death is almost always a head injury. In Freimark’s case, a superficial inspection of the scalp would have sufficed to locate the fatal trauma. There would have been little reason to look further. Besides, we are talking about a pathologist who practised forty years ago. If he was anything like the men who taught me, he would have been eager to finish his work and return to his club.’

Rheinhardt turned to face his friend.

‘Well done, Max.’

‘I was wrong,’ said Liebermann distractedly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In the second of the Three Fantasy Pieces I thought the repeated octaves represented a bell, tolling.’

‘And they don’t?’

‘No.’

‘Then what do they represent?’

‘Hammer blows. Brosius had it all planned.’

It was past midnight when Rheinhardt finished his paperwork. He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a tin of Vanillestern biscuits, baked by his wife. Unfortunately, there were only two left. The tin had been full when he had sat down earlier. Although he could remember consuming biscuits as he wrote his report, he was not conscious of having eaten quite so many. Yet the evidence was irrefutable. He shrugged, and decided that abstinence, at this late stage, would constitute a deplorable act of self-deception. Besides, two more biscuits would not expand his waistline very much further.

Leaning back in his chair, Rheinhardt rested his feet upon the desk and placed a whole Vanillestern in his mouth. He savoured the appeasing sweetness and the slow release of flavours. His wife had added some unusual essences that blended harmoniously with the traditional recipe and left a pleasing, zesty aftertaste. The second biscuit was even more satisfying. Rheinhardt thought of his wife with affection, gratitude and a modest frisson of desire before closing his tired eyes. Some thirty minutes later he awoke from a disturbed, chaotic dream in which he had been chased around a lake by a gang of gypsy fiddlers.

Rheinhardt tidied his desk and made a half-hearted attempt at shaking the creases out of his trousers; however, he paid more attention to his moustache, and checked with his fingers to make sure that the points were still upstanding. He left his room and walked down several empty corridors and a staircase. The door that he eventually came to had a sign hanging outside which read ‘Records Office’. Rheinhardt fished a key out of his pocket and entered.

The light, when it came on, was not very powerful. Its weak illumination revealed a room full of cabinets and a station which was usually occupied by a clerk. The air smelled frowsty and institutional. Rheinhardt went directly to the cabinets in which cases designated as ‘closed’ were stored and began to search through the shelves. It did not take him very long to find Professor Saminsky’s file.

Sitting at the clerk’s station, Rheinhardt opened the folder and began to examine the contents. There were the photographs of Saminsky’s body and there were his own preliminary reports and case summary. Beneath a wad of official correspondence held together with an elastic band he found the results of Professor Mathias’s first autopsy. The results of the second autopsy had been removed.

Liebermann walked through the streets of Alsergrund, his hands plunged deep in the pockets of his astrakhan coat. He could feel the gift he had bought Amelia Lydgate, wrapped in crepe paper and tied up with a silver bow. Initially he had considered buying her flowers, but such an offering had seemed too ephemeral. He had then considered buying her a piece of jewellery, but on reflection that hadn’t seemed appropriate either. It wasn’t that she did not like jewellery (she often wore earrings and brooches when they attended concerts together), but rather it was that jewellery did not demonstrate an appreciation of her essential character. She was attracted to meteorites more than to precious stones. He had observed her behaviour in the Natural History Museum. A lump of iron that had travelled between worlds held much more fascination for her than the largest diamond.