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.
Chapter Thirty-Six
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.
Inner truths. I smiled ruefully to myself, recalling how resolutely I had dismissed, even scorned, the idea as nothing but romantic foolishness, the stuff of poets, not policemen. Motive, opportunity, means…that was all that mattered. Or so I told myself until my path was crossed and re-crossed by this man Schumann, alias Florestan. I wanted nothing more now than somehow to right the wrongs done him. To accomplish this, one further item remained on my agenda: I must get rid of Adelmann's papers, his draft monograph on the life of Robert Schumann exposing details the Maestro was so desperate to suppress.
A block short of Adelmann's address, I ordered the driver to stop, paid the fare and waited on the sidewalk until the cab rounded the next corner and was out of sight. I had earlier appropriated a key to Adelmann's apartment from his landlady, citing “official police business,” and was able to let myself in without being noticed. Fortunately, there was sufficient light, despite the gloom outdoors, to permit a thorough search. I began, of course, in his study, ransacking his desk, an unruly depository of just about every shred of paper the man had ever touched, or so it seemed. But there was not so much as a tittle about Schumann. I then went from room to room, sparing nothing. I probed every stick of furniture, and poked behind curtains, under carpets, even upturning the bedding upon which the man had slept. Not a single nook or cranny escaped my scrutiny.
The papers were nowhere to be found.
I found it hard to imagine that out of some rare spirit of charity or compassion, Georg Adelmann would have voluntarily destroyed his work in response to Schumann's bidding. Besides, as a renowned journalist, Adelmann no doubt took pride in his research and had scruples about expurgating what he regarded as essential facts, even if they were potentially ruinous to someone's reputation. Nor did I overlook the probability that a literary exposé of Robert Schumann's private sex life would have found a wide audience and stuffed Adelmann's pockets with cash…those pockets which were not already stuffed with stolen valuables, that is.
But there was another possibility. What if Adelmann's monograph had fallen into the wrong hands, perhaps those of some professional gossipmonger, and was destined to be widely circulated in the press? Apart from the legitimate newspapers and periodicals in the country, a growing number of scandal sheets had sprung up like poison mushrooms in major cities like Berlin and Hamburg and Frankfurt, places where prurience knew few limits, not only among the masses but among the newly wealthy as well. I could not bear the thought that two personalities like Robert and Clara Schumann, geniuses who once upon a time had lit up the pluperfect realm of music, overnight would become objects of public ridicule and shame. I felt an overwhelming compulsion now to warn Clara about what I feared lay in store for her husband and her. Letting myself out of Adelmann's rooms, and making certain to lock the door behind me, I made straight for No. 15 Bilkerstrasse.