Chapter Thirty-Seven
"Madam Schumann is practicing,” the Schumanns’ housekeeper said, “but I will let her know you are here, Inspector.”
“Never mind. I know where to find her, thank you.” I went directly to the drawing-room, parted the heavy oak doors, and boldly entered to find Clara seated at the older of the two grand pianos. She did not bother to look up, nor did she stop playing, though she had to know I was there (I am, after all, not a small man, nor was the Schumann drawing-room all that spacious). She was bent over the keyboard, her head almost touching the keys, in what I had come to know as her customary posture at the piano. Player and instrument, it seemed, were as one. Her fingers did not strike the keys; rather they squeezed them. Under the touch of her hands-which for the first time struck me as surprisingly large for so compact a woman-the piano responded in a way that I did not think a piano was capable of responding: it sang, as though it possessed a human voice.
Suddenly, she halted in the midst of a phrase. I quickly apologized for the intrusion and for my dreadful appearance. She gave me a critical look, indicating that I had failed to pass inspection. I began to stammer a second apology only to be interrupted with a firm “Please…” followed by a flickering smile. “No need to make excuses, Inspector,” she said. “It appears that Düsseldorf has been chosen as the site of the second Great Flood-” she paused, and her smile warmed a bit, “though I must say, you do look as though you were on Noah's ark and fell overboard.”
“May I ask what you were playing?” I said. “It doesn't sound familiar to me.”
“It is my own composition, something I've been working on for several months…a set of variations on a theme of Robert's that I'm especially fond of.”
“Pardon my ignorance, Madam Schumann,” I said, “but I was not aware that musical composition was among your many talents.”
She smiled ruefully. “Then you must have been listening to my husband, Inspector. Robert went out of his way to discourage my attempts at composition, though from time to time he would allow that something I'd written was, as he put it, rather charming. Have you any idea, Inspector, what it feels like to be told something you've worked on is ‘charming’?”
“I cannot possibly imagine,” I said. “Certainly in my line of work, a word like ‘charming’ has never cropped up nor, I expect, will it ever.”
Rising from the piano, she beckoned me to join her at the fireplace, where the two of us sat facing one another, she looking unexpectedly serene, I on the other hand feeling a deep sense of unease.
“I wasn't born yesterday, Inspector,” she said. ‘You didn't come here merely to listen to the bleating of a frustrated female.”
“I hardly know where to begin,” I said.
“Well, I suppose one ought to begin at the beginning. You've satisfied yourself that our friend Hupfer is guilty of the murder of Georg Adelmann?”
“I'm afraid not,” I said. “You see, ‘our friend’ Willi Hupfer did not murder Georg Adelmann, as it turns out.” As I said this I watched for Clara's reaction. I thought I noticed her eyes narrow slightly. “The fact is, madam…the fact is that I am now quite positive that Adelmann was killed by someone wanting it to look as though it was the work of Willi Hupfer.”
“Well now, Inspector,” Madam Schumann said, “you surprise me. I thought the whole point of that demonstration you so cleverly staged…I'm referring to the business with the tuning fork…was to prove beyond doubt that Hupfer was Adelmann's slayer. You even arrested the man right there, before our very eyes! Now you're telling me the entire exercise was in vain?”
“Not entirely. One mystery has been resolved as a result of that arrest. Willi Hupfer confessed to being partly responsible for a series of deliberate mis-tunings over a period of some months which exacerbated the hallucinations your husband suffered. So there's now no doubt whatsoever about the legitimacy of your husband's complaints.”
“Is that your way of making me feel smitten with guilt because I doubted Robert's complaints were real rather than imagined? If so, then you've succeeded, Inspector.”
“I'm only stating established facts,” I replied. Your feelings? Well, I suppose those are entirely up to you, aren't they?”
“You say Willi admits to being partly responsible. Only partly?”
“There was a collaborator, madam, a man whom I'd describe as the mastermind behind the plot. This ‘mastermind’ was well aware of the frightening damage these heightened auditory hallucinations could inflict. In Hupfer he found the perfect man to carry out the technical part of the plot. And he saw to it that Hupfer, who made no secret of his bitterness over the scant rewards of his trade, was handsomely paid for his efforts.”
“And are you at liberty to disclose who this collaborator is?”
“Unfortunately, there is no tactful way to tell you this. He is none other than Professor Friedrich Wieck…your father.”
I had expected this announcement to elicit from Clara Schumann some highly emotional response. And who would have blamed her at this point if, like a prima donna in some melodramatic opera, she had heart-wrenchingly sworn bloody revenge against the evildoers? Instead, after a full minute or so of silence, with incredible calmness, she said, “So you are completely satisfied that Hupfer has told you the truth about my father's role in all this?”
“When one has been in my profession long enough, one develops what people in your profession call perfect pitch. Hupfer was telling the truth.”
She paused again, then in that same unruffled manner, said, “So you will now travel to Endenich and arrest Robert.”
I found it strange that she put this in the form of a statement rather than a question. There was even a hint of resignation in her tone, as though the facts had emerged plainly in black and white: Who else but Robert Schumann would have had the reason, the opportunity, and the strength to murder Adelmann?
I was not at all prepared for her next remark. “That would be a grave mistake on your part, Inspector,” she said, her gaze intently fixed on me, “a very grave mistake.”
“How so?”
“Robert did not kill Georg Adelmann.”
“You know this for certain?”
“Yes.”
“You mean you have some opinion in the matter?”
“Not an opinion, Inspector. Call it knowledge.”
“Knowledge? Your own, or someone else's?”
“First-hand knowledge, Inspector. I killed Georg Adelmann.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It was I who killed Adelmann.”
I said, “It is very noble of you, Madam Schumann, to want to protect your husband's honour, but the powerful blow that took Adelmann's life could not possibly have been administered by someone of your physical stature.”
She took this as an insult. “Look at these hands!” She extended her hands, the long fingers splayed. “Do you have any notion at all how strong a pianist's hands are? How strong our arms and wrists must be? Even our shoulder and back muscles? I choose to avoid pounding the keys the way Franz Liszt pounds them, but I assure you my hands and fingers are every bit as steely as any male's, pianist or otherwise. A single blow is all it took for me to dispatch Adelmann.”
“There were marks on his temple suggesting that whoever struck him-”
“Not ‘whoever’, Inspector. It was I who struck him-”