He appeared and sounded short of breath, which I was beginning to think was his natural state. “Your colleague Brunner was right, Preiss. He informed me that your cellist friend was in Munich. I learned that she is a guest at the Eugénie Palace, and here you are! I’ve got hold of you just in time.”
“Just in time for what?”
“There’s been a murder, Inspector … a man by the name of Sandor Lantos.”
Chapter Eight
"Sandor Lantos has murdered someone?”
“No, no,” Mecklenberg wheezed, clutching his chest as though he were in pain. “Lantos is the victim. He … uh … he — ”
I hooked an arm through one of Mecklenberg’s arms, fearing he was about to collapse. Though he was a small man, his weight, such as it was, anchored me to the sidewalk. “Come with me into the hotel,” I said. “You could use a comfortable place to sit and a good strong cup of coffee.”
Huffing and puffing, and waving his free arm impatiently, the old man responded, “There’s no time, don’t you see? Besides, I haven’t even told you who Sandor Lantos is … or rather was.”
“There’s no need to,” I said. “I happen to know.”
“Then you will understand that Maestro Wagner is beside himself, poor man. This is tragic for Wagner. Tragic!”
“Excuse me, Mecklenberg,” I said, “but aren’t you missing the point here? Tragic for Wagner? What about Lantos’s wife and children?”
Abruptly the old man shook loose and stared at me as though I were out of my mind. “His wife and children? What about them? Who gives a damn, Preiss? It wasn’t their opera Lantos was working on. It was Wagner’s. That is what matters.”
Recalling for a moment my one and only conversation with Sandor Lantos and his concerns for his family, I was appalled by Mecklenberg’s utter lack of compassion, but for the moment police business came first. “How did you learn of Lantos’s death?” I asked.
“Earlier this evening,” Mecklenberg replied. “I was to meet the Maestro at the opera house. We had some urgent business to discuss. I found him in a terrible state of upset. I have to explain, Inspector: The final scene of Die Meistersinger takes place in a public square. The entire cast is on stage for the competition about to begin … the principal characters, a large chorus of townspeople, my God the entire population of Germany! In typical fashion, Wagner was busy with a tape measure; he was actually measuring the space available for this crowd scene, right down to the last millimetre. It turned out that the set designed by Lantos would not accommodate all these people and Wagner was having a fit, yelling, cursing, vowing to skin Lantos alive. He insisted we proceed straight to Lantos’s studio which, as you perhaps know, is no more than a stone’s throw from the opera house.”
“But wouldn’t Lantos’s studio be closed for the night?”
Mecklenberg gave me a sardonic smile. “Closed? That would mean absolutely nothing to Wagner. When you work for Richard Wagner there is only one time zone on this earth — Wagner Standard Time. Twenty-five-hour days and eight-day weeks. So off we went. When we reached the studio we found the front door slightly ajar. Wagner of course took this as an automatic invitation to enter without so much as a polite knock. I followed after him. None of the lamps had been extinguished and I took for granted that Lantos was working late. The place was a mess, papers strewn all over, many of them in shreds.”
“Yes yes, but what about Lantos?”
Shuddering, Mecklenberg replied, “You won’t believe your eyes, Preiss.”
“So it’s true after all,” I said, muttering to myself, “the pen is mightier than the sword — ”
“I beg your pardon?” Mecklenberg called, making certain to keep a respectable distance behind me and well away from Lantos’s body which lay sprawled in a chair behind his worktable.
“It’s nothing, Mecklenberg. I was just talking to myself.”
Lantos’s throat had been pierced by one of his sketching pens, pierced so deeply its long steel nib had obviously penetrated the man’s windpipe. His eyes were open, staring, as though he couldn’t believe this was how he was about to die.
Two young constables had arrived on the crime scene before me, dispatched by the night duty officer to stand guard and make certain nothing was disturbed. Fortunately two other constables had already ushered Lantos’s wife and children away from the premises. “They were screaming and carrying on something awful,” one of the guards reported, adding that an older man also had to be escorted out of the studio. “Kept shouting ‘Who could do this to me?’” the guard said. “I wrote down the man’s name here in my notebook. Wagner, Richard Wagner, or something like that.” The blank look on the constable’s face indicated Wagner’s name meant nothing to him.
Careful still to maintain a safe distance from the corpse, Mecklenberg called to me again. “What kind of monster could have done this?”
“No monster,” I said, “just a human being with inhuman strength.”
“But why? Lantos was an artist, a quiet decent hardworking man. I can’t imagine he had an enemy in the world.”
“I can,” I said quietly, again speaking to myself, not thinking old Mecklenberg could hear me.
But hear me he did. “You can?”
“Forgive me, Mecklenberg,” I said. “It’s just the cynic in me. A meaningless remark, the result of too many years of seeing this kind of thing.”
For the moment this lame excuse seemed to satisfy Mecklenberg’s curiosity.
I made certain that the next thing I said to myself could not possibly be heard by anyone in the room. “Wolfgang Grilling. Who else?”
Chapter Nine
I had stayed on at Sandor Lantos’s studio late into the night examining everything from the man’s corpse, with its face frozen in an expression of open-mouthed astonishment, down to the tiniest scraps of sketching paper flung about the room as though by a furious wind. Though anything but an accomplished artist myself, I made a number of drawings of various parts of the crime scene that were at least serviceable, and fleshed these out with copious notes. By the end of that long night the thought which had first flashed through my mind — that this was the work of Wolfgang Grilling — was now deeply engraved. Not only would Grilling, a robust and powerfully strong man, have had the strength, he would have had the motive, given the rage he directed at Lantos after he’d viewed the sketches for his costume and make-up as Beckmesser. In all likelihood there had been an altercation between the singer and the designer; perhaps at some point Lantos, his own temper flaring, might have made threatening moves against Grilling, though the seated position of Lantos’s body made this possibility remote and suggested that Grilling must have attacked suddenly and with great speed and deadly precision.
One other fact convinced me the murderer was Wolfgang Grilling: the only sketches left undamaged were those of the Beckmesser character. One would have thought these would have been the first to be destroyed. Instead, though crumpled a bit here and there, they were not only intact but had escaped being strewn about with all the other papers. To me, this was the sign of a consummate amateur. If I destroy these sketches they’ll know for certain it was I who killed Lantos; therefore I’ll leave them more or less untouched and they’ll think someone else with a grievance did away with Lantos.
The following morning I arrived at my office at the Constabulary to be greeted by a remarkably elated commissioner and a smirking Franz Brunner.
“Well, Preiss, our man Wagner seems to have handed himself over to us on a silver platter,” he crowed. “As if his other crimes aren’t enough, he’s now added murder to his résumé.”
At this, Brunner’s smirk expanded into a smile of satisfaction. “To save you the trouble, Preiss,” he said, “I interviewed the stage manager and his crew at the opera house last night. To a man they all agreed: it had to be your man Wagner who murdered Lantos. When he discovered that Lantos had botched the measurements for the scenery, Wagner stormed out of the house uttering threats against Lantos. They said it was as though all hell was about to erupt right here in Munich! Not a shred of doubt about it, Preiss; Richard Wagner is our killer.” Turning to the commissioner, Brunner said, “With all due respect, sir, I think no time must be wasted. Wagner has a reputation as an escape artist. I would be prepared to arrest him within the hour if you will permit.”