“Yiddish was my parents’ first language. Mine too, until my mother decided it wasn’t fashionable. Don’t look so surprised, Hermann. Chayla Bekarsky may be Helena Becker today, but she still remembers how to speak and read Yiddish. There was not time to read the entire letter but it began ‘My dear Hershel’ and ended ‘Your loving mother.’ The handwriting was beautiful, as though the writer might have been an expert at calligraphy. And the stationery looked quite elegant, even though there were numerous rips and creases, as though it had been stuffed away, perhaps in somebody’s pocket. Oh yes, one other thing, Hermann: the writer’s name was embossed in Hebrew letters at the top of the page, which is a bit unusual. The name was Professor Miriam Socransky.”
“Socransky? Are you certain it was Socransky?”
“You look as though it has a familiar ring, Hermann.”
I repeated the name several times. Then it came to me, Madam Vronsky’s tale about the concertmaster of the St. Petersburg orchestra whom Richard Wagner had dismissed and who, in despair, had committed suicide.
Helena leaned across the small table and looked searchingly into my eyes. “Hermann Preiss,” she said, “whenever your face takes on that faraway expression it tells me that I’m no longer in the same room with you, that I’ve ceased to exist, gone up in smoke. I might as well leave — ”
She drew a shawl snugly about her shoulders, and made as if to rise from her chair. Quickly I reached out and held her in place. “Helena, don’t leave. Hear me out. Our ‘friend’ Schramm … I wondered who he was, and what he was up to. Now I know!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"The officer who delivered your summons said it concerned a matter of extreme urgency. I don’t understand, Inspector Preiss. Am I a suspect?”
The man asking this question had just been escorted to the Constabulary by one of my officers. Visibly nervous, he glanced around the small room as though searching for some means of escape, a perfectly understandable reaction given the uninviting interior of the Constabulary and the likelihood that it was his first ever visit to this, or any, police establishment.
I moved quickly to put him at ease. “No, sir, you are not a suspect, not at all. Indeed, Sandor Lantos — ”
“You mean the late Sandor Lantos — ”
“Yes, of course … described you as a gentle and decent man. We were speaking, he and I, of an incident involving Wolfgang Grilling — ”
“Regrettably, the late Wolfgang Grilling — ”
“Alas, yes. For the record, sir, your full name is Friedrich Otto — ”
“Friedrich Karl Heinz von Zwillings Otto, to be precise. I am a professional manager of musical artists. But I assume you already know this. I was Wolfgang Grilling’s manager, which you must also know. But I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about how those two came to be murder victims.”
By now Otto was sitting on the edge of his chair, his hands gripping the brim of his hat, almost crushing it.
A dossier lay open before me. I took several moments to review one document in particular, then looked up at Otto. “I see that you were also the manager of Karla Steilmann … the late — ”
“Please, Inspector Preiss, what is this all about? Why am I here?”
“I will be candid with you, Herr Otto,” I said. “You are here because of a game of darts. I see that you are not amused, and I apologize if my answer sounded flippant. But the truth is that there are times — many times, in fact — when a detective stumbles across a sense of direction in a baffling case in much the same manner as one throws darts at a dartboard. Hear me out: Let’s say Maestro Wagner is at the centre, the bull’s eye so to speak. Here and there, in the surrounding area, are numerous names that spring to mind: Grilling, Lantos, Steilmann, Mecklenberg, von Bülow, Liszt, an eccentric French hornist by the name of Rotfogel, a soprano by the name of Vanderhoute. And then, Herr Otto, your name shows up and my mental dart lands on it … and here you are!”
“You forgot to mention another name,” Otto said.
“Did I? How careless of me.” I pretended to be impatient with myself, hoping at the same time that the name he seemed about to supply was the one I had deliberately omitted to mention. “And that name would be — ?”
“Henryk Schramm.”
“You’re referring to the fellow who won the leading role in Wagner’s new opera … the role your man Grilling coveted?”
Suddenly Friedrich Otto’s demeanor changed. He relaxed his grip on the brim of his hat. The furrows on his brow disappeared. I detected a cautious smile. “You put this to me in the form of a question, Inspector, but it’s obvious to me that you already know the facts. Yes, Grilling lost the role. Yes he was jealous, upset, not merely upset but enraged. And with good reason. After all, Inspector, this Schramm … or whatever his name is — ”
“Whatever his name is? Pardon me for interrupting you, Herr Otto, but are you suggesting Henryk Schramm is not Henryk Schramm?”
“Suggesting? No, sir, not suggesting. Informing is what I’m doing.”
“Informing? Informing to a policeman means information, not just rumour or supposition but concrete evidence. Your reputation as a decent man precedes you, Herr Otto; a man like you would not capriciously float some idle gossip about Schramm merely because of Grilling’s resentment or your own pique. What makes you so certain that you are right about Henryk Schramm?”
“Let’s just say, Inspector, that many years of experience managing these artists has brought me in contact with just about every kind of personality conceivable. In my field one does not play dart games. One deals intimately with every range of ability from talent to genius; with every range of aspiration from naïvety and blind faith to ruthless ambition.” Otto pointed a finger sharply at his forehead. “I have all the ‘concrete evidence’ right here, you see.”
“And nothing else?”
Otto looked at me cautiously. “I don’t know what you’re alluding to,” he said.
I turned a page of the dossier and removed the two fragments of the envelope addressed to Schramm. I explained how and where I had found them and how I had concluded that they were addressed to Schramm from a correspondent in Minsk. “Do you not find it curious, to say the least, Herr Otto, that one fragment was located in Grilling’s apartment, the other in Karla Steilmann’s? Let’s get back to suggestion, shall we. I suggest that somehow a letter was — I was going to say purloined, but ‘purloined’ sounds too genteel. The letter was stolen … stolen by someone who harbored a deep grievance against this man Schramm. Or perhaps by someone in the employ of someone with a deep grievance. All of which points to two people: Wolfgang Grilling, and his manager Friedrich Karl Heinz von Zwillings Otto.” I paused, expecting Otto to react with a vehement protest of innocence, the predictable show we policemen find so terribly tiresome.
Instead, Friedrich Karl Heinz von Zwillings Otto caught me completely off-guard. “You know, I trust,” he said, “that he’s a Jew. His real name is Hershel Socransky, your man Henryk Schramm.” Otto’s pronunciation of “your man Henryk Schramm” — the tone slightly sneering, the look on Otto’s face one of certainty, even of superiority — left me feeling as though it was I, and not Otto, who was on the defensive; as though, whatever the cause, carelessness or stupidity or dereliction of duty, I was guilty of shielding not only a scoundrel, but a Jewish scoundrel!
Egged on by the sustained expression on Otto’s face — an expression of self-satisfaction, of a point scored — and wanting to regain the offensive even if it meant being reckless, I said, “Whether Schramm is or is not Jewish is not the issue. Let me tell you what I now believe really happened, Herr Otto. What really happened is this: Wolfgang Grilling was furious on three counts: first, the loss of the role he thought he deserved; second, losing to a stranger whose origin and operatic background were a total blank; and third, facing the prospect of performing in Wagner’s new opera in makeup and costume he despised. Determined to uncover the mystery of Henryk Schramm’s background, he went to Schramm’s lodgings, spied a letter addressed to Schramm on the concierge’s desk, and made off with it. He showed the letter to you. He, or perhaps you, had it translated at least to the extent that it became apparent Schramm’s name is Socransky.”