Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Papa Mozart in France by Ben Pastor

To Frau Anna Maria Mozart, Getreidegasse by the Loechelplatz, Salzburg. October 1763.

Dear Wife,

As I promised, here is a letter to inform you that Wolfgang and I arrived in France in fair health and fine spirits, and we expect to catch the post for Paris tomorrow. Wolfgang has being doing much better and has quite recovered from the stomach upset that plagued him during the trip across Switzerland. He has been practicing the harpsichord nearly every day and sounds marvelous.

You will not believe what has befallen us during the last twenty-four hours of our stay here at the Reine Margot Inn. Yesterday morning, as I prepared to put on my frock to go downstairs for breakfast, the voice of the innkeeper’s sister — you remember her from last year’s trip, she’s a stout, pleasant woman with a liking for Polish-style ribbons in her dress — called me in alarm from outside our room’s door.

“Herr Mozart, Herr Mozart!”

I recognized the urgency in her tone and opened the door at once.

What a scene she presented, my dear wife! Her looks were in disarray, as if she’d been running up the stairs without a care for her hair or skirts.

“Mademoiselle LeBoeuf!” I said in surprise. “What has happened?”

“Oh, Herr Mozart, such a dreadful tragedy! Please look out your window.”

I humored her and leaned over the windowsill. You will recall that there is a charming rose garden on the west side of the building, kept by the innkeeper himself. Well, Monsieur LeBoeuf was lying on the gravel path nearly under our window, sprawled on his stomach in his shirtsleeves. A knife was planted in his burly back. I recoiled in horror as his sister cried out, “My poor murdered brother! Who would kill such a man as him?”

Of course by this time Wolfgang had awakened and was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He asked at once what the matter was, and I hushed him as best I could. But he’s too smart for that. He jumped right out of the quilts and ran to the window, and before I could stop him, he was staring below.

Blessed innocence! At eight years of age even violent death doesn’t impress us as final. In all seriousness he turned to me and said, “Papa, why did Monsieur LeBoeuf go picking flowers while he was dying?”

I gently took our son away from the window, explaining that it had only been a convulsed motion at the time of death that had caused the poor man to strip a rose from the closest shrub.

Mademoiselle LeBoeuf was weeping in her apron. I offered to accompany her downstairs, where by this time servants and guests had gathered in the dining hall. She managed to explain to me that she’d gotten up earlier than usual that morning and had noticed that her brother’s bed in the room next door was untouched; accordingly, she’d gone looking for him downstairs, and seeing the back door ajar, she’d walked out into the rose garden, where she’d made the awful discovery.

In the dining room the news had already circulated among those present. The kitchen maids cried, and the footmen hung their heads. The two opera singers from Vienna whom Wolfgang and I had met at the table the night before were there — Frau Wentzl (who says she’s twenty-five but must be at least a decade older) and her redheaded companion Fraulein Putz, who is very thin for her profession. Both women were talking at once and expressing their distress. The dark-faced Italian in the group, a Signor Marini from Florence, stood aside from the others and looked uncomfortable. We hear he’s a gambler and only comes into his own after the dinner hour, when pipes and playing cards are brought out. The only sanity was shown by our traveling companion from Switzerland, Monsieur Provins.

He helped Mademoiselle LeBoeuf to sit and asked the maids to fetch a physician.

“It’s impossible,” the poor woman wailed. “There’s no physician within fifty leagues, and what good would it do anyway? My poor brother is dead, and no cure can bring him back.”

“Then,” I said, “we must at least fetch the police.”

This suggestion was even more distressing to Mademoiselle LeBoeuf. She cried out that this had always been a respectable establishment and that calling the gendarmes would only bring a bad name to the Reine Margot.

“I’m an unmarried lady, and my brother and I lived by this inn,” she wept. “What would happen if we had no more visitors? The pension he received after he left service as gardener at court wouldn’t allow us to live on it. No, Herr Mozart. I know how kind you are, and how you and your dear wife and family delighted us with your music during your last stay — wouldn’t you consider trying to find out who killed my brother without calling the police?”

I exchanged a puzzled look with Monsieur Provins, who’s a well-to-do merchant and a man of common sense. He said, “She’s not wrong, Herr Mozart. We can’t risk her losing her livelihood.”

Well, my dear Anna Maria, you know that I’ve always been a man more concerned with arpeggios them intrigue. You’d suppose I’d have right away told the good woman that I had no idea how to investigate a murder. But her tearful face and the anxious expressions of those around me convinced me that I ought, if nothing else, to give it a try.

At this point I realized that little Wolfgang had disappeared from the room. Aware of his childish curiosity, I immediately walked out into the rose garden, and sure enough he was there observing the body. Hands clasped behind his back, he seemed to be gravely considering how this jovial man who’d been bouncing him on his knee the night before could now be lying cold with a common kitchen knife in the middle of his back.

Before I could reach him and take him away from the victim, Wolfgang kneeled and took the rose from the dead man’s hand.

“The night dew kept it alive,” he commented, showing me the large-headed, dark pink flower. “Look, Papa, it’s so heavy it cannot hold its face up. Have you ever seen such a large-headed rose?”

Within minutes, standing with her in the sitting room, I reassured Mademoiselle LeBoeuf that I’d do my best.

“But if you want to help,” I added, “you must make sure that I have a chance to speak to all those who could be suspected of doing away with your poor brother. Please tell me what happened last night after Wolfgang and I retired.”

The woman dried her tears. “Well, Herr Mozart, you and the boy went upstairs early because of his stomachache. The married wenches and footmen live in the village, so they walked to their homes shortly after supper. The two unmarried servants sleep in a room two doors down from mine, and I’d easily hear if either of them slipped out. You recall that Signor Marini was showing card tricks to the company. The two ladies were sitting together and giggling — which is extraordinary considering how they’d been at each other’s throats until that afternoon — and Monsieur Provins smoked his pipe by the fireplace. All of them were still in the dining room with my poor brother, who loved the company, when I left to go to bed.”

“So, in theory, any of them could be suspects.”

The suggestion came to her as a tremendous shock. How she could not have thought of it is beyond me, but she opened her eyes and mouth wide.

“Why would any of our guests kill the innkeeper?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But unless you can come up with smother suspect, I fear that we must look among them.”

She said nothing for a little while. In the meantime Wolfgang, who’d been sitting on a bench dangling his legs with the rose in his hand, asked for permission to look at Monsieur LeBoeuf’s books. There were only a few on the shelf, and Mademoiselle LeBoeuf assured me that there was nothing improper there for a child — some of them were religious tracts, others were notebooks from his old profession, and there was an illustrated version of Perrault’s fairy tales.

“You can look at the fables, dearie,” she told Wolfgang kindly, and in a moment our son was deep in the drawings of wolves and fairies.

Armed with her permission to interrogate the guests as I saw fit, I began with the two garrulous singers from our own country. As I mentioned, Frau Wentzl tries to look younger than her age. She uses a great deal of powder and black silk beauty spots on her face and neck, and wears English-style dresses rather long and skinny at the waist — the type I heard you say you like the least.

“Well!” She looked at me straight, upturning her nose. “That I should live to hear a Salzburger accuse me of murder!”

I assured her that such wasn’t the case, and that I had nothing but admiration for her exquisite vibrato. May the Lord forgive me, that was quite an untruth, but she was captivated by it. Rather more sweetly she explained to me that Monsieur LeBoeuf had for a long time adored her from afar, and that this had elicited the envy of others. “Of course I was so much younger than he,” she added, “and so much better introduced, but he was a landed proprietor after all. I might have paid attention had he insisted a little more. Now, alas, it’s too late. But at least others will not get him either.”

This last statement immediately suggested that I should interrogate her traveling companion, Fraulein Putz. I did so only after ensuring that little Wolfgang was not troubling our hostess.

“Don’t worry, Herr Mozart,” her teary voice answered. “He’s as good as an angel, looking at my poor brother’s books.”

Fraulein Putz spent most of the time of our conversation adjusting her red curlets under her muslin cap. I noticed that she too wore much face powder, and that one could see long scratches underneath it, as if she’d been in a catfight. I recalled what Mademoiselle LeBoeuf had said about their recent argument, and Frau Wentzl’s spiteful words about rivals.

“I’m sure I don’t know why you even bother to speak to me, Herr Mozart,” she said. “It should be obvious to you that there’s only one person among us who would have had an interest in killing Monsieur LeBoeuf.”

“Really?” I asked. “Who could this person be?”

“Why, of course the Italian! Haven’t you seen him play cards with the old man and beat him every time? I expect our host owed him a small fortune by last night. He probably refused to pay, and they got into a fight.”

“If it’s so, why wouldn’t Signor Marini have escaped?”

Fraulein Putz laughed into her lacy handkerchief. “And go where? This is France, not Italy, and since none of us owns horses, he’d have had to awaken the stableboys or hitch a post himself.”

She was right in that none of us could easily leave the Reine Margot. I was curious about the scratches but decided against asking about them just then. I briefly joined the servants in the upstairs bedroom where they’d laid Monsieur LeBoeuf on his bed. Monsieur Provins had sent for a priest and now sat at the foot of the bed with a contemplative look.

“Dear Herr Mozart,” he told me, “sights like this only remind us of the fragility of human affairs.”

I said that I agreed fully.

“You know,” he continued, “I began my business career in this part of the country, and Monsieur LeBoeuf and I knew each other as children and young men. Well, who’d have said that I, the ragged boy who fetched wood in the forest, would end up a prosperous lumber merchant, and the wealthy son of the publican would lie dead by a vagrant’s knife?”

“A vagrant’s knife?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

Monsieur Provins’s jowly pink face opened in a sad smile.

“Why, I mean the most obvious solution for this unfortunate event, Herr Mozart. You can’t have forgotten the beggar who came by before dinner and stood wailing at the doorstep.”

“You’re right!” I spoke up. “I had forgotten!”

“Well, you heard him weep his song and dance, and saw how LeBoeuf gave him a swift kick and tossed him across the road. The ladies felt full of pity, but our friend LeBoeuf knew better — he knew that one goes nowhere by being generous to the lazy poor. A stern businessman, that’s what LeBoeuf was. Surely the beggar crawled back around the property, waited until the innkeeper went to water his roses, and took his vengeance then.”

It made perfect sense, Anna Maria. How clearly did Monsieur Provins see what had happened! I went back downstairs and joined Mademoiselle LeBoeuf in the sitting room, where Wolfgang was looking at the dead man’s gardening books.

“I believe that the beggar whom your brother turned back last night might be the culprit,” I said. “Monsieur Provins thinks so, and he’s likely right.”

Mademoiselle LeBoeuf started weeping afresh. “I told my brother time and again that he ought to be more generous to the poor, but he was always hard-hearted in that way, both with unknown beggars and with his less fortunate friends. If what you and Monsieur Provins say is true, it’d have been so much better for my poor brother to give a sou to the beggar than to be stabbed for it.”

More out of discomfort at hearing her weep than any desire to discontinue my interrogation, I left the sitting room.

Signor Marini was sitting at one of the tables in the dining room, playing at solitaire. Without lifting his dark curly head, he said, “So, Herr Mozart, have you found your murderer?”

I’d had little reason to speak to this unsavory gambler and was not disposed towards courtesy now. He’d tried to teach card tricks to Wolfgang the night before, and had only laughed when I’d taken the boy away from him. He was smiling even now, setting the greasy cards in orderly rows.

“Don’t be so bigoted, Herr Mozart; have a seat. One can learn much from a card game if it’s played well.”

Against my better sense, I sat down facing him.

He had placed a group of face cards in line, one after the other.

“The Queen of Hearts is Frau Wentzl,” he said with a grin of his flashy white teeth. “She’d have liked to get the innkeeper’s money, but I’m sure he said no. The Queen of Diamonds if Fraulein Putz, who fought with her girlfriend over the attentions of Monsieur LeBoeuf and lost. The Queen of Clubs is Mademoiselle LeBoeuf, who surely wanted to keep her bachelor brother from squandering money with either singer.”

“Signor Marini,” I interrupted. “You are a gossip and a vicious man, not above suspicion.”

“Am I?” The gambler pointed at the next face card. “This is the King of—”

My dear wife, I lost my patience. I struck the cards with the flat of my hand and caused them to fly off the table. All fell except two, which Signor Marini deftly took in hand. “Very well,” he smiled. “You don’t want to hear the rest. But I’ll keep one of these cards covered until you find your solution, and will show you the other to help you along the way.”

It was the Joker.

“Whom does it represent?” I asked with contempt.

Signor Marini bowed from his waist, ceremoniously. “Your son Wolfgang.”

Only the sudden arrival of the country priest accompanied by an acolyte kept me from striking the impudent Marini.

All of us except him and little Wolfgang joined in LeBoeuf’s room to pray for his soul. Fraulein Putz dabbed her eyes with her lacy handkerchief, and Frau Wentzl blew her upturned nose; the servants snorted like sad dogs, and Mademoiselle LeBoeuf wept, leaning on Monsieur Provins’s arm. At one point she became faint, and Provins kindly offered to fetch her some water.

I left the room afterwards, anxious that we should send someone after a possibly murderous beggar, and yet suspicious that Signor Marini might have used our time of prayer to escape if he was in fact the culprit.

It turned out that my suspicion was right. Marini was nowhere to be seen. I was about to go back upstairs and summon the footmen to chase him when Wolfgang skipped out of the sitting room with a book under his arm.

“Papa,” he took me by the hem of my frock. “Papa, you must see this.”

I hushed him, “Not now, Wolfgang,” and tried to free myself.

“But you must look at it.”

“There are more serious things at hand than a book, son. I’ll look at it later.”

“I tell you must look.” Undeterred, our son stood in front of me so that I couldn’t go up the stairs. “I found the rose that Monsieur LeBoeuf was holding when he died.”

To satisfy him, I glanced at the page that Wolfgang held out for me to see. It was a sketchbook which LeBoeuf had undoubtedly kept while gardening for the king in his younger years.

“This is the rose,” young Wolfgang insisted.

It was a watercolor image of the dark pink, heavy-headed flower we’d found in the garden with the body. Below it, in ornate cursive, the name of the plant was written in Latin and French: Rosa Gallica, or Rosier de Provins.

Only now did I notice that Provins was also gone from the inn.

Well, Anna Maria! Five hours later, the merchant had been apprehended and had confessed his crime, and Signor Marini, who had led the gendarmes to him, was once more sitting in the dining room in front of his greasy cards.

Mademoiselle LeBoeuf sighed a deep sigh.

“Who would have thought that Monsieur Provins had kept a grudge for so many years? It’s true he and my brother squabbled about a large piece of land and a mill, but was it reason enough to kill him?”

“I think that your brother’s contempt for Provins when he was poor was rather at the root of the grudge,” I said. “When the beggar was maltreated last night, Provins’s resentment must have flared up again, and he decided to punish LeBoeuf.”

“In Italy we kill for less,” Marini added lightly.

“But how did you connect the rose with the killer?” Fraulein Putz asked, adjusting her red curlets.

“Ah, that was my son’s doing,” I was glad to reply.

Wolfgang was in bed by then, of course, because we have a long trip ahead of us in the morning, and two concerts at the archbishop’s residence. “You see,” I explained to the ladies, “right away Wolfgang understood that the dying man hadn’t just grasped a flower at random. LeBoeuf knew all the roses by name and staggered to the shrub that — by fatal coincidence — bore his killer’s name. He hoped it would serve as a hint, but it was only because of my son’s wit that we solved this crime. In his innocence, Wolfgang sought and found the perfect clue.”

Signor Marini had been looking at me all this while, grinning.

“Do you disagree?” I asked.

“On the contrary, Herr Mozart, I concur entirely. I suspected the merchant from the moment LeBoeuf kicked the beggar; I saw murder in his eyes.” He held up the card he had hidden from me, the Ace of Spades. “But I would never have thought about the rose, or the sketchbook. That was indeed your son’s doing.”

“Is that why you showed me the picture of the Joker in reference to Wolfgang?”

Marini laughed. “Oh no. That’s because I heard your son play, and I think that he’s the cleverest in the deck.”

I believe he’s right, dear Anna Maria.

Tomorrow we’re headed for Paris, where God willing we’ll be received at court. Take care of yourself and Nannerl, and do not worry about us. Be well, and receive the most affectionate embrace from your devoted husband,

Leopold Mozart

P.S. Wolfgang sends his love.