Death And The Maiden

57

Low, dark clouds hung over the St Marxer cemetery. Everything seemed colourless, bleached to a vapid greyish monochrome by an obstinate drizzle. Two gravediggers and their assistants were standing in a hole, only the upper halves of their bodies visible. Although spades descended with mechanical regularity, progress was slow. The ground was so wet that it was necessary to shore up the sides of the grave to prevent the walls from falling in. Clots of viscous mud oozed through the vertical timbers, creating an alternating pattern of faecal extrusions.

Rheinhardt and Liebermann had tired of watching this dismal scene, and had walked the short distance to the Mozartgrab. Beneath the stretched fabric of their umbrellas they smoked cigars and made some desultory conversation about the composer’s genius. The truncated column and the statue of the despairing cherub, his hand pressed pathetically against his brow, had never appeared more poignant. They returned to Freimark’s grave, made some encouraging remarks to the men (even though the hole didn’t look any deeper) and then walked up and down an adjacent pathway, stopping occasionally to read headstones.

Eventually they heard a cry. Turning, they saw one of the gravediggers waving his spade in the air like the pendulum of a metronome.

‘Come,’ said Rheinhardt.

They hurried towards the swinging blade, their route necessitating a disrespectful leaping over the final resting places of the dead. When they arrived at their destination they stood on some planks that had been placed at the foot of Freimark’s grave and peered down. The distinctive shape of a coffin had been revealed. A section of the lid had rotted through, and Liebermann thought that he could see something white inside. He also fancied he could smell corruption, decay, the release of foul vapours, but he checked his imagination and realised it was only the fetor of waterlogged earth.

The exhumation continued under a pall of silence. In due course the coffin was heaved out of the grave. Liebermann could see, quite clearly now, a fixed, skeletal grin through the aperture.

‘The top’s rotten,’ said the chief gravedigger. ‘But the rest is sound. We could carry it to the mortuary van.’

Rheinhardt nodded.

The rain intensified and the gentle background susurration, hitherto ignored, suddenly increased in volume, becoming a continuous thrumming. There was something minatory about the downpour. Liebermann should have felt eager, excited, but the bleakness of the landscape and the miserable weather had lowered his spirits. The grave looked as if it had been violated rather than simply opened. He was filled with terrible doubts about the entire enterprise.

‘Well,’ said Rheinhardt, demonstrating remarkable perspicacity. ‘It’s too late to put him back again.’

‘There won’t be much left of the poor fellow,’ said Professor Mathias. ‘Putrefaction and maggots: they eat everything.’

Liebermann and Rheinhardt helped the old man take the lid off the coffin. Inside were Freimark’s jumbled bones and some shredded remnants of fabric. A considerable amount of soil had accumulated around the skeleton. Where it was deepest, the surface trembled on account of the activity of burrowing insects. One of them, a creature with a ribbed carapace and agitated flagella, was crawling along the ridge of Freimark’s hip.

Mathias stood at the head of the coffin and, assuming a solemn expression, began to recite a poem.

‘“The warder looks down at the mid-hour of night, on the tombs that lie scatter’d below.”’ He raised his hand up, like an actor, and added, ‘“The moon fills the place with her silvery light, and the churchyard like day seems to glow. When see! First one grave, then another opes wide, and women and men stepping forth are descried, in cerements snow-white and trailing.”’ Behind the thick magnifying lenses of his spectacles, Mathias’s eyes seemed to be floating outside his body. They fixed on Rheinhardt and the professor issued a challenge. ‘Well, Inspector?’

‘That was the first stanza of Goethe’s Totentanz,’ Rheinhardt replied.

‘Too easy, wasn’t it?’

‘There’s something in the coffin,’ said Liebermann.

‘Yes, the remains of David Freimark,’ Mathias responded with alacrity.

Liebermann ignored the remark and pointed at an object half-buried in the soil. His extended finger directed the gaze of his companions through the baroque curves and arches of Freimark’s ribcage. ‘Look.’

Mathias craned over the coffin’s edge. ‘So there is.’ He reached under the sternum and pushed the soil aside, uncovering a long wooden box. A tiny rusted key projected from the lock.

The three men exchanged glances. Professor Mathias gave the box to Rheinhardt, who turned it over and examined it from all sides. The surfaces were unmarked. There was no beading or inlay. It looked, to the inspector, like an elongated pencil case.

‘Oskar?’ said Liebermann, impatient to discover what was inside. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Rheinhardt sat down on a stool and placed the box on the bench in front of him. The key resisted the force of his knuckle for a few moments, then suddenly capitulated. Its rotation produced a click that sounded disproportionately loud — amplified by the morgue’s commodious acoustics. Rheinhardt raised the lid. Liebermann was aware of a faint breath of air and registered a fragrance, the merest trace of lavender. Inside the box lay a cylinder of paper, speckled with musical notation and tied with a piece of red ribbon. With great care, Rheinhardt removed the roll and slipped off the binding before flattening it out on the bench.

‘A song,’ said Rheinhardt.

The staves were arranged in groups of three, a vocal part and piano accompaniment. The tempo indication was Langsam, andachtig. Slowly, devoutly, Rheinhardt read the title: ‘Nearness of the beloved.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Professor Mathias. ‘I know it well. Once again, Goethe, I believe.’

‘Schubert also wrote a setting,’ said Rheinhardt.

Without looking at the text, Mathias began to recite, ‘“I think of you when the sun’s shimmer gleams from the Sea: I think of you when the moon’s glimmer is mirrored in streams …”’

‘Yes. That’s it.’

‘Are you sure it’s not a copy of the Schubert song?’

‘Quite sure.’

Liebermann pulled up a stool next to Rheinhardt, sat down, and stroked the edge of the paper. All the notes had straight stems and the heads were neatly executed. Beneath the vocal stave Goethe’s poetry shadowed a melody which was ostensibly in C minor but swiftly slipped through a series of bold modulations. Rheinhardt turned the sheet over and held its extremities to stop the paper from curling. In the bottom right-hand corner was a date. 1 September 1863.

‘Eighteen sixty-three,’ said Liebermann. ‘The year he died.’

‘His last song?’ Rheinhardt ventured.

‘Possibly,’ Liebermann replied.

‘I’m very fond of ‘Hope,’ said Mathias. ‘I wonder if this setting is as affecting. You sing, don’t you, Rheinhardt? Would you care to give us a flavour …?’

‘Not now, Professor.’

‘Come now, don’t be shy. I’m told that you have a fine singing voice.’

‘With respect, Herr Professor, although I also am eager to hear Freimark’s swansong, given our purpose right now, I would very much like you to proceed.’

‘As you wish,’ Mathias grumbled and shuffled back to the coffin. Rheinhardt released the paper and allowed it to curl. He rolled it up tightly, replaced the ribbon, and pushed it back in the box. As the lid fell, Rheinhardt caught Liebermann’s eye. The young doctor looked feverish with excitement.

‘We’ll find a piano later,’ said Rheinhardt under his breath.

‘You do realise,’ said Mathias, ‘that the chances of discovering anything significant are vanishingly small.’

‘Yes,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Even so …’

The professor picked up a femur and studied its ballooning terminus and the Greater trochanter: ‘I’ll clean the bones and take a closer look at them in due course; however, if the facts you have presented me with are correct, then much will depend on the condition of Freimark’s cranium.’ Mathias put the femur back in the coffin and lifted the hollow white skull. He held it in both hands and stared into the eye sockets. ‘My poor, dear fellow. That it should come to this.’ Mathias sighed and held the skull beneath the electric light which hung over the dissection table. ‘See here,’ Mathias said. ‘A very substantial insult, radiating fractures, located in the right parietal bone and a smaller, centrally placed insult, located in the frontal bone. The right zygomatic arch is also cracked. However, the occipital and temporal bones are intact, as are the maxilla.’ He paused and ran his finger over the parietal injury. ‘Interesting.’

‘What is?’ asked Rheinhardt.

‘Come closer. What do you see?’

‘An indentation, some splintering.’

‘And what about this?’ Mathias poked his finger into the damaged area.

‘What about what?’

‘It’s a right angle, Oskar,’ said Liebermann.

‘Straight edges,’ said Mathias. ‘Most unusual. Now, it’s perfectly possible that a man falling off the Schneeberg might land, unhappily, on a rock, the tapered summit of which just happened to be square-shaped; however, most natural structures are irregular or rounded. Ergo: I would suggest that this parietal insult was produced by a mallet or hammer.’ The professor turned the skull around. ‘The other injuries are unremarkable.’

Rheinhardt had heard Mathias’s words and understood their meaning. Nevertheless, he felt an irrational desire for confirmation. ‘Freimark was killed with a hammer?’

‘Or a mallet. Yes.’

‘He was struck down first,’ said Rheinhardt, ‘and then pushed off the mountain?’

‘That is very likely,’ said Mathias. ‘Congratulations, gentlemen. I must admit that I was rather sceptical about this escapade. I thought that you might be wasting my time. But I was wrong. I do not know how you came to suspect foul play, but your methods have been vindicated. Again, congratulations.’

‘Professor Mathias,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘Why do you think it was that no questions were raised after the original autopsy? Why didn’t the pathologist mention an anomalous impression on the skull in his report?’

‘Why?’ Mathias responded. ‘Because he never saw it, most probably. He didn’t undertake a thorough examination — and why should he have? Accidental falls are common enough in lower Austria. The cause of death is almost always a head injury. In Freimark’s case, a superficial inspection of the scalp would have sufficed to locate the fatal trauma. There would have been little reason to look further. Besides, we are talking about a pathologist who practised forty years ago. If he was anything like the men who taught me, he would have been eager to finish his work and return to his club.’

Rheinhardt turned to face his friend.

‘Well done, Max.’

‘I was wrong,’ said Liebermann distractedly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In the second of the Three Fantasy Pieces I thought the repeated octaves represented a bell, tolling.’

‘And they don’t?’

‘No.’

‘Then what do they represent?’

‘Hammer blows. Brosius had it all planned.’