The Mastersinger from Minsk (17 page)

"S
o,
Helena,” I said, “what have you got for me?” It was the morning after her evening with Henryk Schramm.

“What have I got for you, Hermann?” Helena pretended to be searching for a thoughtful answer. “Well now, let me think. What
have
I got for you? A great deal of contempt? Yes, I would say that sums it up quite nicely.”

“Look, Helena, I apologize if my question wasn't subtle —”

“
Wasn't subtle,
you say? It was the kind of question you'd put to a whore! You ask a favour of me, I comply, and then you don't even have the decency to inquire where we went, what we ate, what we did afterward, was it pleasant or unpleasant, how I felt playing the role of your sneaky little helper.”

“There will be time for me to show my appreciation, Helena,” I said, reaching out to grasp her hand, and having my hand thrust aside.

“Oh, yes, that empty promise of yours about a holiday in Lucerne. In June was it? Should I begin packing my bags, Hermann? No point waiting to the last minute.”

With every word Helena's voice was rising, her temperature too. We had been seated across from each other at a small table in a fashionable coffee house a few doors from the Eugénie Palace and by now Helena's vociferous indignation was beginning to attract the attention of nearby patrons. I rose and took up my coat and hat. “You're tired, my dear. Let's continue this later when —”

“Sit down, Hermann!” So loud was Helena's command that several of our neighbouring coffee drinkers, witnessing what they took to be a lovers' quarrel, smirked. Embarrassed, I met their smirks with a shrug, as if to say, “Women — what do you expect?” Nevertheless, I obeyed, laid aside my coat and hat, and settled into my chair again.

“I have something to tell you, Hermann —”

“Please, Helena, lower your voice —”

“I have something to tell you —” To my relief, she repeated this in a half-whisper. “His real name isn't Schramm.”

“Ahah! So my suspicion was not misguided after all. I
knew
there was something behind that façade of his.”

“If you're not too busy congratulating yourself,” Helena said, “would it interest you to know how I found this out?”

“I'm not sure I want to hear the details,” I said.

“There are no ‘details,' Hermann,” Helena said, speaking quietly but eyeing me coldly. “But I will tell you this: I would not have resisted — not for one moment — if it had come to ‘details.' He is everything you are
not
, Hermann … kind, considerate, charming, not to mention incredibly handsome.”

“You've forgotten to mention one other thing,” I said. “The man is very likely a fraud, an imposter of some sort. I'm not sure exactly what he's up to but I wouldn't trust him from one side of this table to the other. So, how
did
you learn that he's living under a false name?”

Helena looked away. “I'm so ashamed —”

I reached out, took Helena's face in my hands as gently as I could given that I was quickly losing patience, and said, “Helena, look at me. I have no time for shame, yours, mine,
any
body's. I am a policeman. I do what I have to do.”

Helena pulled my hands away. “But I am
not
, and I hate what I did.”

“Which was —?”

“Which was to spy, to violate the man's privacy, to do something to him which I would never want anyone to do to me, Hermann. Never!” Helena paused, as though preparing to make some dark confession, then said, “We were in his sitting room, and he left and went into this tiny kitchenette to open a bottle of wine to go along with a small cake he'd bought. And while he was busy there, I used the time to look about the sitting room. There was a small writing table in one corner. And that is where I saw it.”

“Saw
what —
?”

“A letter. Just a single page. Written in Yiddish.”

“Yiddish? How could you tell, Helena?”

“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!”

"T
he
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.”

“Ridiculous! Your imagination has run away with you, Preiss!” Otto scoffed.

“I'm not finished, Herr Otto. There's much more to the story. Armed with what he regarded as damning evidence against Schramm, Grilling immediately dashed to Karla Steilmann, expecting to enlist her as an ally, the plan being that the two of them would present the letter to Wagner. And that would put a speedy end to the career of Hershel Socransky alias Henryk Schramm, Jewish tenor from Minsk. Karla retained the letter, perhaps on the pretext of wanting to study it further, but the fact is that Fräulein Steilmann was very much taken with Schramm. Indeed, Herr Otto, you saw the man, you heard him sing. What female wouldn't be attracted to him?”

Again Otto interrupted. “Really, Inspector, one moment you speak of hard evidence, the next moment you throw imaginary darts at imaginary targets. As a citizen I would hate to think that this is how law enforcement is conducted in a civilized city like Munich. Perhaps in some rural backwater —”

“In a civilized city like Munich people do not steal private mail in order to sully someone's reputation —”

“Damn it, Preiss, the man's a Jew!” Otto shot back. “What's a Jew doing in an opera by Richard Wagner? Steilmann was wrong, I tell you. She flatly refused —”

“Flatly refused what?”

“To co-operate. The woman was a fool. She took the letter to Socransky. I suppose she did so because she was in love with him, or
thought
she was. With his true identity exposed, what would you expect the man to do? It's obvious, isn't it? Socransky confronted Grilling, then killed him. Then, in an act of betrayal, he did away with Karla Steilmann. That would account for those torn bits of the envelope. As for the letter itself, God knows where it's ended up. Probably Schramm burned it or tore it to pieces and tossed them down a sewer. What motivated him to murder poor Sandor Lantos is beyond my understanding, Preiss. You'll probably have to throw your precious darts into the air once again and pray that you hit upon the answer. Now then, I trust I am free to leave.” Without awaiting my response, Otto stood and put on his hat.

“For the moment,” I said, “you are free to leave. I must tell you, however, that you remain subject to further investigation, Herr Otto, as an accomplice.”

“An accomplice! To what crime?”

“Theft of private property. I'm referring to the letter, of course. By your own admission, Herr Otto, you participated to some degree in that rather shoddy business.”

“And this …
this
is how you demonstrate your gratitude? This is my reward for helping you find your way through this maze? It's this fellow Socransky you should be subjecting to further investigation.
He's
your culprit. Who knows what further disasters he's out to create!”

Seizing his coat, Otto threw it roughly over his arm, as though the garment somehow were as guilty of offending him as I was. Barely in control of his anger, he said, “It's the Socranskys of this world who pollute the divine, Preiss … the
divine
, do you hear? Opera, sir, is purity. An opera is proof that God exists!”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But the more I see of it, the more I'm persuaded that the stage manager is the Devil. Good day, Herr Otto.”