Back in his flat, Phin propped up the copied news-sheet on his desk, and sat for a long time looking at the image of Links’s face. Then he frowned, pushed it into the folder containing the miscellaneous notes so far gathered and put the folder away in a drawer. Chimerical fragments about long-ago artists could not be allowed to push through into the present. They did not pay bills. Disinterring information for the book on Liszt did.
Phin had already amassed a reasonable amount of background, some of which had resulted from leads provided by the two academics who were collaborating on the actual writing of the book. He had immense respect for both of them – Professor Liripine was a professor of musicology at Durham University, and Dr Purslove was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. However, it was becoming extremely difficult to reconcile the wildly differing views held by these gentlemen as to how the book should be written. They were, in fact, locked in polite warfare with each other, and Phin was in the middle of it.
Dr Purslove was of the cheerfully robust opinion that what he referred to as Liszt’s bed-hopping activities should be the springboard for the book. This, he maintained, would help sell it, because readers did love a bit of scandal and sauce mixed in with their solemn musical studies – Phin would surely agree with that. Two days later, he had sent him a gossipy snippet regarding the tempestuous affair between Liszt and the infamous night-club dancer, Lola Montez. La Montez had apparently discovered that Liszt had sneaked out of a Constantinople hotel bedroom in the early morning while she was still asleep, and had consequently given way to an extravagant fury and smashed up the entire room. Mirrors had been angrily splintered, and what was delicately referred to by the hotel staff as ‘bedroom china’ had been hurled out of windows. Dr Purslove thought this spicy little episode must certainly be quoted in the book, and nor must they omit a statement, apparently made by Herr Liszt later, that he had been so exhausted by the exigencies of his nights with La Montez, he had decided to flee, since he ‘feared her importunities were starting to damage his sanity, his constitution, and his virility.’
The image of the fiery Lola throwing chamber pots around and of Liszt furtively tiptoeing out of the bedroom like a character in a French farce was a lively one, and Phin had noted it all down.
But the following day, Professor Liripine had written, reiterating his view that they should focus on the composer’s later, more contemplative, years, and on his generosity to various humanitarian and charitable organizations. With this in mind, the professor thought that Phin might direct his main research towards Herr Liszt’s monastery years, and his religious and liturgical compositions.
‘We want to present a scholarly study of a fine man and a great composer,’ wrote the professor. ‘With that in mind, I’m enclosing copies of several letters written from within the Madonna del Rosario monastery near Rome. As you know, in later life Liszt was ordained in that monastery, and was even sometimes known as Abbé Liszt. Sadly the dates are vague, but perhaps you can pinpoint them.’
Phin had still not been able to decide how best to reconcile these two opposing points of view, and he was currently wondering whether to explain that there might now be a murder complication in Liszt’s background. He slid Professor Liripine’s photocopies out of the envelope, and he was about to start reading them when an email pinged in.
It was from Arabella, and Phin put the professor’s letters to one side, and opened the email gratefully. He had not really been worried about not hearing from Arabella, but still …
‘Very dear Phin,’ Arabella had written. ‘You’re probably blamelessly asleep in your bed, so I’m emailing instead of phoning. After a bit of a tussle, and some crawling around in corners and jiggling those universal adaptor plug things, I’ve finally got the laptop set up and connected to Wi-Fi. The agency here have housed me in one of the company’s studio apartments. It’s a very comfortable bed-sitting room, with miniature kitchen and bathroom, so I can make meals for myself, but there’s also a bistro on the ground floor, which is very useful.
‘Didn’t we have a truly memorable and brilliant time last night! It stayed with me all the way across the English Channel. Thank you. I’m counting down until the next time.
‘I didn’t phone earlier because of a small misunderstanding at Charles de Gaulle airport about a piece of my luggage – you wouldn’t believe how long it took to get it sorted out. My case had unaccountably got mixed up with somebody else’s luggage, so I had to go along to an airport office and identify it. This was fair enough; the trouble was that I discovered I had lost the key to that particular case, (which could happen to anyone).
‘But then it seemed that claim was also being laid to the case by a French Monsignor, who had lost an identical piece of luggage. Can you believe the airport staff asked me to list the contents of my suitcase? I had to do so in a crowded airport office, with masses of people milling around listening. I swear the officials beckoned in one or two travellers whose planes were delayed – presumably with the idea of providing a bit of entertainment to help them to while away the wait.
‘Anyway, I said, very firmly, that there were clothes and shoes in the case, but they said that was too vague, and pointed out that the French Monsignor had also said clothes and shoes. So please, could I be more specific?
‘I said if they couldn’t distinguish between the garments of an English lady and those of a French cleric, matters had come to a pretty pass. (He was seventy-five if he was a day, for goodness’ sake. Although an absolute lamb.)
‘So then I said there was a set of black silk underwear, which I supposed no one would ascribe to a gentleman of the cloth, after which I threw discretion to the winds by telling them I had packed it because I was expecting my lover to join me for a weekend. You’d think the French would understand such a thing, wouldn’t you, but they looked scandalized, although to be fair that might have been due to the Monsignor’s presence. (He was very politely pretending not to understand – what a gentleman.)
‘Then I remembered that there was a hot-water bottle in the suitcase with a knitted pink cover (present from Miss Pringle, the dear love), and I thought that would clinch my ownership, although it threw them for a few moments, because you could see that although they could certainly slot together a lover and black silk lingerie, the inclusion of the hot-water bottle confused them utterly.
‘Thankfully, at that point the Monsignor stepped forward and said he must retract (or it might have been rescind or even recant) all claim to the suitcase, because he certainly did not have a hot-water bottle amongst his luggage, although he thought I was very wise to have brought one, because Paris could be très froid at nights. (We didn’t mention the black silk underwear.)
‘I signed one or two forms, and somebody went off to make a new search for the Monsignor’s missing case. We all parted very amicably; in fact the Monsignor invited me to take you to have lunch with him if you do manage a weekend. He’s a very charming gentleman and he’s given me his card and it looks as if he lives in a very respectable part of the city.
‘While I’m here I’ll see if there are any traces of Scaramel. That poster in Linklighters referred to her being back “Fresh from her triumphs in Paris”. I don’t suppose there will be anything, but I’ll try.
‘And I’ll look forward to hearing about your explorations into the underground river cellar. Don’t fall into that, will you, and don’t get tangled up in anything dangerous or seductive while I’m away.
Arabella.’
Phin enjoyed this missive very much, although he thought that the chances of Arabella finding any trace of Scaramel in Paris were slight.
He sent a reply, promising to see about fitting in a weekend, pointed out as diplomatically as possible the necessity for being wary of charming and courteous gentlemen in airports, no matter their apparent religious affinities, and requested Arabella on no account to mislay the black silk underwear before he, Phin, could get to Paris.
After this, he returned to Professor Liripine’s letters in a much happier frame of mind, and began to sift carefully through them.
In the main they were, as the professor had said, from Liszt’s more decorous years, but they were interesting and they would be useful. Phin worked systematically through them, typing notes on to the computer as he went.
It was getting on for midnight when he turned over the last of the letters, and he was just thinking he might call it a night. All around him the house and its various occupants had fallen into silence, although there had been a series of thuds from Toby Tallis’s flat shortly after eleven, followed by some muffled feminine giggling, which suggested Toby had not returned home alone from his night out. Good for Toby.
The last document from Professor Liripine was a photocopy of a newspaper cutting from an old French newspaper. Phin saw with relief that the professor, efficient and thorough as ever, had sent a separate sheet with the translation.
He adjusted the desk lamp so that its light fell more strongly on the page, and began to read.
SPLENDID AND MOVING TRIBUTE TO MAESTRO
TEN-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF VIRTUOSO FRANZ LISZT CELEBRATED
Music lovers and faithful admirers of the works of Franz Liszt gathered at the Hall de la Mélodie on Saturday evening to celebrate the great man’s music ten years after his death at a concert aptly titled, ‘Liszten to the Symphonies’.
Liszten. The word seemed almost to explode off the page. Liszten. As in, Liszten for the Killer, thought Phin. I won’t leap to any conclusion, though, not yet. That play on Liszt’s name must have been used many times.
Or had it? Could this be the definite link between Scaramel and Liszt he had been trying to find? There was no date, but the ten-year anniversary of Liszt’s death would have to make it 1896. He read on.
The concert was a glittering and well-attended occasion; the hall being packed with people from many walks of life, although it is understood that the organizer wishes to remain anonymous. This newspaper does, of course, respect that, although one source has suggested that it was a lady whom Herr Liszt had greatly admired in his last years.
[We courteously remind our readers that Herr Liszt was a gallant gentleman when it came to the company of ladies.]
The orchestra was applauded enthusiastically, and encored several times. After the performances a lavish supper was provided by Maison dans le Parc. M’sieur Alphonse himself presided over the tables.
A charming note came immediately before supper, when bouquets and beribboned magnums of champagne were carried out by two small children and presented to the conductor, the soloists, and the first violinist.
We understand the children to be twins, and they curtseyed and bowed with grave politeness. It was not possible to obtain their full names, but it is understood that they are English, and that their first names are Morwenna and Mervyn.
They were delightfully dressed in the costumes of Harlequin and Columbine.
Phin read the article a second time and then a third. It’s all there, he thought. The pieces from the mystery. Or is it? Let’s look at it fragment by fragment.
First of all, the anonymous organizer. Scaramel? She had not sounded like a lady who would have shied away from publicity, but perhaps she had wanted to be discreet about a liaison with Liszt. Did the dates fit for an actual liaison, though? Liszt was born in 1811, and Scaramel’s heyday seemed to have been the late 1880s and early 1890s. So she could have been born anywhere from 1840 to 1860, which would have meant an age gap of anything from thirty to fifty years. Phin conceded that a liaison would not have been impossible, but remembered that Liszt had written to Cosima that while he had a great admiration for Scaramel, he had added rather sadly that nowadays such admirations were a matter of the mind only. So Phin was inclined to think there had not been any actual bed bouncing, and that what Liszt had felt for Scaramel had been an old man’s benevolent but sexless passion.
How about the play on Liszt’s name? Liszten – this time it was ‘Liszten to the Music’. Was that coincidence? Or had Scaramel known about the Liszten for the Killer sketch?
But for the moment it was the twins who were attracting his attention – the two small children dressed for the glittering occasion as Harlequin and Columbine. It’s the commedia dell’arte motif again, thought Phin. The famous Italian ‘comedy of art’ from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harlequin and Columbine and all those other characters – Punchinello and Pantalone. And, of course, Scaramouche – the feminine version of which was Scaramel.
Would anyone other than a flamboyant music hall artiste known to the world as Scaramel – a lady who performed at a place situated in Harlequin Court – have dressed those two children in those particular costumes?
Staring at the names, the images dancing tantalizingly across his mind, Phin was gradually aware of a tugging in his mind. Something he had found earlier, was it? Relevant to the twins? Their costumes? Their names? Their names. He reached for the book in which he had found the original mention of Scaramel, and flipped through the pages. Here it was.
‘There is a song from the era (i.e. the 1880s and early 1890s), which referred to the murder … The composer of the song’s music is not known, but one source suggested that the song’s lyrics had been written by a Welsh writer.’
Welsh. A Welsh writer. And here were twins, turning up at a concert connected to Liszt and probably to Scaramel as well. And those twins had unmistakably Welsh names – names that were not very common, and that surely would not have been common at all in late nineteenth-century Paris. Phin closed the book thoughtfully. He still could not see how any of these pieces fitted together, but he would certainly have to find out more. He went to bed with an increasing conviction that there was something in Linklighters he had missed.