Again, seat D17 was empty. Voytek’s unreliable friend was still unreliable. Troy didn’t care. The mystery was not the empty seat, it was the woman herself. She’d sent a stage hand to find him and deliver yesterday’s ticket—how had she even known he was in Vienna?
None of that mattered a damn while she played. She’d send him back to London with a mission to lock himself away and listen to Mozart’s Twenty-seventh with fresh ears.
In the interval, the same stage hand appeared, smiled faintly at Troy, as though embarrassed by the routine, handed Troy another envelope.
“Wird unser Freund auch mitkommen?” Troy asked. Will our friend be joining us?
Again all Troy received by way of reply was “Entschuldigung.”
It paid to know nothing.
Inside the envelope was another of her notes.
“Come to me after the Brahms. Dressing room #3. MV.”
Brahms? He’d not even asked for a programme. Brahms? What Brahms?
But when the first notes, the descending and ascending thirds of what Troy thought might be the most haunting allegro in music, struck up, he knew it was the Fourth Symphony, and that the mystery of Voytek could be set to simmer while the mystery of Brahms burned.