The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9 Part 22

"I see." (But I didn't.) "I want the piece to be sung within a week of her death, as a direct statement of my grief and sense of loss."

"Of course, I quite understand ... You might find it advisable to let the orchestra and choir rehea.r.s.e as much as possible in advance."

"Ah yes, I see. Well spoken, Mr Mozart. It must be done in the most tactful way possible."

"Totally secret, I would suggest. The public prints take any opportunity for ridicule ... Now I think our business is over?"

"You accept my conditions? And will compose the work entirely in this house, and leave the ma.n.u.script and any notes here always?"

"I do accept, and will write the piece as you stipulate."

We shook hands on it. I had not thought it necessary to mention that nothing in the "safeguards" prevented me from writing out a second copy at home when I was satisfied with a movement.

On the following evening a message arrived from Pickles Palace (as I called it in my mind) with the news that the Danish couple I had recommended, Hr Bang and Dr Olufsen, had been and tuned the piano. No expense spared, obviously. I felt quite sure Mr Pickles noticed no difference.

I began work next day. An anteroom next to the drawing room was a.s.signed entirely to me the lowly room being chosen not to downgrade my position and purpose in the household but to give easy access to the piano. I say "began work" but I had begun work on it in my heart before Mr Cazalet had closed the front door. It was to be a work not full of grandeur, still less grandiloquence, with no trace of suffering or h.e.l.lfire. It was to be gentle, gracious, kind on the ear a feminine Requiem, you might say, for the wife of a wealthy industrialist who must surely be his superior in manners, knowledge of the genteel world, and kindness.

On my third day of working in Pickles Palace, when I was just completing the Sanctus, which I had decided to write first, I had the honour of a visit. I was sitting in the great drawing room, with welcome spring suns.h.i.+ne coming through the high windows, and trying things over on the piano, which was now a superb instrument and sounding like one. I was conscious after a time that I was not alone. I looked round in the direction of the door towards the hall, and saw a figure standing near the fire.

"Very beautiful, Mr Mozart. Very lovely."

The voice came as if from a great distance. It was genteel no, aristocratic and it proceeded from a slim, graceful yet commanding woman of perhaps thirty-five or forty, elegantly dressed in a loose-fitting day gown. What a contrast she made to the mighty Pighills himself!

"I am honoured by your approval. Do I have the pleasure of-?"

"Mercy Pickles," she said, distaste creeping into her tones. "I hope you will create one of the great ecclesiastical musical works. It should have a life beyond the immediate one marking the death of my husband's mother."

"Mo-?" I pulled myself up. "I suppose all composers would like to think their works will last."

"He is very fond of his mother," she said, in the same distant tones she had used hitherto. "She used to make the mill-children's gruel and beat them when they went to sleep. Naturally he's devoted to her, but I found her less than charming."

"A wife seldom gets on with her husband's mother," I said.

"When my father sold me, at the age of sixteen, to a man more than twice my age, his mother made it her business to make my life an endless swamp of misery. When she suffered the onset of senility I made it my business to return her treatment in kind. It palled after a time. There was little joy in mistreating someone so far removed from the world that she could not appreciate the fact that she was being mistreated. Now all I wish is that she would hurry up dying." She stopped, possibly feeling she had said too much. "And then we can all hear your wonderful Requiem." She thought for a second, then said: "Take care, Mr Mozart."

She glided from the room. "Take care" is a popular form of farewell that sat ill with her aristocratic air. But perhaps she meant it to be taken not as a courtesy but a warning.

My first encounter with the Pickles sons was no less confusing, but even more thought-provoking. I was playing over a first sketch for the Libera Me section a grand, sweeping theme with a hint of yearning when the doors of the drawing room opened and two young men began a progress across the great expanse of the drawing room, talking loudly. I went on playing. The voices rose to a crescendo. I was intrigued and stopped playing to listen. The voices immediately ceased. I was impressed: they knew enough about music to notice when it stopped. They turned round and saw me.

"You must be Mr Thingummy."

I waited. I am not a Mr Thingummy.

"Mozart."

It was the taller of the two. He p.r.o.nounced it Mo-zart instead of Moat-zart, a deplorable English habit. However I bowed a reward for a good try. They began over towards me.

"You're the johnny who's teaching my father composition."

"Well, not-"

"You've got a hard job on your hands. You're starting from scratch."

"Typical of my father," came from the shorter boy. "Wasting our inheritance on futile projects. Who will believe that he wrote it?"

"And who would believe," chimed in the older boy, "that he'd lavish all that money and time on a d.a.m.ned librarian?"

"A d.a.m.ned what?" I couldn't stop myself saying.

"Faithful servant and all that. But a piece of music? Choirs and solo singers, orchestral johnnies, the whole caboodle. For a book-duster? It should be a case of, when he dies, slipping a ten-pound note to his widow."

"He's not married, Jimmy," said the other. "Not at all, if you get me."

"Well, in that case you're ten pounds to the good." The pair turned and resumed their marathon.

It was around this point in the execution of the contract that Mr Pickles began to take a more active interest in the progress of my composition. I found one afternoon when I went to play over the day's inspirations that cups and jugs of chocolate had been set out on a small table, and I had no sooner begun playing than a footman came in with napkins and biscuits (biscuits are my weakness but the servants so far had not remembered to offer me any), followed a second or two later by Mr Pickles, who sat himself down and to be fair to him listened. At the first pause in the playing he called me over.

"Mr Mozart, you must be in need of refreshment."

I bowed my head briefly, and made my way over. He had poured into my cup some of the fragrant refresher, while pouring himself a cup from the other jug. Made with the finest Brazilian coffee beans, he explained. It was a country with which his mills had strong financial links. The drink was slightly bitter-tasting but acceptable.

"So how is it going, then? Are you well on the way?"

I had the reputation for extreme facility in the writing of my scores. It was a reputation fully justified when it concerned my pieces written to order for members of the aristocracy or the theatre. Still, four weeks for a full-scale Requiem was ridiculous.

"I have five movements well advanced, either on paper or in my head," I said. "I have fragments of ideas for the other nine sections. Time will tell which are usable."

"Ah yes. This question of time-"

I was so daring as to interrupt him.

"Great work is not done in days. Remember, sir, I have strong connections with Kensington Palace. If the princess on whom all our hopes turn hears this is a workaday piece that anyone could have written she will not attend. But if it is a work worthy of Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart then she will come if I persuade her, and I will not need to say anything about my partic.i.p.ation in the piece."

"Oh my!" said my patron, as if he could barely comprehend the joyful possibility. "A magnificent prospect! A wonderful culmination to our mutual collaboration."

What a mutual collaboration was I could not guess. All we had was a willingness to pay money on one side and an eagerness to accept it on the other, a purely commercial transaction.

So things went on. Now and then Mrs Pickles came in, usually listened for a time, then went out possibly with a ba.n.a.l compliment, sometimes with a barbed remark about her husband or his family, depending on her mood. The boys (James and Seymour were their names, the second being his mother's family name) came either singly or together, greeted me with "Hi" or "Good morning", and sometimes added a sarcastic comment, such as "Earning your daily crust, eh, Mr Mozart?" I didn't like them. Their father was at least fond of music, even if he knew nothing about it. The boys were simply vessels, without learning or achievement. I heard from the servants that they were both very deep in gambling debts.

The course of my time with the Pickleses changed one afternoon at the beginning of May. I had been forced, on my way out of Pickles Palace, to make a quick visit to the privy, the nature of which I won't go into. I was just was.h.i.+ng my hands in the bowl of lukewarm water renewed every hour by a lower footman, when I heard two voices pa.s.sing along the corridor outside. One was Mr Cazalet, whose work in the library prevented my having much to do with him while I was in the house, and the other was his, and temporarily my, employer, Isaac Pickles.

"The uncertainty is playing on your mind, I fear, sir."

"Oh, I'm perfectly all right. Masterpieces are not made in days, or even months, as Mr Mozart says. But I worry a little about him. He is not a young man. He looks increasingly ill every time I see him."

"I see him very little," said Mr Cazalet neutrally.

"Just so long as he lasts long enough to complete the great work," came Mr Pickles's voice fading down the long corridor. Then I heard him laugh a silly, childish laugh. I stayed in the privy, frozen to the spot, looking at my reflection in the gla.s.s.

I was not looking ill, not "increasingly ill" every time I came to the Pickleses. If I was, the Princess would have noticed and been concerned. She is very conscious of the great gap between my great age and her little one. She has so few congenial souls around her that she is desperate not to lose one of them. No, I was not looking more and more sickly.

On the other hand, there was the bowel trouble that had taken me to the privy in the first place.

There was another thing that troubled me: the foolish laugh as the pair disappeared from earshot. It sounded not just silly, but less than sane. Senile. And I thought of the fearsome mother now apparently sunk into imbecility for many years. Was senility heritable? Did that explain the mult.i.tude of reasons given for the Requiem's composition? To me it was for his wife; to his wife it was for his mother; to his thoughtless and senseless sons he gave the least likely explanation of all that it was for his librarian. It all sounded like a foolish j.a.pe. It suggested softening of the brain.

I told all this to the Princess Victoria at the beginning of her next lesson. Her performances that day were more than usually inaccurate and insensitive, and I drew her attention to this several times. Finally, as the lesson ended, she pulled down the piano lid and said: "I'm sorry to play so badly, Mr Mozart. The truth is, I am worried."

"Oh dear. Your mother and Sir John again?"

"Not at all. Well, yes, they are at it, but it's you I am worried about, and what you told me about Mr Pickles. Has it occurred to you that, if he is so concerned to hide the authors.h.i.+p of this Requiem, the most convenient death for him would be your own?"

I fear I was so surprised that I could make no adequate response. I took my leave, made for the door, and turned to bow my farewells. The Princess had not finished with me.

"What was the nature of this little room from which you overheard this interesting conversation, Mr Mozart?"

My mouth opened and shut and I scurried out to make my escape.

a.r.s.enic. That's what it was. I wondered at the Princess's knowledge of the ways of the criminal world, but then I remembered she had grown up surrounded by plots and conspiracies. Threats on her life (usually involving the Duke of c.u.mberland, the next in line to the throne) had been the staple of society and newspaper gossip. a.r.s.enic, the poison that is best administered first in small doses, leading up to a fatal dose. Illness of an internal kind is first established, than accepted as the cause of death. Simple.

And who, after all, questions the cause of death of a seventy-nine-year-old man? I was a sitting duck. And my murderer, insultingly enough, was a brain-softened vulgarian from the North of England!

On the next occasion, later that same week, that Mr Pickles came to hear my latest inspirations I put into action a cunning but simple plan. Standing by the small table, with the chocolate already poured out, I remarked to Mr Pickles that the magnificent proportions of the room were remarkably similar to those of St Margaret on the Square, one of the churches we had considered for the first performance of the Requiem. I suggested he go to the far end of the room to hear how my latest extracts, from the Benedictus, would sound. He was childishly delighted with my proposal. As he walked the length of the room I changed our cups around. The biter bit! I played some of the Benedictus and Mr Pickles expressed his delight: the music penetrated to the far end of the room and was wonderful. We resumed our discussion over chocolate and I looked closely to see if a grimace came over the Pickles face when he tasted it, but I could see nothing.

My next conversation with a member of the Pickles family came two days later. I was sketching a crucial moment in the Rex Tremendae when the door to my little anteroom opened and the younger son, Seymour, put his head in.

"I say, Mr Mo-zart."

"Yes?"

"This Requiem you're writing and pretending my Dad did it all who is it supposed to be for? I mean, who is it commemorating, if that's the right word? Eh? Who is dead?"

"I believe it is to commemorate your mother."

"Well, she's alive and blooming and if she's ill she's quite unaware of it. And we'd that's Jimmy and me heard it was for Cazalet the book johnnie. d.a.m.ned unlikely, what? And now I've heard it is for Gran, who is alive but not so you'd notice and there won't be much difference when she finally goes over the finis.h.i.+ng line."

"I couldn't comment. Maybe your father is confused. Many people who have lived exceptionally active lives do get ... brain-tired earlier than most of us. Or perhaps he has just been joking."

"Pater doesn't joke. And a Requiem's a pretty funny thing to joke about. But you think senility, maybe? I think I ought to talk to a lawyer. He could be declared non compos. Stop him throwing his money around."

"I doubt it. I have seen no signs of it except for the stories about the Requiem. His condition would have to be much further advanced before you could start trying to jump into his shoes."

"I say, you make it sound unpleasant. I mean, I'm deuced concerned-"

I got up and shut the door on him.

A crisis in an affair such as this should not be too long delayed. In a comedy it would come in the third act, with the outcome in the last. Two days after my conversation with Seymour, Isaac Pickles and I had one of our afternoon meetings. We talked first, I explained my aims in the Tuba Mirum, he got up of his own accord and by the time he reached the end of the room the jugs had been s.h.i.+fted round and I was at the piano ready to play and add a sketchy vocal performance as well.

"Enthralling, Mr Mozart," he said, when he returned to the table. "You have excelled yourself as I always say because you always do." He took up his little jug of chocolate, poured it into his cup, added sugar, stirred, and then took a great, almost a theatrical gulp at it.

It was as if his eyes were trying to pop out of his face with astonishment he let out a great, flabbergasted yell, then cried out in fear and outrage. As he weakened he bellowed something a command, a query, a protestation of innocence. I could only a.s.sume he had put a hefty dose of a.r.s.enic in my chocolate jug, and was now really getting the taste of it for the first time. I ran to the door, but before I got there Seymour had appeared through the door at the room's other end, and before I could shout servants were running into the room from all quarters. When I got back to the table the butler was trying to induce vomiting, others were banging him on the shoulders or trying to put their fingers down his throat. Soon two footmen came with a stretcher and said the doctor had been sent for. He was taken, crying out and retching, to his bedroom. The family physician arrived twenty minutes later. By six o'clock in the evening he was dead. The doctor, though he had not been consulted recently, heard from servants and family Isaac Pickles's complaints about an upset stomach. The lower footman who serviced the privies gave more specific evidence. The doctor signed the certificate. I was left to ponder what in fact had happened.

On the long walk back to my house in Covent Garden I subjected my a.s.sumption to detailed scrutiny. Would a man who had just popped a hefty dose of a.r.s.enic into my chocolate jug take a first taste of his own chocolate in the form of a ma.s.sive gulp? I would have thought that, however confident he was of having got the right cup, some primitive form of self-protection would ensure he took a modest sip.

Then again, why would he try to poison me now? The Requiem was barely half complete in rough form. If he had waited a few months it could have been in the sort of shape that would mean it could be completed by one of my pupils the dutiful but uninspired Frank Sussman sprang to mind. Certainly Isaac Pickles couldn't complete it himself. By poisoning me at this point he was spoiling all his own plans, mad as they were, by killing the goose that was laying the golden egg. If senility was setting in and I rather thought it was it was strongly affecting his judgement and his logic and causing him to act in his own worst interests.

Was there an alternative explanation? The chocolate, on days when Mr Pickles intended honouring me with his company, was put outside the drawing room on an occasional table, the jugs protected by their padded cosies. When Pickles arrived the chocolate was brought in by the footman if one was around, or by the Great Man himself if one was not. Either outside the drawing room or once he'd got in Mr Pickles added a small amount of a.r.s.enic to my jug or my cup. His plan was a very small increase in amount so that my death could be timed to coincide with the completion (or the as-near-as-makes-no-difference completion) of the Requiem. He was already anxiously scrutinizing my appearance and convincing himself I was looking ill, as in the early stages of the operation I must have been.

Someone knew I was switching the jugs or the cups. Someone knew that, after a certain time, the a.r.s.enic was going not to me but to the master of the house instead.

Two days after Pickles's death I received a note from Mr Cazalet "written at the request of Mrs Pickles" expressing the hope that I would continue with the Requiem "so that it may be ready in the course of time to commemorate the melancholy pa.s.sing of her husband." The note did not say that the old conditions no longer applied and I could compose the remaining movements in the comfort of my own house, so I was ent.i.tled to a.s.sume that the conditions were still in force. I hoped by returning to Pickles Palace I could be in a position to solve the mysteries of its master's death.

The eclairciss.e.m.e.nt was not slow coming. After three hours spent in composing (initial uneasiness being settled by the glorious business of creation) I went to the drawing room to play through the near-complete section of the Kyrie with occasional contributions from my own fallible voice. As I drew to a close, the far door was opened and the figure of Mrs Pickles wafted towards me.

"Ah, Mr Mozart. Still gloriously in full flood, I'm glad to hear."

I bowed.

"You do me too much honour."

"The tenor solo you sang yourself reminded me of the soprano solo in the Benedictus. I suppose that is intentional?"

She looked at me as she spoke. I held her gaze.

"Intentional of course ... So you have heard some of my compositions for the Requiem already perhaps from the far door?"

"Retreating when my husband came down to test the acoustics yes."

"And perhaps at other times taking peeps through the keyhole?"

"Yes. It's rather a large one, conveniently. I could not see you at the piano but I had a good view of the little table and chairs. And of course of the tray, with the jugs under the cosies."

"I see," I said, unusually stuck for words.

"As soon as I saw your little manoeuvres with the jugs or the cups I knew that my warning had at last got through to you. My husband was in the grip of vast senile fantasies in which he was recognized as a great composer. I feared the logical outcome of these delusions, and of all the silly games he played in the household over the person to whom it was to be a memorial, would have to be your death ... But a.r.s.enic is a slow-working poison in small doses, and when my husband became your intended victim because I knew that is what he would have become I decided to hurry the process up, for reasons I will not go into."

She looked at me.

"It has worked very well," I said. "For both of us."

"For both of us indeed," she said. "I will leave you to your great work. Please remember that if any of this gets out, the first victim of the authorities' suspicions will be yourself. Farewell, Mr Mozart. We shall doubtless meet when the Requiem is performed. You will what do they call this new trick? conduct, will you not? I shall play the afflicted widow to the best of my abilities."

And that was how my involvement with the Pickleses ended. When, four months later, the Requiem was performed at St Margaret's (a church whose vicar went in for the newfangled business of Catholic ritual and costuming), the glorious work was attributed to me, as all would have known in any case, and Mr Pickles's only look-in was as the "commissioner and dedicatee of the Requiem who tragically only lived to hear the first-written movements of the score". The Princess Victoria was present with her adulterous mother, and though she said she was "quite prepared to be bored" she had insisted on a place from where she could see the Pickles family, those whom I described in my introduction to the performance as "his grieving widow and his inconsolable sons" (one of whom had a racing journal hidden inside his word sheet). I also saw the family, both when I spoke at the beginning and at the end of the performance, acknowledging the silent (idiotic English habit in a church) expression of enthusiasm. I saw in one of the walled-off family pews a footman put around Mrs Pickles's shoulders a capacious black shawl, preparatory to attending her out to her carriage. There was on his thick-necked, rather brutal face something close to a leer.

Eight months after her husband's death Mrs Pickles was delivered of what was universally accepted to be a daughter of the late Isaac. The London house had been closed up and sold, and Mrs Pickles in charge of all family affairs until her sons (uncontrollably angry) reached the age of thirty had moved up North. A year after my last sight of her she had married one of her one-time footmen, now her steward. I hope this time she married for love, though my brief sight of him with her did not suggest it was a wise one.

"He reminds me of Sir John," said the Princess with a s.h.i.+ver. She was on the whole a forgiving little thing, but she never was able to reconcile herself to her mother's lover. I wondered whether, when she came to be our queen, her reign was going to be a lot less fun than most people were expecting.