The Devil in Music (10 page)

"I
can't imagine," said Donati. "He knew I was going to do
something to help him. Perhaps he'll come back, or write to me."

"Let
me know at once if he does. He may well be the person best able to
give a description of Orfeo. He fought with him he must have had to
take a good look at him. I wonder Ah, Madonna! Of course!"
Raversi began walking excitedly back and forth. "Orfeo
deliberately picked that quarrel with him! He wanted to drive him
away from the villa, so that there would be no one young and
able-bodied to protect Lodovico! Maestro, have you any idea where
Tonio might have gone?"

"No,
Signor Conte. He had no family, and few friends."

"Hm.
I'll ask Comandante Von Krauss to have his men look for him as well
as Orfeo. But now I must go to Castello Malvezzi and break the news
of Lodovico's death to his servants. Signor Ruga, will you be good
enough to come with me? I wish to make a search for evidence, and
your assistance would be useful."

"Yes,
of course, Excellency! I'm at your service."

Left
alone, Donati played the piano and considered where to find new Eyes.
Perhaps some young singer at the Conservatory in Milan would barter
his services for lessons. Donati would make enquiries directly he
returned to Milan. He hoped that would be soon. He longed for the
familiarity of the city streets, the spring season at La Scala,
Ricordi's music shop. This lake was an ill-omened, treacherous
place. He wished with all his heart he had never come never known
that sweet voiced Englishman who might be criminal or victim,
fugitive or martyr.

Two
days passed. Nothing was heard of Orfeo or Tonio. Peasants poured
into Solaggio to see the marchese's body laid out in all its finery
in the church, but no one seemed to suspect he had met his death by
foul play. There was a good deal of speculation about why the
soldiers were seeking Orfeo. It was rumoured he had run away when
his patron died because he did not want to be forced to account for
the favours he had received. But the more popular theory was that he
had taken advantage of the marchese's death to pinch something.

On
the third day after the murder, Rinaldo and his stepmother Beatrice
arrived at the lake. Donati had expected Rinaldo much earlier, since
Milan was only a few hours' journey away. But it seemed

Rinaldo
had not been in Milan when Raversi's messenger arrived. Donati did
not hear the details about this. He was given permission to leave
the lake and lost no time in returning to Milan.

Soon
after he arrived at his flat near the Conservatory, Conte Carlo
Malvezzi, Lodovico's brother, called and talked with him a while
about Lodovico's last days. Carlo lived in the neighbouring state of
Parma but happened to be paying a visit to Milan when Lodovico died.
Now he was staying on to meet with the Malvezzi family lawyer,
because Lodovico's will had appointed him executor.

At
intervals over the next few weeks, high-ranking police officials came
to question Donati about the murder. But either their efforts to
solve it slackened, or they ran out of things to ask; at all events
their visits tapered off, and there was silence.

In
token of her husband's high regard for Donati, Marchesa Beatrice
settled a pension on him, which he accepted gratefully. Freed from
financial worries, he retired to the university town of Pavia, some
twenty miles south of Milan. There he heard with increasing concern
about the political repression that was sweeping the Italian states.
The revolts in Naples and Piedmont were brutally put down. In Milan
and Venice, the special commission appointed to deal with the
Carbonari flourished. Respected aristocrats, artists, and
professional men were arrested, subjected to secret trials and
humiliating public sentences, and trundled off to prison fortresses
in the far corners of the Austrian empire.

Donati
wondered whether, in this atmosphere of suspicion and secrecy, it
would ever be deemed safe to reveal that Lodovico had been murdered.
How could the government do so, when it must admit it had neither
solved the murder nor found any trace of Orfeo? Donati tried not to
think about it. He had plenty to keep him occupied: he was writing a
treatise about singing techniques, and he still took pupils
occasionally. Yet he could never hear the de profundis without
thinking of Lodovico's soul unquiet, his murder unavenged. Out of
the depths I cry out to thee, O Lord. But no one seemed to be
listening anymore.

PART
TWO

September
1825

In
Italy? Unhappy land! she has ever been the reward of victory.. .
What can be attempted between two powerful nations, which, sworn
ferocious and eternal enemies to each other, make alliance together,
merely to enfetter us? Where their strength is insufficient, the one
deceives us with the enthusiasm of liberty; the other, with the
fanaticism of religion. And do we, wholly undone by our ancient
servitude, and our modern licentiousness, groan like vile slaves,
betrayed, famished, and instigated to action, neither by treachery
nor by want?

Ugo
Foscolo

The
Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis

(from
an 1818 translation)

for
the third day in a row, the newspapers were full of the murder of
Lodovico Malvezzi. Julian Kestrel collected all the latest accounts
and took them into the window-seat of the little inn parlour he
shared with Dr. MacGregor. The rain was falling in sheets, as it
had ever since they arrived. Geneva was a grey city on a greyer
lake, against a pale grey sky.

MacGregor
came in, plunking down a china cup disgustedly on a table. "They've
made the tea too strong again. I might as well chew the tea leaves
and be done with it! No use asking them to do it over it comes back
as hot water with a leaf or two floating on the top."

"The
natives prefer coffee," said Julian, almost as patiently as if
they had not had this conversation a hundred times.

"Hmph!
That bitter black stuff you drink!"

Julian
went to the coffee-pot and poured himself another cup. It was the
closest he cared to come to a gesture of defiance. Why quarrel with
MacGregor now, when they had travelled so far without an open row,
and would soon be parting company?

He
had meant well, inviting MacGregor on this journey. The two of them
had known each other a little over a year, having met when Julian
solved what was now known as the Bellegarde Murder. Since then, they
had formed as close a friendship as was possible between a
sixty-year-old country surgeon and a London beau less than half his
age. A month ago, Julian stopped to visit MacGregor on his way home
from a shooting trip, and learned that MacGregor's old friend and
mentor, Dr. Greeley, had died after a long illness. Ordinarily
MacGregor soon rallied from any disappointment or sorrow: hard work
was his tonic, and religion his consolation. But neither seemed able
to lift his spirits now. One day he happened to mention that he had
spent his whole adult life in Alderton, his Cambridgeshire village,
and had never been out of Great Britain. Julian thought it would do
him good to get away from his patients and obligations to see that
there was more to life than his work, and much more to the world than
Alderton. He himself was about to depart on one of his periodic
trips to Italy, and on an impulse he asked MacGregor to go with him.
At first MacGregor made all sorts of objections: this or that patient
needed him, the autumn always brought on sickness, the local squire's
first grandchild was due in December. In the end he consented to go,
but only for a limited time, and not as far as Italy.

From
the moment they docked in Calais, MacGregor did nothing but complain.
The food was unwholesome, the Catholic Church was corrupt, the
French were rude and sly, everything cost too much. When Julian
pointed out that British tourists were largely responsible for
driving up the prices, MacGregor grumbled that they would do much
better to stay at home.

Of
course the two of them were wholly incompatible in their tastes.
Julian wanted to go to the theatre, the opera, art collections; he
also liked inspecting police offices and gaols. MacGregor preferred
to visit hospitals, asylums, and scientific institutions. Julian was
willing to go to such places he even found them interesting. But he
resented the fact that it was invariably he who yielded graciously to
MacGregor's wishes. MacGregor had none of the gentleman's skills of
adapting or dissembling. His rugged honesty was one of the things
Julian most respected about him but he had never had to live with it
for an extended period before. Unwilling to abandon MacGregor to
struggle with foreign languages and customs, he had no choice but to
forgo many of his own pursuits. In Paris, he saw little of his
friends, eschewed the gaming-houses of the Palais Royale, and hardest
to bear! got no closer to the female dancers of the Paris Opera than
a third-tier box. It was his most chaste sojourn in Paris in years,
which did not improve his temper.

All
the while, MacGregor fretted about his patients. When they reached
Geneva he announced he would go no farther, and Julian could not help
feeling relieved to be rid of him. Yet he told MacGregor he ought
not to leave Switzerland without getting a better look at the Alps.
MacGregor rejoined that he had seen the Scottish highlands, and they
were mountains enough for anybody. After all, how different was one
mountain from another? Julian gave it up. As far as he could tell,
MacGregor had gotten nothing whatsoever out of this journey. Perhaps
his stubborn dedication to work was admirable, but Julian could only
pity him for all that he missed. He himself might be too susceptible
to beauty, but better that than to hear Madame Pasta sing or see
Notre-Dame, and feel nothing.

MacGregor's
voice recalled him to the here and now. Pointing to the pile of
newspapers in the window-seat, he said, "That murder again?"

Julian
nodded. "There's some fresh news today, but not as much as I'd
hoped for. The Italian papers are too heavily censored, and the
Swiss aren't well enough informed. Still, they can't keep away from
the story. How could they? It's an opera plot, a Gothic novel if it
had happened anywhere but in Italy, it would be impossible to
credit."

"It
all sounds like moonshine to me. How could a nobleman like this
Lodovico Malvezzi be shot to death without anyone's knowing a blessed
thing about it for four and a half years?"

"The
authorities put it about that he died of heart failure."

"And
they got a doctor to swear to that?" MacGregor was scandalized.

"In
Austrian Italy, my dear fellow, people swear to much more remarkable
things."

"But
why keep the murder a secret?" MacGregor jumped up and paced
back and forth, as he always did when they were wrestling with a
murder case. Julian felt it was quite like old times. "The
authorities must have known they'd be tying their own hands when it
came to solving it."

"I
don't know if I can make you understand what Italy was like in those
days. I was travelling there, and I remember the climate of
suspicion and fear: the long stops and searches on borders, the
constant surveillance by police, the arrests of men like Silvio
Pellico, the greatest living playwright in Italy, and the philosopher
Melchior Gioia. There'd been a series of radical conspiracies and
rebellions, and the Austrian government was determined to suppress
them. As best I can tell from the newspaper accounts, Lodovico
Malvezzi's murder was viewed as a political assassination, and I
daresay the authorities feared that, if it became known, it might
spark a political conflagration."

"It
sounds as if they'd lost their heads completely."

"Governments
do," said Julian with a shrug. "My father told me about
the anti-Jacobin panics in England after the French Revolution:
political meetings suppressed, people tried for treason just for
holding opinions offensive to the government. But at least we have a

parliament
and some semblance of liberty. Italian rulers can do more or less as
they like."

MacGregor
absently took up his cup and saucer and began drinking the
unpalatable tea. "How did the truth about the murder finally
come out?"

"The
newspapers say that about a fortnight ago, an old woman who'd
prepared the body for burial turned contrite on her deathbed and told
how she'd been sworn to secrecy about the bullet hole in the chest.
I imagine the Milanese authorities were acutely embarrassed. They
probably hadn't intended to conceal the murder so long, but when they
failed to solve it, they found it increasingly awkward to admit
they'd kept it dark. Now I expect it will be a point of honour with
them to catch the murderer or someone they can pass off as the
murderer. The marchese was a staunch friend to the Austrians, and
they aren't so popular in Milan that they can afford to neglect their
duty toward their friends. Besides, the marchese's family has been
kicking up hell's delight. The authorities didn't tell even them
that he'd been murdered, and now his brother is demanding to know why
Orfeo the English singer I told you of hasn't been found, and what
the authorities mean to do about it."