Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3) Page 2

  Maybe he should have paid attention.

  Why ‘of course’?

  “Lord Tiptoft” said Lady. “On loan from Oxburgh Hall. That’s where you’re staying the weekend, to rest up after your engagement.”

  The mention rang a bell. Something Huffy, his agent at William Morris, had said when discussing the itinerary for the European Tour. “Oxburgh, yes,” Albert echoed in the way that made people think he was listening. “Near King’s Lynn.” He wanted to be convivial, and place-names touched upon one of his only areas of knowledge apart from music: geography. Maps had always held a particular fascination for him, and he knew where Norfolk, England was without even looking. “And will he be there?” he said, nodding at the painting with a different nod than the one he’d employed looking at the painting in the other room.

  Sir made that ruptured giggle noise again, and smiled in a friendly way. “He’ll, ah, well, not exactly. This portrait was painted long ago by a chap name of Lossburgh.” He waggled the stem of his pipe at a smudge in the corner of the painting. “The man in the painting is Lord Robert Tiptoft. This is the original, it says here, though there’s a copy in the National Gallery.

  “Long dead now, of course, old Tiptoft.”

  There it was again. How was Albert to know Lord Robert Tiptoft, much less that he was dead? Nobody told him. Or, if they did, he hadn’t been listening. He didn’t read newspapers.

  President Lincoln was dead, of course, and John Kennedy was dead, and his brother, what’s-his-name. And Martin Luther King. Probably there had been others. And now Lord Robert Tiptoft.

  “I’m sorry,” said Albert with as much sincerity as he could muster. That’s what you said when somebody told you that somebody else had died, and he wondered what the friends of the man had called him when he was a boy. ‘Lord?’ Probably Lordy. Kids abbreviate names. He remembered having been called ‘Al,’ but not by anyone who knew he played the piano. It made a difference, apparently. Huffy called him Al sometimes. But no one else. Jeremy Ash called him ‘A’.

  “Great mystery about this painting,” said Sir, who seemed to infer from noises his wife had made that he had permission to speak. “About a treasure of some kind.”

  “Treasure?” said Albert, to whom treasures were things that were buried. Tewksbury would be interested. He was an archaeologist and they enjoyed digging things up, and a treasure at the bottom of a hole might make such a tiresome chore seem worthwhile.

  But Tewksbury was dead, too. A treasure himself, waiting to be dug up.

  “And murder,” said Sir.

  Albert turned his gaze from the portrait and stood looking at Sir as if he’d been cudgeled on the back of the skull.

  “I say,” said Sir. “Are you quite all right?”

  Of all the terms that could be used to describe Albert at that moment, ‘all right,’ was not among them. A cavernous void was rushing at him from all directions. He was dizzy, spiraling downward, nauseous and groping for the edge of the well into which he was falling.

  Murder had found him again.

  Chapter Two

  Everyone has an opinion of England’s National Health Service. Every two-year old on the street who was brought into the world at government expense; every pensioner who lives in the hope that the System’s bankruptcy and his demise will be concurrent events; every Hyde Park anarchist, every dole-recipient of dubious national extraction; every member of the privileged class who is able to afford “real doctors rather than NHS pill-pushers”. No doubt the Queen and would-be kings in descending order all had an opinion. Whatever those opinions might be, however varied, one thing was unanimously agreed, the Sisters, which, for reasons Albert couldn’t ascertain, is what they call their nurses, were generally efficient, terse, and expected to be obeyed without question.

  This particular nurse, who was currently doing things of a highly personal nature to Albert, exemplified each of these characteristics without compromising the other. Albert watched her with interest and listened to the lilt of her accent as she talked, which she did without ceasing as if her next breath depended upon it. Most of the monologue was addressed to the various electronic or mechanical components that monitored or supported his person in some way and her observations and remarks were not always flattering. In the course of several minutes she had condemned the manufacturer of the IV bag to an untimely demise, preferably ‘by drowning after having been hung, eviscerated, and drawn-and-quartered.” This opprobrium was delivered with some emphasis as she slammed the second of two faulty plastic bags into a bedside bin. By the time she got around to asking a question to which he might he expected to respond, Albert had mentally traced her accent to Northern Ireland.

  Accents were the second and terminating item on the list of Albert’s extra-musical interests. They involved sound and, to him, that meant they more-or-less belonged under the same heading as music. He could parse their vibrations as easily as a sommelier could detect crushed rosebuds in Cabernet Sauvignon.

  The Sister bustled, and while she bustled, Albert studied her—practicing those skills of observation that unwonted experience of recent memory had awakened in him.

  A white plastic tab on her chest proved helpful insofar as it stated her name: Edna. Information beyond that it was reticent to divulge. So, her name was Edna and she was from the Northern Ireland which meant that, like himself, she was not native to London. What else? She was about his height which meant that, when he stood up, he would have someone with whom he could see eye-to-eye.

  He snickered. Albert had made a private joke. At forty-three he had lost his comical virginity.

  “You alright, then love?” said the Sister in response.

  “Yes.”

  She did some other things to him in areas that seemed, in his untrained medical opinion, to have little to do with the fainting spell that, as far as he knew, had landed him in her care. Her hands were cold. That was something Albert had observed about nurses and he wondered if they kept their hands in ice until they were needed. Probably something to do with freezing blood flow.

  She was plumpish, he supposed, with a bit more than necessary of everything that made her female. Her blue dress was crisp. Though it might be a kind of green. Or olive. Or beige. Albert wasn’t sure about colors. He knew that if you shined light on them in a certain way, they changed, and there was a point at which one color became another. Apparently no one else minded, so he generally ignored subtle distinctions. Now though, with time on his hands, he decided to pursue the problem. Perhaps he could come to a conclusion through the process of elimination. The dress wasn’t yellow, he was sure of that. Reasonably certain. He was equally sure, after some consideration, it wasn’t white, or black, or red, or orange.

  That left the possibility that it might be some color he’d seen in the ocean once. Or maybe the picture of an ocean. Or the sky. Or the little round disc at the bottom of the urinal.

  Well, he’d narrow it down some more later.

  He learned, in the course of her commentary, that she had a brother, Poor Benny, who had ‘gone to Hell with the IRA.’ Albert pictured a male version of Edna in the Museum, staring eternally at the wall of blotches and swirls. His plastic name tag read: Poor Benny.

  “So, you’re a piano player,” said Edna. That was a question he could answer.

  “Yes.”

  “My Aunt Mimi played piano at my wedding.Come Thou Font of Every Blessing. Lovely, that.”

  Albert was willing to be conversational. “Is that a song?”

  Edna shot him a skeptical glance, as if ignorance of the composition cast doubt upon both his claim to be a piano player and his theology. “‘course it is.” She’d stopped arranging him for a moment and gave him a quick visual examination. “American,” she said.

  Albert, unable to determine by the tone in which it was delivered whether the diagnosis was a question, an observation, or condemnation, bobbled his head about in a non-committal way. Whatever he guessed would be wrong, so non-comm
ittal was the best way to go in situations like this.

  “Ah, well,” she said, and began to fold a sheet that she seemed to have summoned from thin air. “Aunt Mimi was arealpiano player.” The implication was clear, though lost on Albert. “Church music,My Wild Irish Rose, Jenny O’ the Islands, The Charleston. You name it, she could play it. EvenRhapsody in Blue.” She started to hum something that could be part of any of these, for all he knew—titles were as obtuse to him as the Dorabella Cipher, which he’d read somewhere was something particularly obtuse—and danced around his bed with a pillow tucked under her chin as she struggled to wrestle it into a pillowcase.

  There were very few musical pieces Albert knew by name. He’d had occasion to learnThe Volga BoatmenandMy Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, recently. Beyond that, his memory for song titles was a bit iffy.

  More than a bit.

  Almost completely iffy.

  IfIffy were the name of a song, he might know it. But probably not.

  Titles were like your appendix, something that could be removed without anyone really noticing. His sister had had her appendix out and he had watched carefully to see if she looked different, or walked oddly, or leaked, or did anything that she didn’t normally do, but she didn’t. Not that he noticed. Of course, she was always doing odd things, but they were ordinary odd things. She was a female.

  Why titles, anyway? Why not just hum a bar or two? Humming was a language that made sense, and from which he could extrapolate the composition in question.

  Titles were for books.

  Miss Bjork would laugh to hear him say things like that. He wasn’t sure why. But that was okay. He’d liked the sound of her laugh, especially if he’d been the one to make her do it.

  That was music.

  Some people could to that on purpose. Make people laugh. He’d seen them in the teacher’s lounge at the School. Someone would say something, and everyone else would laugh. This baffled Albert. He had pretty good hearing. Exceptional, in fact. He could hear every single syllable that came out of the mouth of whoever was telling the joke, but could never hear whatever it was about whatever was said that made it funny. Somewhere in the sounds was a Hidden Meaning. That’s what he didn’t get.

  He’d wished he could have made Miss Bjork laugh on purpose. She’d have laughed at that one about seeing eye-to-eye with Edna. But that wasn’t something funny Albert had thought of on purpose. It just came to him from somewhere, as if he’d managed to read it on a bubblegum wrapper as it blew by in the street.

  He wished she wasn’t dead. He wished that so hard that his heart bled.

  Dead. Death. Murder.That’s why he was here. Someone had said something about murder, and everything had just gone blank. It was Sir, talking about the man in the blue pajamas. Lord Something or Other. Had someone murdered him? He looked healthy enough in the picture, but it was probably painted before he was killed.

  For most of his life, Albert had been kept in a bubble because, he was told, he was special. He was nine when some people convinced his mother he was so special that he should go to Julliard which is where he met Rudolf Firkušný, the only person who had ever seemed to understand him, or at least to understand that he couldn’t be understood. After three weeks, he’d called Albert’s mother and told her to come collect him. Albert had found the letter explaining the whole bizarre episode on his mother’s nightstand the night she and his sister had brought him home from South Station in Boston.

  Dated Monday, October 17th, 1949, it began politely with her first and last name, then, without preamble, addressed The Problem. ‘In all my experience, ma’am,’ it said, ‘and among all the gifted people I have known, Albert stands alone. Unique.’

  Albert had looked up the word. It was just another way of saying ‘special.’ He might have known. People had always called him that. The same way they described Marky Lindquist who came to church in a wheelchair. Whose head bobbed and dropped and rolled as he played an imaginary instrument in the air, and laughed and guffawed at all the wrong times, and drooled on the bib he wore around his neck. Marky, who Albert wanted to heal with an embrace, as Christ would have.

  He knew then what people thought of him, of both he and Marky. They were special. Except Marky was happy. He possessed some deep knowledge that eluded Albert.

  Maybe it was Albert who needed healing.

  ‘I have known many gifted composers and performers, Madam.’ Albert could hear the professor’s gravelly voice, his thick Czech accent. ‘Your son’s gift is beyond any of these. It is supernatural. I have sat on the bench beside him for hours on end as music poured fourth. Music? Not just music—the language of Heaven, Ma’am! Those who know me best would say I am not given to hyperbole. Quite the opposite. But sitting there at his elbow, watching his tiny fingers coax music from those keys—the same keys I play, to such sad effect, I realize now. I weep. I sob like a baby! But I watch his face, and there is nothing there. Utterly expressionless, he plays on, as if his hands—those marvelous little machines—are wired to the Mind of God, and he merely a witness, a bystander to the miracles they perform, as if they’re of no interest to him.

  ‘How can he be so unaware, so flawlessly mechanical while this fluid of genius flows with such tender expression? How can he be so detached?

  ‘Albert is a void, ma’am. A void in command of a raw creative energy that cannot, must not, be disciplined by instruction or confined by education, here at Julliard, or anywhere else.

  ‘Were I not a practical man, madam, I might suspect you, like Mary, of having been overshadowed by Providence, for I cannot think of any other union that would have produced such prodigy. Forgive me. I overstep myself.

  ‘Yet, there it is. I am frightened to think what continued residence here would do to him, what intercourse with this world might do to him. I cannot imagine he will fare well, but he is better with you who knows him, than here with us. What is to become of him, I cannot say, but I cannot bear the burden of his gift.

  ‘Truth be told, those of us of long experience have come to feel like hypocrites calling ourselves pianists when the conceit is humbled in his presence.

  ‘I have no suggestion, ma’am, beyond that you let him play. Let him compose, and let the world make of the results what it will.

  “Albert is not an ordinary mortal.

  Yours with humblest respect,

  Rudy’

  Reading those words, at nine years old, Albert read ‘special,’ like Marky. ‘A void’—a hole with nothing in it, he’d looked that up, too, just to be sure. ‘Unnatural,’ ‘not ordinary.’

  All of which could be easily interpreted: ‘Alone.’

  He needed no definition for that.

  No wonder they’d sent him back home. No wonder his Mother had bought the farm, way out in the country, where she could keep her little freak out of sight. Still, at the urging of experts whom she trusted, she had shipped him off from time to time. To Vienna, to Moscow, to Milan, but always he came back. Always those appointed to instruct him expressed their inability to do anything with him.

  ‘He is an idiot,’ said Francisco Ferimi of theCastelnuovo di Garfagnana, ‘in all things but music. A savant. Brilliant but utterly unteachable. I have nothing for him.’

  ‘Nothing for him here.’

  Or there. Or there.

  Meantime, his reputation among those at the highest levels of the professional concert community grew to almost legendary proportions. ‘He’s an old man compared to Mozart,’ was a common comment. Nevertheless, it was Mozart to whom he was compared.

  Such notoriety among the cognizenti couldn’t elude the pariahs for long, and soon an agent showed up on the porch of the farm and presented Albert’s mother with the Solution to The Problem. A world tour. All the best care, of course. All the best hotels. Limousines. First-class airfare. A private tutor. ‘Like van Cliburn! Only the best. Plenty of veggies and fish. What? Allergic to shellfish? Well, certainly, no shellfish! and we’ll have a certified English nanny
with him twenty-four hours a day. Every day.’

  Not clearly mentioned in the contract was that Albert would be driven to exhaustion by the agent’s hunger to squeeze every possible penny from him while he was still young enough to be a marketable curiosity, and not just another teenage prodigy, which were a dime a dozen.

  On one promise the agent had made good, though. He had catapulted Albert to the heights of international fame and, to the extent that he could, shielded him from the press and the public; though this was more a marketing tactic than arising from genuine concern. Mystique generated interest. ‘Albert does not speak to the press,’ got more press than fifty interviews. And press sold tickets.

  The Nanny’s name was Jane Finnig. She called Albert ‘Pinhead,’ and ‘Big Chief Little Fingers,’ and she didn’t like him because he was stupid and she didn’t like ‘his kind of music.’ She preferred Elvis and The Big Bopper and other names she apparently made up from some fairytale menagerie in her head.

  In public, though, she was the model Nanny, with a wonderful smile that would ignite in the presence of a photographer, and she’d would walk demurely behind Albert with her hands protectively on his shoulders on the way into and out of theaters, auditoriums, studios, and hotels. She had an uncanny instinct for the cameras and could always tell when they were on or off.

  When they were off, she’d cuff him on the back of the head and ask him what made him think he was so wonderful.

  Albert had never thought of himself as wonderful. He only thought of himself as special. A void. Unnatural.

  Alone.

  Jane refused to bathe him. ‘He’s too old for that, even if he is an idiot’ for which he was most grateful, not grateful that he was an idiot, that couldn’t be helped, but that she at least allowed him privacy of the bath. But Jane wasn’t remiss in her professional duties. She saw that he was well fed—though was often exasperated by his unwillingness to declare what he liked. It was only food. He needed it to stay alive. What did he care what form it took?