The Old House Problem (2/4)

As I was saying, my friend Holly and I had gone to see the creepy, messy old house on a sea cliff looking for ghosts. Holly had fallen asleep, blotto, and I’d spent the night in a hazmat suit, cleaning and sorting the place.

While I was cleaning, I picked up some books and found a letter written in German. I’d majored in German at university and even lived in Heidelberg for five years so of course I noticed it. Written in a spidery hand and only half finished, it send a strange shiver up my spine:

Lieber Dietrich,

Du must mir helfen. Ich hörte die Stimmen wieder. Die Geige ist weg und ich habe Angst, dass sie mich töten werden.

Translated, it was no less odd:

Dear Dietrich,

You have to help me. I have heard the voices again. The violin is gone and I am afraid they will kill me.

The letter was dated March 2008—fifteen years ago. And it was never sent. I wondered…the real estate agent had said that she had died fifteen years ago. Could it be a coincidence? Was this just the raving of a mind on its way out? Or was there something more sinister at play?

There were a few things that became clear straightaway.

One was that even though the stuff had been thrown around higgledy piggledy, it wasn’t really junk. Although the clothes had been ruined by moths, once they had been of very good quality. I’m a secondhand-clothes-store junkie—whenever I travel I hit them first. From what I saw, whoever owned these clothes had to have been wealthy and stylish.

The second thing was that there were a lot of books: encyclopedias, hardcovers, academic, written in German. Most of them were about music, and there were also loads of musical scores, LPs, videotapes and DVDs of concerts. She’d clearly been highly educated, musical and possibly even a musicologist or musician.

The third thing I noticed was that, underneath all the chaos, the house really was quite lovely. The craftsmanship was superb. The floor was of rich red rimu, the bathroom was tiled with hand-painted ceramic tiles, the ceilings were high, there was a gorgeous decorative border near the top of the bedroom wall. It was in the process of cleaning up that it hit me: I was in love with that house. Holly had known it, it was meant for me.

I coveted that house.

But before committing to it and investing in all the deeper cleaning and repairs—the roof needed fixing, the windows would have to be double glazed, the electrical wiring was pretty dodgy too--I had to know what had happened to the old lady. Why had she left? Who were ‘they’? Who was Dietrich--her brother, her son, a friend, her lover? I didn’t believe in ghosts but I also didn’t like the thought that she might have been killed here. I didn’t want to wonder if there was a body in the garden or a skeleton in the closet.

If it was really going to be my house, I had to clear the air.

I’d decided it all before Holly had even woken up.

She creaked into life at around nine o’clock, stumbled out of the tent, looked at the garbage bags outside the house and blinked in confusion.

“Can ghosts do that?” she said, wonderingly.

“Listen Holly, you have to help me.”

“Of course. What are we going to do?” She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.

“I’m going to buy this house.”

“You’re going to buy it? Hell yes!” She smiled wanly through her hangover.

“Yes you do. But I’m getting it on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“I need to find out what happened to this lady. Look at this.” I handed her the note.

She read it and whistled.

“I knew it! There were paranormal disturbances around here.

“I’m going to need to look through her things a bit. When did you say you’d take the keys back?”

“This morning.”

“Not enough time. I need to research some things. Can you stall for a couple of days?”

“Sure. I mean, the house has been on the market for fifteen years already, right?”

***

After dropping Holly at her place so she could recover from the wine, I returned to my apartment in Dunedin. I hauled the boxes inside and opened all the windows to clear the cloud of mold spores and dust and paper particles contained in the boxes.

Wearing a filter mask and vinyl gloves, fortified by strong coffee, I went through the stuff.

By the end of the day research, I’d come up with a profile of the woman who’d owned the house.

Lilian Matilda Hersch was born 14 January in 1935 in Bonn. Her parents were Ernst Hersch (1906-1977) and Ursula (nee Müller) (1913-1995). Lilian was the eldest of three children. Her siblings Gunther and Gudrun were twins born two years after her.

Ernst was a professor of music at the University of Bonn, Ursula was a promising opera singer contralto when they met.

Ernst was Jewish and lost his job thanks to the Nuremberg Race laws, which were introduced soon after Lilian was born. In 1936 the family emigrated to the USA and settled in New York, where Ernst took a teaching position at Juilliard. All three children eventually grew up to pursue careers in music. Gunther became a well known conductor, Gudrun a concert pianist and Lilian took a Ph.D in musicology in 1965.

In 1966 Lilian married a German violinist named Karl Baden. On the occasion of their wedding, her father had gifted them a priceless violin crafted by Sebastian Klotz, the same one that Frederick II of Prussia had given the virtuoso František Benda on becoming concert master of the royal orchestra in 1771.

The family went to live in Berlin (Karl’s home) for ten years, during which time Lilian occupied herself as a mother, hausfrau and manager for her husband’s career. In 1969 a daughter, Rachel, was born.

In 1978 there was a scandal: Karl was revealed, very publicly, to have been having an affair with one of his students, a cellist named Marie. Lilian filed for divorce and was awarded full custody for Rachel. It seems Karl did not mind losing contact with his child at all—what he really minded was the possibility of Lilian getting the violin her father had gifted them on their wedding day. After some legal wrangling, Lilian ceded it to him. Lilian and Rachel returned to New York in 1980 and Lilian checked into a mental health clinic for six months, entrusting Rachel to her parents for that time.

Lilian then returned to academia and taught at New York University. Rachel started studying violin at Juilliard at the age of 15. There were pictures of a very serious young woman, a pale face with large dark eyes and a cloud of dark hair. She went on to join the New York Symphony Orchestra.

In 1989, Lilian was offered a job at Otago University and immigrated to Dunedin, New Zealand. There were dozens of affectionate letters between mother and daughter. Reading these, I learned that Lilian had pulled a fast one on her ex-husband during their divorce. The violin she’d surrendered to him was a much less valuable piece. It was never owned by Benda. What’s more, although it was made in Mittenwald, was not made by a member of the Klotz family but an unknown artisan.

At some point, around 2001, this switch came to the notice of Marie Baden, Karl’s widow. It seemed that Karl had never bothered to check whether the violin was genuine. It’s possible he’d never even played it—he’d mainly wanted it to deny it to Lilian. After his death, though, Marie had had it valued preparatory to auctioning it off. That is when the fraud was discovered. Furious, she sent multiple letters to Lilian demanding that ‘her’ property be returned. Apparently, Lilian ignored these letters until she opened one enclosing a photograph of Rachel cut out of the New York Times—she was on stage playing a violin. Here is the letter that accompanied that photo:

Lilian,

You may ignore me to your heart’s delight. However, let me tell you, I now know where it is. If you agree to surrender my property, nothing bad will happen to her. If you ignore me again, though, Heaven help you.

MB

Lilian replied to this, it seems, because there was another one.

Lilian,

Thank you for your reply. It was very helpful of you to take a picture of yourself with the violin so that I know where to find it. Be assured that I will collect it in due time.

Kind regards,

MB

And there was another one, from a few months later, which chilled me to the bone:

Dearest Lilian,

I was distressed to read about the sudden death of your daughter in the subway yesterday. What a shocking waste, she was so talented. It is a great shame this had to happen.

All the best,

MB

Rachel died in 2003, twenty years ago. Five years later, in 2008, Lilian too would be gone.

Almost immediately after Rachel’s death, Lilian seems to have had a breakdown. After a short stay in a psychiatric ward, she got in touch with a therapist named Dr. Augustus Clay. He seems to have been some kind of Jungian quack and had her writing down her dreams in a diary. He’d written notes in green pen in the margin.

Some time shortly before her death, they had a falling out. He wrote a rather pompous letter as follows:

Dear Lilian,

Thank you for your letter and I do accept your apology. However, I am afraid I must decline your request that I forget about it. It is important to have healthy boundaries with clients. Also, as I told you, I will not tolerate abuse.

Should you require another therapist with regard to these so-called auditory hallucinations, I have provided a list.

Be well,

Doctor Augustus Clay

I wondered what she had said or done to him!

Another point of interest is that for about ten years Lilian was the secretary of the Schiller Club—an organization dedicated to promoting German culture abroad. It might seem an odd choice for a Jewish woman who had lived through the Shoah, but she wrote and delivered a lecture on the apparent paradox in 20. And in this lecture, she talks about her father’s work studying German music history. Notably, she also talks about her family’s connection František Benda's violin.

And I noticed that the person introducing her to the room that night was Professor Dietwald Schmidt—a lecturer I remembered well from my university days. Enthusiastic, brash, sometimes he rubbed people completely the wrong way without realizing it, but he was very smart. Was this the Dietwald Lilian had written to about the missing violin?

One person I did not find any mention of was a caregiver. That said, there was someone mentioned in Lilian’s dreams, an Yvonne. Perhaps this was her caregiver?

Holly and I talked all this over at dinner at a Korean restaurant near her place.

“That is unbelievably dark,” said Holly after I’d explained everything to her. “Do you think Marie went to New York and killed Rachel, then came all the way to New Zealand to kill Lilian and steal a stupid violin?”

“Frankly, no. Lilian must have accused her of Rachel’s death because Marie sent a very chilly letter saying she had a watertight alibi for the day—she was in Berlin at the time! And the idea she paid a hitman or whatnot seems very farfetched.”

“So who does that leave?”

“Well, that’s the question isn’t it?” I said.

We both stared at the little saucer of kim chi, thinking.

“I know!” Holly yelled so loud that I jumped and my chopsticks clattered onto the floor. “Let’s write a list of threads to follow up. Names, facts, just a framework. So we have a plan for the investigation.

I nodded and dug in my bag for the notepad I always carry with me.

After twenty minutes we had a list of names and questions.

Names:

1. Who is the caregiver? Yvonne?

2. Dietwald Schmidt

3. Dr. Augustus Clay

4. Marie Baden [where was she in 2008]?

5. Lilian’s colleagues—was she close to anyone in the music department?

6. Who was the Police officer called when Lilian was found dead?

Questions:

Did Marie and Karl have children?

Did Rachel have children?

Who was at the lecture where Lilian mentioned the violin?

Where is the violin now?

What were the auditory hallucinations?

How did Lilian die (coroner’s report)?

“Phew!” I said. “That’s it, I’ve had it for now.”

“I’m wide awake,” said Holly. “Let me take the list and find out what I can online. I will bet you I can find 80% of it at least.”

“I believed her—she is a whiz with research. God help you if she was in any way interested in you because she has mad internet stalker skills. Already she’d ruled out the real estate agent as a potential mate because she found out he’d had a drunk-driving conviction when he was a teenager and that he has been consistently late paying off his student debt.

Sure enough, no later than the next morning, Holly had the goods.