Death and Transfiguration

Chapter 21

I was about to try to get her attention, but before I could do anything, Léa rushed over to me, shouting, "Mattie! What are you doing here?"

"Gertie's taking the train back to Cambridge today," I explained as Gertie suddenly became very interested in the train schedule. "What are you doing here?"

"Just watching the trains," Léa said, but I wasn't sure whether or not that was the whole truth.

"I wanted to talk to you about something," I said. "When we went to Bergmann's hotel room, there was that concerto, and you said..."

"Mattie, my train leaves in five minutes," Gertie interrupted. "We should go."

Gertie and I walked toward Platform Eight, and Léa followed us, practically trampling some of the other passengers as she ran after Gertie and I. Occasionally, she glanced toward the piece of paper that she was holding in her left hand, and I wondered what exactly it was. It looked like it was some sort of letter, but it was hard to tell.

Eventually, the three of us made it to the platform, where there was a sleek, black steam locomotive waiting on the tracks. Gertie gave me a hug, and then said goodbye one last time before she hopped onto the train. Once she was on board, she rolled down the window and said, "Take care of Moreau for me, will you?"

"As long as you take care of Winnie," I said.

"Oh, come on," Gertie said. "Am I not allowed to remind her of the whipped cream incident?"

I laughed slightly and said, "Well, we're her sisters. We're allowed to hassle her once in a while, right?"

Gertie laughed and said, "I'll miss you, Mattie."

"Me too, but we'll keep in touch," I said.

Before Gertie could respond, there was a loud whistle, and the train began to pull away from the station. "Goodbye, Mattie!" she shouted as I waved to her one last time.

When the train was out of sight, I turned back to Léa, who was still reading that letter. I glanced over her shoulder, but all I could see was the return address. "New Caledonia," I said. "That's awfully far away. How long did it take to get here?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Léa said as she shoved the letter back into her purse.

"The letter," I said. "The return address was in New Caledonia."

"What letter?" Léa said, and I decided to drop the subject, as she clearly did not want to talk about it.

"That's not what I wanted to talk to you about though," I said as the two of us made our way through the station, struggling to get past all of the other people waiting to catch a train. "Bergmann wrote all of those trombone concertos, and I was wondering if you had any idea who inspired them."

"Of course I do," Léa responded.

"Really?" I said, thinking that I might finally make a breakthrough in this case.

"It was me."

The two of us finally left the station and started walking down the Rue de Dunkerque, passing by restaurants and speeding bicyclists as we breathed in the fresh air, which was a nice change from the stuffiness of the train station. "Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" I asked Léa.

"You didn't ask," Léa said. "It was when I lived in Vienna - I was eighteen and eager to enrage my mother, and he was lonely and needed inspiration for his compositions. We started a relationship of sorts, although I was never exactly faithful to him, and he wrote piece after piece for me. I had no idea he was still doing that though, right up until the day he died. He loved me, but I never truly loved him."