Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

I recognized the urgency in her tone and opened the door at once.

What a scene she presented, my dear wife! Her looks were in disarray, as if she’d been running up the stairs without a care for her hair or skirts.

“Mademoiselle LeBoeuf!” I said in surprise. “What has happened?”

“Oh, Herr Mozart, such a dreadful tragedy! Please look out your window.”

I humored her and leaned over the windowsill. You will recall that there is a charming rose garden on the west side of the building, kept by the innkeeper himself. Well, Monsieur LeBoeuf was lying on the gravel path nearly under our window, sprawled on his stomach in his shirtsleeves. A knife was planted in his burly back. I recoiled in horror as his sister cried out, “My poor murdered brother! Who would kill such a man as him?”

Of course by this time Wolfgang had awakened and was sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He asked at once what the matter was, and I hushed him as best I could. But he’s too smart for that. He jumped right out of the quilts and ran to the window, and before I could stop him, he was staring below.

Blessed innocence! At eight years of age even violent death doesn’t impress us as final. In all seriousness he turned to me and said, “Papa, why did Monsieur LeBoeuf go picking flowers while he was dying?”

I gently took our son away from the window, explaining that it had only been a convulsed motion at the time of death that had caused the poor man to strip a rose from the closest shrub.

Mademoiselle LeBoeuf was weeping in her apron. I offered to accompany her downstairs, where by this time servants and guests had gathered in the dining hall. She managed to explain to me that she’d gotten up earlier than usual that morning and had noticed that her brother’s bed in the room next door was untouched; accordingly, she’d gone looking for him downstairs, and seeing the back door ajar, she’d walked out into the rose garden, where she’d made the awful discovery.

In the dining room the news had already circulated among those present. The kitchen maids cried, and the footmen hung their heads. The two opera singers from Vienna whom Wolfgang and I had met at the table the night before were there — Frau Wentzl (who says she’s twenty-five but must be at least a decade older) and her redheaded companion Fraulein Putz, who is very thin for her profession. Both women were talking at once and expressing their distress. The dark-faced Italian in the group, a Signor Marini from Florence, stood aside from the others and looked uncomfortable. We hear he’s a gambler and only comes into his own after the dinner hour, when pipes and playing cards are brought out. The only sanity was shown by our traveling companion from Switzerland, Monsieur Provins.

He helped Mademoiselle LeBoeuf to sit and asked the maids to fetch a physician.

“It’s impossible,” the poor woman wailed. “There’s no physician within fifty leagues, and what good would it do anyway? My poor brother is dead, and no cure can bring him back.”

“Then,” I said, “we must at least fetch the police.”

This suggestion was even more distressing to Mademoiselle LeBoeuf. She cried out that this had always been a respectable establishment and that calling the gendarmes would only bring a bad name to the Reine Margot.

“I’m an unmarried lady, and my brother and I lived by this inn,” she wept. “What would happen if we had no more visitors? The pension he received after he left service as gardener at court wouldn’t allow us to live on it. No, Herr Mozart. I know how kind you are, and how you and your dear wife and family delighted us with your music during your last stay — wouldn’t you consider trying to find out who killed my brother without calling the police?”

I exchanged a puzzled look with Monsieur Provins, who’s a well-to-do merchant and a man of common sense. He said, “She’s not wrong, Herr Mozart. We can’t risk her losing her livelihood.”

Well, my dear Anna Maria, you know that I’ve always been a man more concerned with arpeggios them intrigue. You’d suppose I’d have right away told the good woman that I had no idea how to investigate a murder. But her tearful face and the anxious expressions of those around me convinced me that I ought, if nothing else, to give it a try.

At this point I realized that little Wolfgang had disappeared from the room. Aware of his childish curiosity, I immediately walked out into the rose garden, and sure enough he was there observing the body. Hands clasped behind his back, he seemed to be gravely considering how this jovial man who’d been bouncing him on his knee the night before could now be lying cold with a common kitchen knife in the middle of his back.

Before I could reach him and take him away from the victim, Wolfgang kneeled and took the rose from the dead man’s hand.

“The night dew kept it alive,” he commented, showing me the large-headed, dark pink flower. “Look, Papa, it’s so heavy it cannot hold its face up. Have you ever seen such a large-headed rose?”