The Memorist Read Online Free PDF

and over, exhausting herself and wearing down crayons as she struggled with the details while silvery tracks of tears stained her cheeks.
    Jeremy had been astonished to stumble on an actual antique that was identical to the box his daughter drew but that had been a synchronicity he’d been able to grasp. It was the information in the letter he had discovered inside that box this morning that was unfathomable and that he was there to divulge.
    “The box belonged to Antonie Brentano,” he explained.
    When Erika couldn’t place the name, Fremont explained she was one of Beethoven’s closest friends, and possibly his Immortal Beloved.
    “Beethoven was also a friend of two of our founders—he knew both Caspar Neidermier and Rudolph Toller,” Jeremy added. As the Society’s historian, he’d studied all the records stored in the underground vault. “In the process of preparing the chest for sale in the upcoming auction, I discovered Beethoven gave Antonie the box.”
    “While I admire the labyrinthine paths you traverse in your investigations and enjoy hearing about them, I really don’t want to be late. You said something was hidden in the box?” Fremont asked. “What was it?”
    “A letter written by Ludwig van Beethoven.”
    In the hearth, a log cracked and hissed. Jeremy looked toward it and then over at the recess that held the Coptic urn before continuing. They all knew that in 1813, Caspar Neidermier died after finding an ancient bone flute in India. In 1814, his partner, Rudolph Toller, gave Ludwig van Beethoven that same flute and asked him to find the song believed to be encrypted in complicated markings etched on its surface.
    “According to our records, that urn contains the pulverized fragments Beethoven returned…all that was left of the memory flute after he destroyed it.”
    “But the letter says something else?” Fremont prodded.
    “Beethoven wrote that he only told the Society he’d destroyed the instrument—that what he gave us back was an animal bone, dried out and smashed with a hammer. He kept the real flute, believing it to be too valuable to destroy and at the same time too dangerous to entrust to anyone. He wrote that he hid it. For the protection of us all, and all to come were his exact words.”
    “Is the letter authentic?” Fremont asked.
    “I’ll have an expert opinion by Monday.”
    “Did he say where he hid the actual flute?” Erika asked.
    “Not exactly.”
    “Nothing is ever that easy,” Fremont said.
    “Some manners of death,” she responded with a sad laugh.
    “Beethoven wrote that he sent each of his closest friends one piece of information, a clue if you will, so that if it ever became necessary they would be able to pool their knowledge and find both the flute and its song.”
    “You’re saying he figured out the music?” Erika held her breath.
    “He says he did, and before you ask, yes, I’ve checked—without being specific—with two scholars about any finished or unfinished compositions for the flute that might be relevant and have the right dates on them. There’s nothing.”
    “To go to all that trouble, what he found must have really frightened him…or…was Beethoven just paranoid?” she asked.
    “He was cautious, easy to anger, but no, not irrationally paranoid,” Fremont, the musical aficionado among them, explained. “Although we can assume Herr Beethoven had heard the rumors that circulated when Mozartdied only six weeks after his Magic Flute debuted. Conspiracy theorists suggested the young composer had been poisoned because of the Masonic secrets he’d revealed in his opera. It’s possible Beethoven could have worried that if Mozart had been poisoned for revealing a secret legend about a flute with unusual properties connected to the cycle of life and death, maybe he should stay away from another one.” Fremont took a sip of his brandy.
    Erika’s forehead furrowed again but this time there was a light in her eyes. “What if