An Elegant Solution(108)

“Thank you, Leonhard. He may leave on the morning coach, but he will soon return. Tell me what you see of him.”

“I will, sir.” So, then I understood the danger to Basel. At least, I understood what Magistrate Faulkner and Master Gottlieb believed was the danger to Basel. I’d already known the true danger, which they didn’t know.



Grandmother met me at my door and I knew at once I had a visitor. Her palms were pressed together as they had been when Daniel had come, but her expression was very different. Instead of that knot of disapproval, the cord was more a tangle of impropriety and aversion and surprise, all of them mild and polite as befitting her.

I entered the parlor and found a rotund guest, hat not on bald head but clenched in hand, a hand that usually clenched reins. Rupert the coach driver stood in the middle of the room, nodded his head, aware and unbothered that he was in a house above his own station. “Master Leonhard,” he said, “good evening,” and I nodded, too.

“Good evening, Rupert,” I said. “Welcome.”

“Thank you, sir. I do feel so. I’ll only take a short minute of your time, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

“I’ve only just taken the coach,” he said. “I’m not accustomed to your city yet, and its ways. I hope you’ll forgive my familiarity.” He didn’t seem at all uncertain.

“Of course.”

“Yes, sir. And as I’ve taken the coach, I’ve looked through it to know it, and what I’ve found I’m not sure what’s to be done with.”

“What have you found?”

“This, sir. It was in the post box.”

He handed me a letter which I had seen before. Daniel’s name was in the most beautiful script, covering much of the front, and the wax seal covering much of the back of the envelope had the Tsar’s own double Eagle. “And I’m not sure how long it’s been there.” I knew it couldn’t have been long, as I’d last seen it in Master Johann’s office only a week before.

“It was in the postbox?” I asked.

“There’s an edge to the box, you see, and a bit of a place a letter could be caught and hid.”

I handed it back to him. “Why did you bring it to me?”

“I asked Gustavus, the keeper at the inn, if the man was known in the city here, and he said he was.”

“He’s at the Inn under Gustavus’s own nose near every day.”

“Yes, sir, he has been shown to me. But there’s a saying, I’m told, to treat all that family with great care, and it might even go ill with the one who brings him a letter that’s been delayed such. It seems an important letter.”

“I think it is,” I said.

“And there’s another saying, that you’re a friend to most, sir, and you might hand it to him on my behalf and with my regrets.” And he held the letter back to me.

I stared at it. The story was implausible in every detail, but most of all in this last statement. If Rupert were to walk direct back to the Inn, Daniel would surely be there even at that moment, and Gustavus could hand the letter to him without any fear.

“All right,” I said. I took the letter. He bowed and smiled and I let him out.



I went to the kitchen where my grandmother was waiting. “He’s gone away,” I said.

“Was there anything he wanted?”

“He had a question for Daniel, but was told to be cautious of all Master Johann’s family, so he wanted some counsel first.”

“It’s not well to speak of a man behind his back to a stranger.”

“I only told him he had nothing to fear.” I thought that to tell her about the letter would only be a confusion should Nicolaus stop in again with questions. “And Grandmother. Master Johann said he’d write a letter to Paris for me. He’s accepted my proof. And now, I must write a letter to the Academy myself, to explain the proof.”

She was astonished as I’d been. I told her everything about it, and even Mistress Dorothea couldn’t have spoken as much in an hour.



I sat at my desk and took my pen and ink and poised myself for the words to come. For the moment, though, they did not. This would happen, though rarely, and I’d never found a solution for it but to wait.

So I stood and went to my dresser. I felt the curve of my bowls, and ran my finger through the conch’s spiral, and finally took my hat and tried a little to soothe it again into better shape, and to smooth out the marks of its crushing.

It seemed evident that the hat had been lodged in the arch after escaping Little Johann’s hand. The peculiarity of its return to me was remarkable, greatly.