‘What we need, then,’ said Jelly, ‘is someone who is already in Germany and who has the contacts to go and look on our behalf. Do you know anyone? An academic? A composer?’

A broad smile unfolded across Tovey’s face. ‘You know something? I believe I know the very person.’

Chapter 6

Ulrich Schultheiss, assistant editor at the music publishers B. Schott und Söhne in Mainz, had not slept for five nights. Possibly ten. Sometimes, switching on the wireless to hear the news, which was often no longer news but whitewashing, he suspected he might never sleep again. The Chancellor had declared his political party the only one in Germany, effectively banning all others; that seemed to confirm Ulli’s worst suspicions that Hitler was not only dangerous, but medically insane.

Mainz, Ulli thought, should have been a small enough town not to feel the shifting tectonic plates of world politics. All that changed when the director of the local conservatoire, Hans Gál – a fine composer and even finer man, in Ulli’s view – was evicted from his post one month after the college had renewed his contract.

‘It contravenes the law, surely?’ said Ulli to his boss, Ludwig Strecker – the joint proprietor of the firm with his brother, Willy. Two tall men in their fifties blessed with imposing Roman profiles and a steely charisma fed by the endurance tests of the 1914–18 war, the Strecker brothers were on first-name terms with the entire music world of central Europe and beyond.

‘Law? What law?’ Ludwig said. ‘These madmen can do whatever they want. Gál is Jewish and he’s out. It’s nothing to do with his music or his teaching, let alone the law.’

‘But why does nobody do or say anything? Why aren’t there protests?’ Visiting the conservatoire to see a friend, Ulli had found its stone staircases and dark wooden doorways echoing with the usual wails, scales and studies, the corridors dotted with students smoking after class, while professors lunched in the café opposite. Business as usual – but without Hans Gál.

‘You can’t be surprised if people are afraid to speak out.’

‘But if they can force this, what next? If people just let things happen… ’

‘Oh, Ulli.’ Ludwig was shaking his head. Ulli knew he had experienced the trenches and still had nightmares about them, though he rarely spoke of it. ‘You’re very young,’ was all he said.

The Gáls made a furtive visit to Willy Strecker’s family to say farewell, one night when Ulli happened to be there for dinner. They were leaving, they said, so that their friends would no longer be compromised by seeing them; the Third Reich officials were observing and noting every move of the town’s Jewish citizens. ‘Don’t those busybodies have anything better to do with their time?’ Ulli grumbled.