WARNING: This is all fiction and part of my novel "Rubato".
Roland Kemény was born in Budapest in 1945 and was a musical prodigy as a young boy. His family suffered during WW2 but regained their status because his father invested wisely in the rebuilding of the infrastructure in Eastern Europe. Roland wanted to become a pianist from a young age. He studied at the University of Performing Arts in Vienna and began a career as a pianist after that. His musical hero was Vladimir Horowitz. He became a teacher at the Liszt Conservatory and received recognition for his efforts in acquiring autograph manuscripts for the museum. He was obsessive about buying back the autograph manuscripts of Franz Liszt held by the Library of Congress in the United States but has been unsuccessful.
He has salt and pepper curly hair with a beard and mustache. His eyes are dark and the folds over his eyes create a downward slant giving him a sad but kind face.
Roland Kemény stared at the computer screen. A colleague from America wanted to teleconference with him tomorrow morning. The last call he had with her was when he talked about his relationship with Judith Whitesides. Now he knew that Judith was dead. Would she want to talk about that? What additional information would she want?
He went to the window and looked out at the fall leaves drifting down into the courtyard outside his office. Autumn was especially beautiful in Budapest. He could hear visitors downstairs going through the house on a tour. As one of the oldest tenured teachers at the Liszt Academy he was honored to have an office inside the home of Franz Liszt. Downstairs many of Liszt’s furnishings were displayed, including his carved wood Bechstein piano. At that piano Liszt taught many talented pianists for free. The winged lion carvings on each end of the keyboard were Roland’s favorite reminder of his mission. He was the lion that fought to conserve Liszt's legacy.
His mind went back to the day he first suspected that Judith had found something important on her recent research visit to Budapest. They met here in his office and she teased about the disarray downstairs in the Liszt Museum. She told him the dust and mold were destroying some old forgotten relics. Her frivolous comment that he needed to hire help to organize the basement made him angry. It was just like an American to assume money was available whenever a project was proposed. Would she like the job? That made her laugh and she said something that was still haunting him. “I have enough to keep me busy for a long time." He reminded her that everything in the basement belonged to the museum. Defiantly she answered that Budapest did not have all the important documents related to Franz Liszt.
As it turned out she did have an autograph manuscript. Now with Judith gone where was it?
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A piano teacher is found dead and a lost autograph manuscript of Franz Liszt is discovered. Who wanted that document enough to kill?
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