The Mozart Conspiracy

Начало книги

‘I know I must die.

Someone has given me aqua toffana and has calculated the precise time of my death - for which they have ordered a Requiem.

It is for myself that I am writing this’

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1791

Chapter One

Austria

9 January

Breathless with shock and terror, Oliver Llewellyn stumbled away from the scene he had just witnessed. He paused to lean against a bare stone wall. Nausea washed over him. His mouth was dry.

He hadn’t known exactly what he would find when he’d slipped away to explore the house. But what he’d seen-what they’d done to the man in that strange vaulted room-was more horrible than anything he could have imagined.

He ran on. Up a winding flight of stone steps and through the connecting bridgeway, then back into the main part of the house with its classical architecture and décor. He could hear the chatter and laughter of the party guests. The string quartet in the ballroom had started up a Strauss waltz.

Читать дальше →