Drawing Conclusions (27 page)

Drawings. Brunetti’s thoughts flew to the legendary Reynard auction and the drawings that had not appeared on the block, thus disappointing so many collectors of the chance to add to their collections. Had no one done an inventory? Or, as was most likely, had the inventory been overseen by Avvocato Cuccetti? The Reynard
palazzo
was now a hotel, Brunetti knew, and the objects that had once filled it had long since been consigned to the hands of eager buyers. Avvocato Cuccetti was wherever Madame Reynard had preceded him, neither of them having been able to take anything with them.

Because the phone book was open in front of him, Brunetti dialled the number. His call was answered by a female secretary with the sloppy sort of Roman accent that irritated Brunetti. Brunetti gave his name, not his rank, and when the woman explained that Signor Turchetti was busy, he added his father-in-law’s name, and his title, whereupon the waters parted and the call was transferred immediately to Dottor Turchetti.

‘Ah, Dottor Brunetti,’ a deep voice intoned, ‘Conte Orazio has spoken of you often.’

‘And of you, Dottore,’ Brunetti answered with oleaginous civility.

‘In what way may I be of service to you?’ Turchetti asked after a moment’s hesitation.

‘I wonder if you’d have time to speak to me about one of your clients.’

‘Of course,’ he said easily. ‘Which one?’

‘I’ll come over and tell you, shall I?’ Brunetti asked and, without waiting for an answer, replaced the phone and left his office.

Brunetti took the Number One and got off at Accademia, turned left and started back in the direction of the Guggenheim. Before the first bridge, he found the gallery, paused to study the paintings in the window, and then entered. The space was large and low-ceilinged, though the effect was counteracted by the lighting, which angled up from the walls and thus effectively disguised the lowness. More light reflected from the canal in front, augmenting the sense of space.

A man Brunetti recognized from having seen him on the street more than a few times rose to greet him from a catalogue-covered desk at the back of the gallery. There was no trace of the woman who had answered the phone.

‘Ah, Dottor Brunetti,’ Turchetti said as he approached, hand extended. He was a man best described as ‘
robusto
’, not particularly tall and thus seeming thicker because of that. Had he been a taller man, the brisk energy of his movements would have been imposing; because he was not, there remained something faintly pugnacious about him, as though all that energy stuffed into such a low space would be forced to find some other means of escape. He had dark eyes set in a very broad face and a nose that veered to the left, as if to give further suggestion of something that might turn into belligerence.

His smile was pleasant and inviting, evident in both his eyes and mouth, but Brunetti could not help seeing it as a salesman’s smile. His grip was strong but completely uncompetitive. His lapels were hand-stitched. ‘How may I be of help, Dottore?’ he asked, surprising Brunetti by making it sound like a real question.

Before he answered, Brunetti cast his eyes around the gallery. On the wall to his left was a small portrait of Santa Caterina of Alexandria, her head turned to her left, glancing off towards martyrdom and beatification, one traitor hand placed protectively on her single string of pearls. She already
wore her martyr’s crown, but that too was compromised by a row of inset pearls. Her right hand was placed negligently on her martyr’s wheel, the palm frond about to drop from her fingers. Which is it to be, girl? Earth or heaven? Pleasure or salvation? Poised in a moment of perfect indecision, she stared at a ray of light in the top corner of the painting, uncertainty evident in her every feature.

‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ Turchetti asked. He stepped aside to look square at the painting. ‘I’ll hate to see her leave,’ he said, just as though the woman in the painting were capable of making the decision about when to pick up her skirts and walk out of the gallery.

Then, turning away from the painting, the dealer faced Brunetti and said, ‘You were interested in one of my clients?’

‘Yes. Benito Morandi.’

The name registered in Turchetti’s eyes and his mouth contracted a bit at the corners, as if he had been reminded of an unpleasant taste. ‘Ah,’ he sighed, a noise that could register confusion as easily as recognition but, in either case, would give him time to consider his response. Brunetti, familiar with the tactic, stood and waited, saying nothing and offering only his impassive face.

‘Why don’t we go and sit down?’ Turchetti suggested, turning back towards his desk. Brunetti followed him, sat in one of the chairs placed on the client side and glanced around the gallery, taking in the paintings and drawings but seeing nothing as inviting as the martyr. At first Turchetti leaned back against the desk and folded his arms, but then, as if suddenly conscious of how this placed him so much higher than his guest, sat in a chair facing Brunetti. ‘Your father-in-law,’ Turchetti began, ‘has told me the work you do.’

Brunetti had to admire the exquisite sensibility that could not bring itself to pronounce the word, ‘policeman’. He nodded.

‘And that you are a man with a certain … how shall I put
it?’ Turchetti said, pausing as if in search of the most flattering term. Brunetti, for his part, sat, resisting the impulse to tell the other man he didn’t much care what he called anything, so long as he told him about Benito Morandi. Instead, he tilted his head rather in the manner of Santa Caterina but in a fashion he hoped would suggest mild curiosity rather than angelic rapture.

‘… sense of justice? Is that the term I’m searching for?’

Brunetti thought it probably was and so nodded.

Turchetti renewed his smile. ‘Good, then.’ He sat back and crossed his legs, suggesting that, now that the preliminaries were established, they could start talking. ‘Morandi is a client of mine in that he has occasionally sold me things.’

Brunetti smiled as at the hearing of truth, already known, universally acknowledged. So Turchetti must remember, perhaps regret, writing those cheques to Morandi. Had he been short of cash? Had he needed to delay payment? Or had he paid with cheques so as to allow time to have whatever he bought authenticated? Or to verify the provenance?

‘What things?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Oh, this and that,’ Turchetti said with an easy smile and an airy wave of his hand.

‘What things?’

Displaying no surprise whatsoever at Brunetti’s tone, he said, ‘Oh, the occasional drawing.’

‘What drawings?’

While Turchetti thought about how to answer this, Brunetti reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook. He opened it to the page that had the name of Chiara’s teachers and looked down the list.

Before he could repeat his question, Turchetti said, ‘Oh, minor artists, no one you’ve ever heard of, I’d guess.’

Brunetti took a pen from his inside pocket, opened it, gave Turchetti a neutral glance, and said, ‘Try me.’

Turchetti’s smile was gracious. ‘Johann von Dillis and
Friedrich Salathé,’ he said, pronouncing the first name of the second painter as though he were a man nursed on Goethe and Heine.

Brunetti had heard of the first, but he nodded as though both names were familiar to him and wrote them down. Though he had never heard his father-in-law mention either name, the Count was a collector and spent a lot of time in galleries, and so he might have seen them, had Turchetti shown them in his gallery, and thus Brunetti might learn their resale price.

‘And the others?’ Brunetti asked.

Turchetti smiled. ‘I’d have to check my records. It was so long ago.’

‘But the last sale was only …’ Brunetti said, trying to recall the papers Signorina Elettra had given him as he turned a page of his notebook, ‘about three months ago.’

Had Turchetti been a fish, Brunetti would have seen him squirming around as he tried to free himself from the hook in such a manner as to do himself as little harm as possible. Turchetti did not gasp, at least not in the way of a fish: he drew in two long breaths and finally said, ‘Shall we save time, Commissario, and you tell me what it is you want?’

‘I want to know what he sold you and how much they were worth.’

With a smile that would have been flirtatious, had it been directed at a woman, the dealer asked, ‘You don’t want to know what I paid him?’

Brunetti felt the urge to swipe him aside, but Turchetti did not know that since Morandi had so conscientiously deposited the money into his account Brunetti already knew what he had been paid. It was probably impossible for an art dealer to conceive of a person who would sell something and deposit that amount in the bank.

‘No, Signore,’ Brunetti said, removing Turchetti’s title, ‘only what they were worth.’

‘May I estimate?’ Turchetti asked directly, as if he had tired of the game. He no longer bothered talking about his ‘records’. Brunetti had grown up hearing priests speak of indulgences, so he well knew how malleable was the interpretation of value.

‘Feel free,’ Brunetti told him.

‘The Dillis was worth about forty thousand; the Salathé a bit less.’

‘And the others?’ Brunetti said, glancing down at the names of Chiara’s history and geometry teachers.

‘There were some prints: Tiepolo, not worth more than ten or twelve. I think there were six or seven of them.’

‘You didn’t offer him a price for the lot?’

‘No,’ Turchetti said, unable to disguise his irritation. ‘He insisted on bringing them in one at a time.’ Then, unable to disguise his satisfaction at a job well done, he added, ‘He thought he’d get more for them that way.’ So much, his tone stated, for
that
possibility.

Brunetti refused to give him the satisfaction of a response and asked, ‘What else?’

‘You want to know everything?’ Turchetti asked with carefully orchestrated surprise and another flirtatious smile.

With careful slowness, Brunetti clipped his pen to the inside of the notebook and closed it. He looked across at Turchetti and said, ‘Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough, Signore.’ He moved his lips in something that was not meant to be a smile. ‘I have a list, with amounts and dates, and I want to know what he gave in exchange for the money he received.’

‘And I assume you have the authorization to ask for such information?’ Turchetti asked. All smiles stopped together.

‘Not only can I have it if I ask for it,’ Brunetti said, ‘but I also have the attention of my father-in-law.’

Turchetti could not hide his surprise, nor could he disguise his uneasiness. ‘What does that mean?’

‘That I have only to suggest to him that the provenance given to some of the objects in this gallery is questionable, and I’m sure he’d call around to his friends to ask if they’ve heard the same thing.’ He waited for a moment, and then added, ‘And I suppose they’d call their friends. And so it would go.’ Brunetti returned to smiling and reopened his notebook. He bent over it and said, ‘What else?’

Turchetti, with a precision that Brunetti found exemplary, gave him a list of drawings and prints, approximate dates, and values. Brunetti made a note of them, using the space to the right of the names of Chiara’s teachers and then turning to a blank page to finish the list. When Turchetti finished, Brunetti did not bother to ask him if he had mentioned everything.

He closed the notebook and put it and his pen back in his pocket, then got to his feet. ‘Have you sold them all?’ he asked, though the question was not necessary. They belonged to whoever had them, and even if the law could get them back, to whom did they now belong?

‘No. There are two left.’ Brunetti saw Turchetti start to say something, force himself to stop, and then give in to the impulse. ‘Why? Do I have to give you one?’

Brunetti turned and left the gallery.

Well, well, well. Brunetti walked back towards the bridge. The Dillis was worth forty thousand and poor silly Morandi got four, and why was he thinking of Morandi as poor, or silly? Because the Salathé was worth almost as much and he let Turchetti pay him three?

Brunetti was aware that, no matter how right his own ethical system might feel to him, he still found it difficult to explain, even to himself. He had read the Greeks and Romans and knew what they thought of justice and right and wrong and the common good and the personal good, and he had read the Fathers of the Church and knew what they said. He knew the rules, but he found himself, in every particular situation, bogged down in the specifics of what happened to people, found himself siding with or against them because of what they thought or felt and not necessarily in accord with the rules that were meant to govern things.

Morandi had once been a thug, but Brunetti had seen his protective look at that solitary woman across the room, and so he could not believe Morandi had wanted to keep her from
talking to him so much as he wanted to keep anyone from disturbing whatever peace remained to her.

He waited for the Number Two, watching the people cross the bridge. Boats passed in both directions, one of them filled to the gunwales with the possessions, and perhaps the hopes, of an entire family that was moving house. Down to Castello? Or turn in to the left and back into San Marco? A shaggy black dog stood on a table precariously balanced on a pile of cardboard boxes at the prow of the boat, its nose pointing forward as bravely as that of any figurehead. How dogs loved boats. Was it the open air and the richness of scents passing by? He couldn’t remember whether dogs saw at long distance or only very close, or perhaps it differed according to what breed they were. Well, there’d be no determining breed with this one: he was as much Bergamasco as Labrador, as much spaniel as hound. He was happy, that was evident, and perhaps that’s all a dog needed to be and all Brunetti needed to know about a dog.

The arrival of the vaporetto cut off his reflections but did not remove Morandi from his mind. ‘People don’t change.’ How many times had he heard his mother say that? She had never studied psychology, his mother. In fact, she had never studied much at all, but that did not prevent her from having a logical mind, even a subtle one. Presented with an example of uncharacteristic behaviour, she would often point out that it was merely a manifestation of the person’s real character, and when she reminded people of events from the past, she was often proven right.