The Fine Art of Murder
Read The Fine Art of Murder Online
Authors: Jessica Fletcher
Tags: #Mystery Fiction, #Fiction, #General, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #Murder, #Jessica (Fictitious Character), #Women Sleuths, #Women Novelists, #Radio and Television Novels, #Fletcher, #Media Tie-In, #Italy, #Women Novelists - Travel, #Travel, #Art Thefts - Italy, #Murder - Italy, #Murder - Illinois - Chicago, #Art Thefts
Table of Contents
OTHER BOOKS IN THE
Murder, She Wrote
SERIES
Manhattans & Murder
Rum & Razors
Brandy & Bullets
Martinis & Mayhem
A Deadly Judgment
A Palette for Murder
The Highland Fling Murders
Murder on the
QE2
Murder in Moscow
A Little Yuletide Murder
Murder at the Powderhorn Ranch
Knock ’Em Dead
Gin & Daggers
Trick or Treachery
Blood on the Vine
Murder in a Minor Key
Provence—To Die For
You Bet Your Life
Majoring in Murder
Destination Murder
Dying to Retire
A Vote for Murder
The Maine Mutiny
Margaritas & Murder
A Question of Murder
Coffee, Tea, or Murder?
Three Strikes and You’re Dead
Panning for Murder
Murder on Parade
A Slaying in Savannah
Madison Avenue Shoot
A Fatal Feast
Nashville Noir
The Queen’s Jewels
Skating on Thin Ice
OBSIDIAN
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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, October 2011
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Murder, She Wrote
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With gratitude to orthopedic surgeon Ronald Tietjen,
who gave this writer a better leg to stand on
Chapter One
“T
his is the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, one of the finest in all of Abruzzo. Here you will see two works by the artist Giovanni di Paolo, a fifteenth-century painter who was fond of scenes of the Resurrection. His work is often grisly—much blood and gore. But the subject matter aside, he was quite good.” The speaker was Flavio Simone of Great Art, Humble Places. Simone was younger than I’d expected, although I don’t know why I’d assumed a tour guide would be older. He was dressed in a rumpled green corduroy sports jacket, a yellow shirt that also was in need of pressing, a skinny green tie, and wrinkled chino pants. Obviously an iron would have been a welcome and useful gift.
Simone stood in front of the wooden door of the church, a square building with a façade of pink and white stone, complemented by three Romanesque portals, each beneath a rose window. To the right was a short, round turret that was attached to the corner of the building, looking as if someone had taken it from a castle and set it down there but forgotten to get its match to put on the other side.
“This church was founded by an aging hermit named Pietro Angeleri at the end of the thirteenth century to celebrate the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary. Angeleri eventually became Pope, despite not wanting to be, and was imprisoned by the succeeding pontiff, Pope Boniface VIII, in a castle at Fumone until he died at the age of eighty-one. His body was returned to his church in L’Aquila, where he was canonized as Saint Celestine and buried in a Renaissance tomb within the church.”
Simone stepped away from the door to allow another tour group to enter. The church had been heavily damaged in the 2009 earthquake, he’d explained, and for safety’s sake—ours and the building’s—only one group was being let in at a time.
It was a beautiful time of year to be in Italy, after the throngs of tourists had returned home and while the weather still cooperated with mild, sunny days and just the hint of a chill at night. I’d decided at the last minute to take this vacation, my choice aided by Cabot Cove’s leading travel agent, Susan Shevlin, who came up with a reasonably priced package that wouldn’t break my budget but wouldn’t skip on amenities either. She’d booked me at the Hotel Splendide Royal, where I’d stayed the last time I’d visited Rome. The former nineteenth-century palace had been renovated into one of the city’s most handsome Baroque buildings, and was situated in the center of the city and only a short stroll to the famous Via Veneto and Villa Borghese.
It had been a pleasant, on-time flight to Rome. The full Northern Italian meal was tasty, accompanied by a selection of wines specially chosen for the airline by the Italian Sommelier Association. I spent part of the flight reading a wonderful novel written and sent to me by a friend, and napped for an hour before our descent into Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport (even Italy’s airport celebrates the country’s rich artistic tradition). As I walked to where I would collect my checked baggage, I stopped in a bookshop and was pleased to see that the Italian edition of my latest novel was prominently displayed, a fulfilling sight for any author.
My fellow travelers and I had been picked up the next morning by a small, sleek, modern bus with huge windows—it appeared that the entire vehicle was made of glass. Simone, who had been waiting outside my hotel, had taken my hand as I climbed the two steps inside, and the driver greeted me heartily. Seated behind him were my five traveling companions. Simone introduced us, and I took a seat next to a wiry gentleman with a head full of gray hair the consistency of a Brillo pad. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, and black tie.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said, smiling. “My name is Luca Fanello. Your first time in Rome?”
“No, I’ve been here before. Do you live here?”
“
Si
. Yes. All my life.”
“It’s a wonderful city,” I said.
“In many ways, although there are problems, like in every large city.”
“Are you involved in the arts?” I asked.
He shook his head and smiled. “No, but it is my passion. I recently retired from the police force here in Rome. Twenty years. But I have always had a love of great art. My colleagues sometimes teased me about it. Somehow, they don’t think that a police officer should enjoy things like art or music.”
“What a narrow-minded view.”
“It never bothered me. I always found time to visit the museums and galleries. Now that I am free to and ...”
I waited for him to finish.
“Now that I have retired and my wife is no longer alive, I have all the time in the world to indulge my passion. I understand that you are a famous American writer.”
“Well, I am a writer, murder mysteries mostly—imaginary crime, as opposed to the reality of what you must have experienced as a policeman.”
“It was interesting, but much of the time it was boring. Tell me about yourself and your writing. I always thought I would like to write a book about my experiences, but, as with most things, wanting to do something and actually doing it are too often very different things. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“My late husband, Frank, often said that.”
We chatted easily for the rest of the trip, which took almost two hours. Our destination was the town of L’Aquila, where the Apennine Mountains meet the Adriatic Sea, in the Abruzzo region of Italy, approximately seventy miles east of Rome. As we approached, we passed through lush valleys, with rushing streams and medieval towns perched on terraced hills. I’d read that the Abruzzo region was prime skiing territory, and the snowcapped mountains surrounding the area gave testimony to that.
“I trust we won’t run into any witches or
lupi mannari
,” Fanello said casually.
“Meaning?”
“Werewolves,” he explained, laughing. “Abruzzo is known for its witches and werewolves.”
“I’d better be on the alert.”
“No need,” he said. “It is all legend. Abruzzo is a lovely part of Italy, filled with wildlife, bears, eagles . . . so many magnificent creatures. My wife and I visited often. The weather is perfect, the best in Italy, always cool and pleasant. But we don’t come to see bears or to enjoy the weather,
si
? We’re here to see the art.”
Simone’s description of Giovanni di Paolo’s paintings was accurate. They were certainly dramatic, and somewhat upsetting, but I recognized the skill that went into creating them. I tried to picture one of them hanging on my office wall at home and shuddered at the thought.
“There have been many earthquakes here in Abruzzo,” Simone announced as we came to our second stop, “that have done great damage to this cathedral. But there are works of art inside worth seeing. From here we will visit other smaller, beautiful churches of L’Aquila in which remarkable works by famed artists are proudly displayed.”
“Until someone steals them,” Mr. Fanello muttered to me as we entered the cathedral.
Simone had been right: There was an assortment of oil paintings that reflected the artists’ talents, but none of the names attached to the works rang a bell for me, nor did I find the paintings especially appealing. Of course, it’s unfair for someone who doesn’t have visual artistic talent to judge the works of others who are blessed with it.
We didn’t stay long. Before we left, I asked our guide about two places on a wall where discolored rectangles indicated that paintings might have once been displayed there.
“Stolen,” he replied. “Less than a year ago. Never recovered.”
I heard a grunt behind me and turned to see Signore Fanello raise his eyebrows at me.
“How sad,” I said.
“It’s been happening with greater regularity,” Simone said. “As you can see, there is no security here in the cathedral, or in most of the churches throughout Italy. Oh, some attempts are made to secure the works to the walls, but that doesn’t deter the thieves.”
After a lunch of spicy porchetta sandwiches and, for dessert, almond marzipan sweets, enjoyed in a bustling piazza, our tour continued on to some of the dozens of L‘Aquila’s smaller churches, where works painted by Italian artists were on display. Our final stop was the Church of San Bernardino, named after another saint who’d come to L’Aquila, Saint Bernardino of Siena. He died in the town, which angered the Sienese, who never got his body back. He was honored in L’Aquila with a magnificent Renaissance church, including an imposing mausoleum sculptured by noted Abruzzese sculptor Silvestro dell’Aquila. Of all the churches we’d visited that day, this was the most impressive. Simone had saved this stop for last because it contained the finest work of art we’d seen on the tour, a large oil painting depicting a lush garden in which a seminude woman pleaded with a huge man holding in his bloodstained, beefy hands what one could only assume was her child.
“Bellini was greatly influenced by Mantegna,” Simone informed us as we stood in front of the piece, impressed into silence by its power and form. “His most famous work was
Agony in the Garden
, and as you can see, this painting follows through on the garden theme. Bellini’s own influence on artists in Venice was profound, and his many students went on to success of their own.”
As he spoke, two friars in hooded cassocks entered the church. They stopped at a stone urn that held holy water and waited while a child holding her mother’s hand scooped out a handful of water and splashed it on the floor before raising a chubby hand to her face. “No. No. No,” I heard the mother say. She apologized to the men in rapid Italian, picked up the child, and hastened out of the church. The friars stood quietly, then dipped their hands in the water, crossed themselves, and slowly walked down the aisle opposite ours.
“The reason this particular work has not been displayed in museums is a debate over its true origins, whether Bellini himself painted it or whether it was his best students who did the work. The consensus is that it is the work of one of his students. As far as I’m concerned, this shouldn’t make all that much difference. Many great artists had students who contributed to finished works that bear the name of the master.”
Simone moved us up the aisle toward another painting on the opposite side of the church, where the religious brothers stood admiring a statue of the Madonna. As we passed the urn, I noticed footprints on the floor made by someone walking through the spilled water.
“That’s funny,” I murmured.
“What’s funny?” Signore Fanello asked.
“Those footprints,” I said, pointing to the pattern that led down the aisle we were approaching. “They look like sneakers.”
“Not so unusual,” he said.
I looked up. “Yes, but the only people who walked through the water before us were those two robed friars. I guess I never thought of friars wearing sneakers.” I glanced around to see where they were. They had circled to the back of the church and one of them was locking the door. Before I could ask myself why a friar would need to lock the church, his companion whipped off his cassock, flung it to the side, and pointed a gun in our direction. He was a young man in black jeans, a black T-shirt, and running shoes, as was his accomplice. Both held out pistols, jerkily pointing them at each of the six of us and shouting in Italian words that were obviously orders of some kind. Their voices ricocheted off the church’s sacred walls as they waved us out of the center aisle and into pews. One woman on the tour began wailing and collapsed back onto the pew. In an apparent attempt to silence the crying woman, one of the gunmen shouted at her, brandishing his pistol in front of her. She managed to stifle her sobs, and instead began rapidly chanting prayers in a low, choked voice. Simone muttered, “Don’t do anything to anger them. Let them do what they came here to do.”
Moments later it was obvious what they were after. While one of them kept us huddled together at gunpoint, the other tucked his gun in his belt and, using a crowbar he’d hidden under his clerical robe, went to work removing the Bellini painting from the wall over the altar.
“Can’t you say something to stop them?” I asked Simone.
He put his index finger to his lips and shook his head. He was right, of course. It wasn’t worth losing anyone’s life in order to rescue a painting. Still . . .
The young man holding the handgun on us kept muttering in Italian, frequently glancing back to see how his colleague was faring. The painting had obviously been firmly anchored to the wall, and I assumed that what both men were saying in Italian contained at least a modicum of four-letter words. Finally, the Bellini was freed and the crowbar-wielding young man carried the painting over to where we crowded together, afraid to move or to speak. One of the thieves barked something at Simone.
“He says no one will be hurt, and we are to keep our mouths shut to the police.”
The thief holding the canvas took a few steps toward the doors through which they’d come. At that moment—and it took everyone by surprise, including me—Mr. Fanello, who stood in front of me, reached down, drew a small revolver from an ankle holster, brought it up, and fired a single shot at the young man who held his weapon in his right hand. The shot struck him in the left shoulder. Simultaneously, he got off a shot that hit Fanello in the forehead, directly between the eyes. Blood spurted into the air as he toppled backward, crashing into me and almost causing me to fall on the woman who was praying loudly in Italian. A plume of the downed former policeman’s blood filled the air and I raised my hand to keep it from hitting me. I locked eyes with the wounded art thief, who appeared to be in shock. He hadn’t moved; his dark eyes were filled with surprise, anger, and hate. We were only two feet apart, and every detail of his dusky, youthful face registered with me—one eye, his left, was slightly lower than his right and the eyelid drooped a bit; he had a tiny scar, which looked fresh, on his right cheek; his prominent nose was somewhat crooked; soft black curls fell over his narrow forehead.
He raised his gun and pointed it at me. His hand trembled and my eyes followed the movement of the muzzle as it shifted back and forth across my face. I heard him cock the hammer. Then a loud noise made him spin around toward the church door. His cohort with the painting had released the lock, and shouted something at him. The injured gunman took a last glance at me, turned, and stumbled up the aisle, clutching his shoulder and mumbling something that sounded distinctly threatening. I sank down onto the pew, next to the woman, who was wailing again, a dead policeman at my feet.