GB_23: By Its Cover: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

by Donna Leon

  ‘Dottoressa, I have to confess two things to you,’ he said, hoping to turn them both back to the matter at hand.

  She looked mildly alarmed but said nothing.

  ‘There’s my ignorance about the monetary worth of the missing books and about the market for the pages that have been taken.’ He paused, but she had nothing to ask or say. ‘Because of that, I think this is a case that should be handled by the Art Theft division, but they’re in Rome, and …’

  ‘And they have larger things to worry about?’ she asked.

  Neither of them saw fit to comment on the explosion of thefts from homes, churches, libraries, and museums – even from the library of the Ministry of Agriculture – that had taken place in recent years. Brunetti regularly read the circulars from the Art Theft police and from Interpol that announced the major thefts, not only of paintings and statues, but of manuscripts and books, either whole volumes or pages from them. Anything was fair game for the new book vandals, left to their own among the oldest collections in Europe.

  ‘How many volumes do you have here, Dottoressa?’ he asked.

  She tilted her head to one side while she considered his question. ‘The total collection is about thirty thousand, but the bulk of that is downstairs, in the ordinary collection. Up here,’ she said, waving her hand to include the rooms behind Brunetti, ‘we have about eight thousand volumes: the manuscript collection contains about two hundred more.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘We have a collection of Persian miniatures: a merchant brought them back from Iran at the turn of the last century. If anyone wants to see them, a member of the staff has to stay with them.’

  That reminded Brunetti that someone had been with Dottor Nickerson for at least part of the time he was in the library, perhaps for a good part of it. ‘This man you called Tertullian. Do you have his application on file?’

  ‘What do you want with him?’ she asked, sounding protective.

  ‘I’d like to speak to him. You said he’s been here so long he’s like one of the staff. If that’s true, then he might have seen something he thought was unusual.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any purpose in that,’ she insisted.

  Brunetti was tired of playing good cop. ‘Dottoressa, I’m not sure the examining magistrate would see it that way.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asked, and he heard the hardening of her tone.

  ‘That a magistrate would certainly issue an order that you give us his name and any information that would help us locate him.’ Then, before she could protest, he added, ‘This is a library, Dottoressa, not a medical practice or a church. His name and address are not protected information, and there is every possibility that he was a witness to a crime. The only way to find out is to talk to him.’

  ‘I think that might be,’ she began, then paused in search of the right words. ‘… difficult for him.’

  ‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, this time more mildly.

  ‘He’s had problems.’

  ‘Such as?’ This time Brunetti drew on the infinite patience required to get people to say what they were reluctant to say.

  He watched her weigh how much she would reveal. ‘He might once have been a priest, or at least a seminarian.’

  That would explain his interest in Tertullian, Brunetti thought. ‘Might have been?’ he asked. She gave him a confused look, and he added, ‘Did he decide to stop being a priest, or stop studying to be one? Or was he forced to do so?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘It’s not something I could ask him.’

  ‘But you have an idea?’ he asked, his sensors activated by the uneasiness with which she had spoken.

  ‘Why are we talking about him?’ she demanded. ‘All he did was sit and read. That’s not a crime.’

  ‘Seeing a crime being committed while you’re sitting and reading and not reporting it is a crime, however,’ Brunetti said, twisting the truth to his purpose.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ she insisted. He knew from long experience that good men are not necessarily brave men, nor do they necessarily want to become involved in the lives of other people.

  Brunetti had read something by the – he knew he was a lawyer and thought he was African – theologian ages ago, and he remembered not having warmed to him at all. He had never encountered anyone so opposed to pleasure as Tertullian, nor did he seem to have much good to say about life in general. Imagine the person who would want to read Tertullian.

  ‘Will you show me his application?’ he asked, refusing to be diverted.

  ‘You really have to talk to him?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘His name is Aldo Franchini, and he lives in Castello, down towards the bottom of Via Garibaldi.’

  Brunetti took out his notebook and wrote the name and the location, then looked across at her, interested that she knew where he lived. ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘Not well at all,’ she said, going behind her desk to sit. She waved Brunetti to a chair, which he sat in, hoping this would lead to greater ease between them. ‘But I do know his younger brother, who was at school with me. He called me about three years ago. He said his older brother had moved back to the city. He’d lost his job because of trouble with the Director, which meant he couldn’t get a letter of recommendation. He wanted to come here to read, and his brother asked if I’d give my permission, even though he’d lost his job.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Teaching theology at a private boys’ school in Vicenza.’

  ‘Theology?’ Brunetti asked.

  She gave him a level look and said, ‘He was a priest then.’ She sounded far more certain about him than she had been before.

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I didn’t think that was any of my business,’ she said, though without the huff of righteousness many people would have given.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told him that if his brother was resident here, then he didn’t need a letter: all he had to do was come in with identification and apply for a reader’s card.’

  ‘You weren’t interested in what he might have done?’ Brunetti insisted.

  She ignored his question. ‘If he wants to read, it’s his right. Nothing else about him is my business.’

  ‘Did his brother say anything about him?’

  ‘Is this part of your police work?’ she asked. ‘Or do you simply want to know?’

  ‘Any man who would read Tertullian interests me,’ Brunetti said, telling part of the truth, smiling when he said it.

  ‘He told me his brother was a serious reader and needed a place where he could find books.’ She seemed to relent, and in a softer voice added, ‘He said it would help him, reading.’

  ‘Did you ask why his brother might need help?’ Brunetti asked, though he doubted she would have done so.

  She smiled for the first time and all resemblance to a bird disappeared: she became a tall woman with a kind, intelligent face. ‘I think he wanted me to ask, but I didn’t. His word was good enough for me.’

  ‘In the time he was here, did you find out anything about him?’

  ‘No, not really. He read Augustine, Jerome, Maximus the Confessor, but he started by reading Tertullian, so that’s the name we gave him.’

  ‘Why would you do something like that?’

  ‘Librarians are …’ she began, thought about it, and then started again. ‘Librarians are unusual people.’ Brunetti was certainly willing to believe that. ‘He was the first person any of us could remember who requested Tertullian and then actually sat and read him. Not for research for a university class but because he was seriously interested in the book.’ Her praise was implicit in every word.

  ‘How much contact have you had with him?’

  ‘After some time, we would say hello to one another, and occasionally I’d ask him what he was reading.’

  ‘And how did he seem when you spoke to him?’

  She smi
led, but this time Brunetti realized it was to warn him that her answer would not be a serious one. ‘Do you mean do I think there’s anything wrong with him?’

  ‘Well, considering what he’s been reading …’

  She laughed. ‘Yes, they seem like lunatics to some of us today, but perhaps he hoped to find …’

  ‘Answers?’

  She raised both hands as if to ward off his attempt to force his words on her, then said, ‘I don’t know what the Fathers of the Church have for us today. Comfort, perhaps.’

  ‘You mean to a dying religion? Or from one?’

  She looked across at the surface of her desk and then back at him. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Statistically, yes,’ Brunetti answered. He was never sure just how he felt about that, but suspected he regretted it. ‘Soon they may all be out of work,’ he added. Then clarified. ‘Priests, nuns, bishops.’

  ‘It won’t be that fast, I think,’ she countered.

  ‘No, probably not,’ Brunetti agreed. Then, to move away from the mood that had been created, he said, ‘Will you leave those books on the table, please?’

  ‘What will your men have to do? Put black powder on them?’ Her fear was obvious.

  ‘That’s only on television. They use lasers now, just shine a light on the pages and take a photo. It does no damage to the paper.’ He saw how difficult she found this to believe, as would anyone who had grown up with films and television presenting the technicians with their brushes and black powder. ‘Believe me, nothing will get on to the paper. You can be with them while they work if you want, and I promise they’ll wear gloves.’

  ‘When will they come?’

  ‘They should be here today.’

  She opened a drawer of her desk and took her card from it. He slipped it into his pocket without looking at it, thanked her and put out his hand.

  ‘That’s all?’ she asked as they shook hands.

  ‘For the moment,’ he said and left the library.

  4

  Brunetti stopped on the way back to the Questura and finally had his coffee, but he drank it almost reluctantly, knowing it was merely a delaying tactic, not a pleasure. When he walked in, he decided to go directly to report to the Vice-Questore what had happened at the library. As he climbed the steps to his superior’s office, he thought of a story, surely apocryphal, he had once heard about some American movie star – was it Jean Harlow? It was said that when she was given a book for her birthday, she unwrapped it and looked at it, then said, ‘A book? I have a book.’

  Thus Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, he was sure.

  When he entered the small office where Signorina Elettra usually sat, he saw that her chair was empty and her computer wasting its sweetness on the desert air. In recent weeks, she had often been absent from her desk. Vice-Questore Patta, who was her direct superior, had either not noticed or – far more likely – was afraid to ask. Because she was not his secretary, Brunetti thought it was not his place to inquire and so said nothing. This time her absence meant he would be exposed to the Vice-Questore’s mood with no preparation. Was he a man or a mouse? Brunetti went to the door and knocked.

  ‘Avanti,’ he heard and entered.

  Dottor Giuseppe Patta, the finest flower of Palermitano manhood, sat behind his desk, caught in the act of folding his handkerchief into the breast pocket of his jacket. Brunetti was glad to see that the handkerchief was white – linen, perhaps – and bleached to the colour of dinosaur bones in the Gobi, the uniform of the umpires at Lord’s, a child’s first tooth. Patta would never concede to modern liberties of dress, would see himself dragged through the streets before he would put a coloured handkerchief in the breast pocket of his suit. In some things, usually those related to fashion, Patta was a man of stalwart principle; it was an honour to be in the same room with him.

  ‘Buon giorno, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, resisting the impulse to tug at his forelock.

  Patta gave the handkerchief a final prod and turned his attention to Brunetti. ‘Is this important?’ he asked.

  ‘It might be, Dottore,’ Brunetti said easily. ‘I thought you should know about it before it’s reported to the press, as I’m sure it will be.’

  Had the handkerchief caught fire, Patta could have been no more energized. ‘What is it?’ His look of mild displeasure had been upgraded to that of defender of the nation.

  Brunetti approached the desk and stood behind one of the chairs. He placed his hands on the back and said, ‘We had a call from the Biblioteca Merula, reporting a combination of vandalism and theft.’

  ‘Which is it, vandalism or theft?’ Patta demanded.

  ‘Someone sliced pages from more than twenty books, Dottore. And books are missing, probably stolen.’

  ‘Why would anyone do that?’ Patta asked.

  Brunetti breathed a silent prayer to Saint Monica, that emblem of patience. She was the patron saint of the abused, so Brunetti could invoke her for either function, depending upon the ferocity of Patta’s behaviour. ‘Books, as well as pages from rare books, are very popular with collectors, sir, and have a certain value.’

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘The books were all used by a Doctor Joseph Nickerson, who was there with a letter of reference from the University of Kansas and gave them an American passport as identification.’

  ‘Is it valid?’

  ‘I haven’t contacted the Americans yet, Vice-Questore.’ He looked at his watch and realized it was hopeless to try to do anything else that day.

  Patta gave him a long look and said, ‘It doesn’t sound like you’ve done very much at all, Brunetti.’

  Brunetti again consulted Saint Monica. ‘I’ve just got back, and I wanted you to know about it in case it’s necessary to deal with the press.’

  ‘Why should that be necessary?’ Patta asked, as though he’d been channelled the information that Brunetti was deliberately hiding something he should be told about.

  ‘One of the patrons of the library is the Contessa Morosini-Albani. In fact, it was she who donated at least one of the books that are missing. They’re concerned about what her reaction will be.’

  ‘She’ll probably take back anything else she’s given them. That’s what any sensible person would do.’

  It certainly sounded like what Patta would do, though Brunetti would need more than the help of the saints to believe that the Vice-Questore would ever donate a book to a library.

  Then, abruptly, Patta asked, ‘Is this what you meant about the press? That they’ll be interested in her?’

  ‘I think it’s possible, sir. Her family is very well known in the city, and their appetite has certainly been whetted by her stepson.’

  Patta’s look was fierce as he replayed Brunetti’s remark, scanning for criticism of the higher orders. Brunetti ironed all emotion from his face and stood, attentive, neutral, waiting for his superior’s response.

  ‘Do you mean Gianni?’ Patta asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Brunetti watched as Patta’s memory, which was elephantine for scandal of any sort, flashed across the photos and headlines that had filled the gutter press for years. Brunetti’s favourite was ‘Gianni paga i danni’, for the rhyme between his name and the damages he had had to pay after destroying the sound equipment of a band whose music he had not enjoyed in a club in Lignano. ‘Nobile ignobile’ had followed his arrest for shoplifting from an antique dealer’s in Milano, and then the delightful headline in the British press, ‘No-account Count’, after he was stopped trying to steal from a shop in New Bond Street. As Brunetti recalled, he had been serving as an attaché of some sort to the Italian embassy in London at the time, and so he could not be arrested, only declared persona non grata and expelled from England.

  Though Gianni was in no way, at least to the best of Brunetti’s current knowledge, involved with the library or the theft, the mention of the family name would be enough to work the Miracle of San Gennaro on the press: give it a good shake, and
the blood would flow afresh. The young man – who was no longer young and not much of a man – had so saturated the press that any combination, no matter how accidental, of his name and a crime of any sort would quickly become a headline; the Contessa would hardly want to see the family name exposed to the public eye in this fashion.

  ‘Do you think … ?’ Patta began.

  Brunetti waited, but his superior left the question unasked.

  Patta shifted his attention, and Brunetti saw the very moment when the Vice-Questore remembered that Brunetti had, by virtue of his marriage, slithered in among the nobility. ‘Do you know her?’ Patta asked.

  ‘The Contessa?’

  ‘Who else have we been talking about?’

  Brunetti, instead of correcting him, said only, ‘I’ve met her a few times, but I can’t say I know her.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Know her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My wife and my mother-in-law,’ Brunetti answered reluctantly.

  ‘Would one of them talk to her, do you think?’

  ‘About what?’

  Patta closed his eyes and sighed deeply, as one does when forced to deal with lesser intellects. ‘About how she might answer the press, should they find out about this.’

  ‘And how should that be, sir?’