Paganini's Ghost

by Paul Adam

  “Dio,” Guastafeste said. “I’m not sure this was such a good idea now. Where do we begin?”

  “Can you see any dates on these ledgers?” I asked.

  “No, they all look the same to me.”

  I pulled out a volume. It was heavy, too heavy to hold up for long, so I propped one end up on the edge of the shelf and opened the cover. Written on the first page in a large, elegant hand were the words “January 1823– March 1823.”

  “They look like quarterly records,” I said. “Four books for each year.”

  “How could one man produce so much stuff?” Guastafeste said.

  “He wouldn’t have done it all alone. He’d have been like the great violin makers or painters. He’d have had apprentices, assistants who did the bulk of the work, but it would all have had Le Bley Lavelle’s name on it.”

  Guastafeste walked along the stack, counting off the ledgers.

  “This should be 1819.”

  He pulled out a volume and opened it.

  “April 1827. Wrong way,” he said. “Try your end.”

  I lifted down a ledger at random and checked inside it.

  “October 1820.”

  “We’re in the wrong stack.”

  We moved into the next row of shelves and took down various volumes, finding three that related to 1819.

  “The third quarter is missing,” Guastafeste said. “We’ve got January to March, April to June, and October to December, but nothing for July to September. What was the date on the letter Elisa wrote to Paganini? Can you remember?”

  “September 1819,” I said.

  “That was when she sent him the gold box, but would Le Bley Lavelle have made it in that same quarter, or earlier in the year?”

  “It can’t have been much earlier. Paganini didn’t write the “Moses Fantasy” until the late spring. But we can check.”

  We carried the ledgers to the end of the stacks, where there was a small table and a single chair. Guastafeste insisted I take the chair, while he stood beside me. I opened the volume for the second quarter of 1819 and leafed through it. The pages were yellow and curling at the edges, many of them stuck together due to the damp atmosphere in the basement. Some pages were disfigured by blotches of blue mould and all of them were thickly coated with dust.

  Molyneux et Charbon’s filing system may have been nonexistent, but there was nothing sloppy about the records Henri le Bley Lavelle had kept almost two hundred years before. There were meticulous entries for each item of jewellery he, or his team of assistants, had made, from small gold chains through to whole silver dinner services. Every piece of metal and every jewel was documented and costed; there were detailed drawings of each item, and every stage of the production process had been approved and signed off by Le Bley Lavelle himself. A simple gold ring might have only a couple of pages of information about it, but a larger item—a necklace or a jewel-encrusted bracelet—could have nine or ten pages devoted to its creation.

  I prised apart the pages, taking care not to tear them, and went through the whole ledger. There were records for several gold boxes, but not one that matched the box François Villeneuve had placed in his hotel safe.

  “It’s not here,” I said.

  “Merda!” Guastafeste said. “So it must be in the missing volume. Do you think Villeneuve took it away with him?”

  “He’d have had a job. It’s not exactly something he could shove up his shirt and walk out with.”

  “Maybe no one noticed.”

  “A place like this? You saw the security upstairs—the locks, alarms, cameras. No, it must still be down here somewhere.”

  Guastafeste looked round the basement, appalled at the prospect of having to search all the shelves.

  “We could be here for weeks,” he said.

  “Let’s think it through,” I said. “Work out what Villeneuve would have done. He’s found the volume he’s searching for, so what does he do? They’re heavy books. He wouldn’t stand by the shelf looking through it. He’d do what we’ve done. Bring the book to this table and examine it here.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. But then what? Where did the book go after that?”

  “He must have put it back.”

  “Then why isn’t it on the shelf?”

  “But not necessarily in the exact place he found it. Let’s assume he’d got what he came for and had no plans to come back. He didn’t need to find that volume again. You’ve been in libraries. Have you never dumped a book on a table or the wrong shelf because you couldn’t be bothered to return it to its proper place?”

  “So Villeneuve . . .”

  Guastafeste turned and scanned the nearest stack of shelves. Most of the space was given over to cardboard boxes, but on the middle shelf of the stack was a small collection of four or five ledgers, tilted over at an angle.

  “One of those?” Guastafeste said.

  He moved towards the stack.

  “The one on the far right,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at the spines. Most of them are caked in dust. They haven’t been disturbed for years. But that one has finger marks in the dust. You see them? They’re catching the light.”

  “You should have been a detective, Gianni.”

  Guastafeste removed the ledger from the shelf and flipped back the cover. He grinned at me.

  “July to September, 1819.”

  He brought the volume over to the table and I went through it page by page. Midway in, we found what we were looking for—an entry dated August 6, and headed “A fine gold box with engraved lid and other decorations. Client: the Comtesse de Compignano.”

  “That’s not Elisa Baciocchi,” Guastafeste said.

  “It’s what she was calling herself in 1819. She was no longer a princess, just a mere countess.”

  There was confirmation that I was right on the following pages—a series of detailed drawings of Moses on Mount Sinai for the engraver to copy, and then a drawing of a wooden insert in the shape of a violin. The exact dimensions of the insert were given, accompanied by specifications for the colour and thickness of the velvet with which the insert was to be lined.

  Guastafeste leaned over the table, studying the drawing.

  “I can’t see any information about the violin it was intended for,” he said.

  “Nor can I.”

  I flipped over the page. There was a list of costings for each stage of the box’s construction—the underlying metal shell, which wasn’t gold, then the gold veneer, the combination lock, the engraving, the pine for the insert, the velvet, even the glue used to secure the velvet, the total coming to 3,200 francs. Everything was recorded in minute detail, the entries written out in a neat copperplate hand, probably with a quill pen. It was clear that Henri le Bley Lavelle had been very particular about record keeping.

  “That’s a pity,” Guastafeste said disconsolately. “I was hoping for a maker’s name, maybe a description of the violin.”

  I peered closer at the ledger.

  “What’s that there? I can’t read it.”

  I touched the page with my finger. There was one entry that was uncharacteristically untidy and written in a different hand to the others. It had been inserted between two entries, just below the costings for the velvet lining. Guastafeste bent lower, focusing on the cramped, spidery handwriting. “I think it says ‘Voyez la princesse de Piombino et Lucca.’ ”

  I felt a sudden jolt of excitement.

  “Elisa! What’s that after her name? A date?”

  “October 1807.”

  “And the rest?”

  “That’s hard to make out. It looks like ‘Jeremiah’ and then another word. ‘Posier’? Is that right? Jeremiah Posier. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “He’s not a violin maker?”

  “I’ve certainly never heard of him.”

  “ ‘See the princess of Piombino and Lucca, October 1807,’ ” Guastafeste said. “That was w
hen Paganini was in Lucca, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. And when Elisa gave him the other gift she mentioned in her letter.”

  “Let’s find the ledger for October 1807.”

  We went back into the stacks and searched the shelves, pulling out volume after volume until our hands were black with grime and our nostrils choked with dust. But the ledger for October 1807 wasn’t there.

  “It could be in one of these cardboard boxes, I suppose,” Guastafeste said. “Or simply lost. We can’t expect every record to be here, not after two centuries.”

  I gazed at him for a moment.

  “You know, we’re a pair of idiots,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Villeneuve looked at the 1819 ledger. He’d have seen that note about Elisa just as we did.”

  I went back to the first stack by the table, and examined the small collection of ledgers on the middle shelf. I should have noticed it earlier: One of the other volumes had finger marks on the spine. I pulled it out and opened it on the table. It was the 1807 ledger we’d been searching for.

  I turned over the pages. Almost immediately I found the one we needed. Or rather, I didn’t find it. One of the pages had been roughly torn out of the ledger, leaving behind a strip of jagged paper. I could tell from the pale colour of the torn edge that the page had been recently removed.

  “Villeneuve?” Guastafeste said.

  “Who else could it have been?” I replied.

  Guastafeste swore.

  “Well, that scuppers that particular line of enquiry.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “What’s this here?”

  I was studying the next page in the ledger. It was a continuation of the record that had begun on the missing page. There were only a few lines of handwriting. One of them read “Repair to underside of item completed, October 6. Posier hallmarks undamaged.”

  There was then a short table of figures, with a total underneath of 150 francs. Below that were the words “Item despatched to Her Highness, October 8,” followed by the initials HLBL, where Le Bley Lavelle had approved the record.

  “ ‘Her Highness’—that has to be Elisa,” I said. “This doesn’t look like a new commission. Elisa has obviously sent something to Le Bley Lavelle to be repaired. Probably only minor repairs, too—one hundred and fifty francs, that doesn’t sound a lot. And the item, whatever it was, was made originally by Jeremiah Posier.”

  “I don’t understand,” Guastafeste said. “This is jewellery, not a violin. It can’t be what we’re looking for.”

  “It must have some connection with Paganini’s gold box. Why else would there be that cross-reference in the ledger? And why else would François Villeneuve have torn out this page?”

  We didn’t linger in the basement. The dust and the damp were beginning to irritate our throats, making us cough. Besides, we’d done all we could there. It was possible that there was more information about the gold box to be found—perhaps in one of the many cardboard boxes—but neither of us felt like looking for it. Guastafeste, in any case, had an alternative plan of action.

  “Villeneuve’s partner, Alain Robillet,” he said. “He must know what Villeneuve was up to. Let’s go and talk to him.”

  We went back upstairs and encountered Olivier Delacourt outside one of the consulting rooms.

  “You have finished?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Guastafeste replied.

  “You found what you were looking for?”

  “Not everything. A page had been torn out of one of the ledgers—October 1807.”

  Delacourt looked shocked.

  “Torn out? By François Villeneuve?”

  “I presume so.”

  “That’s disgraceful. Thank you for telling me. I will look into it.”

  “And one other thing,” Guastafeste said. “Have you heard of a goldsmith or jeweller named Jeremiah Posier?”

  “Posier? No, I don’t think so.”

  “He was working round the beginning of the nineteenth century, or earlier.”

  “I’m sorry, no, the name is unfamiliar to me.”

  “Might Monsieur Jahinny know?”

  “Monsieur Jahinny has had to go and see a client. I, too, am engaged at the moment, but please allow me to show you out.”

  Delacourt tapped in a code on the keypad beside the door and ushered us into the showroom. A red button on the wall unlocked the front door. Delacourt shook hands, wished us good day, then closed the door behind us and hurried back to his customer.

  Guastafeste and I walked the short distance to the Ritz Hotel and took one of the waiting taxis to an address in the Marais, the area between the Centre Pompidou and the Bastille, a neighbourhood that half a century ago had been full of dilapidated mansions and squalid tenement buildings but which had then been redeveloped and gentrified by the middle classes, who had brought with them their penchant for art galleries, chic apartments, and interior-design shops.

  The premises from which François Villeneuve and Alain Robillet conducted their affairs were on the less fashionable fringes of the Marais, where some of the original character of the area still remained. The bars and shops here were less trendy, the buildings a touch shabbier. It had the feel of a real working commercial district rather than a spread from a lifestyle magazine. Villeneuve and Robillet’s business had a frontage on the street—two large plate-glass windows with a sign above reading fine art and antiques—but there weren’t many items on display. One window contained just a chest of drawers and a sideboard, the other a single easel on which a gloomy oil painting of a biblical scene was perched. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon, but the place looked shut up for the night. The lights were off and the steel security grilles had been lowered over the outside of the windows.

  Guastafeste tried the front door. It was locked. I put my face to the pane and peered through the glass. I could see a large room inside, displays of furniture and other antiques stretching away into the darkness.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anyone here,” I said.

  “Let’s try round the back,” Guastafeste said.

  We walked down the access road at the side of the building and into a scruffy rear yard. A big furniture van was parked against a wall. Next to it was a grey Peugeot saloon that was in need of a wash. I glanced up at the building, the windows overlooking the yard. There were no lights on here, either. The back door of the premises was ajar. Guastafeste pushed it open and we stepped through into a storage area that was piled high with old furniture. A flight of metal stairs with open treads led up to the floor above. We went up them.

  The landing at the top was dim and narrow, the floor covered with dirty lino. A trickle of feeble daylight seeped out from a door to our left. Guastafeste pushed open the door.

  “Hello, Monsieur Robillet?” he called.

  There was an office inside—a desk, a chair, a few metal filing cabinets—but no sign of Alain Robillet. Guastafeste walked across the office towards the window. He stopped abruptly and I heard his sharp intake of breath.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Stay where you are, Gianni,” Guastafeste said calmly. “And don’t touch anything.”

  “What?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  Guastafeste went round the desk and looked down. I edged sideways, then wished I hadn’t. On the floor by the window was a man’s body. I could see only his head and part of his shoulders, but that was more than enough. On the side of his head, above the ear, was a dark open wound. His face was streaked with congealed blood.

  Twelve

  I have no clear memory of exactly what happened after that. I can vaguely recall Guastafeste taking me by the arm and guiding me downstairs and into the yard. I felt sick and faint, but the fresh air alleviated the nausea. I sat on a wooden chair that Guastafeste brought out from the storeroom and followed his instructions to breathe in and out slowly and deeply. He had his mobile phone in his hand by that point and was calling t
he police. I heard his voice, but the words didn’t register: They were just a blur of indistinct sounds.

  My sense of time must have been impaired, for it seemed only a few seconds later that the first police cars arrived. Suddenly, the yard was swarming with people: uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, men in white boiler suits carrying cases of forensic equipment. I was moved out of the way and left alone in a corner of the yard while Guastafeste went back inside the building with the policemen. Fifteen minutes later he emerged alone and came over to me.

  “How are you feeling, Gianni?”

  “I’m all right. It was just a bit of a shock.”

  “I can get you some medical attention, if you need it.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. I’m fine now. What’s happening?”

  “The usual scene-of-crime investigations. The officer in charge wants us to stick around for a while, in case he has any questions, then go over to police headquarters to make statements. We’ll probably have to give them our fingerprints, too, to eliminate them from the enquiry.”

  “We’re not suspects?”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “We found the body.”

  “He’s been dead for some time.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Experience. The look of the body, the blood on the floor. I’ll wait for the police doctor’s verdict, but I’d say it happened several hours ago.”

  “Is it Alain Robillet?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  I shuddered.

  “First Villeneuve, now his partner. That’s frightening.”

  “There’s nothing for you to worry about,” Guastafeste said reassuringly.

  “He must be a desperate man, the killer. Two murders in a matter of a few days.”

  “We don’t know that it was the same person.”

  “You mean there might be two killers?”

  “Let’s not get into that right now.”

  More vehicles were pulling into the yard—a couple of unmarked police cars, another white transit van. The area round the back door of the building had been cordoned off with tape. We watched the officers coming and going, Guastafeste fidgeting impatiently beside my chair. He wasn’t accustomed to being a spectator at incidents like this. I knew he wanted to go inside and see what was going on.