The Rainaldi Quartet

by Paul Adam

  Guastafeste was examining the last of the documents. ‘There’s something,’ he said. ‘Not very significant. It’s clearer than all the others, but that’s not saying much.’

  I took a closer look at the document. It was a letter to Cozio. The address at the top and the opening words, ‘My Dear Cozio’, were reasonably clear, but after that the text was completely illegible until you got to the signature at the bottom of the page.

  ‘What’s the name of the sender?’ Guastafeste said. ‘It’s hard to make out. Federico? Federico something. Marinelli?’

  ‘Marinetti,’ I said. ‘Federico Marinetti.’ I looked at Giovanni. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  I’d been overoptimistic. I’d hoped that the Castello di Salabue might reveal some hitherto undiscovered secret, something to put us back on the scent of the violin we were seeking. But once again the trail had gone cold.

  ‘How about the name Giovanni Michele Anselmi di Briata?’ I asked.

  ‘That means nothing either,’ Giovanni replied. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He was a Casale cloth merchant, Cozio’s agent in the purchase of Stradivari’s last remaining violins from Paolo Stradivari. He also acted for the count in at least one transaction with an English cloth manufacturer named Thomas Colquhoun to whom Cozio, apparently, owed money. Why would an Italian nobleman owe money to an English factory owner?’

  Giovanni pursed his lips, then lifted his pipe pensively, tapping the stem of it lightly against his teeth.

  ‘No one in the family has ever been absolutely sure where Cozio’s money came from,’ he said. ‘There have been rumours that he engaged in trade of some kind – always using an intermediary, of course. A nobleman of his time would never have done anything so distasteful openly.’

  ‘The cloth trade?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘That would account for him knowing Anselmi,’ Guastafeste said. ‘Perhaps the firm still exists. Maybe they have records we could look at.’

  Giovanni took down a local telephone directory from a shelf and leafed through it. ‘It doesn’t look like it, I’m afraid. There is no entry for any Anselmi, business or residential.’

  ‘So what now?’ Guastafeste said.

  ‘We try the library in Casale Monferrato,’ I replied. ‘See if there’s anything in their archives.’

  14

  The River Po, in Cozio’s day, would have been a thriving waterway, its banks cluttered with jetties and wharves, heavily laden barges waiting two and three deep to unload. Stevedores would have been moving to and fro, their backs bowed beneath sacks and crates and barrels, horse-drawn carts lined up to transport their cargoes to the merchants in Casale and beyond. It was here that Stradivari’s last few violins arrived in 1775, brought upstream from Cremona by a bargemaster named Gobbi. Packed carefully in wooden boxes, they were transferred to one of Count Cozio’s carriages for the final twenty-kilometre journey to Salabue.

  Sadly, there is no sign of this vibrant history today. Now the Po seems detached from Casale. The bustling, noisy waterfront is gone, so too are the barges, their role long ago usurped by the roads and railways. There are no buildings along the riverbank, just a crescent of pale shingle on the north side where the course sweeps round in a long curve, and a swathe of wild grassland on the town side, deserted this morning except for a courting couple kissing beneath one of the trees.

  We left the car in the sprawling parking area just above the river and walked into the centre of the town, along colonnaded streets overlooked by imposing stone palaces. Out of interest – mine more than Guastafeste’s – we made a short detour to the Via Mamelli where Cozio had once had his town house. The building had long since been converted into apartments and offices. There was no indication, no sign or plaque on the wall, that the count had ever lived there. Unless you are a luthier, the name Cozio – even in Italy – is virtually unknown.

  The civic library was only a short distance away. The librarian in the archives section was one of those classic public servants who loathed both the public and any idea of service. When we explained what we were looking for she rolled her eyes behind her thick spectacles and gave a long, peppery sigh of irritation.

  ‘Anselmi di Briata, we don’t have anything on him,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know without looking?’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Perhaps we could look?’ I suggested.

  I made a move towards the stack of filing drawers next to the desk, but the librarian – reacting with the speed of a choleric rattlesnake – interposed herself between me and my goal.

  ‘I said we don’t have anything on him. Someone was asking only the other week.’

  Guastafeste and I exchanged glances.

  ‘Asking about Anselmi?’ Guastafeste said sharply. ‘Who? Who was asking?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that,’ the librarian replied primly.

  Guastafeste took out his police ID card and held it up in front of the librarian’s face.

  ‘This is a homicide investigation, signora. We’d appreciate a little cooperation.’

  The librarian screwed up her nose as if Guastafeste’s warrant card were tainted with a noxious smell.

  ‘I don’t know who he was,’ she said. ‘He didn’t give a name.’

  ‘Was he an Englishman?’ I said.

  The librarian started and stared at me, then recovered herself.

  ‘I couldn’t say. Perhaps.’

  ‘And you told him you had nothing on Anselmi, is that right?’ Guastafeste said.

  ‘We don’t have anything on him.’

  ‘I’d like to look for myself.’

  Guastafeste walked across to the filing cabinets. The librarian scurried after him.

  ‘The files are for staff use only,’ she snapped.

  ‘This is a public archive,’ Guastafeste said coolly. ‘I have a right to look.’

  Guastafeste pulled open one of the drawers and leafed through the cards inside – computer databases, like other aberrations of the modern age, not yet having made it to Casale. The librarian glared at him, but made no attempt to stop him.

  Guastafeste pulled out a filing card and held it up, reading out the heading on it. ‘“Anselmi di Briata. Cloth merchants, Casale Monferrato, 1726-1870.” Is this what you mean by nothing?’

  The librarian didn’t respond for a moment. I could tell she was regrouping, gathering her resources for a counterattack.

  ‘They’re uncatalogued documents,’ she said with a smug hint of triumph in her voice.

  ‘Meaning?’ Guastafeste said.

  ‘Meaning they’ve never been sorted out and given a proper filing reference.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’re probably in boxes in the basement. It could take me a long time to find them. And I don’t have that time right now.’

  ‘You don’t have to find them,’ Guastafeste said. ‘If you’ll show us the way, we’ll find them ourselves.’

  * * *

  There were fifteen large boxes full of dusty documents. Guastafeste looked at them in dismay.

  ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Do we have to go through them all?’

  ‘The earlier stuff, before 1775, we can probably ignore,’ I said.

  ‘How do we know which is the earlier stuff?’

  ‘We don’t.’

  I opened the first box and tipped the contents out on to the table. A thick cloud of dust gusted up into my face and I turned away, coughing.

  ‘How did you know it was Scott?’ Guastafeste asked.

  ‘It was just a guess.’

  I took off my jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. It was hot and oppressive down here in the basement. The stacks of shelves were all around us, blocking us in. There was no daylight, just a naked bulb above the table, casting a harsh yellow aura over the documents below. I sat down and picked up the first paper. I could tell this wasn�
�t going to be an enjoyable experience.

  * * *

  An hour later and I knew more than I’d ever wanted to about the eighteenth-century cloth trade, but I’d seen nothing at all – not even a passing mention – about violins. All I’d read so far were dull requests for bales of cloth, invoices for payment and other commercial trivia. I wasn’t surprised that no one had bothered to catalogue this stuff. It was a miracle they hadn’t taken one look at it and dumped it in a skip.

  We were on box five before anything of interest surfaced. Guastafeste held up a letter he’d been perusing. ‘This is about a violin.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Take a look.’

  Guastafeste handed me the letter which I saw was dated June, 1787. The writing was clumsy and childish as if the sender were only poorly educated, a conclusion reinforced by the Italian which was basic and full of grammatical errors.

  ‘Gracious Sir, I thank you much for interest you show in violin left me by my mother. It very good thing. Nothing bad about it. Price you say is good. I send it you now.’

  The signature was printed in capital letters, making it easy to read.

  ‘Elisabeta Horak,’ I said. ‘An address in Bohemia.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘I have no idea. Just someone selling a violin to Anselmi.’

  ‘For Cozio’s collection?’

  ‘Most probably.’

  ‘Does that take us any further?’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ I replied, but I put the letter to one side anyway. It sat on its own in a corner of the table, insignificant and rather pathetic. It wasn’t much to show for three hours’ concentrated work.

  We took a break for a brief lunch in a bar at around 3 pm, then returned to the archives, refreshed but hardly raring to go. Guastafeste fingered the pile of documents on his table unenthusiastically.

  ‘Do we have to do this?’

  ‘You have a better way of spending the afternoon?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Having a few beers in the square doesn’t count.’

  ‘It would probably be as productive as sitting here chewing dust.’ He looked at my expression. ‘Okay, okay, I’ll get down another box.’

  It was two more hours before anything else of any significance emerged from the mountain of moribund papers. This time it was I who found it.

  ‘Federico Marinetti. There’s a letter from him,’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Let me finish it … well, not a lot, I’m afraid,’ I admitted. ‘Listen. “My dear Anselmi, you must excuse my silence these past two weeks, but I have been confined to my bed with a fever that left me unable to sit up, much less attend to my correspondence. I am now, thank the Lord, fully recovered from the illness and looking forward to resuming our musical diversions. I am having guests from Milan at the end of the week. Bring your fiddle over on Saturday and we will amuse ourselves with some quartets.”’

  Guastafeste gave a snort. ‘Is that it? Not exactly a breakthrough, is it?’

  ‘Don’t give up hope,’ I replied. ‘There are still another four boxes to go.’

  ‘Wonderful. Two each.’

  * * *

  ‘Got it!’ Guastafeste jolted upright so fast he nearly toppled over backwards on his chair. He grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself. ‘A letter to Anselmi from Thomas Colquhoun. It’s in English. Here.’

  He passed me the letter. It was stiff and wrinkled like a piece of hide. I studied the faded text for a time.

  ‘Well?’ Guastafeste said. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied with a heavy sigh. ‘Absolutely nothing. It’s a thank you letter for that painting.’

  ‘What painting?’

  ‘The one on the wall at Highfield Hall. The Garofalo. The man with the violin.’

  ‘It was a gift from Anselmi?’ Guastafeste said.

  ‘So it would appear.’

  I read out the relevant section of the letter, translating it into Italian. ‘“The painting is truly magnificent, the brushwork on the violin of exceptional quality. I confess that I would have much preferred His Excellency’s instrument – and indeed I have not yet given up hope of it being recovered – but your painting goes some way towards consoling me for my loss. I am indebted to you for your kind consideration and unfailing generosity. The riddle to which you allude escapes me for the moment, but I have grown accustomed to your love of japes and I will endeavour over time to attempt to solve the puzzle. Without your assistance, however, I fear I may not be successful…”’

  Guastafeste frowned. ‘What’s he saying. What riddle? I’m confused. Is the violin in the painting the one that went missing?’

  ‘It’s not clear from the text. Maybe.’

  ‘But at Highfield Hall you said it was a Guarneri “del Gesù.”’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So it wasn’t a Stradivari that Cozio sent Colquhoun?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m confused too. I don’t know what to make of it either.’ I looked at the date at the top of the letter – June, 1806. ‘It was written two years after the last of the letters we found at Highfield Hall. It would appear that the missing violin – whatever it was – had still not been found by then.’

  ‘It never was found,’ Guastafeste said despondently. ‘It disappeared for ever. That’s the truth of the matter, isn’t it?’

  I put the letter on the pile with the other two we’d saved. I felt deflated. The poison of defeat was seeping into both of us.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Guastafeste said. ‘It’s gone for good.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I fear it has.’

  15

  We left Casale that evening. There didn’t seem much point in remaining any longer. We drove to Cremona in a heavy thunderstorm, sheet lightning breaking over the horizon, the road swimming with rainwater. Guastafeste dropped me off at my house. I opened the car door to get out, but Guastafeste put his hand on my arm.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘A couple of things bother me. Well, more than a couple, but these two in particular have been nagging away at me. First, how did Tomaso track down Mrs Colquhoun? What made him go all the way to England, to that isolated house in the hills, in search of old documents? Something must have put him on to the scent. I’m going to talk to Clara about that. Second, that painting at Highfield Hall. I want to know more about it. The riddle Thomas Colquhoun mentioned in his letter to Anselmi. What was he talking about? Would you ring Mrs Colquhoun, Gianni? I’d do it myself but you know how bad my English is. Ask her if she can recall anything more about the history of the painting, ask her to look at it for us, check the back for marks, see if there’s anything striking, anything peculiar about it. I’ll call you later.’

  I went into my house. The rain had stopped, but the air felt damp and clammy. I opened a few windows and made myself some pasta for supper, then phoned Mrs Colquhoun. An hour later, as I was preparing to go to bed, Guastafeste rang.

  ‘You get through to her?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. She wasn’t much help. She didn’t know any more about the painting than she’d already told us.’

  ‘Did you ask her to look at it?’

  ‘I gave her fifteen minutes, then called her back. The picture was too heavy for her to lift down, but she swung it out from the wall and had a look on the back of it. Nothing. She didn’t know anything about a riddle either. How about Clara?’

  ‘She didn’t know how Tomaso got on to the Colquhoun-Anselmi connection. But she did say that Tomaso had been spending a lot of time in the Cremona public library recently.’

  ‘Looking at what?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I intend to find out. You interested? I might need a bit of help.’

  I sighed. It had been a long, tiring day. I was growing weary of libraries and old documents, but I knew we had to follow up every lead, track down every missing piece in the jigsaw.

  ‘W
hen do you want to meet?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow,’ Guastafeste said. ‘Outside the Palazzo Affaitati.’

  * * *

  The Palazzo Affaitati is quite a handsome sixteenth-century building, though you wouldn’t know it from the exterior which has been virtually obscured by scaffolding for many months and will no doubt remain so for years to come – almost as if the architect in charge of restoration has incorporated the planks and rusty poles into his ‘concept’.

  You enter through an arched gateway and porticoed foyer which opens on to a courtyard dominated by three large magnolia trees, then go up a broad marble staircase to the first floor. On one side of the landing is the city art gallery and Museo Stradivariano, on the other the Cremona public library and historic archives. Guastafeste and I went through into the archives.

  The librarian in charge was, fortunately, rather more cooperative than the one in Casale.

  ‘Yes, I remember Signor Rainaldi,’ she said. ‘He came here a lot. Sat at that table over there. We were sorry to hear about his death. And in such horrific circumstances.’

  ‘Do you have any record of what he looked at when he was here?’ Guastafeste asked.

  ‘Of course. Every reader has to fill in a request form, then the material is brought up from the archives.’

  ‘You still have the forms?’

  ‘They are kept for twelve months.’

  Thank God for Italian bureaucracy, I thought, that pathological need to hoard old bits of paper.

  The librarian disappeared into her office and returned a few minutes later with a thick wad of request forms. Guastafeste and I spread them out on one of the tables and studied them.

  ‘He must have spent weeks here,’ I said.

  ‘He did,’ Guastafeste replied. ‘Look at the dates: April, May, June. That was serious research.’

  Tomaso had visited the archives, and requested material, some twenty times over that three-month period. Each time he’d asked for the same collection of documents, or rather parts of the same collection – the Carteggio of Cozio di Salabue, the extensive, painstakingly detailed record that the count kept of his violin collection.

  ‘Let’s take a look at some of these,’ Guastafeste said and I gave him a sceptical glance.