The Rainaldi Quartet

by Paul Adam

  He went through them slowly, removing the pieces of paper one at a time and placing them to one side for us to study. There were rough sketches of landscapes, of fields and gardens and grand country houses; there were still-life drawings, charcoal outlines of nudes, both male and female, and numerous studies of faces, the outlines of the portraits which formed the greater part of Morera’s artistic output.

  ‘There,’ Vittorio said, pulling out another sketch from the portfolio. ‘That looks like Cozio.’

  It did indeed. It was a chalk outline of the count’s head, his features drawn in some detail. His torso and arms were missing, but I had no doubt that this was a preliminary sketch for the portrait hanging on the wall in the museum.

  Vittorio lifted out another drawing of Cozio’s head alone, then a larger, less detailed sketch of the full portrait, with Cozio seated, his left hand resting on his walking stick, his right holding a piece of paper – a piece of paper with a few words scribbled carelessly across it.

  Vittorio peered closer. ‘You guessed correctly, Gianni. That looks like a coat of arms at the top, Cozio’s family crest.’

  ‘And below it?’ I leaned over the desk, trying to discern the words.

  ‘They’re hard to make out, the chalk is very smudged. I can see a figure here, a number. A seventeen, then more digits. It looks like 1716 – a date.’

  I glanced at Guastafeste. 1716, the year the Messiah was made.

  ‘I’m afraid the rest is very faint,’ Vittorio said. He took a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and held it over the drawing. I can see an S followed by an L – no, I think it’s a T. The next few letters are illegible. Then maybe a V, then an I. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Could it be Stradivari?’ I said.

  Vittorio took his time replying. ‘It might be,’ he said eventually without looking up from his magnifying glass. ‘Then there’s another couple of words. Federico … Federico something.’

  ‘Marinetti?’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s possible. There’s something that looks like an old-fashioned lire sign, but the figures after it are too blurred to read.’ He straightened up. ‘It’s intriguing. It doesn’t look as if it’s a letter the count is holding. From the pattern of the words, the layout, the fact that there are so few words, I’d say it was more like an invoice or a bill of sale; a commercial document of some sort. That date puzzles me though: 1716. The painting was done in 1831. Why would Cozio be holding a document dated 1716?’

  ‘It’s not the date of the document,’ I said. ‘It’s the date of a violin. A Stradivari of 1716. A Stradivari violin that Cozio sold to Federico Marinetti.’

  16

  The three letters we’d found in the public archives in Casale Monferrato were spread out on my kitchen table – not the originals, of course, but photocopies we’d been allowed to take. I looked at each in turn: Thomas Colquhoun’s letter about the painting at Highfield Hall – an intriguing missive, but still a puzzle to us; the letter from Elisabeta Horak about her mother’s violin – I wondered about that. Was it of any relevance? I could not see at the moment how it might be. And who was Elisabeta Horak? Finally, I turned to the letter from Federico Marinetti to Michele Anselmi. I read it through again. The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t, in fact, addressed to Michele Anselmi, as we’d thought before, but to his son, Paolo.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Guastafeste said when I pointed out the discrepancy. ‘All we want is Marinetti’s address.’

  That was when I noticed the second thing. ‘Ah. The address.’

  ‘It’s there, isn’t it?’

  The address at the top of the letter, I now realised, was so badly stained as to be completely indecipherable.

  ‘Can you make anything out?’ I said.

  Guastafeste took the letter from me. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘The other letter from Marinetti – at Salabue – did that have an address on it?’

  Guastafeste shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. We didn’t think he was significant then. Let’s call them and ask.’

  I rang Giovanni Davico. He went away for a couple of minutes and returned with the letter.

  ‘Yes, there’s an address on it,’ he said. ‘Faint and smudged, but I think it says Villa Magenta, Frassineto Po.’

  * * *

  Frassineto Po was five kilometres east of Casale Monferrato, one of those nondescript, insignificant settlements that are almost too small to be flattered with the title ‘village’ – a one-horse town where the nag has long since keeled over and been consigned to the dogmeat factory.

  We asked in a bar and were given directions away from the river and up into the rolling hills on the southern bank of the Po. The Villa Magenta was a couple of kilometres away, perched on the side of a low hill, copses of trees and open pastureland on the slopes below it. We sped up a steep, twisting drive from the road and came out on a gravel forecourt in front of the house – a large, three-storey seventeenth-century villa that had been built in three distinct sections: a long central segment with a turreted wing on each end. The near and middle sections looked occupied, but the furthest wing was derelict – its roof had gone completely and the windows were devoid of glass, the stucco around them blackened with soot and peeling off in sheets. Parked in front of the main entrance was a yellow Lamborghini sports car. Guastafeste turned in next to it.

  The man who answered the door was in his early thirties. He was casually, but expensively, dressed, a pair of reflective sunglasses concealing his eyes. Guastafeste showed him his police identity card.

  ‘I hope we’re not intruding,’ he said. ‘You are Signor Marinetti?’

  ‘No, my name is Ferrucci.’

  ‘But this is the house where Federico Marinetti lived?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘You are descended from him?’

  ‘No, the house passed out of the Marinetti family … oh, a hundred and fifty years ago. They went broke. What is this?’

  Guastafeste explained why we were there. Ferrucci pulled off his sunglasses and squinted at us.

  ‘A violin? I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Could we come in for a moment?’ Guastafeste said.

  Ferrucci hesitated. ‘Well … I suppose so.’

  He led us across the hall and into a drawing room which was furnished more for show than comfort. The chairs and sofas – all rococo curves and silk upholstery – looked too fragile to sit on and the walls were overcrowded with gloomy paintings in heavy gilt frames that gave the room an oppressive atmosphere.

  ‘You say the Marinettis went broke?’ Guastafeste said, sitting down on one of the sofas.

  ‘Yes,’ Ferrucci replied. ‘Gambling debts. Federico Marinetti was a compulsive gambler. He inherited this house and a vast estate from his father and blew it all away on extravagant living and the gaming tables. You don’t know the story?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Guastafeste said.

  ‘It was quite a scandal at the time. Federico was something of a character. He liked to throw huge parties, invited friends, dozens of friends, to stay. He’d hire an orchestra for a week at a time – he was a great lover of music – and party day and night until he collapsed of exhaustion. He ran up such large debts that gradually the estate was sold off piece by piece. But that didn’t stop him. He went on one final, mad gambling binge and blew what was left of his inheritance. Then he came back here to the Villa Magenta, shut himself away in the west wing with his mistress and set fire to the place. Both he and his mistress perished in the blaze.’

  That explained why the words on the piece of paper in Cozio’s portrait had been painted over. Who would have wanted to publicise any association with a man like Federico Marinetti?

  ‘The wing has never been rebuilt then?’ I said.

  ‘No, it was left derelict after the fire. The servants managed to extinguish the blaze before it took hold in the rest of the house, but the west wing was gutted.’

  ‘And after Marinetti’s deat
h?’ Guastafeste said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I believe everything was sold to pay his debts.’

  ‘So nothing of Marinetti’s is left here today?’

  ‘Not in the main house.’

  ‘And in the west wing?’ I said, still hopeful that our visit might not be entirely wasted.

  ‘Well, it’s pretty much the way it was left after the fire,’ Ferrucci replied. ‘The floors and roof have gone. It’s just a pile of rubble. No one’s bothered to get rid of any of it.’

  ‘Do you mind if we look?’

  Ferrucci shrugged. ‘Be my guests.’

  * * *

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ Guastafeste asked, peering up into the empty shell of the building.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing above to fall down on us,’ I replied. ‘And the walls must be pretty secure to have survived intact for all these years.’

  I stepped through an opening which must once have been a door and looked around, my heart sinking. Perhaps I’d been guilty of deluding myself, of allowing my common sense to be overridden by an unrealistic optimism that we would eventually find the violin we were seeking. If so, this was the moment of my awakening. There was no way any degree of optimism could have remained intact when faced with the scene of absolute destruction that was now before me. The walls were bare stone, their surfaces still stained by the marks of the fire, by soot and ash and scorching blisters. The roof, of course, was gone, but fragments of the rafters remained embedded in the tops of the walls, great stumps of charred timber that had burnt like kindling in the ferocious inferno. What little was left of the roof tiles and the collapsed upper floors of the building now lay in a heap on the ground, their origins almost invisible beneath the dense tangle of weeds and grass that had colonised them over the intervening years.

  I picked my way around the mound of rubble, looking for gaps in the vegetation. There was sunlight, blue sky above me, but down here all was shadow. Was it my imagination, or could I really smell the sulphurous residue of smoke? I grasped hold of a tall clump of weeds and wrenched it out, then another, clearing a patch in the debris. With the toe of my shoe I scooped out some of the looser material, eating into the side of the mound.

  ‘A violin is made of wood,’ Guastafeste said. ‘It would have been one of the first things to be destroyed.’

  I caught a glimpse of a thin filament of wire half buried in the earth. I bent down and pulled it out. Was it a violin string? I knew it wasn’t. The strings would have been made of gut that would have burnt as easily as the instrument itself. This was just a piece of rusty wire. I tossed it away and gazed around. Guastafeste was right – no violin could have survived such an all-consuming fire – but a part of me still hoped I might find some trace of its existence: a charred peg, a piece of scroll, perhaps even a brittle fragment of paper bearing the words, ‘Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1716…’

  ‘Leave it, Gianni,’ Guastafeste said gently. ‘It’s over.’

  17

  Disappointment is like a disease, a debilitating fever that saps your energy, drains your willpower and leaves you frail and feeble. If left untreated, it can eat away at the mind, depressing the body’s immune system and eventually producing physical symptoms as painful and genuine as any bacterial or viral illness.

  I was despondent. So too was Guastafeste. We’d been to England, to Salabue, to Casale Monferrato and now Frassineto Po, but had yet to arrive at the destination we craved.

  ‘Sleep on things,’ Guastafeste said when he dropped me off outside my house. ‘I’ll call you in the morning.’

  It was late, I was tired after our drive, but I didn’t go up to bed immediately. I put on a CD of Bach and sat in my sitting room, thinking back to the night Tomaso had been killed, of everything that had happened since. The murder investigation was the province of the police. They had resources, specialist personnel, powers that were way beyond anything I could command. I could give Guastafeste no assistance in that area. But violins – violins were my province.

  In the excitement of tracing the 1716 Stradivari to Federico Marinetti, then the bitter disappointment of discovering that it had most probably been destroyed, we had temporarily lost sight of the other instrument – the violin that had gone missing on its way to England two hundred years ago. And we had lost sight of the painting that I was sure held the key to that violin’s fate. Mrs Colquhoun had not known any more about the portrait on the wall of her house, but there were other ways of alleviating my curiosity. In the morning, as soon as the museum opened, I telephoned Vittorio Sicardo at the Palazzo Affaitati and told him what I wanted.

  ‘Just let me find a pen,’ Vittorio said. ‘What was the name again?’

  ‘Cesare Garofalo,’ I said.

  ‘This kind of stuff’s easy to track down on the internet, you know.’

  ‘I’m old-fashioned,’ I said. ‘I still have a touching faith in books and libraries. Besides, I don’t have a computer.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find and call you back. It might take me some time, I’ve meetings all morning.’

  ‘Whenever, that’s fine.’

  I went into my workshop and diverted my troubled mind by finishing off the repairs to the damaged Stradivari for Serafin. Nearing eleven o’clock, Guastafeste called and we had a brief conversation. He told me that the British police – who had been officially asked to locate Christopher Scott – had been unable to find the dealer, at either his home or business address. He seemed to have disappeared.

  I was having lunch in the kitchen when the phone rang again. It wasn’t Vittorio, as I’d expected, but Margherita Severini.

  ‘How busy are you this afternoon?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing that can’t wait.’

  ‘Can I come and see you?’

  ‘But of course. Come for dinner.’

  ‘No, I won’t do that – I have to be back in Milan this evening – but thank you.’

  ‘See me about what?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. Now where are you, and how do I get to you?’

  * * *

  I took her out on to the terrace when she arrived and we sat in the shade under my pergola, the trellis of vines above our heads protecting us from the heat of the sun. She was wearing a sleeveless blue summer dress and just a trace of make-up. I brought out a jug of iced tea with lemon and poured her a glass. She looked at me and smiled.

  ‘I could have done this on the phone,’ she said. ‘But I thought it would be better face to face. I had no classes this afternoon and I felt like getting out of Milan. I often feel like getting out of Milan.’ She looked across the terrace. ‘You have a lovely garden. Do you do it all yourself?’

  I nodded. ‘It was already pretty mature when we bought the house. The previous owner planted most of the trees, but I’ve added a lot of shrubs, made a vegetable patch down at the bottom.’

  ‘You have such a lot of space. I can smell fresh air, not petrol fumes, see the sky, not a line of traffic.’

  ‘Well, if you will live in the city,’ I said.

  Margherita made a wry face. ‘I know, it’s my own fault. Is your workshop here too?’

  ‘Over there. I’ll show you it later, if you like.’

  She sipped some of her iced tea. I waited.

  ‘I’ve heard from my uncle’s lawyers,’ she said. ‘He made no separate provision for the disposal of his violin collection, so it would seem that I inherit it, along with the rest of his estate.’

  ‘It was a formidable collection,’ I said.

  ‘More than a hundred instruments,’ Margherita said. ‘Not all of them on display. He kept some in a bank vault. He was not a great one for paperwork, Uncle Enrico. Apparently he kept no proper record of the violins he acquired. There are no invoices, no receipts. No one knows exactly what violins he owned, by what makers, when they were bought or what he paid for them. It’s all a complete mess.’

  ‘Weren’t they insured?’

  ‘Some, but by no
means all. Uncle Enrico didn’t seem to be too worried about insurance. The end result is that there’s no full inventory of the collection. And the lawyers need one. So will the tax man. Which is where you come in, Gianni. You’ve seen the collection, you know about violins. Would you be willing to identify, catalogue and value the instruments? For a fee, of course.’

  ‘I’m not a dealer,’ I said. ‘I don’t have up-to-the-minute knowledge of the market.’

  ‘I don’t want a dealer. My experience of dealers leaves a lot to be desired. They’d only cheat me, I have no doubt about that. I’ve made a few enquiries, asked around. Your name keeps coming up. You want someone who knows his stuff and has integrity, Gianni Castiglione is your man, they all say.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘Could you do it? Would you?’

  ‘Certainly I could do it. I do valuations for insurance purposes all the time. But an insurance valuation is not the same as a market valuation.’

  ‘What’s a market valuation?’ Margherita asked rhetorically. ‘A figure some crooked dealer has pulled out of a hat to swindle some unsuspecting client. No, I’ll settle for your figures, Gianni.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘Where are the violins? Still in his house?’

  ‘The lawyers had them moved to a bank vault. You’ll have to go to Venice, of course, but all expenses will be paid. Just name your fee.’

  I waved a hand. Talking money has always made me uncomfortable.

  ‘We can agree a fee later,’ I said.

  ‘No, I won’t have you do it for nothing. This is business. I’m paying for your time and expertise. It’s not my money. It will come out of my uncle’s estate and – believe me – the estate can afford to pay you properly.’

  I glanced away across the garden. The borders were daubed with vibrant colours – scarlet fuchsias, deep purple buddleias, a vivid yellow climbing rose. Butterflies, their wings as striking as the flowers, fluttered over the foliage like petals drifting in the breeze.