[Mark Twain Mysteries 05] - The Mysterious Strangler

by Peter J. Heck

  “Yes, I drink a glass of wine with you,” said Maggio. “And I think we talk più candido, all of us, now that I do not believe your servant is murderer.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said, not bothering to correct his misunderstanding of my position in Mr. Clemens's household. “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “When I tell your daughter that the poor American woman was strangled. I watch your face,” said the policeman. looking me in the eye. “I don’t think you play innocent—your surprise, your hurt, that was no acting. So I think you not the killer.”

  “I thought it was just a bit too casual, the way you fired off that parting shot,” said Mr. Clemens, filling a glass from the decanter on the sideboard. He handed it to Maggio and said, “Well, maybe I paid you back in part for that trick, just now. Why don’t we all stop playing games and see if we can do business together?”

  “Do business?” Agente Maggio frowned, then nodded. “Ah—capisco. Yes, I think we can do some business—but there are things I no can do myself. Capitano Rosalia…”

  “Yes. the captain,” Mr. Clemens said. “I guess you have to tell him what’s going on. unless you want to get into trouble. I don’t object to that. But I want to make sure you don’t do anything to stop us from helping find the killer— we’ve got a personal stake in that, you understand?”

  “I understand,” said Maggio. He took a sip of his wine, then allowed himself to sit down. “I think I can do that business with you.”

  “Good,” said Mr. Clemens. He pulled a pipe from his inside breast pocket, and started searching for his tobacco pouch, then stopped and looked at the policeman. He pointed with the pipe stem and asked. “Now, first of all, why don’t you tell us where that young woman’s body was found?”

  Agente Maggio cupped his chin in his right hand, holding the wineglass in his left. “How well do you know Firenze?” he asked.

  “A little better than most tourists, but not really well.” said Mr. Clemens. “We’ve been living here maybe six weeks, and I get into town every now and then. Why?”

  “Do you know—” He paused, looked at me, and continued. “You ever go to a place just outside the old city wall, at Porta di Pinti?”

  “Sorry, I don’t know Porta di Pinti.” said my employer, and I confessed my own ignorance, as well.

  “Ah. that is interesting,” said Agente Maggio. “You see, they find her body in a place near there. And the capitano thinks first, who lives near that place? And when he learns who else saw her that night, he sees that it is halfway from Signore Stephens’s home to Settignano.”

  “Aha!” said Mr. Clemens. “That’s one of the reasons he suspected you. Wentworth—he thought she might have been coming here to see you.”

  “If it’s on the way here, I suppose I must have passed it on my way into the city some time or another.” I said. “But other than what the agente just said. I couldn't tell you where it is.”

  “Well. I am under orders to follow your man wherever he goes,” said the policeman. “But I understand, you go some places with a carabiniere following you, nobody wants to see you. Here’s an idea. Suppose instead of my uniform I wear regular clothes, and drive you wherever you go. Then nobody pays attention to me, and I can still follow my orders.”

  “That makes sense,” said Mr. Clemens. “Our regular driver doesn’t speak English worth a damn, anyhow—it’ll be a relief to be able to tell you where I want to go without pointing and hollering and making faces.”

  “I will be your obedient servant, signore.” said Maggio, with a comical bow. “But you understand, there will be times I am saying where we need to go. And tomorrow will be one of those times. We will go to the place where Signorina Fleetwood was murdered, so you can see it yourself. It is a place you ought to see, anyhow, since you are a visitor to Firenze. It is a very pretty place.”

  “Perhaps it is.” I said, “but I doubt I shall ever be able to think of it except as the place where Virginia was killed.”

  “That’ll be hard to forget.” said Mr. Clemens, nodding. “But maybe it’ll be worth the pain it causes you if we can find something that helps us catch the killer.”

  13

  The next morning, Agente Maggio look us into Florence to show us where Virginia's body had been found. As we had planned, the policeman wore civilian clothing instead of his uniform, so as not to attract attention to his presence in our company. He drove us along a route I had taken into the city on several occasions, without ever stopping to see the sights along the way. Just outside the old city wall, we came to an oval plot of land, perhaps a little larger than a football field. The stone markers made it obvious that we had come to a cemetery. In fact, it was the Cimitero degli Inglesi, Florence’s Protestant cemetery. Maggio stopped the carriage outside the entrance, and turned to look at me.

  “Why are we stopping here?” I asked.

  The policeman peered at us for a moment before saying. “This is where you said you wanted to come, signori.”

  My mouth fell open. “What? Was she murdered here?” Terrible as the murder had been, it somehow became more chilling to learn that Virginia had been killed in a graveyard.

  But Maggio nodded solemnly. He pointed toward the entrance and asked. “You want to go in?”

  “If this is where the body was found, I do.” I said, looking in all directions for any clue to where the murder had occurred.

  Maggio clucked to the horses and we turned into the gate. He looked at me again, as if to ask which way he should turn. but there was nothing to make me choose a direction—no reason to think that one spot inside was different from any other. The only thing that affected me was a monument nearby marking the last resting place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning—a poetess whose books my mother owned. Someone I had heard of was buried in this cemetery. For a brief moment, that had more impact on me than Maggio’s word that Virginia had died here.

  “You sure you’ve never been here before?” asked Maggio, looking closely at my face. I realized he was trying to see if I was familiar with the place—perhaps I would glance toward the spot where the body had been found, and betray my guilty knowledge.

  “Never in my life,” I said. “I’ve gone by it on my bicycle. but I didn’t come inside. I noticed the stones, so I knew it was a graveyard, but beyond that it made no impression on me.”

  Apparently convinced that I was telling the truth, Maggio took us to a little grove of trees in the northern part of the oval plot. He told us that Virginia’s body had been found there by gravediggers working nearby; one of them had stepped into the grove, and saw something glittering in the bushes. When he went to investigate, he found a gilded picture frame; nearby was the body. The police had later confirmed that the frame came from the stolen Raphael portrait.

  The police had gone over the site with a fine-toothed comb, right after the crime was reported. I saw nothing that I could dignify with the name of a clue, unless there were significant inferences to be drawn from broken twigs and scuff marks on the ground. That sort of investigation was, frankly, beyond my capabilities, and—having heard Mr. Clemens sneer at fictional detectives who specialized in it— I doubted he was any better at it than I. In fact. I wondered whether coming here would have any effect other than throwing me into deep melancholy.

  My employer must have read my mind. “This is a damned dreary place,,” he said, his breath misting in the cool morning air. “I know some people claim to like graveyards. but I’m not one of ’em. Why would that young girl come all the way out here in the middle of the night? It makes no sense.”

  “We don’t know that it was in the night,” I said. “Or do we?” I looked at Agente Maggio. who had volunteered no information since conducting us hither and pointing out where the body and the empty picture frame had been found. He was still looking to catch me in a contradiction. I realized.

  “We don’t know for certain.” said Maggio. “They find the body just before noon, so maybe it was there a few
hours, maybe overnight. I don’t think anybody killed her while the gravediggers were working so close.”

  “I don’t think anybody would bring a valuable painting out here at night, either,” said Mr. Clemens. “Not just because of the weather, but because if they were delivering it to somebody else, the other party would have wanted to see what they were getting.”

  “There’s no proof at all that she brought the painting here.” I said. I realized that I didn't want to think of Virginia as a criminal. “She may have followed the thief and surprised him in the act of delivering it to someone else.”

  “Maybe, maybe. Why did they bring the frame, though?” said Mr. Clemens. “If they took the picture out of it in Stephens’s back yard, they’d have made things easier on themselves. Once they got it this far. I think they’d have left the picture in it instead of doing something that could damage it. Either these thieves are damned stupid, or I’m missing something important.”

  “Thieves are always stupid.” said Agente Maggio, exuding confidence. “That is why we catch them.”

  “Well, you’d better hurry up and catch this bunch.” said Mr. Clemens, scowling at the policeman. “They’ve already killed that girl, and that may just be the start of it. Do you have any theory why they brought the painting all the way out here?”

  “Yes,” said Maggio. pointing to the north. “Over there, on Piazza Donatello, are shops of artists and dealers. Some of them are not ashamed to sell the stolen paintings, or the—how you say? falsi? forgiarri?”

  “Forgeries?” I suggested.

  The policeman nodded vigorously. “Yes, forgery. is almost the same word. I don’t think the poor woman come here to see you, Signore Cabot. I think maybe she come here to bring the Raphael to show someone who will buy it. Someone who has already seen it…”

  “And instead, he killed her.” said Mr. Clemens. “Well, it’s a better motive than anything else we’ve got. It’s still got more holes in it than a chicken coop, though. For one thing. Wentworth doesn’t think the lady stole the painting, and I'm inclined to give his opinion some weight on that point.”

  “Me, I keep the mind open.” said Maggio, making a large circle with his right hand. “I find out what the American lady does before she dies, maybe then I find out who kills her. If I say ‘No. she never do anything like that.’ the way her friends want me to do, maybe I don't look in the right places to find the answer. So I don’t make the—how you say?—supposizione, because I want the answer more than I want to feel good about the lady. Nobody ought to die that way. Capisce?”

  “That makes good sense.” I said, surprised to find myself agreeing with the policeman's logic. “All right, then. Let's assume that she—or somebody she was following—came here to show the painting to a buyer. You say there are art dealers’ shops near here. Why don’t we go visit some of them, and see if we can find some answers?”

  “A good idea. Wentworth,” said my employer. Then he pointed at Maggio and added, “But don’t you think they’ll be suspicious if we walk in with a cop in tow?”

  I started to protest, but Mr. Clemens held up his hand. “He may not be in uniform, but he’s still got his face. Anybody who’s running a crooked business is going to recognize the local cops, in uniform or out. Especially a cop whose boss has an interest in the traffic in stolen art. What do you say. Maggio? Are these birds going to know who you are?”

  Maggio laughed. “You’re right.” he said. “I work with Capitano Rosalia all the time, so anybody who saw me with him might remember I am carabiniere. It is no problem. I don’t worry about Signore Cabot running away, so I don’t need to follow him into shops. You go ask questions. I go to a cafe near here and wait. You come get me when you finish, and tell me everything you find out—d’accordo?”

  “If that means what I think it does, we’ve got a deal.” said Mr. Clemens extending his hand to the policeman, who took it and shook it. smiling. When I had shaken hands with Maggio in turn, my employer clapped my shoulder and said. “OK. now we’re really in business. Let’s start finding out who murdered that girl.”

  Piazza Donatello appeared to be the center of a thriving artists’ community, with several shops and studios in the space of a city block. Agente Maggio dropped us off at the entrance to the street, then drove off to wait in the nearby cafe, leaving my employer and me to interrogate the art dealers.

  Having no reason to choose one establishment over another, we entered the first shop we saw, with a sign in the shape of an artist's palette displaying the owner’s name in ornate letters: Arturo Nori, Esercente d’Arte. Through the front windows we could see several framed paintings on the walls, although there was nobody visible within. But a bell rang as we opened the door, and that called forth a stout gentleman with a bald pate fringed with thick dark hair, a full beard, and thick spectacles over a hawkish nose. “Si, signori, cosa prendete?”

  I knew that phrase from restaurants— “What do you want?” Neither Mr. Clemens nor I were fluent in Italian, but having discovered that most Florentines who dealt with foreigners had a fair command of English, we tried our luck in our own language. “Are you the owner?” asked Mr. Clemens. “We’re interested in some old paintings.”

  “You come to the right place,” said the man, rubbing his hands together. “Is nobody in Firenze can show you the more better art like Arturo Nori.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr. Clemens. “Normally I’d settle for the less worse art, but since I’m in Firenze, I reckon I'll do as the frenzied. I seec you’ve got quite a few good-looking pieces here.”

  “Si, si,” said Non. beaming. “You show me what you want. I give you the best price.”

  “Well, the price isn’t as important as getting the right piece,” said Mr. Clemens. He put his hands behind his back and walked over to inspect the paintings on display; I followed him. doing my best to appear interested in Signore Nori’s offerings. Actually, that wasn’t hard—I was always interested in art.

  Mr. Clemens walked up to within a few inches of one painting—a large still life of flowers in an ornate vase— and pretended to examine the brush work. “This is fine stuff,” he said. “What do you think, Wentworthˆ?”

  “Very competent.” I said. “I’m not sure it’s what we're looking for, though.” In fact, had I really been in the market for art, there were several things here that I would not have been ashamed to hang on my wall, although this particular piece seemed rather undistinguished. The artists’ names were unfamiliar, of course. But I couldn't afford the works of any artist I had heard of—other than my few personal acquaintances who happened to be painters, and some of them were talented enough to command prices beyond the means of an impoverished writer’s secretary.

  “Oh, Signore, this is but part of what I have,” said Nori, stepping up beside me and bowing slightly, his hands clasped in a sort of prayerful gesture. “You tell me what you like to see, and I show you much more.”

  Mr. Clemens peered at another painting, this one a view of Florence from south of the Amo, with dramatic clouds gathering behind the Duomo. “Well, I don’t know if you can show me what I want or not. This all looks like new stuff, to me. I’m after the old masters. Can you get that kind of goods?”

  “Oh. yes. signore.” said Non. grinning broadly. “But signore—excuse me for saying so—you understand, the old masters cost a great deal. Now. if you wish to save the money. I know the artists who can make you very good copy..

  “Copies won’t do.” said Mr. Clemens, with a chopping motion of his hand. “If that was what I wanted, I could find an artist myself, and save even more money by not paying you your cut. But I’ve got the money, and I want the real thing. Can you deliver the goods?”

  All this was of course a complete fabrication. Even if Mr. Clemens could have afforded a genuine old master, he had made it clear on any number of occasions that he had little use for the art of earlier periods. He was a firm believer in progress, and often said he'd trade all the Miche
langelos in Italy for an equal number of colored lithographs. However, either Signore Nori did not recognize my employer, or, if he did, he had no notion of his true opinions. For my part. I did my best to keep my expression strictly neutral.

  Nori shrugged and said. “The old masters. I do not keep them here in the gallery, you understand. But it is my business to know who has something, and who would sell it for a price. Are you interested in some particular artist? Or is it a certain subject you want—a madonna, a crucifixion? Or are you interested in drawings, perhaps? If I know these things, then I can see what there is to show you.” Was it my imagination, or had his English improved when he realized we might be ready to spend more money than he had at first thought?

  “I’ve got a mind to pick up a Raphael or two,” said Mr. Clemens, jabbing a finger at the art dealer. “Do you have anything along that line?”

  “A Raphael.” said Signore Nori. wrinkling his brow. “This is most curious, do you know? There are not many Raphaels that come to sale in Firenze, and yet three have been offered here just in the few days. And it is even more curious that one of them was stolen just two nights ago. And now you come to my shop asking for a Raphael.” Well, there's the end of that ploy. I thought. My employer’s too-direct approach must have aroused Nori’s suspicion. Now, we’d be lucky to learn anything useful in our investigation.

  Mr. Clemens wasn’t about to let Nori off the hook. “Yes, I heard about those Raphaels coming on the market,” he said. “In fact, that’s what got me thinking. I’d seen plenty of Raphaels in museums, and liked ’em well enough. But I thought they were the kind of thing a private party couldn’t get his hands on. Now I know better, and I’ve got a mind to have one for myself. I’m willing to pay the asking price if the piece is good enough. So, can you help me out. or do I go talk to somebody else?”