Overture in Venice

by Hester Rowan

  Guy raised his eyebrows. ‘Dinosaurs?’

  ‘Clare’s an expert on them, didn’t you know?’ Isabel reproved him.

  ‘Only during working hours,’ I said, ‘and then only in the company of the under-tens.’ I smiled at her. ‘What about you, Isabel? What’s your job?’

  ‘Oh, I help to run an art gallery. It’s one of the best in Sâo Paulo – we have some wonderful exhibitions there.’

  ‘Modern art, of course,’ Lang interjected.

  ‘Contemporary?’ Guy asked. ‘Andy Warhol and David Hockney, do you mean?’

  ‘We showed two Hockneys not long ago,’ said Isabel, ‘but it’s usually late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century work. Most of the wealthy Brazilians are investing in the Pre-Raphaelites at the moment.’

  ‘Do you buy and sell the paintings, or borrow them for your exhibitions?’ asked Caterina.

  ‘Both. Sometimes we borrow valuable paintings to add to the interest of an exhibition, but we buy and sell where we can. Not just paintings, of course – sculpture, ceramics, all kinds of objets d’art. There’s a great deal of interest in the early South American civilizations, too. We have some magnificent Inca and Mayan antiquities.’

  ‘My daughter went through art school,’ Dr Lang told Caterina proudly. ‘She knows about these things. Myself, I don’t pretend to know anything about art – I’m a plain geologist. But I do like to think that I’m something of a gourmet, and I don’t know when I’ve tasted such a meal as this. I hope you’re taking note, Isabel my dear – I shall be disappointed if you don’t try your hand at some Italian-style cooking when we get home.’

  He had turned the subject adroitly. Too adroitly, I thought. Isabel was now asking Caterina earnestly about Italian regional cookery, and Henry Lang was telling Guy about an occasion when he had eaten some Mexican food so spicy that it had paralysed his taste buds for days. The change of subject had been so smooth as to be unremarkable, except to someone like myself who was looking for clues to fit a puzzle … I waited for the conversation to flag and then turned it back to the subject of art.

  ‘Are you planning to buy anything in Italy to take back for your gallery?’ I asked Isabel.

  She blinked, surprised by my return to that topic. ‘Oh no – no chance of that. Anyway, as I told you, we specialize in modern paintings and we’d try England and France for those. But I’m making the most of my visit to Italy and trying to see as many of the great paintings as I can. You visited Venice, didn’t you, Clare? Didn’t you love the Tintorettos?’

  I declined – in a friendly way – to be sidetracked. ‘I was certainly impressed, but a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of his output. I’m afraid that I got to the stage where I felt weak at the knees when anyone mentioned yet another Tintoretto that we simply had to see. But I didn’t imagine that you’d be trying to buy old masters – presumably there are smaller things that might be suitable for your gallery?’

  Henry Lang had reached for an apple from the overflowing fruit bowl and begun to peel it, but now he paused. ‘What kind of smaller things did you have in mind, Clare?’ he said, his eyes sharper than his voice.

  The challenge was unmistakable. Just as I had tried to test him, now he was pushing me. For a moment I hesitated. I could easily retreat, parrying his question by pleading ignorance, and changing the subject again. But what Isabel had said about antiquities seemed to be a possible answer to my puzzle. My memory was teasing me with half-forgotten fragments of an international archaeological scandal that all the newspapers had featured a few years previously.

  I snipped a twig of grapes from the bunch in the fruit bowl and smiled at him artlessly. ‘Oh – classical antiquities?’

  His steel-blue eyes fixed on mine. ‘Antiquities?’ He laughed as casually as I had spoken. ‘Of course not! That isn’t allowed, surely you know that? The export of antiquities and works of art from Italy is forbidden.’

  ‘And quite right,’ said Caterina.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Lang agreed; but I refused to be shaken off. I turned to Guy, speaking to him directly for the first time that evening.

  ‘Has that kind of trade been stopped, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a hope!’ he said. ‘Italy still loses billions of lire worth of art treasures each year. Priceless paintings are stolen from country churches, archaeological sites are vandalized and the stuff is smuggled into Switzerland. There’s an open market there and dealers can buy and sell what they like.’

  ‘I remember now,’ I said quickly. ‘There was a great out-cry a few years ago, wasn’t there? An Etruscan vase was bought by a New York museum. The museum officials said that they had bought it from a dealer who had got it from a private collection in England, but the Italians thought that it had been looted quite recently from a site in Italy, and they wanted it returned.’

  ‘Yes. But first they had to prove that it was in fact stolen from Italian soil,’ said Guy. ‘That’s almost impossible.’

  ‘And the news was splashed all over the papers,’ Caterina chimed in indignantly, ‘that this museum had paid millions of lire for a vase that had probably been found in fragments on an Italian hillside. Soon everyone is looking for buried treasure. It becomes a – a manufactory.’

  ‘A sizeable industry,’ Guy agreed. ‘You’re right, Caterina. What with illegal diggers and shady dealers and shifty middlemen, and foreign museums which don’t bother to ask inconvenient questions and millionaire private collectors without any scruples, Italy is being fleeced of her cultural heritage.’

  ‘I take your point,’ said Lang seriously. ‘But of course you know the other side of the argument: some people will tell you that it’s better to have these treasures on public display in a museum, even if it is outside Italy, than to leave them hidden in the earth where no one can enjoy them. And then, I can see that there’s still a good deal of poverty among the country people here – no offence, Signora, I can assure you that it’s a good deal worse in Brazil. So it could be argued that any money that they can make by digging up these buried antiquities gives a welcome boost to their standard of living. How would you answer that, Guido?’

  Guy speared a pear and began to dissect it. ‘I’ve heard the arguments, of course,’ he said carefully, ‘and they’re certainly plausible. But as a geologist you’ll be the first to agree, I’m sure, that important sites need to be investigated scientifically. If only the wealthy collectors would spend their money on financing proper archaeological digs – and they could provide quite a bit of employment for the local people at the same time – the problem wouldn’t arise. But it’s not just a question of moral judgment any longer, it’s a matter of legality. Private excavation of archaeological sites is illegal.’

  ‘But if people just plough up old pieces of pottery and sell what they find,’ said Isabel, ‘I don’t see that anyone can accuse them of illegality.’

  ‘It is not so simple as that,’ Caterina told her. ‘There are gangs of men – help me out, Guido: tombolari –?’

  ‘Tomb robbers,’ he translated. I started and he grinned. ‘Not quite as gruesome as it sounds, Clare. You’re thinking of the resurrection men who used to steal corpses to sell to anatomists before the study of anatomy was legalized. No, these tombolari specialize in digging out ancient underground tombs in the middle of the night and stealing the gold jewellery and the bronze and silver statuettes and the pottery that the pre-Roman Etruscans furnished their graves with. That kind of vandalism is an archaeological crime in itself, quite apart from the illegality of the digging and of the subsequent smuggling to get the loot out of the country.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Lang heartily. ‘Of course, we’re talking now about the area just north of Rome, aren’t we? That’s where these tomb robberies have been taking place. There’s been nothing like that going on round here, has there?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Guy confirmed. ‘There was nothing comparable to the Etruscan civilization in this district. The local people will never get rich by finding and
selling antiquities. But there are similar problems in other parts of Italy –’

  ‘And in many other countries,’ Isabel interrupted with a smile. ‘And what’s more it’s been going on for centuries. Let me see, Clare … didn’t I hear that a certain rich Lord Elgin once helped himself to a sizeable chunk of classical Greek sculpture, which is still in the British Museum despite all suggestions that it ought to be returned …’

  I grinned at her. ‘Oh dear. I thought you were sticking your neck out, Guy, for someone who is partly English. How on earth do we explain away the Elgin Marbles? Or half the contents of the stately homes of England, come to that – most of them seem to be stuffed with treasures brought back by young noblemen from the Grand Tour of Europe.’

  ‘And not that Italy herself has a clean record,’ said Isabel, frowning at Guy with mock severity. ‘Take Venice, for example – didn’t you think that it had an Eastern look about it, Clare?’

  ‘Positively Oriental,’ I agreed. ‘Wasn’t St Mark’s Square furnished from the proceeds of the sack of Constantinople? Those Moorish figures that strike the hours, for instance, and the horses, and –’

  Guy held up his hand, suing for peace. ‘Yes, all right, you’ve both made your point. Sorry I was dogmatic – I agree that it’s a very difficult problem and that no country’s blameless. Incidentally, did you ever hear how the Venus de Milo lost her arms? It seems that she was found intact, but that several rival parties of amateur archaeologists were trying to loot her for their respective countries. There was a most undignified struggle on Melos beach. Some of them clung to one arm of the statue, and some of them hung on to the other, while the rest of them made off with the torso.’

  We all laughed except Lang who shook his head seriously. ‘What an unscientific way to behave,’ he said, scandalized.

  As soon as Caterina went to make coffee, I followed her.

  ‘It’s rather a silly question,’ I said hesitantly, ‘– but do you happen to have such a thing as an Italian-English dictionary?’

  She laughed. ‘I will not do?’

  I felt myself blushing. ‘Oh, I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to be rude, it was just that I didn’t want to bother you. It was that word you used. Tombolari.’

  ‘Tomb robbers, I think Guido said.’

  ‘Yes. Caterina, is there such a word as tomba?’

  ‘Yes, it means tomb – er, grave is your word, I think.’

  I nodded. One piece of the puzzle had slotted neatly into place.

  ‘Caterina,’ I said diffidently. ‘I want rather urgently to talk to Guy. In private. But he’s very much preoccupied with Isabel, and I don’t want him to think …’

  She gave me an understanding smile. ‘I think I know what you don’t want him to think, Clare,’ she said gently.

  I only hoped that she hadn’t guessed why I didn’t want him to think it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I helped Caterina to serve the coffee. She seated herself next to Henry Lang and addressed Isabel: ‘I am very much interested in Brazil,’ she announced with charming sincerity. ‘We have talked enough of Italy, now you must tell me about your country. Tell me Isabel – do you find Sâo Paulo a more interesting city than Rio?’

  Guy stood for a moment listening as he sipped his coffee and then moved to join me.

  ‘Hallo, Clare. You succumbed to the garden this afternoon, I noticed.’

  ‘I succumbed to its beauty the moment I saw it.’

  ‘Ah yes, but I warned you what might happen if you lingered there – and then I came back this afternoon to find that you’d taken root and blossomed.’

  ‘Oh – I’d forgotten about Daphne.’

  ‘You’ve a very short memory.’

  ‘Not really … it can be tenacious. Things I thought I’d forgotten often come back. And I’ve just remembered the other word that Alberto was trying to tell me – it was tomba.’

  He looked blank. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive. It came to me when you and Caterina were discussing tombolari at dinner. Alberto spoke to me about Trevalle, and then he put one coffee cup in front of another … I told you about that.’

  ‘Yes – the one at the back represented tesoro, the treasure he wanted me to know about.’

  ‘And now I know that the one in the front stood for tomba. I asked Caterina and she said that it means tomb.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Don’t you see!’ I said impatiently. ‘The treasure is in Trevalle, behind a tomb. So whatever it is must be in the cave where Giorgio’s son is buried!’

  He frowned. ‘Oh, hold on a minute, Clare. You’re just guessing –’

  His frown deepened, and then began to lift. ‘Do you know … I think you may well be right. It could make sense, knowing the kind of life Giorgio’s boy led. And Caterina said that Alberto was here last year, that’s probably when he got to know about it.’ He gave me a smile that was certainly appreciative, though I thought that I detected a suggestion of patronage in the way he added: ‘Well done, Clare.’

  I shrugged modestly. ‘I’ve been thinking hard about it and I feel certain that was the gist of Alberto’s message. He said the words over and over again, and I’m sure I’ve got them right. But don’t you see, that means that it’s Giorgio and Maddalena and the child who are in danger. Can you do anything to help them?’

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. ‘As it happens, that problem has already been taken care of. After all, until now Giorgio has been keeping all comers at bay with his rifle. And now the valley’s due for closure tomorrow there are police about, not to mention engineers preparing to blow the rock. If the family’s come to no harm so far, I don’t think that there’s much likelihood of it in the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘And his friends will be up there, and you as well to help him move out?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He hesitated and I guessed what he was thinking, but not for the world was I going to put it into his head. ‘Strange coincidence that Henry Lang should be interested in that particular rock behind the farmhouse, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Coincidences are strange,’ I agreed lightly. ‘But then, it’s a long rock face – and he did say that he’d be perfectly happy to work on another part of it.’

  ‘So he did. Anyway, that’s our problem solved, Clare. You’ve given me Alberto’s message and we’re agreed that Giorgio and his family aren’t in any danger, so there’s nothing we need worry about. But you know what I remembered this morning when Isabel and I were down at Riva? We passed a jeweller’s shop and I suddenly thought that you’d never managed to buy that pendant you wanted to take back to England.’

  ‘I’d forgotten it myself – though I’ve still got grazes on my knees and elbows to remind me that the most comfortable way of leaving a jeweller’s shop isn’t by sliding down his out-house roof.’

  ‘It was your own choice,’ he reproved me. ‘Anyway,’ he added hastily, ‘I suggest that we go down to Riva tomorrow morning to finish your shopping.’

  ‘Aren’t we going to Trevalle?’

  ‘Yes, towards the end of the afternoon. We can go down to Riva – or Gargnano, perhaps – in the morning, do your shopping, have lunch and still get back in plenty of time to go and help Giorgio. I’m sure Isabel won’t mind a second visit to Lake Garda.’

  It had been too much to hope that he would want to leave her behind. ‘And what about Henry Lang?’ I countered. ‘I’m sure he’d enjoy seeing the lake too.’

  Guy raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, yes. I’ll certainly suggest it to him, if you’d like his company. He may have plans of his own, of course.’

  That was what I was wondering. I expected Lang to decline the invitation, and if he’d declined I would have felt sure that it was because he intended to spend the day staked-out somewhere near Trevalle. So it was disconcerting to hear him accept with alacrity.

  ‘Clare’s going too?’ he asked. ‘Then I’ll be delighted to make a fourth.’ He smiled at me, his t
eeth gleaming white in his lined brown face, his eyes a warm, entirely friendly, blue. And I knew that I didn’t trust him, but I knew too that my mistrust was purely instinctive; for all my efforts to test his sincerity, I still hadn’t one scrap of evidence against him.

  We had agreed to make an early start. Guy had borrowed Caterina’s car for the occasion, an elderly Fiat, much less spritely than his own Lancia but roomy enough to take the four of us in comfort. Isabel asked to see the corniche road, and Guy took us over the mountains and down to Gargnano, half-way along the lake, so that we could travel through the dramatic tunnels of the corniche on the way back towards Riva and home.

  As the road swept us down towards Gargnano in a series of hairpin bends that gave the passengers equal shares of the dizzying view, we could feel the heat rising to engulf us. At the villa, perched up among the Alpine foothills, the constant sunshine had been tempered by a breeze. The air had always been fresh, tasting of flowers and grass with a hint of resin, heady as wine. But down by Lake Garda, tucked narrowly between steep mountains, there was no wind to lift the blanket of heat. The sun shone through a haze, the interior of the car was stifling. We were sticky, thankful when we reached the lakeside and Guy managed to find a parking space under the shade of a tree.

  He got out and stretched. The back of his shirt was dark with sweat and I felt that my own clothes must be clinging to me.

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a storm brewing,’ he said. ‘Well now – shopping first, or something to drink?’

  Isabel and I glanced at each other for instant confirmation. ‘A drink, please!’

  ‘Something long and frosty,’ she added.

  Henry Lang had stripped off his jacket and was now tugging at his tie. ‘My pleasure,’ he insisted. ‘Right here, too, don’t you think, Guido?’

  We were outside a massive old-fashioned hotel, the Regina Vittoria, a stone castle complete with pepper-pot turrets that brooded incongruously over the sub-tropical lake. The exterior of the hotel had been modernized at ground level to provide a shaded pavement restaurant, and although this faced directly on to the busy traffic of the promenade we were all too hot and thirsty to quibble. I made for it unhesitatingly but Guy lingered, looking at the exterior with a half-smile on his face.