By Its Cover (12 page)

‘The Biblioteca Merula,’ he said.

A long pause followed. ‘Dottoressa Fabbiani told you about my involvement with the library?’ she finally said.

‘I’m afraid she had no choice, Contessa.’

‘People always have choices,’ she said instantly.

‘Perhaps fewer, when the police are involved,’ he answered mildly.

‘Unfortunately, yes,’ she said, apparently displeased at the idea. ‘Is this an official request for information?’ she asked, immediately adding, ‘Not that I have any to give you.’

‘I want to talk to you about books, Contessa. I know little.’

‘But we’ve talked about books, Commissario.’

She sounded so disingenuous that he laughed. ‘I mean rare books.’

‘The sort people would steal?’

‘Have stolen, in this case,’ Brunetti risked saying.

‘Does this mean you’re in charge of the investigation?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you’d better come here and we can talk about it.’

He knew where the
palazzo
was: he used to walk past it on his way to middle school, and he and Paola usually passed by if they chose to take the long way home after having dinner at Carampane. Its four floors loomed over a small
campo
in San Polo, the water door at the side providing access to one of the canals that ran perpendicular to Rio San Polo. The windows on the ground and first floors were protected by iron bars. During the decades he had seen them, Brunetti had always thought about fire and how the residents would have to leap from the second floor if one broke out. There were no graceful arabesques, no suggestion of filigree, no interest in beauty on these grilles: as straight as the lines on a crossword puzzle, the bars had been soldered together centuries before at the points where the verticals and horizontals intersected. Nothing except reaching hands had passed through those bars since then.

The grilles had rusted over the centuries and scoured long dark trails down the façade. They reminded Brunetti of the signs of age on the front of Franchini’s building.

He switched his briefcase to his left hand and rang the bell; after a short time a dark-skinned woman in a white apron opened the door for him. She might have been Thai or Filipina. ‘Signor Brunetti?’ she asked. When he said he was, she gave something that, in a former age, would have been called a curtsey. Brunetti forced himself not to
smile. She stepped aside, said the Contessa was expecting him, and let him enter the vast open
androne
that extended all the way back to the canal, where he saw more of the barred windows.

She closed the door, which appeared to cost her some effort, then turned and led him across the room and to a flight of steps that rose to the first floor. The door at the top was a vast slab of walnut squares, and into the centre of each was carved a rose in full blossom. The handle was brass, in the shape of a lion’s claw.

Inside, she led him down a central, windowless corridor and into a large sitting room that looked out on the
campo
. Telling him to make himself comfortable, she said she would go and fetch the Contessa and disappeared through a set of double doors on the other side of the room.

He had no idea how long he would have to wait, but he did not want to be found sitting when she came in. He went and studied the first painting on his left, a large hunting scene of a boar being pulled to earth by a pack of slavering hounds, two of whom appeared to have abandoned the hunt in order to roll on the ground together. An enormous Great Dane was savaging the boar’s ear, and another had him firmly by a back leg. Brunetti recognized the style from a still life the Conte had in his study and thought the painting might be a Snyders, but even the painter’s name could not make him like the painting.

There were six portraits of men and women on the wall that received what little light came in from the
campo
. He detected a resemblance between one of the men and the boar; the expression on the face of another did not differ much from that of the dog dragging on the boar’s back leg. He wondered if they were family portraits.

His observations were interrupted by the arrival of the Contessa. She wore a simple grey sweater and a darker
woollen skirt that fell to slightly below her knees. Brunetti remembered that she had good legs, and a quick glance confirmed this. She wore strings of tiny linked gold circles, each smaller than the head of a pin, the delicate Manin link that had been the dream of his mother and her friends. They aspired to own one chain; the Contessa must have been wearing thirty.

He knew she was two years older than his mother-in-law, but she looked at least a decade younger than that. Her skin was unblemished and seemed to be composed of cream and roses, though Brunetti gave himself a mental shake when he heard himself using those terms.

She came quickly across the room to greet him, extended her hand and seemed not at all surprised when he bent to kiss it. She led him to a chair and asked, ‘May I offer you a coffee, Commissario?’

‘That’s very kind of you, Contessa, but I had one on the way. You’ve already been very generous by agreeing to speak to me.’

He waited until she had taken the chair opposite him before he sat. Perched upright, she looked so perfectly placed as to cause him to doubt that her back had ever touched that of a chair. Her profile, he had realized the first time he saw her, was perfect, with a straight nose and high forehead that spoke, in a way he did not understand, of optimism and energy. Her eyes, as close to black as eyes could be, were exaggerated by her pale skin.

Brunetti placed his briefcase on the floor. ‘I’d like to thank you for finding the time to speak to me, Contessa,’ he said.

‘Books that once belonged to me have been damaged and stolen, and you’re going to try to find the person responsible. I hardly feel that I am being generous with my time if I speak to you.’ She smiled to soften the remark.

Unsure if he had been reproved or thanked, he said, ‘I hope I don’t sound venal, but I’m here chiefly to speak about the financial loss to the library and, if you have enough time to spare, to learn more about books. Dottoressa Fabbiani said you know a great deal.’

He caught the surprise that flashed across her face, and said, ‘She was very complimentary.’

‘I’m flattered,’ the Contessa replied, sounding as though she meant it.

‘She said you have a feel for books,’ he told her. She smiled at this and raised a hand as if to push away the compliment, and Brunetti continued. ‘I know very little, really, about the world of books, well, books of this quality. That is, I understand the theft, but not why they chose to steal what they did or what happens after: where the pages can be sold, or their value.’

‘What a pity we never talked about this at Donatella’s dinners,’ she said.

‘I try to go there as Paola’s husband, not as a policeman.’

‘But you’re here as one today?’

‘Yes,’ he said. Brunetti opened his briefcase and removed a notebook and pen. ‘One of the books that was stolen,’ he began, ‘was a gift from you to the library. Dottoressa Fabbiani said it was a Ramusio, but I have no idea of its value.’

‘What importance does that have?’ she asked.

‘It gives me an idea of the seriousness of the crime,’ Brunetti answered.

‘There’s no question of its seriousness,’ she said severely. ‘It’s a rare and beautiful book.’

Brunetti shook his head to ward off confusion. ‘I’m afraid mine is a policeman’s vision, Contessa. The monetary value of the book affects the way we treat the crime.’

He watched her consider this, certain that the idea offended her. She said, ‘The prices paid for them would be in the family records.’

‘But wouldn’t those prices be out of date?’ he asked, though he knew they must be. Then, thinking this would help calculate a more current price, he asked, ‘Was the Ramusio insured?’

‘My father-in-law,’ she began with a small smile, ‘once said that he had considered buying insurance for the things in the
palazzo
.’ She let that remark sit alone for three long beats and then added, ‘But he told me he found it cheaper to make sure that there was always at least one servant in the house.’ Her glance was as cool as it was level.

‘Yes, that would no doubt be cheaper,’ Brunetti agreed.

‘It was, then,’ she said. Having established the social position and wealth of her husband’s family, she added, more practically, ‘One way to discover their recent price would be to check the online lists of sales and auctions.’

Brunetti had suspected that such lists must exist and said, ‘I’ll have someone do that.’ He, too, had servants to do things for him.

‘What else is missing?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think they know yet,’ Brunetti said. ‘The man who cut the pages never requested nor received the two books that are missing.’

‘But she’s sure they’re gone?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

After a moment, the Contessa asked, ‘Does this mean there’s more than one thief?’

‘It would seem so.’

She made a noise that, in a person who did not have a title, would be called a snort and said, ‘I thought they’d be safe in a library.’

Brunetti had the wisdom not to speak.

‘This man was there for three weeks,’ she continued, ‘and no one saw anything?’

He heard the harshness but still said nothing.

‘She told me he was an American,’ the Contessa said, adding, ‘Not that it makes any difference.’

Brunetti bent down and took the file from his briefcase. ‘His name is Joseph Nickerson,’ he read, glancing at her to see if it meant anything to her. It obviously did not, so he gave her the rest of the information: the University of Kansas, Maritime and Mediterranean Trade History, letter of introduction, passport.

‘Do you have his photo?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, passing her the photocopy of his passport pages.

‘He looks like an American,’ she said with mild disdain.

‘It’s what he told them at the library.’ Brunetti reached to take the paper back and studied the face again. The people who had spoken to Nickerson had done so in Italian and had heard his accent: in that case, he could as easily have been English or perhaps from some other country. His Italian was fluent. It came to Brunetti to wonder if it was the accent that had been learned and not the language, and the man was perhaps Italian. If the passport was fake, why believe anything on it?

He took a fresh look at the photo, darkened the hair, let it grow a bit longer. Yes, he supposed it was possible. It was a pity Nickerson hadn’t left a sample of his handwriting, even if only a few words: that was a far more certain sign of origin than accent or appearance.

The Contessa was silent for a long time, while Brunetti’s mind remained on the idea of handwriting. Had not Nabokov written somewhere that he had consciously stopped putting the crossbar on the number 7 when he moved to America as a public declaration that he had left
the Old World behind? How had Nickerson requested books if not by filling out a form? Or was that now computerized, too?

The Contessa interrupted his thoughts. ‘What am I meant to call you, by the way? “Commissario”? “Dottore”? “Signore”?’

‘Paola’s husband’s name is Guido,’ he said. ‘Would it be an imposition to suggest you use that?’

She tilted her chin to one side and stared at him, subjecting Brunetti to a scrutiny that succeeded in making him uncomfortable. Even though he rested, in a way, under the protective wings of the Falier family, he was not sure she saw them when she looked at him.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? Now, what was it you wanted to know about books?’ she asked, not calling him anything and repeating the formal
lei
with which he had addressed her.

It took him a moment to digest her rejection of grammatical intimacy and return his thoughts to the crime.
Cui bono
? Who would profit from the theft, and how was that profit measured? If the thief and the future owner were not the same person, how did each of them profit? They would want the books or pages for different reasons, one venal and one … he couldn’t think of the right word here, perhaps because he didn’t understand the desire.

His thoughts were interrupted by the Contessa, who cleared her throat in a sign of impatience.

‘You’re known to be a collector,’ he began. ‘An intelligent collector.’ He paused to see if she would respond to this compliment, but she simply waited, face impassive.

He had no choice but to continue. ‘I don’t understand the desire to have rare books.’ Seeking clarity, he added, ‘That is, a desire so strong as to steal them or have them stolen.’

‘And so?’

‘And so I’d like you to help me understand why
someone would do this. And what kind of person would do it.’

She surprised him by smiling. ‘Donatella’s told me a little about you,’ she said, still addressing him formally.

‘Should I worry?’ Brunetti asked lightly.

Her smile did not change. ‘No, not at all. She’s said you want to understand things.’ Before Brunetti could thank her for the compliment, for he had taken it as such, she continued, ‘But that’s not going to help you here. There’s nothing to understand. People steal them for the money.’

‘But …’ Brunetti began, but she talked over him.

‘That’s the only reason that animates the thieves. Forget the articles about the men who suffer a mad passion for maps and books and manuscripts: that’s all romantic nonsense. Freud in the library.’ She leaned forward and raised a hand, though it was hardly necessary to catch his attention. ‘People steal books and maps and manuscripts, and they cut out single pages or whole chapters because they can sell them.’

It cost Brunetti no effort to believe in greed as a motive for human crime, so he asked calmly, ‘And who buys them?’

‘I’ve heard talk,’ she said. ‘Dealers, gallerists, auction houses are willing to buy things without asking questions

‘Do the thieves steal to order?’

‘So long as there’s no library stamp and they’re rare enough, they’ll sell them.’ Then, with savage emphasis, ‘To the better class of client, that is.’

Brunetti remained silent, then finally asked, ‘Who are?’