By Its Cover (7 page)

As he walked to the Questura the next day, Brunetti reflected on the press and began to wonder if he had been precipitate in mentioning it to Patta. Dottoressa Fabbiani was certainly not going to notify them, and he suspected that Sartor was sufficiently loyal to keep his mouth closed. Only Dottoressa Fabbiani and Sartor were certain about what had taken place in the library, and only they had seen the papers with the names of all of the books Nickerson had consulted, although she and Brunetti were the only people who had seen all of the vandalized books. It was in her best interests to keep this quiet until she found some way to inform the Contessa. Brunetti was a public official and could imagine how the press would treat this, so he saw no reason to inform them of the thefts. The authorities had been alerted: the press could go to hell.

The first thing he did when he got to his office was call Dottoressa Fabbiani, who told him, not at all to his surprise, that Dottor Nickerson had not returned to the library that morning. He thanked her and called the American embassy in Rome, identified himself, then explained his need to verify Nickerson’s passport, saying only that the man was a suspect in a crime and the passport the only identification they had. He was transferred to another office, where he again explained his request. They told him to wait, after which he found himself speaking to a man who did not identify either himself or his office, although he asked Brunetti to give his name. When Brunetti offered to give his phone number, he was told that was not necessary, and they would call him back. Twenty minutes later, he received a call on his
telefonino
from the secretary of an undersecretary at the Italian Foreign Office, asking if
he was the man who had called the Americans. When he said he was, the man thanked him and was gone. Soon thereafter he received a call from a woman speaking excellent Italian with the slightest of accents, who asked his name. When he identified himself, she said that the United States government had issued no such passport, and did he have any further questions? He said he did not, they exchanged polite monosyllables, and he ended the call.

They still had his photo. Nickerson – for want of a better name – might well look different by now and could very likely be out of the city, even out of the country entirely. But what had prompted his sudden departure?

Piero Sartor had said the man spoke excellent Italian: perhaps he would not waste that talent by going to some other country. Besides, Italy was rich in museums and libraries, public, private, and ecclesiastical, all providing an endless field in which he could work. Brunetti was not unaware of how grotesque his use of that word was to describe what the man was doing.

He took the photocopy of Nickerson’s passport and went down to Signorina Elettra’s office. It was only a little after ten, far too early for Patta to have arrived. She was behind her computer today, wearing a pink angora sweater, the sight of which caused him immediately to revise his low opinion of both the colour and the wool.

‘The Vice-Questore expressed his concern about the theft at the library, Commissario.’ He wondered if the Vice-Questore had also expressed his concern about summoning the Eumenides of the press down upon their heads.

‘I’ve checked with the Americans, and the passport is fake,’ he said, putting the photocopied page on her desk.

She studied the photo. ‘That was to be expected, I suppose.’ Then she asked, ‘Shall I send this to Interpol and the art theft people in Rome and see if they recognize him?’

‘Yes,’ he said, having come down specifically to ask her to do this.

‘Do you know if the Vice-Questore has talked about this to anyone else?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The only person he talks to is Lieutenant Scarpa,’ she said, pronouncing ‘person’ as if she weren’t quite sure it applied. ‘I believe neither of them would consider the theft of books a serious crime.’

‘I was concerned about the press,’ he said, turning his attention to the tulips on her desk and telling himself it would be nice to take some home that evening. He reached across to move one slightly to the left and said, ‘I doubt that the Contessa would enjoy the publicity.’

‘Which contessa?’ Signorina Elettra inquired mildly.

‘Morosini-Albani,’ Brunetti answered, his attention still on the flowers.

She made a noise. It was not a gasp and it was not a word, merely a noise. By the time he glanced at her, she was looking at the screen of her computer, her chin propped on and covered by her left hand. Her face was impassive, her eyes on the screen, but the colour of her face more nearly approached that of her sweater than it had a moment ago.

‘I’ve met her a few times at my parents-in-law’s,’ Brunetti said casually, moving another tulip into place in front of the broad leaf that had been hiding it. ‘She’s a very interesting woman, I’d say.’ Then, oh so casually, ‘Have you ever met her?’

She hit a few keys with her right hand, chin still propped on the left. Finally she said, ‘Once. Years ago.’ She turned her attention from the computer and looked at Brunetti with an expression devoid of emotion. ‘I once knew her stepson.’

Brunetti, curious, was silent, then finally thought to say, ‘She’s the major donor to the library. I don’t know
how many of the books that were vandalized were once hers, or if they were part of the original collection, but she gave them one of the books that were stolen, and one that was vandalized. It’s hardly news that would please a major donor.’

‘Ah,’ she said in a tone meant to display little interest in the matter.

He pulled out his notebook and opened it to the page where he had written the names Dottoressa Fabbiani had given him. ‘There’s an edition of Ramusio and a Montalboddo,’ he said, quite proud of the ease with which he named them.

She murmured something appreciative, quite as if she were familiar with them.

‘Do you know the books?’ he asked.

‘I’ve heard their names,’ she answered. ‘My father’s always been interested in rare books. He owns a few.’

‘Does he buy them?’ Brunetti asked.

She turned to him and laughed outright, banishing whatever tension had been in the room. ‘You sound as though you think he might be stealing them. I assure you he’s been nowhere near the Merula for months.’

Brunetti smiled, in relief that her good humour had returned after her strange response to the Contessa’s name. ‘Do you know much about rare books?’

‘No, not really. He’s shown me some of them and explained what makes them special, but I’m a disappointment to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I think they’re beautiful enough – the paper, the bindings – but I can’t get excited about them.’ She sounded genuinely displeased with herself. ‘It’s collecting: I don’t understand it, or I don’t feel it.’ Before he could ask, she continued, ‘It’s not that I don’t like beautiful things: I just
don’t have the discipline for collecting in a systematic way, and I think that’s what real collectors do: they want one of everything in the classification they’re interested in, whether it’s German postage stamps with flowers on them or Coca-Cola bottle caps or … or whatever it is they’ve decided to collect.’

‘And if you don’t feel the enthusiasm …’ he began.

‘Then there’s no way you’ll ever feel their excitement,’ she said. ‘Or even really understand it.’

Her mood had softened somehow and so he asked, ‘And the Contessa?’

Signorina Elettra’s look was suddenly austere. ‘What about her?’ she asked.

He danced about mentally, searching for a task that would justify his having brought the Contessa back into the conversation. ‘I’d like you to see what you can find out about the gift she made to the library: it was about ten years ago. Anything you can find about the terms and conditions of the donation might help,’ he added, thinking of Patta’s suggestion that the Contessa might ask for the return of the books.

Her head was lowered over the notebook as she wrote down his request. ‘I’d also like you to see if there’s anything you can find about Aldo Franchini, who lives down towards the bottom of Via Garibaldi and taught in a private school in Vicenza until about three years ago. He has a younger brother who was at school with the Director of the library, who’s probably in her late fifties. So he’s certainly not a young man.’

‘Anything else?’

‘You might check on his involvement with the Church.’

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘We live in Italy, Commissario.’

‘Which means?’

‘That, like it or not, we are all involved with the Church.’

‘Indeed,’ was the first thing he could think of to say. ‘But even more so in this case: he used to be a priest.’

‘Ah.’

‘Indeed,’ he said and turned to leave.

As he started to walk away, she asked, ‘What sort of thing are you looking for about this Aldo Franchini?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti confessed. ‘It seems that he was sitting in the same room for at least some of the time that the thefts were taking place.’ She raised her eyebrows at this. ‘For the last three years, he’s been reading the Fathers of the Church.’

‘How much time does he spend there? Reading.’

‘I didn’t ask. But it must be a great deal. The librarian said he’d become a piece of furniture, almost one of the staff.’

‘And he said nothing to them about what was going on?’ she asked.

‘He might not have noticed anything.’

‘So enraptured with the ravings of the Fathers of the Church?’

‘Or his chair might have faced in the other direction.’

She allowed a few seconds to pass and then asked, ‘Could he have been interested or involved in what was happening?’

Brunetti shrugged. ‘Involved would mean sitting and reading the Fathers of the Church for three years, or pretending to read them: I don’t know which is worse. Can you imagine the level of greed that would induce a person to do that?’ Before she could answer, he added, ‘Besides, if he’s been reading the Fathers of the Church seriously, then it’s unlikely he’d be involved in anything like this.’

She looked away from him and at the now-empty screen of her computer for so long that he thought she
had nothing to say, but finally she asked, ‘Do you really believe that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Remarkable,’ she said, then added, making no attempt to hide her own surprise, ‘So do I.’

6

Brunetti paused on the stairs to reflect on the strangeness of their joint assumption that a person who spent his time reading the Fathers of the Church was likely to be honest. There were many reasons why Franchini could have been reading them: interest in rhetoric, history, the minutiae of theological disagreement. Yet both Brunetti and Signorina Elettra had automatically assumed he could not have been involved in the thefts, nor even aware of them, as if the mantle of the Fathers’ presumed sanctity had covered Franchini as well.

Brunetti did not remember what the historical Tertullian had to say about theft, but he could hardly have been made a Father of the Church unless he had condemned it, or what use was the Commandment? Was it the fourth? Coveting came later in the list, he knew, a sin that Brunetti had always seen as the antipasto to Orwell’s Thought Crime. In fact, he thought it quite normal to covet someone else’s wife or goods. Why else were movie stars famous
and why else build the Reggia di Caserta, buy a Maserati or a Rolls-Royce unless covetousness and envy were in our bones?

Back at his desk and forgetful of the time difference, he decided to call the office of the History Department of the University of Kansas. He dialled the number and, after five rings, got a recording saying that the offices were open from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday to Friday and please press 1 to leave a message. He switched to English and explained that he was a commissario of the Italian police and would like someone to call him or email him. He gave his name, phone number, and email address, thanked the machine, and hung up. He looked at his watch again and worked out on the fingers of both hands that it was still the middle of the night in Kansas. Always uneasy when reliant upon the combination of technology and office workers, he turned on his computer and found the email address of the Department of History. He wrote a more detailed explanation of his request, gave Nickerson’s name and area of study as well as the name of the person who had signed the letter, and asked for the courtesy of a quick response because this concerned a criminal case.

He read quickly through his emails, finding nothing that interested him, however insistent the demands for responses. He brought up the Questura’s file of people arrested in the last ten years, typed in the name Piero Sartor, then added Pietro, just to be sure. His request brought up two possibilities, one for Piero and one for Pietro. But their ages, the first more than sixty and the other only fifteen, excluded them
a priori
. For purposes of exclusion, he entered the name of Patrizia Fabbiani, but it was not in their files.

While he was doing this, he thought he might as well duplicate Signorina Elettra’s search and typed in the name
of Aldo Franchini. ‘Well, well, well,’ he muttered as the system listed a man of sixty-one, living at Castello 333. Brunetti didn’t know where it was exactly, but he knew it was somewhere beyond the end of Via Garibaldi.

Franchini had been questioned, though not arrested, six months earlier in connection with an incident in Viale Garibaldi that had sent him to the hospital with a broken nose. A man sitting on a bench along the Viale had told the police that he noticed Franchini on another, a book in one hand, talking to a woman who was standing in front of him. Some time later, he heard an angry voice and looked up to see a man standing where the woman had been. With no advance warning, the man pulled Franchini to his feet and hit him, then walked away.

The assailant, who was quickly identified and arrested, had a record of petty theft and the receiving of stolen property and was under court order to remain at least one hundred metres from his former companion, whose life he had threatened. She turned out to be the woman who had been talking to the victim.

Franchini, however, refused to press charges against the assailant, saying that he had stood up when the man shouted at him and must have tripped and broken his nose when he fell.