Street of the Five Moons

Chapter Seven

FIRST THING NEXT morning I went to Helena’s room. She had insisted that one of the maids sit up with her, and the poor girl was glad to be relieved. I started investigating the suitcases. Helena woke up while I was doing it.

‘Shut up,’ I said, when she complained. ‘Do you want the police after you? Pietro might let you get away with the brooch, but he won’t stand for this.’ I held up a T’ang figurine of a horse, which she had lifted from the drawing room. I wondered how she had known its value.

‘I was angry,’ she muttered. ‘Do you blame me?’

‘Not for being angry. I do blame you for being stupid. For God’s sake, no wonder this suitcase was so heavy!’

The weight had come from a solid silver candelabrum, almost three feet high.

I stood up, dusting my hands ostentatiously.

‘You put this stuff back,’ I ordered. ‘If you still want to leave, I’ll help you. But you can’t take all this along.’

She hadn’t removed her makeup the night before. It looked awful in the cold light of day, all smeared and streaked by the bedclothes. She blinked sticky lashes at me.

‘I am staying. He cannot cast me off.’

‘Aren’t you afraid of the ghost?’ I inquired.

‘You are not.’

‘No, but I wish I knew who . . .’ Helena had pulled the sheet up to her chin, but there was a gleam in those shallow dark eyes of hers that made me demand, ‘Helena, do you know who it was?’

‘No.’

‘And if you did, you wouldn’t tell me. That’s what I get for trying to be nice. Get up out of that bed and put your loot back, or I’ll tell Pietro myself.’

When I got down to the breakfast room I was surprised to see Pietro seated at the table gobbling eggs. He greeted me with a cry of pleasure.

‘You’re up early,’ I said.

Pietro handed his empty plate to the footman, who refilled it, and looked inquiringly at me.

‘Caffè,’ I said. ‘Just coffee, please.’

‘I have much to do today,’ Pietro explained. ‘We were so early to bed last night . . .’

He hesitated, looking warily at me.

‘You weren’t feeling well,’ I said. ‘I hope you are better this morning.’

‘My old war wound,’ Pietro said, sighing.

I wondered how much he remembered of what had happened the previous night. I didn’t wonder about the war wound; it was as apocryphal as a lot of other things about my charming host.

‘Your wound must be a sore trial to you,’ I said, watching with awe as Pietro devoured his ham and eggs and then accepted a bowl of cereal. He was international in his food tastes – Italian dinners, English breakfasts. In that way he got the absolute maximum of calories.

‘Yes, I must keep up my strength,’ said Pietro. ‘I have business today – business and pleasure. My old friend, the Principessa Concini, comes today. She will stay to dine, but first we have business to transact. A publication she is preparing, about my collections. Perhaps you will be able to advise us.’

‘I will be honoured.’

‘Sir John will also help. That is why he is here, to assist in arranging the collections.’

‘How long have you known Sir John?’ I asked casually.

‘Not long. But he comes most highly recommended. However . . .’ Pietro put down the sausage he had been munching and looked at me soberly. ‘However, I do not completely trust him.’

‘Why?’ I asked, breathlessly.

‘No, I do not trust him. You are a young lady guest in my house; I feel I must warn you.’

‘Please do.’

Pietro leaned towards me and lowered his voice.

‘I fear he is not altogether honourable in his dealings with women.’

‘Oh,’ I said, deflated.

‘Yes.’ Pietro nodded portentously. ‘Yes, I have reasons to suspect this. A man of my experience . . . Be on your guard, my dear Vicky. Not that you would be susceptible. I cannot imagine that any women would find him attractive, but my observation tells me otherwise.’

The door behind Pietro opened noiselessly. I caught a glimpse of blond hair, at a level that strongly suggested the owner was bending over with his ear to the door.

‘Oh, Mr Smythe has a certain crude charm,’ I said. ‘Some unsophisticated women, with no taste and limited experience, might be temporarily attracted to him.’

The door closed rather sharply. Pietro turned his head.

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing important,’ I said. I pushed my coffee cup away and stood up. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk. Your gardens are so beautiful.’

‘You should see them at night, when they are illuminated. They are bright as day. We will have the illumination tonight, perhaps.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘Yes, we will stroll among the blossoms and the gentle fountains in the summer night,’ said Pietro, looking as soulful as a little fat man can look. ‘Wait for your walk until then, when I can accompany you and point out beauties in hidden corners that you might otherwise miss.’

‘I’ll just take a short stroll now,’ I said. ‘It won’t spoil the beauties you can point out to me, I’m sure.’

I left him wheezing with amusement at my sly wit.

Smythe joined me as I walked across the terrace.

‘Beautiful day,’ he said. ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Oh, are you my watchdog today?’ I inquired. ‘Yes, I do mind. Lurking in the shrubbery suits you better.’

Smythe fell into step with me.

‘Of course you could run,’ he said. ‘Then I would run after you. We’d look pretty silly, wouldn’t we, pelting along the cypress avenues?’

We walked on in a silence that I hoped was repressive. It didn’t repress Smythe for long.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Oh, everywhere . . . anywhere. I haven’t explored half the grounds yet.’

‘You won’t find it.’

‘What?’

‘Whatever it is you are looking for.’

‘What do you want to bet?’ I inquired. We entered the courtyard next to the garage. The Rolls was out, being washed by two men with hoses and buckets. One of them was Bruno.

I hadn’t realized how big he was. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, baring arms like muscled tree trunks. He looked up and saw me and his heavy brows drew together in a scowl. He went on rubbing the fender of the car with a sponge.

‘If Bruno was what you were looking for, I don’t admire your taste,’ said Smythe, taking my arm and turning me away.

‘I was just confirming a theory.’

‘It can’t be much of a theory. The count has a financial interest in the antique shop, as you may have surmised. When I had the good fortune to meet you, I was checking the books.’

‘And Bruno was helping you. I suppose he has a degree in accounting.’

‘He was in charge of the dog,’ Smythe said.

We had entered a kitchen garden, with neat rows of cabbages and feathery sprouts of carrots.

‘That reminds me of a bone I have to pick with you,’ I said. ‘What have you done with Caesar?’

‘I haven’t done anything with him. I assure you, he is living off the fat of the land. We had to give up using him at the antique shop. He turned out to be rather a poor watchdog.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. He’s quite a remarkable animal, though. He has learned to open tins, not with his teeth, but with a tin opener. He developed a regrettable passion for foie gras, and sulked when we offered him ordinary dog food.’

‘I’d like to see him.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, I – ’ I stopped, before the discussion could degenerate into one of those childish exchanges Smythe seemed to enjoy. We were still in the service area, so, obeying a wild impulse of the sort that often seized me when I was with Smythe, I threw back my head and shouted, ‘Caesar? Caesar, where are you, old dog? Cave canem, Caesar.’

There was a moment of silence, then a furious outburst of barking. Giving Smythe a triumphant glance, I followed the sound through the kitchen garden, into a courtyard filled with trash cans and empty crates, under an archway. Caesar never let up barking, and I encouraged him with an occasional hail. When he saw me he reared up on his haunches and his barks rose to a pitch of ecstasy. His lunges dragged the dog house to which he was tied a good six feet.

I squatted down beside him. He looked better than he had when I first saw him. His ribs weren’t so prominent. The dog house was not elegant, but it was adequate, and his chain gave him ample room to roam. His water dish was full.

‘What a touching sight,’ said Smythe, looking down his nose at the pair of us.

‘I always say you can’t trust a man who doesn’t like dogs,’ I remarked, pulling Caesar’s ears.

‘I prefer cats myself.’

‘You’re trying to mislead me. Cat people have a lot of good qualities, usually.’

Caesar settled down with his head on my lap and his mouth hanging open in canine rapture. I scratched his neck and looked around.

Caesar’s yard was a grassy plot, roughly mowed and enclosed by high brick walls. Against the far wall was a small building. It hadn’t been painted in fifty years, but I observed that the structure was quite solid. The door was heavy and the windows were tightly shuttered.

Was this one of Smythe’s tricks? To anchor Caesar in front of a mysterious-looking building might suggest that that building held something he didn’t want me to see. Or it might be that he wanted me to waste a lot of time investigating a red herring. Or it might be that he would want me to think it was a red herring because it really did contain something . . .

I decided I would investigate the building. Obviously I couldn’t do it then. So I stood up – not an easy job, since neither Caesar nor Smythe assisted me. Caesar started to howl when I walked away. After I had closed the gate, I could hear the dog house being dragged along the ground, inch by scraping inch.

‘He’s bored,’ I said indignantly. ‘He needs exercise. Why don’t you let him run? The field is fenced.’

‘You can come round twice a day and exercise him,’ Smythe said. ‘Good for both of you.’

‘Go away,’ I said.

‘I shall. You’d better come along and have a bath. You smell like Caesar.’

‘If I thought the smell would keep you away, I’d bottle it,’ I said rudely.

Smythe grinned and walked off.

I might have gone back to the house to shower if Smythe hadn’t suggested it. Instead I went towards the garage. Two men were polishing the Rolls, but Bruno was no longer one of them.

I sought the rose garden next, thinking that scent might overpower the smell of Caesar – an assumption which proved to be erroneous. I wondered why Smythe had chosen to leave when he did. And where was Bruno? What did it all mean? I threw up my hands, figuratively speaking.

The roses weren’t doing me any good, so I proceeded into a part of the gardens I hadn’t seen before. It contained one of the larger fountains, a spray of shining crystal water that dampened the marble contours of a complex sculptural group of nymphs and water gods. Beyond an oleander hedge I could make out the walls of a building. Once I got a good look at the place I knew what it was. I had found Luigi’s studio.

It was a singularly unimpressive establishment for the heir to all the grandeur I had beheld – a low brick building that had once been a shed. Part of the roof had been knocked out and replaced by the skylight that is indispensable to a painter, but that was the only improvement that had been made.

The door was open. It had to be. With the sun beating down through that glass roof, the interior of the room had the approximate temperature of a pizza oven. Luigi was stripped to the waist. His paint-stained jeans hung low on his lean hips, giving me a view of a tanned back as smoothly muscled as that of Lysippus’ athlete. I couldn’t imagine how he kept his paints from running in the heat. Then I caught a glimpse of the canvas he was working on, and I realized that it didn’t matter. No one would have known the difference.

I coughed and shuffled my feet. Luigi turned. He had a brush between his teeth and his face was stippled with red and aquamarine dots. Those, I regret to say, were the major colours of his canvas. I don’t know what else I can say about it. It conveyed nothing in particular to me except ‘red, aquamarine.’ And particularly horrible shades of both, I might add.

Luigi was a lot nicer to look at. He was beautifully tanned, every exposed inch of him; the sheen of perspiration made his skin glow like bronze. He took the brush out of his mouth and looked at me soberly.

‘You came. I thought you had forgotten your promise.’

‘I didn’t know whether I should come without being invited,’ I said. ‘It can be annoying to have one’s creative process disturbed.’

Luigi’s sulky face broke into a smile.

‘I had reached an impasse,’ he said, with a comical attempt at dignity. ‘That does occur at times, you know.’

‘So I understand. I’ll leave, if you – ’

‘No, no.’ He caught my arm in his hard young fingers. ‘You must stay. Tell me, what do you think of this?’

I know the routine. I stepped back a few feet, put my head on one side, and squinted. I looked through my fingers. I moved to the right and squinted, to the left and squinted. Then I advanced on the painting and squinted at close range.

‘Fascinating,’ I said finally. Luigi let out his breath. ‘Yes, it’s a very interesting conception. Suggestive technique.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Luigi said eagerly. ‘You understand.’

We discussed the painting. I pointed out several places where the tonal values weren’t quite as sound as they might have been. Luigi told me what he planned to do about that. He had a very nice time. Once he caught me off guard when he asked me point-blank what the painting suggested to me, but I talked fast and got out of that one. The only thing it suggested was sheer chaos.

After ten minutes in that heat I felt as if I must smell like a goat. Luigi didn’t seem to notice, and I couldn’t walk out on him, he was so pleased to have an audience. He showed me several other canvases. They were different colours. Mostly yellow and purple, I think.

‘Have you tried other media besides oils?’ I asked.

It was a silly question. I should have asked if there was anything he hadn’t tried. Pen and ink, watercolour, pastels; silk screen, engraving, woodcuts . . . He kept hauling out portfolios. I was so hot the perspiration ran down my face in streams, getting into my eyes and blurring my vision, and in desperation I finally gasped.

‘I can’t assimilate any more, Luigi. I must let the things I have seen sink into my subconscious and become part of me.’

Luigi agreed. He would have agreed with me if I had told him it was brillig and the slithy toves were on the wabe. I escaped into the comparative coolness of the garden, leaving Luigi busy at work on his tonal values.

It wasn’t funny, though. The frustrations of youth never are. Although I don’t claim to know much about any form of art after AD 1600, I didn’t think Luigi had much to offer. He would find that out sooner or later, and it would hurt like hell. In the meantime, let him enjoy himself; I certainly had no intention of telling him what I really thought.

I went into the villa by one of the innumerable side doors, planning to go straight to my room and some soap and water. As luck would have it, the first person I saw was the principessa. Things always work that way for me.

She was standing in the hall drawing off her immaculate white gloves while an obsequious butler waited to receive them and the jacket of her pale-yellow linen suit. She must have stood up in the car; there wasn’t a crease in her skirt. Her shoes were as spotless as her gloves, and every hair on her shining dark head looked as if it followed a detailed masterplan.

She inspected me, smiling her faint antique smile, and I was conscious of every spot on my unkempt person. Grass stains from the field, damp spots where Caesar had drooled on me, dirt, paint, perspiration . . . I pushed the limp hair off my forehead and saw her wrinkle her patrician nose, ever so slightly.

‘Hi, there,’ I said.

‘How nice to see you, Vicky.’ She handed the butler her gloves and came towards me, arms outstretched. I stepped back.

‘Don’t touch me, Bianca,’ I said. ‘I’ve been playing with the dog.’

‘Dog? Oh, that great beast of Pietro’s. What peculiar taste, my dear.’

‘I must shower,’ I mumbled, retreating towards the stairs.

‘I’ll go up with you. I must freshen up before lunch.’

‘I can’t imagine how you could look any fresher.’

‘How sweet of you to say so. Seriously, Vicky, I want to have a private word with you before we join the others. The matter you spoke of the other day . . . I promised you I would look over my collection.’

She looked so serious that I stopped short, halfway up the stairs.

‘You don’t mean you found something!’

She shook her head.

‘I didn’t check every piece, of course. But I selected examples I thought would be most attractive to your hypothetical criminals. The Kurfürstenpokal cup, the Sigismund emeralds, a few others. They passed every test.’

‘Well, that’s good news,’ I said, after a moment. ‘I’m not mean enough to hope you were robbed simply to justify my theories.’

‘That doesn’t mean your theories are wrong.’

She was trying to be nice, but she still didn’t believe it, and I found myself unreasonably annoyed by the hint of patronage in her manner.

‘My theories aren’t wrong. I can’t prove them yet, but I will.’

‘Have you discovered anything new?’

‘No, not really. But I think I’m on the right track. That Englishman I told you about – the one who was in the antique shop. He’s Pietro’s secretary.’

‘So I learned,’ she said calmly. ‘You seem suspicious of him, but I can’t think why. His credentials are excellent.’

‘Did you see them?’ I asked bluntly. She smiled her faintly sinister archaic smile.

‘I have met the man himself. I find him attractive. Don’t you?’

‘His looks have nothing to do with his morals,’ I said.

‘You sound like Queen Victoria,’ said Bianca, her smile widening. ‘Do relax, child, and enjoy life. I wonder if I was ever so deadly serious, even when I was your age . . .’

And she sauntered off down the hall, leaving me standing in front of my door feeling more than a little foolish.

Compared to the other meals I had eaten with the Caravaggios, this one positively sparkled. The principessa was the catalyst. She controlled the conversation like an experienced hostess, drawing even Helena into it, heading off at least two quarrels between Pietro and his son, and managing simultaneously to flirt elegantly with Smythe, whose silly head was completely turned by the attention. He babbled and made jokes as if he were being paid for it.

The only thing that didn’t glow was the weather. Clouds began to gather as we lingered over our coffee, and the dowager looked anxiously at her grandson.

‘Luigi, promise you will not go back to that studio of yours while it is raining.’

Luigi, who was in excellent spirits, grinned at me.

‘She thinks I will be hit by lightning,’ he explained, patting the old lady’s hand.

‘My grandmother wouldn’t let me play the piano during a thunderstorm,’ I said.

‘Very sensible,’ said the dowager firmly. ‘Electricity is a strange substance. Who can understand it? Luigi, promise. Come and read to me. You know how I love to hear you.’

‘I must make a few telephone calls first,’ the boy said. ‘Then I will come, Grandmother.’

‘Telephone calls indeed,’ Pietro muttered. ‘He talks all day. No telephoning to that friend in Switzerland, Luigi, the last bill was absolutely outrageous.’

Luigi’s smile faded, but he said nothing. I wondered what perverse quality makes people so unfailingly rude to their nearest and dearest. Many of Pietro’s remarks to the boy were quite uncalled for; he couldn’t seem to resist needling him.

After lunch I went with the principessa and Pietro to look at his collection of rare china. She was preparing a publication on a certain type in private European collections, and she was trying to decide which of Pietro’s possessions to include. China happens to be a subject I know virtually nothing about, and I have no desire to know more than I do. It was fun looking at some of the lovely dishes Pietro displayed, but I couldn’t understand half of what they were talking about. So I made my excuses and went to my room. It was raining steadily, and the soft sound made me sleepy. I lay down on my bed and soon dropped off.

I don’t believe that dreams are vehicles for messages from the supernatural world, but I do think they can serve as a means of dragging certain subconscious worries out into the open. I had a very peculiar dream that afternoon. It was all about art – Raphael’s erotic drawings, the ‘Pietà’ of Michelangelo, the Greek statues in Pietro’s salone – all of them spattered and streaked with vermilion and aquamarine, like Luigi’s awful painting. When I woke up, the rain was still drizzling drearily on the balcony outside my window, and I lay blinking into the grey twilight for a while, trying to think what it was that bothered me.

It had something to do with Luigi and his studio. Those portfolios of drawings, sketches, watercolours . . . The boy had experimented with many artistic techniques. Why hadn’t he tried sculpture or modelling in clay?

There were a number of reasonable explanations. Maybe he didn’t work well in three dimensions. Yet some of the sketches I had seen through a haze of heat and perspiration had a certain something . . .

It wasn’t a theory, it was just a nebulous, incredible suspicion. But I knew I had to check it out, right away. I grabbed my raincoat and was almost at the door when I caught sight of the clock on the dresser. It was four thirty. So I went back to the telephone.

Schmidt’s secretary, Gerda, answered the phone, and I had to gossip with her for a few minutes before she put me through. She is the worst talker I have ever met, but she’s a good kid. Yet I found it hard to chat; a mounting sense of urgency made me as twitchy as a dog with ticks. Finally Schmidt came on the line.

‘I think I may be on to something,’ I said. ‘No, I can’t tell you yet, it’s too amorphous. But I’ll call you later if my hunch works out. If you don’t hear from me tonight, forget it – but expect the usual call tomorrow.

He was full of questions, but I cut him short. I didn’t have much time. If I did not show up in the drawing room for cocktails, someone might go looking for me. But I was wild to check out my crazy hunch, and with the rain keeping everyone indoors, I might never have a better chance.

The door of Luigi’s studio was closed, but not locked. It yielded to the pressure of my hand. Once inside, I wiped the raindrops off my face and looked for a light switch.

In the bluish glare of fluorescent bulbs the studio looked cold and depressing. It certainly was a good imitation of a starving art student’s garret. The velvet draping the model’s throne was worn and dusty, and the chairs looked as if they had been chewed by a large dog. The rain pounded on the skylight like the drums of a regiment marching into battle.

I pulled out some of the canvases that had been placed in racks along the wall. Luigi had gone through several ‘periods.’ Like Picasso, he had enjoyed a blue period. Like his namesake Caravaggio, he had experimented with chiaroscuro. He had tried pointillism, and cubism, and imitations of Van Gogh, with an overloaded palette knife. The dreary collection proved that the boy couldn’t paint in any style known to man, but it also proved that he was dedicated. Why hadn’t he ever tried sculpting?

A long table under the windows held a miscellaneous assortment of paint tubes, turpentine, stained rags . . . and the portfolios of sketches. A bolt of lightning splashed across the skylight, but I hardly noticed it. Those sketches . . .

They were bad; there was no question about that. But they had a certain quality. I looked at a dozen of them – amateur renditions of heads and animals and parts of bodies – before I realized what they did have. His anatomy was terrible, and he had no feeling for design or form. But there was one pen-and-ink drawing of a female head that was so good I thought for a minute it must be a print. I knew I had seen the original somewhere. Then I recognized it. I had seen the original, in the Bargello in Florence. It was a sculptured bust by Mino da Fiesole. Luigi had no creative talent, but as a copyist he was absolutely first rate. I put the drawings carefully back in the portfolio and started to search the room.

The trapdoor was under the model’s throne, which slid on rollers. There must have been some way of anchoring the throne when it was in use, or Luigi’s models would have gone gliding around the room like the Flying Manzinis; if so, he had forgotten to take care of that little detail. Why should he? If I was any judge, the trapdoor was used a hell of a lot more than the model’s throne.

The light of the subterranean room at the bottom of the stairs went on automatically when the trapdoor was raised. There was a very complete little workshop down there. I couldn’t identify all the objects, but many of the tools of the trade have not changed over the centuries. Gravers, punches, hammers, a soldering iron . . .

I got a little excited. I went running around the room grabbing things and dropping them, pulling out drawers, shuffling through papers. The tools of the trade might not be enthralling, but the materials certainly were. Gold wires and sheets of thin gold, silver nuggets; tiny compartments filled with imitation pearls and emeralds, rubies and opals; chunks of lapis lazuli and turquoise and orange-red carnelian – for the Egyptian crown and other objects of that period; stones of every colour of the rainbow, from pale-yellow citrine to garnets like drops of blood; sheets of ivory, malachite, porphyry, jade. All fakes, no doubt, but the general effect was dazzling.

A file on one of the workbenches held detailed sketches of a number of pieces. They weren’t all jewellery. Some were plates, reliquaries, goblets. The piece Luigi was working on had been covered with a cloth. I lifted it gently.

Only a few surviving pieces have been definitely attributed to Benvenuto Cellini. I had seen one of them, the Rospigliosi cup in the Metropolitan Museum. The bowl itself is shell-shaped, exquisitely curved; it stands on a base consisting of an enamelled serpent mounted on a golden tortoise. Luigi had not ventured to copy any of the known pieces. Even that gang of arrogant swindlers wouldn’t dare claim they had burgled the Met. But this could have passed for one of Cellini’s works; the various elements of which it were composed were all based on parts of other pieces. It was a golden chalice, with the same elegant curves as the Metropolitan’s bowl. The handles were jewelled serpents, and the whole thing was supported by a voluptuous nymph modelled on the lady on the saltcellar in Vienna. Luigi was branching out, no longer imitating known works of art. I wondered what a hitherto undiscovered Cellini would fetch in the market. I couldn’t even guess. Worth the effort, certainly.

The thunder outside was making quite a racket. The noise itself didn’t make me nervous. What made me nervous was the fact that I couldn’t hear anything else over the thunder – like, for instance, the sound of someone upstairs. I had to get out of there fast, and I had to come back – with a camera.

I started up the stairs. My nerve ends were twitching, but when I cautiously put my head up out of the hole the studio was still deserted. I closed the trapdoor and shoved the throne back into position. I felt a little more secure then, but not much; no one would believe I had been overcome by an irresistible urge to see more of Luigi’s work during a rainstorm. I wished I had not turned on the studio lights. They would be visible for quite a distance, thanks to that skylight.

The studio was perilous ground, but I would have to risk coming back, at least once more. I needed photographs of the shop, the tools, the sketches, the unfinished chalice. The photographs wouldn’t be proof of a swindle. There is no copyright on antique art. But if I could find out what jewels had been sold, the photographs would be damning evidence of forgery.

I was awfully pleased with myself, and I guess conceit made me careless. I opened the door and stepped out into the rain, and a fist that hit me on the jaw.