The Modigliani Scandal (1976)

I

THE MULTISTORY, REINFORCED CONCRETE hotel in Rimini offered English breakfast bacon, eggs, and a pot of tea. Lipsey glimpsed a portion on someone′s table as he made his way through the dining room. The egg was fried hard and there was a suspicious green patch on the bacon. He sat down and ordered rolls and coffee.

He had arrived late last night and chosen his hotel badly. This morning he was still tired. In the foyer he had bought the Sun—the only English paper available. He flicked through it while he waited for his breakfast. He sighed with exasperation: it was not his sort of newspaper.

The coffee made him feel a little less weary, although a real breakfast—the kind he cooked for himself at home—would have been better. As he buttered his roll, he listened to the voices all around him, picking out accents from Yorkshire, Liverpool, and London. There were one or two German voices, too, but no French or Italian. The Italians had more sense than to stay in hotels they built for tourists; and no Frenchman in his right mind would go to Italy for a holiday.

He finished his roll, drained his coffee, and postponed his cigar. He asked an English-speaking hotel porter for directions to the nearest car-hire office.

The Italians were feverishly turning Rimini into a replica of Southend. There were fish-and-chip restaurants, imitation pubs, hamburger bars and souvenir shops everywhere. Every spare plot of land was a building site. The streets were already crowded with holidaymakers: the older ones in open-necked Bermuda shirts with their wives in flowered dresses, and the younger, unmarried couples in bell-bottom jeans, smoking duty-free king-size Embassy.

He smoked his belated cigar in the car-hire office, while a couple of officials filled in lengthy forms and checked his passport and his international driving license. The only car they had available at such short notice, they regretted, was a large Fiat in a metallic shade of light green. The car was rather expensive, but as he drove it away Lipsey was thankful for its power and comfort.

He returned to his hotel and went up to his room. He studied himself in the mirror. In his sober English suit and heavy laced shoes, he looked too much like a policeman, he decided. He took his 35 millimeter camera in its leather case from his luggage, and slung it around his neck by the strap. Then he put a set of darkened shades over the lenses of his spectacles. He studied himself in the mirror again. Now he looked like a German tourist.

Before starting out, he consulted the maps which the hirers had thoughtfully provided in the glove compartment. Poglio was about twenty miles away along the coast, and a couple of miles inland.

He drove out of the town and took a narrow, two-lane country road. He settled down to a leisurely 50 m.p.h. driving with the window open and enjoying the fresh air and the flattish, sparse countryside.

As he approached Poglio the road got even narrower, so that he had to stop and pull onto the shoulder to allow a tractor to pass him. He stopped at a fork with no signpost, and hailed a farmworker in a faded cap and T-shirt, his trousers held up with string. The peasant′s words were incomprehensible, but Lipsey memorized the gestures and followed them.

When he reached the village, there was nothing to indicate that this was Poglio. The small, whitewashed houses were scattered about, some twenty yards from the road, some built right out to the curb, as if they had been put up before there was any well-defined road there. At what Lipsey took to be the center of the place, the road forked around a group of buildings leaning on one another for support. A Coca-Cola sign outside one of the houses marked it as the village bar.

He drove through the village, and in no time at all found himself in the country again. He did a three-point turn on the narrow road. On his way back he noticed another road off to the west. Three roads into the village, for what it′s worth, he thought.

He stopped again, beside an old woman carrying a basket. She was dressed all in black, and her lined face was very white, as if she had spent her life keeping the sun off it.

″Is this Poglio?″ said Lipsey.

She drew her hood back off her face and looked at him suspiciously. ″yet,″ she said. She walked on.

Lipsey parked near the bar. It was just after ten o′clock, and the morning was beginning to get hot. On the steps outside the bar, an old man in a straw hat was sitting, his walking stick across his knees, taking advantage of the shade.

Lipsey smiled and bid him good morning, then went past him up the steps and into the bar. The place was dark, and smelled of pipe tobacco. There were two tables, a few chairs, and a small bar with a stool in front of it. The little room was empty.

Lipsey sat on the stool and called: ″Anybody there?″ There were noises from the back of the place, where the family presumably lived. He lit a cigar and waited.

Eventually a young man in an open-necked shirt came through the curtain beside the bar. He took in Lipsey′s clothes, his camera, and his shaded glasses with a quick, intelligent glance. Then he smiled. ″Good morning, sir,″ he said.

″I would like a cold beer, please.″

The barman opened a small household refrigerator and took out a bottle. Condensation hazed the glass as he poured.

Lipsey took out his wallet to pay. As he opened it, the photograph of Dee Sleign fell out onto the counter and slipped over to the floor. The barman picked it up.

There was no glimmer of recognition on the man′s face as he looked at the picture, then handed it back to Lipsey. ″A beautiful girl,″ he commented.

Lipsey smiled and handed over a note. The barman gave him change, then retired to the back of the house. Lipsey sipped his beer.

It looked as if Miss Sleign, with or without her boyfriend, had not yet arrived at Poglio. It was quite likely: Lipsey had been hurrying, and they had not. They had no idea anyone else was after the Modigliani.

Once again, he would have preferred to look for the picture rather than for the girl. But he did not know just what had led her to Poglio. She might have been told that the picture was here; or that someone here knew where the picture was; or some more complex clue.

He finished his beer and decided to look around the village. When he left the bar the old man was still on the steps. There was no one else in sight.

There was little enough to look at in the place. The only other shop was a general store; the only public building a tiny Renaissance church, built, Lipsey guessed, in some seventeenth-century flush of wealth. There was no police station, no municipal office, no community hall. Lipsey walked around slowly in the heat, amusing himself by drawing idle deductions about the economics of the village from its buildings and its layout.

An hour later he had exhausted the game′s possibilities, and he still had not decided what to do. When he returned to the bar, he found that events had once again taken the decision out of his hands.

Outside the bar, parked near the steps where the old man still sat in the shade, was a bright blue Mercedes coupe with an open sunroof.

Lipsey stood looking at it, wondering what to do about it. It was almost certainly Miss Sleign or her boyfriend, or both—nobody in the village would own such a car, and there was little reason for anyone else to come here. On the other hand, his impression was that neither she nor her boyfriend had a great deal of money—the Paris flat had indicated that much. Still, they might have been slumming.

The only way to find out was to go into the bar. Lipsey could not hang around outside looking casual: in his suit and polished shoes he made an unconvincing village loafer. He mounted the steps and pushed open the door.

The couple were sitting at one of the two tables, drinking what looked like long, iced apéritifs. They wore identical clothes: baggy, faded-blue trousers, and bright red vests. The girl was attractive, but the man was extremely handsome, Lipsey noted. He was a lot older than Lipsey had expected—late thirties, perhaps.

They looked at Lipsey intently, as if they had been expecting him. He gave them a casual nod and walked up to the bar.

″Another beer, sir?″ the young barman asked.

″Please.″

The barman spoke to Miss Sleign. ″This is the gentleman I was telling you about,″ he said.

Lipsey looked around, raising his eyebrows in an expression of amused curiosity.

The girl said: ″Have you got a picture of me in your wallet?″

Lipsey laughed easily. He spoke in English: ″This man thinks all English girls look alike. Actually, you do look a little like my daughter. But it is only a superficial resemblance.″

The boyfriend said: ″May we see the picture?″ He had a deep voice with a North American accent.

″Surely.″ Lipsey took out his wallet and searched through it. ″Ah! It must be in the car.″ He paid the barman for his beer, and said: ″Let me buy you two a drink.″

″Thank you,″ Miss Sleign said. ″Campari, for both of us.″

Lipsey waited for the barman to make the drinks and take them to the table. Then he said: ″It′s odd, meeting another English tourist out here in the wilds. Are you from London?″

″We live in Paris,″ the girl said. She seemed to be the talkative one of the pair.

The boyfriend said: ″It is odd. What are you doing here?″

Lipsey smiled. ″I′m a bit of a loner,″ he said with the air of one who makes something of a confession. ″When I′m on holiday, I like to get right off the beaten track. I just get in the car and follow my nose until I feel like stopping.″

″Where are you staying?″

″In Rimini. What about you—are you wanderers too?″

The girl started to say something, but the man interrupted her. ″We′re on a kind of treasure hunt,″ he said.

Lipsey thanked his stars for the boyfriend′s naivete. ″How fascinating,″ he said. ″What′s at the end of it?″

″A valuable painting, we hope.″

″Is it here, in Poglio?″

″Almost. There′s a chateau five miles up the road.″ He pointed south. ″We think it′s there. We′re going there in a while.″

Lipsey made his smile condescending. ″Well, it makes a holiday exciting—a bit out of the ordinary—even if you never find the treasure.″

″You bet.″

Lipsey drained his beer. ″Personally, I′ve seen enough of Poglio. I′m moving on.″

″Let me buy you another beer.″

″No, thanks. I′m in a car, and there′s a long, thirsty day ahead.″ He stood up. ″A pleasure to meet you. Goodbye.″

The Fiat was terribly hot inside, and Lipsey regretted not having the foresight to park it in the shade. He wound his window down and pulled away, letting the breeze cool him. He felt pleased: the couple had given him a lead, and let him get ahead of them. For the first time since he had started work on the case, he was on top of it.

He drove out on the southward road, in the direction the American had pointed. The road became dusty. He wound up his window and turned on the car′s air conditioning at full blast When it was cool again, he stopped to look at his maps.

The large-scale chart revealed that there was, indeed, a château to the south. It seemed more than five miles away—perhaps ten—but it was still quite conceivable that its postal address would be Poglio. It was slightly off the main road—if main road it could be called—and Lipsey memorized the directions.

The journey took him half an hour, because of the poorness of the roads and the absence of signposts. But when he arrived there was no mistaking the place. It was a big house, built about the same time as the church in Poglio. It had three stories, and there were fairy-tale towers at the corners of the facade. Bits of the stonework were crumbling, and the windows were not clean. A separate stables building had apparently been converted into a garage, and its doors stood open, revealing a gas-driven lawn mower and a very old Citröen station wagon.

Lipsey parked outside the gates and walked up the short drive. Weeds grew in the gravel, and as he got closer to the house it looked more and more dilapidated.

As he stood looking up at the house, a door opened and an elderly woman walked toward him. He wondered what approach to take.

″Good morning,″ she said in Italian.

Her gray hair was neat, she was elegantly dressed, and the bones of her face indicated that she had once been beautiful. Lipsey gave a small bow.

″I beg your pardon for this intrusion,″ he said.

″Don′t apologize.″ She had switched to English. ″How can I help you?″

Lipsey had learned enough about her to decide on his approach. ″I wonder whether one is permitted to look around the outside of this beautiful house.″

″Of course,″ the woman smiled. ″It is pleasant to find someone interested. I am the Contessa di Lanza.″ She extended her hand, and Lipsey shook it, mentally revising his estimate of his chances of success to around 90 percent.

″Dunsford Lipsey, Contessa.″

She led him around to the side of the house. ″It was built in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, when all the land around here was given to the family as a reward for service in some war or other. That was the time Renaissance architecture finally filtered through to the countryside.″

″Ah. Then it was built about the same time as the church in Poglio.″

She nodded in agreement. ″Are you interested in architecture, Mr. Lipsey?″

″I am interested in beauty, Contessa.″

He could see that she was suppressing a smile, and thinking that this stiffly formal Englishman had a certain eccentric charm. That was what he wanted her to think.

She talked to him about the house as if she were retelling a familiar tale, pointing out the place where the masons had run out of the right sort of stone and been forced to change, the new windows added in the eighteenth century, the small nineteenth-century west wing.

″Of course, we no longer own the district, and what land we have retained is rather poor. As you can see, too many repairs have been postponed.″ She turned to face him and gave him a self-deprecating smile. ″Contessas are two-a-penny in Italy, Mr. Lipsey.″

″But not all have a family as old as yours.″

″No. The newer aristocrats are businessmen and industrialists. Their families have not had time to grow soft with living on inherited wealth.″

They had completed the circuit of the house, and now stood in its shadow at the foot of one of the towers. Lipsey said: ″It is possible to grow soft on earned wealth, Contessa. I′m afraid I do not work very hard for my living.″

″May I ask what you do?″

″I have an antique shop in London. It′s on the Cromwell Road—you must visit next time you are in England. I′m rarely there myself.″

″Are you sure you wouldn′t like to see the inside of the house?″

″Well, if itʹs not too much trouble ...″

″Not at all.″ The Contessa led him through the front door. Lipsey felt the tingle at the back of his neck which always came near the end of a case. He had worked things just right: he had gently given the Contessa the impression that he might be willing to buy something from her. She was obviously in fairly desperate need of cash.

As she led him through the rooms of the house, his sharp eyes flitted quickly around the walls. There were a large number of paintings, mainly oil portraits of previous counts and watercolor landscapes. The furniture was old, but not antique. Some of the rooms smelled unused, their aroma an odd mixture of mothballs and decay.

She led him up the staircase, and he realized that the landing was the showpiece of the place. In its center was a mildly erotic marble of a centaur and a girl in a sensual embrace. The rugs on the highly polished floor were not worn. The walls all around were hung with paintings.

″This is our modest art collection,″ the Contessa was saying. ″It ought to have been sold long ago, but my late husband would not part with it. And I have been postponing the day.″

That was as near an offer to sell as the old lady would come, Lipsey thought. He dropped his pretence of casual interest and began to examine the pictures.

He looked at each one from a distance, narrowing his eyes, searching for hints of the Modigliani style: the elongated face, the characteristic nose which he could not help putting on women, the influence of African sculpture, the peculiar asymmetry. Then he moved closer and scrutinized the signature. He looked at the frames of the pictures for signs of re-framing. He took a very powerful, pencilbeam flashlight from his inside pocket and shone it on the paint, scanning for the giveaway traces of overpainting.

Some of the paintings needed only a glance; others required very close examination. The Contessa watched patiently while he went around the four walls of the landing. Finally he turned to her.

″You have some fine pictures, Contessa,″ he said.

She showed him quickly around the rest of the house, as if they both knew it was only a formality.

When they were back on the landing, she stopped. ″May I offer you some coffee?″

ʺThank you.″

They went downstairs to a drawing room, and the Contessa excused herself to go to the kitchen and order coffee. Lipsey bit his lip as he waited. There was no getting away from it: none of the paintings was worth more than a few hundred pounds, and there were certainly no Modiglianis in the house.

The Contessa returned. ″Smoke if you like,″ she said.

″Thank you. I will.″ Lipsey lit up a cigar. He took a card from his pocket: it bore only his name, business address, and telephone number—no indication of his trade. ″May I give you my address?″ he said. ″When you decide to sell your art collection, I have some acquaintances in London who would like to know.″

Disappointment flashed briefly on the Contessa′s handsome face as she realized that Lipsey was not going to buy anything.

″That is the full extent of your collection, I take it?″ he said.

″Yes.″

″No pictures stored away in attics or basements?″

″Iʹm afraid not.″

A servant came in with coffee on a tray, and the Contessa poured. She asked Lipsey questions about London, and the fashions, and the new shops and restaurants. He answered as best he could.

After exactly ten minutes of idle conversation, he emptied his coffee cup and stood up. ″You have been most kind, Contessa. Please get in touch next time you are in London.″

″I′ve enjoyed your company, Mr. Lipsey.″ She saw him to the front door.

He walked quickly down the drive and got into the car. He reversed into the drive of the château, and caught a glimpse of the Contessa in his mirror, still standing in the doorway, before he pulled away.

He was most disappointed. It seemed the whole thing had been in vain. If there had ever been a lost Modigliani at the chateau, it was not there now.

Of course, there was another possibility: one that, perhaps, he ought to have paid more attention to. The American, Miss Sleign′s boyfriend, might have deliberately sent him on a wild-goose chase.

Could the man have suspected Lipsey? Well, it was a possibility; and Lipsey believed that possibilities were there to be exhausted. He sighed as he made his decision: he would have to keep track of the couple until he was sure that they, too, had given up.

He was not quite sure how to set about trailing them now. He could hardly follow them around, as he might have in a city. He would have to ask after them.

He returned to Poglio by a slightly different route, heading for the third road from the village: the one which entered from the west. About a mile outside Poglio he spotted a house near the road with a beer advertisement in the window. Outside was one small circular iron table. It looked like a bar.

Lipsey was hungry and thirsty. He pulled off the road onto the baked-earth parking lot in front of the place and killed the engine.