Certain englishmen seem to expend so much energy on being English that it empties them of natural vigor. If he had not just heard about John Nightingale’s skill at faking provenance, Blume would have dismissed the lethargic man in the downstairs waiting area as being slow-witted. Blume put him in his mid-sixties. His hair was gray and tightly curled like a scouring pad used for saucepans. He looked the kind who might be comfortable in corduroy, maybe with patches on the elbows of his jacket, but in fact his clothes, though wrinkled, were sober, silver-gray, and expensive. Blume introduced himself. Nightingale stood up, shook Blume’s hand, and smiled by curving the left side of his mouth upwards and the right side downwards. Then he sat down again and said, “E’ tutto vero?”
“Is what true?” asked Blume, switching straight into English as soon as he heard Nightingale’s accent.
“That they found Harry murdered on the street.”
“Hahwy?” said Blume, momentarily confused.
“Yes. Harry.”
“Harry as in Henry?” said Blume, resisting the temptation to say “Henwy.”
Nightingale said, “Yes. Harry. I never called him Henry.”
“Henry Treacy. How did you find out?” asked Blume.
“Dear God!” Nightingale widened his eyes. “It is true, then.”
“How did you find that out?” repeated Blume.
“Emanuela told me. Manuela, rather. My receptionist. Manuela told me, well, let me see, half an hour ago. She told me to come down here and find you or an Inspector Mazzola or some such name. It’s good to find someone who speaks English like this. I can’t quite place your accent… God, you’re not Irish are you?”
“No.”
“No, you’re American. How stupid of me. Harry was Irish, you see.”
“I see,” said Blume. “I take it you’re here to make a voluntary statement?”
“What?”
“A statement to the police. Since no lawyer is present and I am not a magistrate, nothing you say can be used as evidence in court.”
“I came to get information, not the other way round. Am I under arrest?”
“No. Absolutely not. A voluntary statement cannot be used as evidence for or against anyone, period. Whatever you tell us now is of no judicial use, but it can certainly help us. You’ll want a lawyer if the magistrate calls you in for questioning, but not now. Also, as long as we keep talking English and remain one-to-one, we are speaking off the record, more or less.”
“More or less?” Nightingale’s eyes suddenly narrowed and seemed to sharpen as his bewildered and exhausted aspect vanished for a second. But then he ran his hands through his hair again and declared, “Actually, I don’t care. I just want to help.”
He stood up and began to shuffle around the small room, rubbing his hand up his temple to his receding hairline.
Nightingale was wearing sturdy handmade shoes. Blume had often thought that if he had wealth, he would invest in really good handmade shoes. Strong shoes should give a man direction. A person with shoes like that had no right to shuffle about lengthening his A’s and turning his R’s into W’s.
“Stop wandering uselessly about and come up to my office,” said Blume, and led the way out of the antechamber. With a mixture of obedience and watchfulness, Nightingale followed him down the hallway toward the two elevators next to the stairs.
The elevator arrived, and Nightingale insisted on ushering Blume in ahead of him.
“Please, just get in, Mr. Nightingale,” said Blume.
Damned Brits. His father had not liked them, and Blume, who had never properly considered the matter, seemed to have received prejudice like a fully wrapped gift which he was only now getting around to opening.
As they passed through the operations room, a few heads bobbed up to see who was accompanying Blume. Blume waved Nightingale into his office, closed the door, and went behind his desk. He sat down and leaned back, and nodded at the space midway between the two chairs on the other side of his desk. One was a cheap red molded plastic chair, the other a comfortable low-slung black armchair. Nightingale chose the second with hardly a moment’s hesitation, then crossed his legs at the ankles, and waited for Blume to speak.
“So,” began Blume. “We were just about to go looking for you. Can you tell me where you’ve been today?”
“You say Harry has been killed.”
“Did I say that?”
“Then Manuela did. Someone must have told me. I can hardly remember. Clearly I am in a state of deep shock. I feel calm now, and lucid, but I daresay it will hit me later on.” He tilted his head and repeated his crooked smile. “Inspector…”
“Commissioner,” corrected Blume. “Where were you this morning, Mr. Nightingale?”
“Florence, but, um, I’m afraid… look, I’m sorry about this. It’s the nature of my job. Always read the small print, caveat emptor, all that sort of thing, but I’m not sure I quite believe what you just told me downstairs.”
“I can’t remember,” said Blume. “Besides definitely not mentioning that Treacy was killed, what did I say downstairs?”
“You know, about what I say not being used as evidence. I’m awfully sorry if I doubt your word. It comes with my job.”
“To trust is good; not to trust is better,” said Blume.
“A smashing Italian expression,” said Nightingale. “One of my favorites.”
“You’ll just have to believe me,” said Blume.
“I’d love to do that, but I’m afraid the thing is… I would take your word as a gentleman, of course, but as an Italian public official…”
“As an Italian public official, what?”
“Well, you know how it works here.”
“No,” said Blume. “Tell me.”
Nightingale uncrossed his legs and straightened in his seat. “All I am saying is that as a public official, you have certain duties and responsibilities that would prevail over any assurances you give me, as is only natural and right.”
“This is an interview, not an interrogation. There is no magistrate present, nor any officer taking notes,” said Blume.
“I’m afraid I was born diffident.”
“I see.” Blume got up, and walked over to the narrow bookcase behind his desk. He pulled out a fat purple-and-blue volume, opened it, then presented the volume face down to Nightingale. “ Code of Criminal Procedure, 17th edition, which is the latest. Here, read Article 350, paragraph 7.”
Nightingale looked surprised for a moment, but soon pulled out a collapsible pair of reading glasses from the breast pocket of his jacket. He balanced them on the end of his nose, and turned the book over. Blume watched him mouth some of the words, close his eyes, and reread.
“You are quite right, Commissioner. Mind if I read the entire article?”
“By all means,” said Blume.
Nightingale bent down over the book and read again. Then, holding the page with his thumb, he turned back several hundred pages.
“Sorry about this, but you know how it is: this law is pursuant to that one, which refers back to another and so on and so forth. It’s all a terrible bore.” He continued reading.
Finally Nightingale closed the book, put it on Blume’s desk, and said, “Very well. I was in Florence last night and this morning. I think I just said that. I had an appointment with an art dealer there.” He put his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a ticket stub. “This is my train ticket. As you can see, it is time stamped at 8:03 p.m. for the outbound journey last night and at 9:35 for the return trip this morning. I reached Termini at half-past eleven, my home at midday, and Manuela phoned me there shortly afterwards. When I got to the gallery, the Carabinieri had already been through the place, but she advised me to come to you people instead.”
“Who were you in Florence with?”
“The art dealer’s name is Ricasoli. Same as the wine maker. Same family. He was interested in acquiring a Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione that had come into our possession.”
“You kept the ticket stub?” said Blume, reaching out and taking it. “Do you always do that?”
“Only when I remember. Travel expenses can be deducted from the gallery’s imponibile. If you can be bothered to fill out the tax forms afterwards, of course.”
“The gallery belongs to you?”
“The business activity and movables. Not the building, sadly. We founded the Galleria Orpiment in 1974, you know. That’s a long time ago. I don’t know what I am going to do without Harry. I’ll have to close. We were thinking of closing it down anyhow.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re getting old, Commissioner. Some nights I get up just to lean on a sink and count my heartbeats and wait for them to stop. You’ll find yourself doing that, too, someday. Or maybe you will be different.”
“I want to be straight with you, Mr. Nightingale,” said Blume. “For the moment, the squadra mobile is on standby while we wait for an autopsy report and definite instructions from the investigating magistrate. In the meantime, a rather important dinosaur from the Carabinieri has come onto the scene. Colonel Orazio Farinelli, former director of the Art Forgery and Heritage Division and, I hear, a former operative with the domestic secret service, back in the days when SISDE went off the rails. He speaks with such familiarity of you and Treacy that I think you must know him.”
Nightingale seemed to sink into his chair. He brought his hand up to his brow and seemed to study his fine shoes. By the time he spoke, it was obvious his reply could go only in one direction.
“Yes, I do know Farinelli. I wish I didn’t, but I do. We go a long way back. He was a lieutenant when I first encountered him. We’re really off the record?”
“Up to a point,” said Blume.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Let’s hope I can answer,” said Blume.
“Are you working with the Colonel on the investigation?”
“We are both public servants,” said Blume.
“Oh.”
Blume waited patiently as Nightingale picked his next words carefully. Like so many other suspects, Nightingale was about to fall victim to the delusion that words pronounced slowly somehow gave less away.
“You may hear that Harry and I were not getting on. I just want you to know we never did. Not really. We needed each other and there were many shared experiences, but we were too different. If anything I felt a greater cultural affinity with Farinelli.”
“You consider the Colonel a friend?”
“A friend, good God, no!” said Nightingale, immediately forgetting to pick his words with forethought. “Anything but. The Colonel is never a friend. Look, would you mind terribly if I asked you another question.”
“Shoot,” said Blume.
“Did you and the Colonel find any writings?”
Blume made a show of not understanding.
“Such as manuscripts, papers, typescripts, something along those lines, so to speak?”
“That’s an interesting question,” said Blume. “Tell me why you asked it.”
“Did you find anything? Tell me that first.”
“No,” said Blume. He saw a slight release of tension around Nightingale’s eyes, so out of interest for the effect it would have, he added, “But I can’t speak for the Colonel.”
Nightingale had relaxed a little when he said he had found nothing, and seemed to relax even more when he suggested the Colonel might have.
Blume said, “I told you that I found nothing. Now it’s your turn to tell me why you are asking.”
“Yes, well, about a month ago, Harry told me he had been writing his memoirs, but was beginning to be afraid he might not live to see them turned into a book. He also told me he was working on a second book, which had separated itself from his memoirs and was turning into a manual for what he liked to call ‘practitioners.’ He meant painters, restorers, forgers, some dealers, even canvas and brush manufacturers. Not the galleries or the art historians. I said I could edit them for him if he died and make sure they got published, but he laughed and said he couldn’t let me do that because I’d destroy them and he intended to outlive me anyhow… ha! Sorry if I sound a little callous here.
“I took this as a sort of threat, especially after the kindness of my gesture to edit his work, and we argued. It was a bad argument, too. One of our worst and, as it turns out, our last. I asked him why I would want to destroy his work, and he said because there were parts in it that concerned me. I told him he had a duty to show me what was in his notes. He taunted me, said there was plenty of stuff in there and that people would soon enough find out what sort of a person I am. That was bad enough, because no one likes to have their personal affairs published for all the world to see, but there was another question about which Harry was not even aware, and it had to do with his… well, our, line of business.”
Nightingale faltered and Blume intervened to reassure him. “His forgeries, is that what you’re shy of saying?”
“No, as it happens, I am not shy at all,” said Nightingale. “You see, Commissioner, the art world’s got different rules. Different principles and behavior. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that I were to admit to placing forgeries on the market over the years. In the first place, I would be protected from prosecution for almost all of them by the statute of limitations. But even if I spoke openly of a forgery sold yesterday, almost all the other interested parties and the people involved in the transaction, especially those who invested good money in it, would be so keen to attest to its authenticity that no one would be allowed to believe me. I would have to work really hard to prove that what I sold was not authentic. Very hard indeed. It’s not easy to self-incriminate in this line of work.”
“Does Henry provide evidence of forgery in his writings?”
“In the writings you did not find?”
“Yes, in those,” said Blume.
Nightingale settled himself more comfortably in his armchair. “Back in the 1930s, Commissioner, there was an American collector called Joseph Duveen. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
Blume shook his head.
“Well, this Duveen was a genuine expert, with both an eye and historical knowledge, which is a rare thing indeed. In an article he wrote, Duveen happened to mention that a version of a very famous painting La Belle Ferroniere, supposedly by Leonardo da Vinci, was a fake. Now, bear in mind that the people who were in the process of selling the ‘discovered’ work had a quite unbelievable story to begin with. I mean, really-they hardly even tried to make it convincing. But they did insist on its authenticity, and aggressively, to boot. With barefaced… sfacciatezza — I don’t think English even has a word for that sort of attitude-”
“ Chutzpah,” said Blume.
“If you can call that an English word,” said Nightingale. “The point is the work was purportedly a second copy made by da Vinci-the artist famous for not even finishing off his own originals, let alone making copies. So when Duveen said fake, you probably think the vendors would have hidden their faces in shame and pulled the work from sale. Au contraire. Declaring that Duveen had depreciated their profits, they sued him for damages, and won. They bankrupted the poor chap. The painting was duly sold and is still attributed, sort of, to da Vinci, even though no one believes that anymore.”
“If you are untouchable, I fail to see why you should be worried about what Treacy wrote,” said Blume.
“Reputation, Commissioner. As he got on in years, Harry became more and more open about his forging activities, till he was practically shouting it from the rooftops, though it is worth mentioning he did not start doing that until he stopped producing work that was skilled. I did not depend all that much on him. The relationship was the other way around, really. Even if he had been producing magnificent interpretations of grand masters once a month..”
“Interpretations, huh? I thought you weren’t shy of the word forgery.”
“Fine, then, forgeries. We could hardly be selling a discovered grand master once a month. There are limits to what the market will accept. I had quite high volumes of trade in areas that did not concern him, including sculpture. But two years ago, Harry even started sending letters to museums around the world, claiming authorship of various paintings. None of them ever purported to take him seriously, though one or two old masters subsequently vanished from display, often ‘for cleaning.’ Some of Harry’s claims were bluffs, and sometimes I thought he was becoming delusional, genuinely believing he was the artificer behind works that he had never touched. The thing is, Harry was bursting to tell the world what he had done, which is not really what one wants to hear.”
“So you would not have edited his writings, you would have destroyed them.”
Nightingale looked offended. “I would have edited them, not destroyed them. I might have made a lot of cuts. The best editors cut out more than they leave in.”
“I see,” said Blume. “And so who better to tell about the notebooks than someone who knows the business, knows you and Treacy, and has authority. You contacted Colonel Orazio Farinelli and told him about the notebooks, didn’t you? It should have been easy for the Colonel to get them, but maybe he delayed. Maybe he was doing a deal with Henry.”
“I can’t even begin to fathom what you are trying to say, Commissioner.”
“OK, fathom this: when we or the Carabinieri get called out to a scene, our job is not to gather evidence that can be used against a person, but to gather evidence that a crime has been committed in the first place. That’s phase one. The law is very clear on this point. Our evidence cannot really be used as part of the prosecution case unless the prosecutor successfully applies for an incidente probatorio — I’m afraid I can’t translate that for you. It means using the preliminary evidence retroactively if it turns out there is a perpetrator. After our preliminary phase, we report to the investigating magistrate who chooses which force to use and, from then on, it is up to the magistrate to direct inquiries. Of course, we still have the power of initiative and can make suggestions, but all this comes after we have declared the existence of a suspected crime. Are you following this?”
“Without any great interest, I’m afraid.”
“Keep listening, then. Today we did not get as far as reporting a crime, which is one of the reasons you have little to fear from this conversation we are having. No one from here filed a notification with a magistrate. Our instinct was that this might be a death by misadventure. But seeing as there is also some mad mugger operating in Trastevere, picking on foreign victims, we were going to look at that, too, and incorporate Treacy’s death into an ongoing investigation already under the direction of a magistrate. All nice and simple, so far. Yet, a few hours later, a new magistrate and the Carabinieri are investigating. Well, that’s fine, too. This sort of thing occasionally happens, especially when we stumble into something that another force is already investigating. The Carabiniere who arrives on the scene is a colonel, no less. Former director of the Art Forgery and Heritage Division. The dead man is a forger. Well, that definitely suggests the existence of a prior investigation, doesn’t it? And if there was one, you were at the center of it along with Treacy, but you did not mention it. Perhaps you did not know?”
“If there was an investigation into us, I did not know,” said Nightingale.
“By law, you must receive an official notification that you are under investigation. You never got one?”
“No.”
“So it seems there is no investigation, or was none until this morning. But the magistrate, a very flexible man who is susceptible to persuasion from powerful people, says there is an investigation. And then I have the pleasure of a chat with the Colonel himself, and it turns out he, Treacy, and you go way back.”
“I am still not sure what you are implying,” said Nightingale. “Perhaps you might be a little clearer?”
“I find the sudden investigation into a suspicious death that has not yet been declared suspicious to be suspicious.”
“Ah, much clearer now. Who says the art of explication-”
Blume cut across him. “Don’t test my patience, Mr. Nightingale. The obvious conclusion to this is that you warned the Colonel about the notebooks.”
“That’s not the only obvious conclusion.”
“It’s the one I choose to draw,” said Blume. “Refute me.”
Nightingale spelled out his words with great deliberation: “I did not tell the Colonel about the notebooks.”
“That’s not a refutation, it’s just a denial.”
“It’s also the truth.”
He was lying. Blume was sure. But he was pleased, too. It was as much and more than he had hoped to get out of the interview.
“And now you tell me, Commissioner, how do you know these writings that you say you have not seen are contained in notebooks?”
Blume and Nightingale sat there looking at each other, neither embarrassed at his own discovered lies, both annoyed at the other’s. After a while, Blume said, “If I have Treacy’s writings, I will soon read them and discover whatever it is you wanted kept quiet. You might as well tell me what it is.”
“I just did. His claims and revelations regarding paintings I sold…”
“I see,” said Blume. “You’re hoping that whatever it is, Treacy did not include it. Perhaps someone killed him beforehand?”
Nightingale stood up. “I think next time we speak, I shall have my lawyer with me.”