The Rainaldi Quartet (27 page)

‘You're up early,' Giovanni said. ‘Would you like breakfast?'

‘I'll wait for Antonio.'

‘Let me show you the church then. Cozio's tomb.'

We went through a door at the far end of the courtyard and came out at the side of the church whose open bell tower was almost built into the walls of the Castello.

‘Was this Cozio's private chapel?' I asked.

‘No, it's always been the village church. But the family has had strong links with it for centuries.'

The main doors of the church were open. One or two people were drifting inside, exchanging greetings.

‘Is there a service?' I asked.

‘Early morning Mass. But not for ten minutes. Come in, no one will mind.'

I followed him into the church. It was a small, very simple place of worship – just a handful of pews in the nave, no transepts to speak of. The main altar was marble and gold, but on the left was another much plainer altar, next to which was a marble headstone embedded in the wall of the church. The inscription on the headstone was in Latin, the name and date standing out as if they'd been freshly carved: Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salabue, December 15, 1840.

I gazed at the modest, unadorned tomb for a long time, wondering about Cozio, about his violins, about the secrets he had taken with him when he died.

*   *   *

The papers were in a cardboard box-file in Marie-Therese's office in one of the turrets of the Castello. They were yellowing and fragile, stained so badly by damp and mould that the writing on them was almost impossible to read.

‘You see what I mean?' Giovanni said. ‘There's not much you can do with them.'

I spread the documents out on the desk and leafed through them anyway, examining each one in turn in case there were a few legible passages, then passing them across to Guastafeste for a second opinion.

‘Where did you find them?' I asked.

‘In the basement,' Giovanni said. ‘There's an underground chamber beneath a wooden trapdoor. My wife calls it a dungeon, but I think it was most probably used as an ice house in the past. They were dumped in a corner under a pile of junk. Some were just blackened pulp. We had to throw most of them away.'

‘So this is all that was left?' I said.

‘Yes.'

‘There are no unexplored nooks and crannies in the Castello? No secret hiding places?' Guastafeste asked hopefully.

‘If there were, we would have found them. I've been over every part of the house and all the outbuildings.'

‘What about Casale?' I said. ‘Are there any papers in the archives there?'

Giovanni shrugged. ‘There may be. I've never looked.' He lit up his pipe and sucked on the mouthpiece, smoke leaking out between his lips.

Guastafeste was examining the last of the documents. ‘There's something,' he said. ‘Not very significant. It's clearer than all the others, but that's not saying much.'

I took a closer look at the document. It was a letter to Cozio. The address at the top and the opening words, ‘My Dear Cozio', were reasonably clear, but after that the text was completely illegible until you got to the signature at the bottom of the page.

‘What's the name of the sender?' Guastafeste said. ‘It's hard to make out. Federico? Federico something. Marinelli?'

‘Marinetti,' I said. ‘Federico Marinetti.' I looked at Giovanni. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?'

‘Not a thing.'

I'd been overoptimistic. I'd hoped that the Castello di Salabue might reveal some hitherto undiscovered secret, something to put us back on the scent of the violin we were seeking. But once again the trail had gone cold.

‘How about the name Giovanni Michele Anselmi di Briata?' I asked.

‘That means nothing either,' Giovanni replied. ‘Who is he?'

‘He was a Casale cloth merchant, Cozio's agent in the purchase of Stradivari's last remaining violins from Paolo Stradivari. He also acted for the count in at least one transaction with an English cloth manufacturer named Thomas Colquhoun to whom Cozio, apparently, owed money. Why would an Italian nobleman owe money to an English factory owner?'

Giovanni pursed his lips, then lifted his pipe pensively, tapping the stem of it lightly against his teeth.

‘No one in the family has ever been absolutely sure where Cozio's money came from,' he said. ‘There have been rumours that he engaged in trade of some kind – always using an intermediary, of course. A nobleman of his time would never have done anything so distasteful openly.'

‘The cloth trade?'

‘It's possible.'

‘That would account for him knowing Anselmi,' Guastafeste said. ‘Perhaps the firm still exists. Maybe they have records we could look at.'

Giovanni took down a local telephone directory from a shelf and leafed through it. ‘It doesn't look like it, I'm afraid. There is no entry for any Anselmi, business or residential.'

‘So what now?' Guastafeste said.

‘We try the library in Casale Monferrato,' I replied. ‘See if there's anything in their archives.'

14

The River Po, in Cozio's day, would have been a thriving waterway, its banks cluttered with jetties and wharves, heavily laden barges waiting two and three deep to unload. Stevedores would have been moving to and fro, their backs bowed beneath sacks and crates and barrels, horse-drawn carts lined up to transport their cargoes to the merchants in Casale and beyond. It was here that Stradivari's last few violins arrived in 1775, brought upstream from Cremona by a bargemaster named Gobbi. Packed carefully in wooden boxes, they were transferred to one of Count Cozio's carriages for the final twenty-kilometre journey to Salabue.

Sadly, there is no sign of this vibrant history today. Now the Po seems detached from Casale. The bustling, noisy waterfront is gone, so too are the barges, their role long ago usurped by the roads and railways. There are no buildings along the riverbank, just a crescent of pale shingle on the north side where the course sweeps round in a long curve, and a swathe of wild grassland on the town side, deserted this morning except for a courting couple kissing beneath one of the trees.

We left the car in the sprawling parking area just above the river and walked into the centre of the town, along colonnaded streets overlooked by imposing stone palaces. Out of interest – mine more than Guastafeste's – we made a short detour to the Via Mamelli where Cozio had once had his town house. The building had long since been converted into apartments and offices. There was no indication, no sign or plaque on the wall, that the count had ever lived there. Unless you are a luthier, the name Cozio – even in Italy – is virtually unknown.

The civic library was only a short distance away. The librarian in the archives section was one of those classic public servants who loathed both the public and any idea of service. When we explained what we were looking for she rolled her eyes behind her thick spectacles and gave a long, peppery sigh of irritation.

‘Anselmi di Briata, we don't have anything on him,' she said.

‘How do you know without looking?' I said.

‘I know.'

‘Perhaps we could look?' I suggested.

I made a move towards the stack of filing drawers next to the desk, but the librarian – reacting with the speed of a choleric rattlesnake – interposed herself between me and my goal.

‘I said we don't have anything on him. Someone was asking only the other week.'

Guastafeste and I exchanged glances.

‘Asking about Anselmi?' Guastafeste said sharply. ‘Who? Who was asking?'

‘I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to divulge that,' the librarian replied primly.

Guastafeste took out his police ID card and held it up in front of the librarian's face.

‘This is a homicide investigation, signora. We'd appreciate a little cooperation.'

The librarian screwed up her nose as if Guastafeste's warrant card were tainted with a noxious smell.

‘I don't know who he was,' she said. ‘He didn't give a name.'

‘Was he an Englishman?' I said.

The librarian started and stared at me, then recovered herself.

‘I couldn't say. Perhaps.'

‘And you told him you had nothing on Anselmi, is that right?' Guastafeste said.

‘We don't have anything on him.'

‘I'd like to look for myself.'

Guastafeste walked across to the filing cabinets. The librarian scurried after him.

‘The files are for staff use only,' she snapped.

‘This is a public archive,' Guastafeste said coolly. ‘I have a right to look.'

Guastafeste pulled open one of the drawers and leafed through the cards inside – computer databases, like other aberrations of the modern age, not yet having made it to Casale. The librarian glared at him, but made no attempt to stop him.

Guastafeste pulled out a filing card and held it up, reading out the heading on it. ‘“Anselmi di Briata. Cloth merchants, Casale Monferrato, 1726-1870.” Is this what you mean by nothing?'

The librarian didn't respond for a moment. I could tell she was regrouping, gathering her resources for a counterattack.

‘They're uncatalogued documents,' she said with a smug hint of triumph in her voice.

‘Meaning?' Guastafeste said.

‘Meaning they've never been sorted out and given a proper filing reference.'

‘So?'

‘They're probably in boxes in the basement. It could take me a long time to find them. And I don't have that time right now.'

‘You don't have to find them,' Guastafeste said. ‘If you'll show us the way, we'll find them ourselves.'

*   *   *

There were fifteen large boxes full of dusty documents. Guastafeste looked at them in dismay.

‘Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Do we have to go through them all?'

‘The earlier stuff, before 1775, we can probably ignore,' I said.

‘How do we know which is the earlier stuff?'

‘We don't.'

I opened the first box and tipped the contents out on to the table. A thick cloud of dust gusted up into my face and I turned away, coughing.

‘How did you know it was Scott?' Guastafeste asked.

‘It was just a guess.'

I took off my jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. It was hot and oppressive down here in the basement. The stacks of shelves were all around us, blocking us in. There was no daylight, just a naked bulb above the table, casting a harsh yellow aura over the documents below. I sat down and picked up the first paper. I could tell this wasn't going to be an enjoyable experience.

*   *   *

An hour later and I knew more than I'd ever wanted to about the eighteenth-century cloth trade, but I'd seen nothing at all – not even a passing mention – about violins. All I'd read so far were dull requests for bales of cloth, invoices for payment and other commercial trivia. I wasn't surprised that no one had bothered to catalogue this stuff. It was a miracle they hadn't taken one look at it and dumped it in a skip.

We were on box five before anything of interest surfaced. Guastafeste held up a letter he'd been perusing. ‘This is about a violin.'

‘What does it say?'

‘Take a look.'

Guastafeste handed me the letter which I saw was dated June, 1787. The writing was clumsy and childish as if the sender were only poorly educated, a conclusion reinforced by the Italian which was basic and full of grammatical errors.

‘Gracious Sir, I thank you much for interest you show in violin left me by my mother. It very good thing. Nothing bad about it. Price you say is good. I send it you now.'

The signature was printed in capital letters, making it easy to read.

‘Elisabeta Horak,' I said. ‘An address in Bohemia.'

‘Who was she?'

‘I have no idea. Just someone selling a violin to Anselmi.'

‘For Cozio's collection?'

‘Most probably.'

‘Does that take us any further?'

‘I don't see how,' I replied, but I put the letter to one side anyway. It sat on its own in a corner of the table, insignificant and rather pathetic. It wasn't much to show for three hours' concentrated work.

We took a break for a brief lunch in a bar at around 3 pm, then returned to the archives, refreshed but hardly raring to go. Guastafeste fingered the pile of documents on his table unenthusiastically.

‘Do we have to do this?'

‘You have a better way of spending the afternoon?' I said.

‘Well, yes.'

‘Having a few beers in the square doesn't count.'

‘It would probably be as productive as sitting here chewing dust.' He looked at my expression. ‘Okay, okay, I'll get down another box.'

It was two more hours before anything else of any significance emerged from the mountain of moribund papers. This time it was I who found it.

‘Federico Marinetti. There's a letter from him,' I exclaimed.

‘Saying what?'

‘Let me finish it … well, not a lot, I'm afraid,' I admitted. ‘Listen.
“My dear Anselmi, you must excuse my silence these past two weeks, but I have been confined to my bed with a fever that left me unable to sit up, much less attend to my correspondence. I am now, thank the Lord, fully recovered from the illness and looking forward to resuming our musical diversions. I am having guests from Milan at the end of the week. Bring your fiddle over on Saturday and we will amuse ourselves with some quartets.”'

Guastafeste gave a snort. ‘Is that it? Not exactly a breakthrough, is it?'

‘Don't give up hope,' I replied. ‘There are still another four boxes to go.'

‘Wonderful. Two each.'

*   *   *

‘Got it!' Guastafeste jolted upright so fast he nearly toppled over backwards on his chair. He grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself. ‘A letter to Anselmi from Thomas Colquhoun. It's in English. Here.'