The Rainaldi Quartet (32 page)

‘Well?' Guastafeste said.

I shook my head. In Italy I'd been so sure there would be something in the painting. Now we were here before it, I could see nothing.

‘Just move aside, Gianni.'

Guastafeste had brought a digital camera with him. He crouched down and took several shots of the painting.

‘I'll get them blown up in the lab,' he said. ‘We can study them when we get home.'

I was still looking at the painting. It
had
to be there. Why couldn't I see it?

‘Gianni…'

I nodded and tore my eyes away from the picture. There was no point in lingering.

Mrs Colquhoun tried to persuade us to stay longer, but we politely declined. We drove away from the house in silence. In stark contrast to our previous visit there was no mist on the moors. The heather and the sandstone crags were illuminated in brilliant sunshine, but neither of us was interested in the scenery. We dropped down off the plateau, past the coniferous plantations, the reservoir, the enclosed fields of grazing sheep. We passed under a railway bridge, the outskirts of a village closing in around the road. I saw a pub, rows of stone houses, the tower of a church on the hillside in the distance … and it came to me suddenly, as if a magnesium flare had erupted inside my skull.

‘Pull over…'

Guastafeste turned his head. ‘What?'

‘Stop the car.'

‘Here?'

‘Anywhere.'

Guastafeste slowed, pulled in to the kerb. A driver behind sounded his horn and overtook us with an angry rev of his engine. Guastafeste looked at me. I was trembling, my stomach gripped in a tourniquet of sickness and excitement.

‘I know what it is,' I said, my voice little more than a croak. ‘The riddle, the clue. And the violin. I know where it is.'

18

For a long time neither of us moved. I stared straight ahead through the windscreen, listening to the racing beat of my heart. Cars went past in both directions. I was aware vaguely of their shapes, the noise of their engines, but my gaze was focused intently on the hillside beyond the village; on the tower of a church just visible above a line of trees.

‘I'm waiting,' Guastafeste said calmly.

I blinked and turned to look at him. Then I slid my hand into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out an envelope containing the photocopies of the letters we had found at Highfield Hall and in the archives at Casale Monferrato. I unfolded the last of the letters from Michele Anselmi to Thomas Colquhoun, dated some time in 1804 – the letter revealing that the violin Cozio had sent to Colquhoun in lieu of his debt had disappeared en route to England.

‘Let me read you a few passages,' I said.

‘“It is impossible, at the moment, to be certain whether the instrument ever left Paris or if it did, at what point in the journey to England it was stolen. As the months go by, I begin to fear that the violin will never be recovered and the thief will take the secret of its whereabouts to the grave with him.”

‘Then later in the letter, Anselmi writes,
“As it was through my negligence that this unfortunate loss occurred, I feel honour bound to make due recompense to you. I am therefore enclosing a banker's order for the full amount of the debt owed to you by His Excellency.”
That was a noble, generous act on Anselmi's part. It was Cozio who owed Colquhoun the money, yet Anselmi paid it in full.

‘He was clearly a man of great integrity. At the end of the letter he writes,
“It is my fervent wish that this debt should be honourably discharged, for only then will my conscience rest easy.”
He uses the word honour at least twice in one paragraph and is clearly very troubled by the loss of the violin. Perhaps a little too troubled.'

‘Why do you say that?' Guastafeste asked. ‘He undertook to send the violin to England, but it never got there. Wouldn't you feel troubled by that?'

‘Certainly I would. But I wonder whether there was more on his conscience than just the disappearance of the violin.'

‘More? What do you mean?'

‘That by the time he wrote this letter, Michele Anselmi knew what had happened to the violin, and it was that knowledge that weighed so heavily on his conscience.'

I paused. Was I right? Was the evidence really there to support me, or was I simply deceiving myself?

‘I think his son stole it,' I said.

‘His son?' Guastafeste frowned at me.

‘Paolo Anselmi. His father gave him the job of transporting the violin to Paris and finding a courier to take it on to England. But Paolo didn't find a courier, he may not even have taken the violin to Paris. We know from Marinetti's letter that Paolo was a violinist himself. I think he saw the violin, was overcome by the desire to possess it, and kept it for himself.'

‘You have some foundation for this theory? Or is it just guesswork?'

‘It's guesswork,' I admitted. ‘But I know how powerful is the urge to own a fine violin. I've seen it many times in the course of my career. It can override a man's reason, his principles, even his sanity. Sometimes it's frightening. Sometimes the consequences – as for Tomaso and Enrico Forlani – can be fatal.'

‘But if Anselmi knew, why didn't he simply say the violin had turned up and send it on to Colquhoun?'

‘I don't know. Shame perhaps. His son had disgraced him. Maybe he didn't want to open that particular can of worms. Who knows what might have come out? Maybe he preferred to pay the money and forget about the violin. The painting tells the whole story. It's all there. The young man holding the violin was Paolo Anselmi – made to pose for the artist by his angry father who was determined to humiliate his son, to punish him for what he'd done. Paolo's guilt is there in his face, in the way he's holding himself.'

‘And the violin?' Guastafeste said. ‘What happened to it?'

‘There's another clue in the painting,' I said. ‘Where's your camera, the pictures you took?'

Guastafeste leaned over into the back of the car and brought out his digital camera. He switched it on, holding it between us so we could both see the image of the painting on the tiny display screen on the back.

‘Just here,' I said, pointing with my finger. ‘Through the window at the side of the music room. You see the cypress trees, the tower of a church? That distinctive brick tower with an open belfry? I knew I'd seen it somewhere before. It's in the trees on the hillside just outside Casale. We saw it when we drove to Salabue.'

‘The violin is in the church?' Guastafeste said.

‘Not the church. Anselmi gave it away in his letter.
“The thief will take the secret of its whereabouts to the grave with him.”'

Guastafeste stared at me. ‘You think the violin is in a grave? Buried?'

‘In a grave, yes,' I replied. ‘But I don't think it's buried.'

*   *   *

The road to the Sanctuary of St George climbed up the hillside in a series of tight hairpin bends, the slopes on either side cloaked in dense woodland. In the dark there was something sinister about the trees, the headlights of our car playing over their trunks, emphasising the deep shadows behind them, the hidden glades shrouded in the night. The church was on the summit of the hill. It was small and unostentatious, its bell tower silhouetted against the moonlit sky. I suppressed a shudder as I saw it. This was not a task I was looking forward to undertaking.

Guastafeste slowed and pulled off the road on to the tiny parking area in front of the church.

‘You all right?' he said. ‘You can stay in the car, if you prefer.'

‘No, I want to be there.'

We climbed out. Guastafeste clicked on his torch, keeping its beam low, focused on the ground. There were no houses nearby, but there was a village across the valley where, even at two o'clock in the morning, someone might just be awake and wonder what a light was doing at the sanctuary.

We crossed the parking area to the wall around the churchyard. It was just over head height, covered with an uneven layer of whitewashed stucco. Guastafeste cupped his hands in front of him and gave me a leg up the wall, then scrambled over after me.

We set off across the churchyard. We'd been there that morning to reconnoitre, but everything looked different in the dark. The church was to our right, and on our left, perhaps fifty metres away, was a long wall of marble tombs stacked one on top of the other like drawers, the fronts inscribed with names and dates and sometimes an enamelled photograph of the deceased. In between, the ground was crammed with other graves, some with vertical headstones and crosses, some covered by horizontal stone slabs. Slowly we picked our way through them, following the narrow gravel paths that criss-crossed the whole area.

From the ranks of tightly packed graves it was easy to get the impression that the churchyard was full to overflowing, but as we came out of the shelter of one of the tall cypress trees that were planted at intervals along the paths, we almost stumbled into a freshly dug hole in the ground.

‘Careful,' Guastafeste said, shining his torch along the edges of the pit, the mound of excavated soil piled up on the far side.

The atmosphere was unnerving. The graves were all around us, the moon hidden by clouds. Guastafeste's torch beam picked out the shape of another cypress tree next to the path, then a white marble headstone so smooth and polished it reflected the light like a mirror. I could feel my flesh tingling, a tremor of foreboding on the back of my neck.

At the lower end of the churchyard were the grander tombs, the large family vaults that stood in their own plots of land like miniature temples, their marble pillars and turrets and towers emphasising the fact that even in death not all men are equal. The Anselmi family vault was one of the more modest in the enclave, reflecting their position as prosperous merchants rather than landed gentry. It was built in the shape of a marble cube, four sculpted angels standing vigil at each corner and the name ‘Anselmi' carved above the door. A short flight of marble steps led up to a pair of heavy wrought-iron gates which protected the entrance to the tomb. The gates were fastened in the middle by a padlock and chain.

Guastafeste swung the rucksack he was carrying off his shoulders, unfastened the flap and took out a pair of boltcutters and a crowbar. He grasped hold of the boltcutters and glanced quickly around the churchyard. What we were doing was not only sacrilege, but a criminal offence. Guastafeste had considered applying for a court order to open up the tomb, but had decided against it. No judge, on the basis of a few cryptic sentences in an old letter and some tenuous guesswork, would have granted permission. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe this was all a mistake. But we had to know.

Guastafeste placed the jaws of the boltcutters around the chain and snapped through the links. The severed chain and padlock clattered to the floor. Guastafeste pulled open the gates. I put my hand on his arm.

‘Ssssh,' I hissed. ‘I hear something.'

Guastafeste clicked off the torch. We waited in the darkness, listening. Faintly, in the distance, was the sound of a car engine drawing nearer. It was in a low gear, coming up the road from the valley. I could see the dim reflection of headlights in the trees beyond the perimeter wall of the graveyard. The glow grew brighter, the engine note louder. The car changed gear, nearing the summit. It slowed. I listened, waiting for the noise of tyres on gravel as the vehicle pulled into the parking area and stopped. But instead it accelerated, went straight past the sanctuary, dropping over the summit and away down the other side of the hill. I started breathing again.

We stepped inside the vault. Guastafeste's torch flickered over the marble interior, illuminating the individual tombs that were stacked against the three walls. There were twelve in total. I inhaled. The air smelt fresh, no hint of damp or mustiness.

Guastafeste shone the torch beam over the inscriptions on the tombs. The oldest – in the lowest tier – dated from the early seventeenth century, the latest from the mid-nineteenth when either the vault had become full or the Anselmi family line had petered out. I saw the name Giovanni Michele Anselmi di Briata.

‘That's the father. Where's the son?' I whispered. There was no one within earshot, but the very fact of being inside a vault made me lower my voice.

‘Over here,' Guastafeste said. ‘Paolo Anselmi di Briata, 1778–1851.'

It was the very top sarcophagus in a stack of four. We examined it with the torch.

‘Do you think we can get the lid off?'

Guastafeste reached up and ran his fingers under the rim of the stone lid. ‘There's a small gap just here.'

Guastafeste lifted the steel crowbar and jammed the tip under the lid of the sarcophagus. He pulled down with all his strength. The lid didn't budge.

‘Give me a hand, Gianni.'

I took hold of the crowbar and we pulled together.

‘Again,' Guastafeste said. ‘Pull!'

I applied all my weight, every iota of power I could muster, to the crowbar.

‘And again,' Guastafeste gasped.

I gripped the steel, felt my muscles knot, my feet almost leave the ground.

‘It's going,' Guastafeste breathed. ‘Don't stop.'

There was a sharp crack as the seal around the lid broke. Then the crowbar dipped down suddenly, sliding out from beneath the stone rim and slipping from our grasps. It fell heavily to the floor, narrowly missing our feet. In the enclosed vault, the noise of steel hitting marble was like a grenade going off. Neither of us moved. My ears were ringing.

Then Guastafeste said, ‘You all right, Gianni?'

‘Yes, I'm okay.'

I picked up the torch and directed the beam upwards on to the sarcophagus. The lid had slid a little to one side, the corner jutting out above our heads. We looked at it, reluctant to make the next move. Finally, I turned my gaze to Guastafeste and he gave a slight nod. He knew it had to be him.