The Etruscan Net

by Michael Gilbert

  ‘She was my client. I was fortunate enough to secure her acquittal. Here is the waiter. Will you take chocolate?’

  ‘Tea,’ said the Commander. ‘Lemon, and no milk. What had she done?’

  ‘She had killed her husband.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows. Possibly he did not appreciate her piano playing. But we must not divert ourselves from your problems. A slice of this cake?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Commander. ‘But no.’

  ‘You are worried about your figure. Curious how many Englishmen are. Their figures, and their balance of payments. These are becoming obsessions with the English. Quite unnecessarily. There is no harm in being fat, or in debt, as long as you do not let it worry you. Now tell me your story. Beginning at the very beginning–’ Avvocato Riccasoli speared a further rich-looking pâtisserie with his fork and added, ‘Omitting no possible detail.’

  Colonel Nobile, head of the Florence Police, studied the report in front of him. It was, in a sense, satisfactory, since it confirmed his long-held and deeply felt suspicions of the English. He said to the Police Inspector who had brought it in, ‘There is no doubt, in your own mind, Inspector, about these facts?’

  ‘None at all, Colonel.’

  ‘And the conclusions you draw from them?’

  ‘I conclude that Commander Comber is a member of the British Intelligence Service.’

  ‘Curious,’ said the Colonel. ‘Such men are usually attached to the Embassy, to afford them diplomatic privilege.’

  ‘This one is an undercover agent. He sends messages every week. They go to a “Mr Smith” at what is evidently an accommodation address in London and payment is received through a well-known English newspaper. Yet, a curious fact emerges. No article by Commander Comber has ever appeared in that paper!’

  ‘And this is one of his communications?’

  ‘This is the most recent.’

  The Colonel studied the message, which was attached to the report. It started, ‘Fishcake, Filligree, Obol, Shoehorn, Dichotomy–’ and continued in the same style, some of the words being long, some short, and many of them uncommon. The message concluded with the words, in brackets, ‘Frame 8 B’.

  ‘And has it been decoded?’

  ‘Our cryptography department is working on it now. The difficulty is that it is clearly a mechanical code.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘The recipient will have a number of different frames. He will set the words out in a pre-arranged form. Probably in columns, each ten letters long. The correct frame is then laid over the letters, and the message emerges.’

  ‘And the words at the end indicate which frame to use? Ingenious.’

  ‘And almost insoluble.’

  ‘If we cannot solve it we can stop it,’ said the Colonel angrily. ‘I will speak to the British Consul about it at once.’

  10

  Harfield Moss Talks to Elizabeth

  ‘It’s an outrage,’ said Sostituto-Procuratore Risso.

  ‘Are you certain you are not exaggerating?’

  ‘I am not exaggerating. It is persecution. Deliberate and systematic persecution.’ He laid a slip of yellow paper on the Procuratore’s desk, and prodded it with his finger. ‘A demand for supplementary tax for refuse collection, on the grounds that the refuse collected from my house exceeds the limit laid down by Municipal regulations.’

  ‘And does it?’

  ‘Of course. All houses exceed it. But other people do not get these demands. And this.’ He produced a second paper. ‘An additional water rate on the grounds that my gardener has been observed using a sprinkler on the lawn. And this – this came this morning.’

  The Procuratore examined the document cautiously. He said, ‘It seems quite clear. Your tasso di famiglia is being raised on the grounds that you have installed a swimming bath. If you must indulge in these luxuries, Antonio–’

  ‘It is not a swimming bath.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It is a goldfish pond. It has been there ever since I bought the house.’

  ‘Have you been swimming in it?’

  ‘It is precisely two metres long. Even the fish can hardly swim in it.’

  ‘Why do you suppose–?’

  ‘There is no mystery about it. All the imposts in question are controlled by the office of Sindaco Trentanuove.’

  ‘You think he is conducting a personal vendetta against you?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In some of my recent speeches I have been forced to say things about the Communist party which he may have found hard to forgive.’

  ‘I see,’ said the Procuratore. He untwisted the string, and opened the flap of the folder on his desk. ‘You are sure, are you, that his motives are political?’

  ‘What else would they be?’

  ‘You have not forgotten that he is a friend of Signor Broke?’

  ‘I did not know that. No.’

  ‘A very old war-time friend.’

  ‘His motives, you suggest, might be personal.’

  ‘They might be mixed,’ said the Procuratore. ‘He would gain just as much kudos, in the eyes of his party, by defeating you in the Courts as he would by defeating you at the poll. Indeed, the one might lead to the other.’ He had the papers out now, and was leafing through them. He said, ‘I think, Antonio, we had better bring this case on without further delay.’

  ‘I entirely agree. Now that we have the scientific evidence, the indictment is complete.’

  ‘Almost complete. If the cemetery-keeper reconsidered his evidence. If, for instance, he was prepared to admit that the noise of a car braking and skidding which he heard might have occurred about an hour earlier, then I would agree that the case would be sufficiently complete, and the papers could go forward to the Tribunale.’

  ‘It is easy for an old man to be mistaken about times,’ said Risso. ‘I will ask the investigating officers to question him again. We may find that when he is questioned verbally his evidence will not be as cut-and-dried as it appears from his written depositions.’

  ‘I have known that happen,’ agreed the Procuratore.

  Tenente Lupe said, ‘And has the girl’s complaint been investigated?’

  ‘I have done what I could,’ said Carabiniere Scipione. ‘It was difficult to investigate the matter thoroughly since the complaint was so indefinite. I spoke to the girl–’

  ‘Tina Zecchi. She would be the daughter of Milo Zecchi, who was knocked down by the car. What was her story?’

  ‘She was in a café, near her house, in the Via Torta. It is not a place of very good repute. We have had complaints of disorderly behaviour from there before. It belongs to a man called Tortoni, but he goes there very seldom. He leaves the running of it to a woman, Maria Calzaletta–’

  ‘Who is a witness in this same running-down case.’

  ‘That is true. According to Tina’s story, she was visiting the café with a young man, and they became involved in an argument with the woman Calzaletta.’

  ‘The name of of the young man–’

  ‘It was Mercurio Bronzini. He is the adopted son of Professor Bronzini, of the Villa Rasenna.’

  ‘I know the Professor. I seem to recollect that he also has some connection with this running down. Refresh my memory for me.’

  Scipione said, rather sulkily, ‘Milo Zecchi used to work for him, and the Professor has interested himself in the case. As I was saying, there was an alteration–’

  ‘Did it not strike you as a curious coincidence that three of the people connected with the running-down should also be connected with this incident?’

  ‘It did not seem to me to be of any particular significance.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  The Tenente considered the matter, whilst his subordinate fidgeted.

  ‘Do you wish me to continue?’

  ‘Please go on. You were saying that there was an altercation. What happened next?’

&n
bsp; ‘The girl says that a man came into the shop.’

  ‘Which girl says it, Signorina Zecchi, or Maria? You are telling this story very badly.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Scipione’s face was flushed with annoyance, and his mouth, under the line of black moustache, had for a moment an ugly look about it. If the Tenente noticed it, he made no comment.

  He said, ‘The girl’s statement will have been written down, I take it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then perhaps you had better read it to me.’

  ‘I will fetch the papers.’

  ‘No need. They are in that filing cabinet. I was reading them last night.’

  A wary look had come into Scipione’s face. He walked across to the filing cabinet, took out a folder, and extracted a paper from it, and returned to the desk. Then he said, his voice carefully expressionless. ‘Do you wish me to read the whole statement?’

  ‘No. Just from the point where this man comes in.’

  ‘It is here. “A man came into the room. I did not know him, but from his general appearance, supposed him to be one of two men who had been hanging round the café for the last ten days. They are said to be Sicilians, and both have the appearance of Mafia gangsters. This one attacked Mercurio. I hit him with a billiards cue, and in the struggle the girl also got knocked unconscious, and we were able to make our escape from the room.” That is all she says.’

  ‘Very curious, is it not?’

  ‘In what way curious?’

  ‘That Signorina Zecchi should have been the one to make the complaint. This unknown man, and the woman, Calzaletta, were knocked down. Yet it is their assailants who complain.’

  ‘True,’ said Scipione.

  ‘And there is a further curious coincidence about the matter. The report speaks of two men, Sicilians, Mafiosi, who have been around Florence for the last ten days or so. Now, it is in my mind that we had a report from the main line station, about ten days ago, of the arrival of two such suspicious characters. Am I right?’

  ‘You are right.’

  ‘And you were to make a check on various hotels and pensioni to see if they could be located. You did that?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Men of that type should not be too difficult to locate.’

  Scipione flushed again. He said, ‘They might not be staying at a pensione. They might have compatriots who would lodge them and conceal them.’

  ‘That is quite possible,’ agreed the Tenente. He seemed to have lost interest in the topic. He said, ‘I have had a communication from the office of the Procuratore. There are certain points in connection with that running-down case which he desires to have checked. In particular, the testimony of – now, what is his name? I have it here. Frutelli. Carlo Frutelli, the attendant at the Mortuary in the Via Canina.’

  ‘I know him. A silly old man.’

  ‘His testimony appears, on paper, to be clear, and at variance with the rest of the evidence. He states that he heard a car coming down the Via Canina, fast. Then he heard the squeal of brakes, and the noise of a skid.’

  ‘There were skid marks in the road, still visible the next morning, by where the body lay. Where is the inconsistency?’

  ‘It lies in the timing. He says he heard these sounds at half past eleven. By that time, Broke had been long back in his house and in bed.’

  Scipione laughed. ‘Is that all?’ he said. ‘One hour! He is such a stupid old man that he would not know the difference between midday and midnight.’

  ‘I think, perhaps you had better speak to him.’

  ‘I will do so.’

  ‘In order to clarify his testimony.’

  ‘When I have finished speaking to him,’ said Scipione, ‘his testimony will be completely clear, I can promise you.’

  ‘It’s good of you to spare me the time, Mr Moss,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Particularly as I’ve come to pick your brains.’

  ‘Anything you can find there,’ said Harfield Moss gravely, ‘is entirely at your disposal. How is your father?’

  ‘He’s in very good health.’

  ‘And your sister?’

  ‘She’s all right too.’

  ‘Fine, fine. Now tell me exactly what it is I can do for you.’

  ‘I want to find out everything I can about faking Etruscan relics.’

  A poker player of international repute, Harfield Moss had schooled his face not to reveal his thoughts. This was one moment when he was glad of it. He said, ‘Would your interest be academic, Miss Weighill, or were you contemplating going in for that line of business yourself?’

  ‘I’m not taking it up as a hobby,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But my interest isn’t academic, either. I really want to know something about it. It’s to do with the charge they’ve brought against Robert Broke.’

  ‘That nice Englishman I met at lunch, who had that attack.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help you, you can surely count on me. But I find it difficult, right at this moment, to see how Etruscan relics, genuine or otherwise, could be connected with a hit-and-run charge. Perhaps you can explain?’

  Elizabeth did her best. Harfield Moss had disconcertingly candid eyes which he kept focused on her as she spoke, like twin cameras in close-up. But she had a feeling that his mind was not entirely on what she was saying; that he was weighing up considerations beyond her ken, estimating the strengths and weaknesses of his own position, weighing the comparative virtues of disclosure and concealment, in exactly the way he would have done if she had been a business rival. Curiously, the feeling did not make her dislike him.

  At the end of it, he said, ‘You have two theories about this, am I right? The first is that the Professor has unearthed a genuine hoard, the pick of which he plans to sell abroad. Well, I won’t deny that that fits in with certain other information I have. You won’t want to press me about that I’m sure. But I’m not in Florence entirely for my health. Can we leave it at that? The other idea is rather more alarming to me personally. And that is, that no real discovery has been made at all. That the so-called relics are fakes.’

  ‘I wanted to find out if that was a possibility.’

  ‘In the ordinary way, I should have dismissed the idea out of hand. There have, of course, been successful swindles in the past. Your own British Museum had a sarcophagus foisted off on it some fifty years ago, and there were the famous Etruscan Warriors in terracotta in the Twenties. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is still sore about them.’

  ‘If real experts were deceived–’

  ‘Surely. But we’re talking of the dark ages, Miss Weighill. Neither of those fakes would have stood up for five minutes under modern spectographic analysis. Just to give you an example, in the case in New York, the examination showed the cobalt, lead and manganese had all been used as colouring agents, none of which could have been present in the genuine article. If your Etruscan craftsman wanted to produce that lovely black glaze you see on his kraters and jars, he did it by a three-stage firing process. He didn’t employ mineral additive at all. That was demonstrated in the Forties by Dr Theodore Schumann, who actually reconstructed a kiln on the Etruscan model and fired–’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but I’m getting out of my depth. Is what you’re saying that, in this day and age, it would be impossible to fake Etruscan terracotta so as to deceive an expert?’

  ‘Certainly. And the same would go for bronze or iron-work. In those cases the patina or encrustation would reveal marked dissimilarities–’

  ‘Then is there any material which you could use, and hope to get away with it?’

  ‘It’s precisely the point I was coming to, Miss Weighill. And it’s the point which makes your story so particularly interesting – and disturbing. The materials which come most readily to mind, because they are both natural materials, and are neither of them subject to decomposition, are gold, and alabaster.’

  ‘I see,’ said Elizabeth. ‘That does look
a bit coincidental, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Mind you, even if you decided to work in those particular materials, your difficulties would by no means be over. First, there is the question of style. Either you would have to make an exact copy of some known Etruscan original, and that, in itself, would give ground for suspicion, or you would have to design something new, for yourself. To do that with any hope of success, you’d need not only great expertise but – how shall I put it – an Etruscan mind. An Etruscan outlook.’

  ‘Right. And the second snag?’

  ‘The second is even more difficult. It is a question of what collectors call provenance. You produce an Etruscan relic, apparently genuine in style and material. The first question I ask you is, where did it come from? You can of course refuse to tell me. But that in itself would give rise to suspicion. The men who produced those New York forgeries were lucky. They named the site, but before any proper investigation could be made, the war intervened. By the time the war was over, and minefields had been cleared, and travel restrictions lifted, so much time had elapsed that they were able to be a bit vague about the location. It might have been just here. It might have been a mile or two up the valley.’

  ‘I see,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But suppose you already had a tomb. A private tomb, on your own land. One that people knew you were investigating. You dig away like a beaver, and one day you hit the main burial chamber. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have anything very exciting in it. Just a helmet and a few arms perhaps, the man having been a pirate by trade. So what do you do? You manufacture a lot of much more valuable items – gold necklaces and alabaster boxes and statues, and then you find them in this burial chamber.’

  ‘You’ve got a criminal mind, Miss Weighill,’ said Harfield Moss thoughtfully.

  Carabiniere Scipione drove out alone to the cemetery in the Via Canina. As he drove, he was whistling to himself. He parked his car at the bottom of the street and walked up. Seen in full daylight, it was not a pleasant place. The pavement was narrow and irregular. The roadway cracked and dirty, with storm water runnels breaking the surface. On one side a row of condemned houses with boarded windows and weed-choked front courts. On the other a low wall and rusty spiked railing guarded the mouldering bones of the departed below and the crumbling relics of piety above.