by Paul Adam
We turned onto the inner ring road and headed south in a line of sluggish traffic.
“Those questions you asked—about his whereabouts on Sunday morning?” I said. “Do you seriously think he might have killed Villeneuve?”
“I wanted to see how he reacted.”
“He has an alibi.”
“From his mistress. We’ll see how it stands up.”
“You think it might not?”
“An enquiry like this, we check out everything,” Guastafeste said. “I’m keeping an open mind. I’ve got a list of potential suspects, and right now, Serafin’s name is on that list.”
Ten
It was nearing one o’clock when Guastafeste dropped me off at my house. I tried to persuade him to come in for something to eat, but he declined my invitation—he had work to do at the questura. I made myself a simple lunch of spaghetti tossed in butter and Parmesan and settled down at the kitchen table with Napoléon’s Sisters: Caroline, Pauline, and Elisa, by Maria Pellegrini, the book I’d borrowed from Vittorio Castellani’s office.
I read first the chapters on Elisa’s period in Lucca. I already knew a reasonable amount about those years from my biographies of Paganini, but this time I was getting the story from Elisa’s perspective. A strong-willed, ambitious woman, Elisa had formidable reserves of energy, which had barely been tapped before her arrival in Tuscany. She had previously maintained a salon in Paris, at which writers like Chateaubriand and Louis de Fontanes had read from their works while their hostess reclined on a sofa, fanning herself coquettishly, but apart from that she had done very little with her life except marry Felice Baciocchi—and that was hardly a great achievement. Baciocchi was almost the exact opposite of his wife. He was weak, unambitious, and by the age of thirty-five, when he and Elisa were wed, had risen no higher than the rank of captain in the army. But he was the only suitor in sight, and Elisa was, above all else, a practical woman. She was twenty years old, a veritable geriatric in the competitive marriage stakes of the day, and any husband was better than no husband.
Elisa was twenty-eight when Napoleon made her princess of Piombino and Lucca. She and Felice had been married for eight years and had settled into the dull, passionless domesticity of a couple twice their age. Felice was an amiable consort who pottered about the place reviewing the troops and playing his violin, but exciting he wasn’t. Paganini, however, most decidedly was.
“From the first moment she met the violinist, Elisa fell madly in love with him,” Maria Pellegrini had written in her book, going on to describe Paganini’s “wild good looks,” his “charisma,” and his “mutual passion for the princess” in prose that seemed more suited to a romantic novella than a serious biography.
La Pellegrini’s language might have been a little florid, but she was right about the impact Paganini must have made on Elisa. In the small provincial arena of Lucca, populated by philistines and dullards, his talent must have seemed like a supernova, a raging ball of fire that would incinerate anyone who came too close.
“For three unforgettable years, Elisa and Nicolò conducted a torrid, all-consuming love affair,” the book said. “Neither made any secret of their attachment, and poor Felice, the cuckolded husband, could only stand and watch as his wife gave herself body and soul to her flamboyant lover. Elisa was besotted with him, showering him with jewellery and other valuable gifts, many of them confiscated from monasteries and convents round Lucca and farther afield. Napoléon was constantly short of money to fund his wars, and he forced his sister to close down these religious institutions, appropriate their property and riches, and send the proceeds to Paris.
“Paganini, for his part, showed his devotion to his mistress by composing music dedicated to her—a ‘Duo Merveille,’ a ‘Duetto Amoroso’ for violin and guitar, and several other pieces.”
I stopped reading. This last paragraph had been underlined in ink, and in the margin alongside it was a question mark and the handwritten words “Serenata Appassionata?”
Strange. Vittorio Castellani had quite clearly told me that he had never heard of any Serenata Appassionata, and yet here he was, writing the name in the margin of one of his books.
I read on for a few pages, through the section describing the gradual drifting apart and eventual acrimonious breakup of the two lovers, then skimmed ahead to get a general idea of Elisa’s life without Paganini.
Her time in Florence, after she moved there as grand duchess of Tuscany in 1809, was little different from her years in Lucca. She still kept her palaces at Piombino, Massa, Viareggio, Bagni di Lucca, and Marlia—her country estate outside Lucca, on whose gardens and furnishings she had lavished a fortune—but, in addition, she had the Pitti Palace in Florence to enjoy. She continued to work energetically on behalf of both herself and her subjects—though the former generally took precedence over the latter—and maintained her soirées with artists and writers and—very occasionally—her husband.
These were happy days for Elisa. She had given birth to a daughter, Elisa Napoléone, in Lucca and now, in Florence, she had a son. Her brother was still emperor, so her power and privilege were safe, but in 1812, after Napoléon’s disastrous campaign in Russia, things began to change. Further French defeats at Vitoria and Leipzig weakened her brother’s position even more, and in early 1814 the British landed at Livorno, on the Tuscan coast, and demanded that Elisa give up her principality. Impotent and humiliated, Elisa and Felice packed their bags and headed north to Genoa and exile.
In April of that year, Napoléon abdicated and was banished to the island of Elba by the allies. Elisa, meanwhile, was wandering round southern France and northern Italy, giving birth to another son, Frédéric, at the villa at Passeriano, near Venice, where in 1797 Napoléon had stayed to negotiate the Treaty of Campo Formio. She then settled in Bologna, in the Villa Caprara, a modest little residence compared to the half-dozen palaces she had once occupied. She was now calling herself the comtesse de Compignano, after one of the delightful Tuscan estates she had been forced to relinquish.
Her stay in Bologna was brief. In March the following year, four days after her brother escaped from Elba, Elisa and her older children were seized by the Austrians and taken away to the fortress of Brünn. The allies’ contempt for Felice was clearly shown by their allowing him to remain in Bologna with the baby, Frédéric.
Elisa never returned to Italy. In 1816, the allies decided that she was no threat to them and permitted her and her husband and children to live in Trieste. With her customary energy and determination, Elisa set about obtaining compensation for the property she had left behind in Tuscany, eventually receiving an annual income from the Austrians of some 300,000 francs. With this money, she was able to buy a house on the Campo Marzio in Trieste, and a nearby seaside residence, the Villa Vicentina. It was from here, in 1819, that she wrote the letter to Paganini that we had found inside the gold box.
Had she seen the violinist since that final angry parting in Florence a decade earlier? Maria Pellegrini’s book was silent on the subject. The index made no reference to Paganini after 1809, yet there was clear evidence that the two former lovers had not lost touch with each other entirely. Paganini had, after all, dedicated the “Moses Fantasy” to Elisa. Why should he have done that? She was no longer his employer. She was no longer a princess. Her influence and much of her wealth were gone. Paganini, throughout his life, was desperate for a title to add to his name. Elisa might once have been able to confer that title, but not now. Yet Paganini composed a piece of music for her. Surely that was indication that she still had a place in his thoughts, if not his heart.
Elisa’s letter from the Villa Vicentina showed no trace of animosity towards her erstwhile lover. Quite the contrary, in fact: It was warm and affectionate and made reference to a previous letter she had written him, giving reason to believe that they were in more than occasional contact with each other. The gift she had sent him—an expensive gold box—was also a sign that she still held him in high rega
rd. She was not exactly living in poverty, but such a present would nevertheless have made a considerable inroad into her income.
Had the two of them ever met again? The romantic in me hoped that they had, but I think it unlikely. Elisa was forbidden by the Austrians from entering Italy, and Paganini never set foot outside the country until the late 1820s, by which time Elisa was long dead.
Those final few years in Trieste were comfortable and—given the turmoil following Napoléon’s defeat at Waterloo—thankfully uneventful for Elisa. Of the three Bonaparte sisters, she was the best equipped to deal with adversity. She busied herself with improving the house and gardens of the Villa Vicentina and looking after her children. The social life in Trieste was dull and monotonous. There was a daily outing in the carriage and evenings at the theatre, but in general it was a quiet existence, more suited to prosperous country gentry than a former grand duchess. Felice, the betrayed, much-ridiculed husband, ironically, was now a welcome companion. He had remained loyal to his wife through all the upheavals, and the couple were resigned, even contented, with their lot.
To occupy her time, Elisa took up archaeology, initiating a dig at the nearby Roman site of Aquileia. In hindsight, it was a tragic mistake. The excavations were on marshland, and it was while visiting them in July 1820 that Elisa caught a putrid fever, from which she died the following month. She was only forty-three.
Her husband, almost immediately, left Trieste and returned to Bologna, where he once again began to call himself Prince Felice, living in great state on the fortune that Elisa’s persistence had wrested from the Austrians. Elisa’s body was brought to the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna and Felice erected a monument there in her memory. He lived on for another twenty-one years, dying in 1841, at the age of seventy-eight.
The next paragraph in the book had been underlined in ink and there were more scribbled notes in the margins.
“Elisa’s family line soon died out. Frédéric, the son she had borne after leaving Tuscany, died in Rome in 1833 after falling from a horse. Her other son died in 1830, at the age of twenty. Her daughter, Elisa Napoléone, married Count Camerata, an Italian nobleman, but the marriage didn’t last. Elisa Napoléone’s only son committed suicide in 1853.”
The notes next to the text read, “Baciocchi, Agostino—F’s cousin m. Giuseppina Ferraio. Daughter, Manuela, m. Ignazio Martinelli.” The last word—the name Martinelli—had been underlined twice.
I stared at the notes for a long time. Elisa’s descendants had been cut off, but the Baciocchi line had not died out. Felice had had a cousin, Agostino, whose daughter, Manuela, had married someone named Martinelli.
Felice would have inherited Elisa’s estate on her death. Her possessions, presumably including any music that Paganini had written for her, would have passed to him. And on Felice’s death, those possessions would have gone where? To his cousin’s daughter? Is that what these notes meant? The Serenata Appassionata—if it survived—had been inherited by the Martinelli family.
I thought back to my interview with Vittorio Castellani. Had he forgotten about these notes he’d made? Had the Serenata Appassionata genuinely slipped from his memory? He’d written his biography of Paganini ten years ago, after all. That was a long time to remember minor details.
I flicked back to the beginning of Maria Pellegrini’s book, to the title verso page, where its date of publication was recorded, and was stunned by what I found. The book had been published only two years earlier. These weren’t old notes in the margins; they must have been made fairly recently.
I put the book down on the table and gazed at the wall in quiet reflection. Vittorio Castellani had denied all knowledge of the Serenata Appassionata. He had claimed to have no interest in Elisa Baciocchi. Yet here was a two-year-old book about Elisa that he had obviously been reading, and in the margins were notes that seemed to indicate an interest in Felice Baciocchi’s descendants. Now why was that?
For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, I worked on my violins, hollowing out part of a maple back for one instrument before changing tasks and carving a little more of the scroll for another. Paganini seemed to be in my blood at the moment, so I listened to some of his violin concertos—the box set LP version recorded by Salvatore Accardo in the 1970s—on the old record player that sits in the corner of my workshop.
I was growing weary and contemplating stopping for dinner, when the telephone rang. I could hear nothing but a fuzzy crackle on the line to begin with and was about to hang up, when a voice broke through the interference.
“Hello?”
It was a man’s voice, speaking in English.
“Yes?” I replied in the same language.
“Gianni?”
I realised who it was.
“Yevgeny? Is that you, Yevgeny?” I almost shouted into the phone.
“Yes, it is me.”
“Yevgeny, where are you? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I am all right.”
He sounded very faint. His voice was thin and tremulous.
“What’s happened?” I said. “Have you rung your mother?”
“No. I cannot speak to her.”
“Yevgeny, you must. She’s going crazy with worry. Where are you? Why did you disappear like that?”
“Please, Gianni, speak to my mother for me. Tell her I am okay. Tell her I am sorry.”
“Why can’t you speak to her yourself?”
“I just can’t.”
His voice cracked and I thought he was about to burst into tears.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s happened? Did someone take you away by force?”
“By force? No, nothing like that.”
“So where are you? People are worried. It’s not just your mother. The police are involved, too.”
“The police?”
“You vanished, Yevgeny. No one knows where you are. Anything could have happened. Of course your mother went to the police.”
“The police?” he said again. “I did not know.”
“Are you in trouble? What’s going on? Can I come and collect you?”
“Speak to Mama for me. Please, Gianni. I know I can trust you. Say I am sorry for all the trouble I am causing.”
“Do you need help? Tell me where you are, and I’ll come and get you. Are you in Cremona?”
“I will be back in a few days. I have to sort things out.”
“What things?”
“I will call you again. I am sorry.”
The line went dead. I pressed the recall button but got only a computerised voice-mail message. He’d turned off his mobile.
I left my workshop and went across the terrace and into the house, knowing I had to call both Ludmilla and Guastafeste, but unsure whom to ring first. I chose Ludmilla. Antonio’s involvement in the case was purely professional, his interest detached and objective, but Ludmilla was Yevgeny’s mother. Her life, her entire emotional being, was inextricably entwined with her son’s. She needed, and deserved, to be told first.
It wasn’t an easy call. The initial relief in her voice was so great that she sounded as if she were about to swoon. But then she recovered and became almost indignant.
“Why did he ring you?” she demanded. “He barely knows you. Why didn’t he call me?”
“I’m not sure, signora. The important thing is, he is safe.”
“But where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
“Yes, I asked. He didn’t say.”
“Was he alone? Was Kousnetzoff with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should have asked. You should have found out. He has engagements, commitments. What is the stupid boy playing at?”
“He sounded distressed,” I said. “He said to tell you he was sorry and that he’d be back in a few days.”
“A few days? When? I have already had to cancel his recital in Venice. He is destroying his career. We must find him. Have
you told the police?”
“I am going to ring them next.”
“They can trace the phone call. They can find out where he is. Does he not realise how foolish he is being? Call them now. They must act quickly. Now, you understand?”
“Yes, signora. I will call them now.”
Guastafeste was still at his desk at the questura. I gave him the gist of my conversations with Yevgeny and Ludmilla.
“He gave no indication at all of where he is?” Guastafeste said.
“No.”
“You didn’t pick up any clues? Background noise, other voices, that kind of thing?”
“No. The line was so bad, it was hard enough hearing Yevgeny.”
“And he said nothing about why he disappeared?”
“I asked him. He wouldn’t—or couldn’t—answer.”
“You think there was someone with him? Someone who was monitoring what he said?”
“No. When I asked if he’d been taken away against his will, he sounded genuinely surprised. I don’t know what’s going on, Antonio, but he hasn’t been abducted. I’m sure of that.”
“Well, that’s good to know. We can scale down the search for him now.”
“Ludmilla wants you to trace the phone call. Can you do that?”
“From a mobile? It’s possible. If his phone is still switched on, it will be sending out an intermittent signal to the nearest base station.”
“It’s not switched on. I tried to call him back.”
“Then we can get the record of the call from the phone company. They’ll have the coordinates of the location from where it was made. But it’s a lot of hassle, and I’ll probably have to get a court order. The magistrate will want some pretty good reasons for granting the order. Did Yevgeny sound as if he was scared or in danger?”
“He sounded upset, but not scared.”
“Upset?”
“Emotional, close to tears.”
“Has he had some kind of breakdown?”
“It’s possible, a highly strung artist like him.”