The Monster of Florence

by Magdalen Nabb

  “Yes. He tried.”

  “I was sure, sitting out there in your waiting room. I knew. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so ashamed in my life.”

  “You needn’t have. It wasn’t your fault. But as far as this other business is concerned, you might well be right and it’s all a joke at your expense, so we shouldn’t do anything hasty. What we are going to do is have a coffee before we go any further.”

  Thinking of which, the Marshal decided he could do with one now, and a glass of water as well. Sweating in this wretched woollen overcoat had brought on a thirst. He’d walked quite a way too, of course. He spotted a red neon sign on the other side of the dark, narrow street not far ahead and crossed over in the hope that it was a bar. It wasn’t, it was a trattoria, but he did find a bar right at the end on the corner.

  “A coffee and a glass of mineral water.”

  “Flat or fizzy?”

  “Flat.” While he was waiting he fished a slip of paper out of his overcoat pocket and looked at the address Marco had written down for him.

  “One coffee.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This glass do you?”

  “A bigger one, I think. It’s so hot for November …”

  “Flu weather. My wife’s gone down with it already.”

  Via dei Della Robbia should be immediately to the right. The thick coffee scalded his tongue and he took a sip of water. Young Marco had certainly done his homework.

  “You see, whether the painting is forged or stolen, my father could only have been some sort of middle man. He wouldn’t have stolen it and couldn’t have painted it. So I went through his diary and checked up every one of his contacts with the excuse of communicating my father’s death to them. I think I’ve eliminated them all except this one. There was nothing in the diary about him except a surname and the time of an appointment. Since it’s an unusual name, I looked it up in the phone book and there were only two. One’s a woman, a veterinary surgeon, the other’s this man, Ivo Benozzetti in Via dei Della Robbia. That’s one of those nineteenth-century streets where the ground floors are studios.”

  “You have been playing the detective!”

  “I didn’t mean … I mean I couldn’t ask you to—”

  “No, no, I was only joking. You’ve done a good job. So what next? Are you going to go and see him?”

  “I was hoping you would.”

  “Me?”

  “Not officially, just as a friend of the family who’s helping me out—well, that’s true, isn’t it?” Without giving the Marshal the chance to protest he went on, “I had an idea, you see, that we could say—you could say—that my father had stipulated in his will that certain friends should be offered some little memento of him from the personal effects in his studio. You could ask him to meet me there and choose something.”

  “Are there any personal effects in the studio?”

  “Not many,” admitted Marco, “but there are one or two framed photographs of him with famous people, you know the sort of thing—and there’s a clock, an antique letter opener, enough to convince him, I hope. You needn’t even mention the painting. After all, if he’s involved he knows it’s there. If it’s his he might take it away, saying he’d left it to be valued.”

  “And you’d let him take it?”

  “Certainly I would. Then I’d be rid of the problem.”

  “Mmph.”

  The Marshal wasn’t too sure about that, but since it was clear that Marco would proceed alone if he refused and since, if he were absolutely honest, his own curiosity had been aroused, here he was. He paid for his coffee.

  “I wonder … I’m looking for Via dei Della Robbia …?”

  “Just there to your right.”

  “You don’t know a man called Benozzetti, by any chance—I’m not sure that I’ve got the right door number—Ivo Benozzetti.”

  “Never heard the name. I’d have remembered if I had, it’s unusual, isn’t it? Of course, I don’t remember the name of everybody who comes in for a coffee. I might know him by sight.”

  “He’s an artist, I think.”

  “Artist? It’s a long time since this was an artists’ quarter. Nothing but the street names left from those days.”

  “Well, thanks anyway.”

  As he peered at the tiny lights of the doorbells in the gloom he wondered whether, in the long run, it would be a better idea to present himself as a Marshal of the carabinieri rather than just a friend of the family. Both, he decided, pressing firmly on the bell with a large finger. He had enough experience of life to know that when you want to deceive somebody there’s no better weapon than the truth.

  “Yes?”

  The Marshal leaned down to speak into the microphone.

  “Guarnaccia, Marshal of carabinieri. I’m looking for Benozzetti, Ivo. The label on the ground-floor flat was marked only I. B.”

  There was no response for a moment, then the voice said, “Wait, please.”

  He waited for almost five minutes but he would have stood there motionless for an hour if necessary. He didn’t ring the bell again, either. He was quite used to this and it was all the same to him whether it was an old lag stuffing a pistol behind a brick in the chimney or a housewife straightening the cushions and whipping off her apron. Everybody has something to hide when The Law arrives, from the prime minister to the tramp.

  The gate clicked open, and through the thick laurel bushes, the front door was illuminated at the end of the path. The door opened just enough to admit him and without the man who opened it ever becoming visible to the outside world.

  “Yes?” He was behind the now almost closed door and showing no inclination to allow the Marshal to intrude any further into the elegant high-ceilinged entrance hall. It was just as well, the Marshal thought, that he’d decided to introduce himself as a carabiniere. Of course, the man could refuse to admit him or not as he pleased just the same, but to refuse a carabiniere admittance would look bad, draw attention. Someone with only I. B. written on the doorbell wasn’t too keen on drawing attention. Even so, the Marshal waited without a word, filling the doorway with his solid presence, no more likely to go away than one of the trees behind him. He maintained his silence until the man was forced to fill it.

  “Has there been a robbery in the building? Some sort of accident? I’ve heard nothing.”

  “Not an accident …” Leaving the other possibility open he added, “I think we should talk inside. I won’t disturb you long.”

  The door opened then just long enough to admit him but Benozzetti, he noticed, stepped back out of sight of the street. Man must be paranoid … or …

  The alternative explanation, half formed in the Marshal’s mind, that he might be in some way scarred or deformed dissolved the minute the door closed. Benozzetti was a very fine man indeed, broad and muscular, his grey hair sleek and his face freshly shaven. He was wearing an impeccable and very expensive-looking suit. The Marshal took all of this in without appearing to look at the man. Ostensibly he was looking at a mass of tall plants standing in brass pots on the chequered marble floor and the fancy wrought-iron work of the lift. He reckoned he wouldn’t be kept out here to talk. A man who couldn’t tolerate being seen from the street would hardly let his neighbours in the building know his business. “Come this way, please.” A small door set back in an alcove. Nothing at all this time on the bell.

  Once inside it took all the Marshal’s willpower not to stare about him. Of course, it was all one room with floor space equal to one of the large and elegant apartments above, but even so … And in the centre that massive figure, whatever it was, swathed in polythene—and the safes! Who could need two safes that size, apart from a bank?

  He wasn’t staring about him. He took in what he could with his large, slightly bulging eyes without permitting himself to move his head one centimetre, and even then it was only his peripheral vision that was picking up the objects whilst his gaze was fixed on Benozzetti and he was explaining his errand
with plodding meticulousness.

  It wasn’t much of an explanation since the Marshal was no fine talker. When it came to an end there was a short silence. There was something in the way Benozzetti was looking at him, nothing he could define, perhaps the eyes themselves—which were as hard and cold as diamonds—that caused the sweat on the Marshal’s body to turn chilly. This man was surely dangerous.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m all right … I was overheated and then …”

  “Sit down. I can’t offer you anything other than this hard chair. The room is cold because I work with clay. It can’t be allowed to dry out too rapidly. I rarely feel the cold myself.”

  The Marshal could well believe it.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll bring another chair for myself. As you can see, comfort is not a priority.” He waved a hand vaguely. “This is my life …”

  He turned and strode towards the back of the studio, presumably in search of another chair. As he retreated it was just possible to see that the top of his left ear was missing. The Marshal didn’t waste a second. Against the opposite wall was a large neatly made bed with a fur rug thrown over it and a screen partly obscuring it. A chest with a marble top and a lamp … those high cupboards along the rest of the wall might contain clothes but there was no other sign of domestic life in the room. The opposite wall was all shelving, tools, workbenches—but surely that was a cooker …

  Benozzetti was back. The Marshal made no futile attempt to deceive him.

  “Excuse me staring about a bit. I don’t get to meet many artists in my walk of life.”

  “You don’t get to meet any”—Benozzetti adjusted the creases in his trousers and seated himself so that the damaged ear was out of sight—“because there aren’t any.”

  “But surely you … I can see you’re dedicated to your work.”

  “I’m dedicated to art. I’m not an artist because the current commercialization of so-called art feeds on the self-publicist, dedicated not to art but to instant fame through glossy magazines, fashionable parties, and prostitution to the critics, God help us, the critics.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sure you’re right but, of course, I don’t know a lot about it—Landini, now …”

  “Ha! You don’t know a lot about it but you’re a friend of the late lamented Landini! Isn’t that what you said? A friend of the family?”

  “Well, more a friend to the son, you know, to be exact. I’m afraid I must have embarrassed you.”

  “Embarrassed me? Why is that?” Benozzetti seemed highly amused by the idea.

  “Oh, you know, assuming you were a friend of his—he wasn’t very specific in this business of the bequests so we’re rather working in the dark, contacting all the likely people, but if you can’t do with critics I suppose your relationship wasn’t what I thought …”

  “Ha! I like that. Yes. Well, Marshal, I don’t know whether our relationship was what you thought since I don’t know what you thought, now do I?”

  Those cold glittering eyes were so hypnotic that the Marshal almost found himself saying that he thought that he had something to do with that mysterious painting, especially as he felt quite sure of it by this time. He was also sure that if he did come out and say it Benozzetti wouldn’t care a bit. He was living on some other plane where it wouldn’t matter and where the Marshal couldn’t get at him. However, he didn’t say it. Apart from anything else he had a feeling that Benozzetti was quite capable of saying it himself. So he contented himself with murmuring, “Well, perhaps I’ve made a mistake and disturbed you for nothing …”

  “Not in the least. I didn’t mean to tease you. Landini was a friend and colleague and, yes, he was a critic but not so much of a fool as most of them. Ah, the experts, Marshal, the experts! Have you ever given them much thought?”

  “I—no, no. Art experts, you mean? No.”

  Benozzetti leaned forward and whispered fiercely, “Naked!”

  “What?” Was that why his eyes were so frightening? Was he a madman?

  “Stark naked! The Emperor’s new clothes! Naked as the day they were born. Naked in their ignorance and arrogance. Tell me, did you ever hear of a musicologist who couldn’t play a note? A literary critic who couldn’t even read or write? Even a football manager who’d never played a game in his life? Have you?”

  “I don’t suppose I have …”

  “And I don’t suppose you have, either. But the art expert, now, there’s a really special man. He can’t draw, he can’t paint and he can’t sculpt but he feels himself qualified to pronounce judgement on Leonardo, on Botticelli, on Michelangelo. A miracle of a man, wouldn’t you say? He can’t express the simplest concept with any visual or manual skill of his own but he can sit in judgement on genius. Ah, where would the world be without the expert—you know what he’s there for, don’t you? He’s there at the service of the art dealer, not art or the artist. Now Landini, not being the worst of them, knew that was true. He wore the Emperor’s new clothes with considerable panache and made himself a fine career out of doing it, but he had no illusions. And he had taste, he wasn’t just a cataloguer. The rest of them might as well make laundry lists since lists are all they know how to make—you don’t have a list of your own in your pocket, by any chance?”

  “A list?”

  “All right. I just wondered. If I’m not mistaken you people have a specialist group that takes something of an interest in paintings.”

  “Oh, I see … yes. No, no, I’m just—”

  “A friend of the family.”

  “That’s right,” said the Marshal, his gaze becoming duller and blanker in retreat from those glittery cold eyes. Once, long ago in the early years of his marriage, his wife had screamed at him in exasperation, “Can’t you even quarrel? Answer me! Don’t just roll over and play dead!’ And he had been amazed. By this time he had seen his plump, peaceable son Giovanni do just that when attacked by his quick and nervous younger brother, so now he knew it was true. He also knew it was effective. “Though, as I said, more of a friend of young Marco’s. Landini himself, now, I only met him once and that’d be over ten years ago. You’re not a married man yourself?”

  “No.”

  “No, I thought not. That would be something you’re working on, would it, under all that polythene? Clay, you said?”

  “A nude figure. That’s just one of the reasons why I never married. Everyone assumes that artists sleep with their models. A wife would have given me no peace.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve certainly got it all worked out, this nice big space you can keep cool to suit your clay, nobody around to disturb you.” The Marshal shivered at the thought of such an existence. How odd a man he was. Such a fierce intelligence, incisive, aggressive even, and yet so easy to distract. Was that because so many things made him angry so that he attacked anything that caught his attention like a tormented bull? Or was he just so unused to social intercourse that he had no experience of controlling conversation? If that were the case then the Marshal had the advantage over him. He was very used to controlling the conversation, chiefly by power of inertia. How very different from Benozzetti, who was on his feet again now, perhaps anxious for his visitor to leave. So be it. The Marshal stood up and waited in silence to be sent away. But Benozzetti strode to the back of the long room.

  “Come here.”

  The Marshal was only too pleased to obey the summons which took him past the two great safes. There was no sense risking a question about those at this stage …

  He pulled himself up mentally. What was he thinking about? This wasn’t a case he was on! He had to remind himself that the line about being a friend of the family and so on was actually the truth as well. There was no reason why he should ever set foot into this place again; once he’d convinced Benozzetti to go round to Marco’s studio and see the painting, his part was finished.

  “Over here!”

  Well, there wasn’t time to work out whether he’d convinced him o
r not … where the devil had the man got to?

  “Here, Marshal.”

  He was behind a huge easel and was carefully lifting a cloth that shrouded the painting standing on it. The Marshal’s heart sank. There was little doubt that he was about to be shown a painting and even less doubt that if he opened his mouth about it he’d make a fool of himself. Every time he was obliged to attend the opening of some exhibition in the Palatine Gallery at the Palazzo Pitti where his station was, his wife would remind him, “Just keep quiet, Salva, and listen to what Dr. Biondini says. You might learn something.” And he did his best, but though what Dr. Biondini, the director of the gallery, said was very clear and sensible when he was saying it, the Marshal couldn’t remember anything of it for more than a few minutes. Then when Biondini was kind enough, as he always was, to come and welcome him and ask him what he thought of the exhibition he always seemed to say the wrong thing. Sometimes he just looked puzzled and kind and quickly spotted someone he was obliged to go and speak to. The thing about Biondini was that, though he knew such a lot, he never gave himself airs or made you feel badly about not knowing, so it wasn’t that much of an ordeal. The Marshal, rounding the easel, had a feeling that Benozzetti was a very different kettle of fish and that he’d do best to take his wife’s advice and keep his mouth shut.

  “Ah …” The Marshal’s sigh of relief escaped him before he knew it.

  “Yes, I’m glad you appreciate it. I’m showing it to you to demonstrate something. Of course it’s a beautiful painting.”

  “Beautiful,” said the Marshal contentedly. He could manage this one all right. What was beautiful about the painting, as far as he was concerned, was that he was as familiar with it as he was with his own face in the mirror. It was the one that hung on the wall of the second room in the Palatine Gallery and next to it stood a commodious chair in which reposed, for a large part of the day, his good friend and fellow Sicilian Mario Di Luciano, a custodian. Mario came from the same little town in the province of Siracusa and he liked to chat about old times down home. The Marshal reckoned he’d probably spent as much time standing in front of that picture as Titian had. What a stroke of luck.