Now I was surprised. “Nothing to tell? You were in the same room with a main suspect in a murder case and let him walk away without finding out where he was going. Can't you get into trouble for keeping that kind of information from your superiors—especially if something happens?”
Maggio shrugged. “But nothing happens, see? You come home all right, so nothing to worry about.”
“If you don’t count my nearly getting burned to death.” I said. “Are you sure you didn’t tell somebody that I had gone off to meet Garbarini?”
Now the carabiniere put his finger to his lips and leaned forward. “I tell you a secret,” he said. “I don’t think Giovanni Garbarini is the killer we want. The capitano has orders to blame this murder on the anarchists. But he doesn’t give me those orders, and so I just try to find the real killer. If I make a mistake, maybe it gets me in trouble. But I think is better to find the real killer than to make the anarchists look bad. So I take that chance.”
I wasn't certain whether to believe Maggio or not, but as I had no way to refute his explanation. I decided provisionally to accept it. “Very well,” I said. “It sounds as if you’re telling the truth. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to talk to the cook.”
I was ravenous, and so I ordered up a huge breakfast, with toast, eggs, several rashers of bacon, and plenty of coffee to wash it down. I took my coffee cup and was headed toward the dining room when I realized Maggio might be able to help us. “Excuse me again.” I said. “Mr. Clemens and I are going to talk about the murder. Why don’t you get a cup of coffee, and come into the dining room and join us?”
“You want me, I join you,” said Maggio, putting down his book and taking off his glasses. He filled up a coffee cup and followed me through the door. Mr. Clemens raised an eyebrow as the carabiniere followed me into the room, but said nothing.
Maggio and I sat down and I turned to Mr. Clemens. “It seems to me we’ve reached the end of our own resources.” I said. “I don't think we can count on any help from Garbarini and his friends, and most of Stephens's crowd isn’t talking to me. Agente Maggio knows the city better than either of us, and he’s in the business of catching criminals. Let’s find out if he can help us get out of our impasse.”
“That’s fine with me.” said Mr. Clemens. “But how about you, Maggio? Do you believe the captain's story about the anarchists killing the girl? I recall you said a few harsh words about the radicals when we first talked about them.”
Maggio shrugged. “I said what I believe,” he responded, then took a sip of his coffee. “They think they can solve the people’s troubles by making the government go away. All right, we all know the government makes us pay big taxes so the big officials can live like rich men. and do stupid things with our money. But if the government goes away, who’s left to feed the hungry ones or build railroads or factories or hospitals? Who’s stopping bad men from doing whatever they want? So I think those anarchists don’t know what the people need, or how to help with the real troubles we have in Italy.”
“Or the real troubles anywhere else.” said Mr. Clemens, nodding. He leaned forward across the dining room table and peered at the carabiniere. then said. “I reckon we agree on most of that. Most reformers I've known have had trouble getting their feet to touch the ground. But you still haven’t said whether you think the anarchists stole the painting and murdered that girl.”
“I don’t think they steal the painting, because nobody asks Signore Stephens for money to bring it back,” he said.
“Couldn’t they get the money by selling it?” I asked.
“Sure, but it’s slower and they got to find somebody who wants a Raphael bad enough he doesn’t care if it’s stolen,” said Maggio. “It don’t hurt to ask Stephens for money, because if he says No, they still got the painting.”
“I see problems with that, but let it go for now.” said Mr. Clemens. “What about the girl?”
“If they don’t steal the painting, why do they need to kill the girl?” said Maggio. with the air of someone proving a geometrical proposition. “Giovanni Garbanni isn’t the kind of man who kills her, then looks a police in the eye without showing he is feeling guilty. He is the—how you say in English?—idealista, but not the fanatico.”
“That rings true, from what I saw of him. and of Gonnella, too,” said Mr. Clemens. “All right, then—if not them, who? Where do we start off?”
Agente Maggio turned his eyes toward me for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, “Usually, when someone is killed, the killer is somebody they know before. Not always, but most of the time.”
“By that, do you mean that I'm still a suspect?” I asked. My fists involuntarily clenched. “If you’re willing to exonerate Garbarini so quickly, why are you still considering me a suspect? Why, I was…” Practically in love with her, I almost said before stopping myself. Of course, love was one of the prime motives for murder. Everybody knew that.
“I know Garbarini five, six years.” said Maggio. “You, I know less than a week. Is a big difference.” He paused a moment, looked away from me, and added, “I hope we find out you didn’t do it. I think you are innocent the more I know you, but I am not the judge. Even the judges don’t decide before they get all the evidence “
“I appreciate your fair-mindedness.” I said, with only a touch of sarcasm. I might have gone on in a similar satiric vein, except that the cook emerged from the kitchen just then, bringing my breakfast. I took its arrival as an opportunity to let the subject drop. And. in fact. I had little to say for the next few minutes, shoveling bacon, eggs, and warm Italian bread—with plenty of melting butter—into my mouth.
Mr. Clemens took up the slack. “Okay, Maggio.” he said. “I’ll grant that for the sake of completeness that my secretary has to be a suspect. But he wasn’t the only person the young lady knew in Florence—not by any means. Who else is on that list? Could you make a good case for any of them being the murderer—or the art thief, which may amount to the same thing?”
Maggio leaned forward. “First of all, the husband of her sister—Signore Stephens—he would be a suspect. They live in the same house, so they would disagree sometimes, argue with each other. And Stephens, he also has a good chance to steal the Raphael—or to send somebody to do it, while everyone eats the meal together. If a man everybody knows comes to take away something in a house, they all think it is permitted.”
“What makes you think he’d steal his own painting?” asked my employer. “Stephens claimed he already had a buyer lined up. He doesn’t seem like a man who'd throw away ready money.”
“It is a puzzle,” agreed Maggio. “And it does not explain why the frame of the painting is by Piazza Donatello, in the artists’ quarter, or why the signorina is there with it.”
My employer rubbed his chin, then said. “Wentworth, you’ll pardon me if I ask this, but I need another opinion on a question that’s got to be asked. Maggio, do you think the young lady could have stolen the painting herself? Could she have tried to sell it to the wrong person, and ended up being killed to keep from giving her a share of the loot?”
Despite a mouthful of bread and butter, I was about to register a protest. Maggio forestalled me by saying without hesitation. “I don’t think so.” He took a sip of his coffee and continued: “Capitano Rosalia and I, we know all the art dealers in Firenze—the good ones and the bad ones. Even the good ones will sometimes make a few extra lira by doing something not so honest. We don’t catch everything. and we don’t punish everything we catch—is the way of life here. Capisce?”
“It’s the way of life everywhere.” said Mr. Clemens. “Why, I’ve even heard of that kind of thing in America.”
“Just so,” said the carabiniere, spreading his hands apart. “Everyone is stealing, and we can't punish it all. But if someone is killing, that is a much worse thing, and everybody knows it. We will make life bad for all the dealers if we think one of them kills somebody. So if one of them does it and the others find
out, maybe they tell us who it is. That way, only the killer gets in trouble.”
“It’s a great system in theory.” said Mr. Clemens. “I’m not sure I’d put a lot of faith in it, though. Especially with a pretty young girl dead, and the police looking for scapegoats instead of trying to find the real killer. But let’s assume you’re right. Who else do you consider a serious suspect?”
“I think all the people at Stephens’s party have to be suspected.” said Maggio. “Maybe how they stole the painting is, somebody goes out from the dining room while people are eating, and hides the painting someplace they can get it after they leave. They bribe the butler, or some other servant, not to tell. Then when they leave, they get the painting and go to meet a dealer to help sell it. The signorina. maybe she sees them and follows them, surprises them. Then the thief is afraid she will expose them, and kills her.”
“That suggests some planning in advance,” said Mr. Clemens. “Otherwise, they wouldn't have a middleman all ready to meet them—at midnight in a cemetery, for God’s sake. It’s an idea straight out of bad fiction. Not that I haven’t used that kind of business myself, of course.”
I pushed aside my breakfast dishes, and said, “They didn’t have to plan it that far in advance. It could be done by telephone. Of course, it depends on both parties having a phone available. I don’t know if Stephens has one in his home…”
“He does not,” said Agente Maggio. “We Italians, we invent the telephone, but we do not have so many in our houses.”
“Oh. really!” I interrupted. “Everyone knows the telephone was invented in America, by Alexander Graham Bell.”
“Who was Scotch, if I remember right,” said Mr. Clemens. “But Maggio’s not just blowing smoke. There was an Italian—what was his name, Maggio?”
“Antonio Meucci,” said Maggio, holding his chin up. “He invents the telephone before I860, but the Americans steal it from him.”
“Yes, that’s the name,” said my employer. ‘There were a couple of others who contested Bell’s patent, too, maybe with good reason. So the case ain’t as clear-cut as you think, Wentworth. But that’s off the point. With no phone in Stephens’s house for somebody to make spur-of-the-moment plans, it looks as if the thief was someone who knew Stephens was going to show the Raphael in his house.”
“That's everyone at the party, and half the crowd at Diabelli’s.” I said. “And who knows how many others? He bragged about it enough.”
“But the others he bragged to weren’t at the party.” said Mr. Clemens. “Or—wait a minute. Maybe they were at the party. Did Stephens hire any outside help, waiters or cooks or somebody, or did he just use his regular household staff?”
“I don’t know.” I admitted, and shot a quizzical glance at Maggio.
“He brings in some people.” said Maggio. “The capitano had me question them—a cook’s helper, two waiters, some musicians. None of them are suspects.”
As he was speaking, Elsa, the German maid, stuck her head through the door and said. “Bitte, Herr Clemens, hier kommt ein Mann Sie zu sehen.”
“Somebody to see me? Damnation, who is it?” said my employer, pushing back his chair.
“Kenne ihn nicht,” said the maid, with a flounce, and she turned and left.
“I guess she don’t know,” said Mr. Clemens. With a shrug, he followed her. Whoever it was waited in the entry hall, just outside the dining room. So when he spoke to my employer, every word was audible from where I sat.
“Signore Mark Twain. I hear you search for the old master paintings.” said a baritone voice with an Italian accent. My ears must have perked up like a horse’s when I heard that, and I could see Maggio’s eyes widen as he realized what the man had said.
“Well, it depends on what you’ve got.” said Mr. Clemens. “I like some better than others, you know. I'm not going to hang just any old master over the fireplace.”
As quietly as possible. I stood up and tiptoed over to the doorway so as to hear better. Agente Maggio did the same, and soon we were both leaning forward, trying our best to eavesdrop on the conversation.
“Someone tells me you want to buy a Raphael.” said the man. The voice wasn’t familiar, but I didn’t dare stick my head out far enough to see him. on the chance I might be seen myself.
“Sure, I’m in the market for that,” said Mr. Clemens. “Do you have the goods? I can talk pie in the sky anytime I want, but I’d rather talk turkey.”
My employer’s figure of speech must have exceeded the other man’s grasp of English, for he said. ‘Turkey? You don’t have to go to Turkey—the Raphael is here in Firenze. If you want, you can see it today.”
“Well, that would suit me fine.” said Mr. Clemens. “When can you bring it here?”
“No, no. is impossible.” said the man—quickly, and very firmly. “You come with me. I take you where you can see it.”
“Well. I reckon I can get away,” drawled my employer, slowing down. “But I’ll have to bring along my secretary, Cabot. He’s my art expert, and I won’t buy as much as a ten-cent chromo without him approving it.”
Again the man said. “Is impossible.” but before he could say another syllable Mr. Clemens cut him off.
“If that’s impossible, then you’ll have to find another buyer.” he said. “I’ve got money to spend on the real thing, and I’m ready to move if I see something I like. But if you won’t let me bring my man along, you can go whistle.”
“Signore Mark Twain, the owner of this painting wishes to keep its location a secret,” said the man. “We must go in a closed carriage, so that you cannot find the way back there by yourself. And my carriage holds no more than two.”
“What, is that the whole problem?’ said Mr. Clemens. “I can solve that. Your driver can take my carriage—it’ll hold the three of us easy—and you can close the blinds if you’re so particular about secrecy. That way, I can bring Cabot, and your seller can keep his secret. When we’ve seen your picture, he can bring us back home and then take your carriage home again. But I’ll warn you, if he mistreats my horses, it’ll cost you. So, are we in business, or are you going to think up more reasons not to take my money?’
The other speaker hesitated a moment, muttering. As I strained to hear, Maggio tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned to look at him he was grinning. I understood: we'd been beating our heads against the wall trying to figure out who’d stolen the painting, and now they’d strolled up to our door. I nodded at him. smiling myself, and then I heard the man in the other room say to my employer. “Oh. very well. I will trust your groom to take care of my horse while we are gone, if you will trust my driver with yours. Make your carriage ready.”
“Good enough.” said Mr. Clemens. “Cabot,” he called out loudly, “will you come out here? We’re going to go look at a painting.”
I counted to twenty, to make it seem as if I had come from a greater distance than I had. then went out into the entry hall. To my surprise, the man standing beside my employer was one I had seen before—in Cafe Diabelli, no less. I didn’t know his name, but perhaps it would come to me. And when it did, a lot of questions would be answered.
And until then. I had to put on my best imitation of an art expert, to look at what I hoped would be the Raphael stolen from Frank Stephens’s house—and possibly to confront both the thief and the man who had murdered Virginia Fleetwood.
22
Our guide introduced himself as Lorenzo, with no surname. Lorenzo was a tall, blond, northern Italian who smoked cigarettes one after the other. He wore a suit of expensive cut and material over a brightly colored shirt, and his expression seemed constantly on the verge of breaking into an outright leer. Too many things about him hit a false note; I didn’t relish going off with him to view a stolen painting—the theft of which had been the occasion of a murder. For all we knew, Lorenzo himself was the murderer.
I tried to catch my employer’s eye, hoping to speak to him in private to warn him. But Mr. Clemens igno
red my efforts to pull him aside. Instead, he let Lorenzo talk, which the fellow seemed perfectly willing to do, babbling on about his connections to various people of importance, most of whose names meant nothing to me. No doubt Mr. Clemens hoped Lorenzo would let slip some clue by which we could trace him, but he said nothing I could make use of. Nor could I remember where in Diabelli’s I had seen him— he was not a chess player, nor one of Stephens’s associates. Could he be among Volponi’s hangers-on? I didn’t think so—he would undoubtedly have dropped Volponi’s name, if he could claim any connection.
I tried to break away and speak to Agente Maggio; possibly he could follow us surreptitiously and discover our destination. But Maggio kept out of view, no doubt worried that Lorenzo would recognize him; and when I finally made some excuse to leave the entry hall for a moment. I could not find him. Perhaps he had already made plans to follow us without my prompting.
After a little while, the groom sent word that the carriage was ready, and we went out to the courtyard to go on our mysterious errand. I climbed up next to my employer, while Lorenzo gave his driver a few instructions in rapid Italian, which I couldn't follow. Then he settled into the seat across from us, and pulled the curtains shut. He lit a cigarette and said. “Now, signori, be comfortable—it will not be a long drive. I am sorry you cannot view the scenery, but it is a gray day after all.”
“Yes. it is,” said Mr. Clemens. He rubbed his chin and said. “I assume we're going to the artists' quarter, near Piazza Donatello.” The jouncing of the carriage's springs made it clear that we had moved out of the courtyard onto the road.
“That could be, signore.” said Lorenzo, grimacing behind the hand holding his cigarette. “But where we go is not important—your purpose is to see the painting. Does it matter whether it is at Piazza Donatello, or in Sicily, as long as you like it and can take it home with you?”
“It better not be in Sicily.” said my employer, with a frown. “I’ve already gone off on one snipe hunt that kept me overnight. Livy won’t forgive me another quite so soon.”
[Mark Twain Mysteries 05] - The Mysterious Strangler Page 24