The room was quite handsome. It had been a grand salone at one time, when the Palazzo Concini was still a private residence. There was only one other researcher, a little old man with no hair, and glasses so thick they looked opaque. He did not glance up when I tiptoed past him with the book I had selected. I took a seat at a neighbouring table. It took me about a minute and a half to find what I wanted. I checked all three paintings, just to be sure, but the first one I looked up, the Murillo, provided the necessary information. It was in the private collection of the Conte del Caravaggio, Rome.
In my exultation I slammed the book shut. It made more of a noise than that hallowed chamber had heard in years. The little old man at the next table wobbled feebly, like those bottom-heavy toys that sway when you nudge them. For a minute I thought he was going to topple over, flat on his face on the table, a la Hitchcock. You could die in that place and nobody would notice for hours. But finally he stopped swaying, and I made my way back to the desk with exaggerated care.
When I asked if I could see the director, the librarian’s face looked shocked. I think I could have gotten in to see the Pope with far less argument. But finally she consented to telephone, and after a muttered conversation she turned back to me looking even more surprised.
‘You will be received,’ she murmured, in the whisper demanded by that dim vault with its frescoed ceiling and statued niches. I felt as if I ought to genuflect.
The director’s office was another flight up. I was allowed to take the private elevator, which opened directly into an anteroom presided over by a stately-looking man with a beard. I was about to greet him with the humility his exalted position demanded, and then I found out he wasn’t the director after all, only a secretary. He offered me a chair, and I cooled my heels for a good twenty minutes before a buzzer on his desk purred and he beckoned to me. The carved mahogany door behind him was an objet d’art in its own right. He opened it with a bow, and I went in. By then I was slightly annoyed at all the pomp and circumstance: I marched in with my chin in the air, prepared to be very cool and haughty, but the sight of the woman behind the desk took the starch right out of me.
Yes, woman. This is a man’s world, and nowhere in the world is male chauvinism more rampant than in Italy, but I never thought for a moment that this female was a secretary. She would be the boss of any establishment she chose to honour with her presence.
Being something of a female chauvinist myself, I should have warmed to her. Her male secretary was a particularly nice touch. Instead I took an instant dislike to the creature. I was about to say ‘unreasoning dislike,’ but there was good reason for my reaction. She looked at me as if I were a bedbug.
The room was arranged to provide a setting that would awe most visitors. Its high windows, draped in gold swags and festoons, opened onto a terrace so thickly planted with shrubs and flowers that it looked like a descendant of one of the Hanging Gardens. The Persian carpet on the floor was fifty feet long by twenty-five wide – a glorious, time-faded blend of cream and salmon, aquamarine and topaz. The desk should have been in the museum downstairs, and the paintings on the walls were the greatest of the great masters.
But the woman didn’t need that setting. She would have been impressive in a soup kitchen. Her black hair surely owed something to art, for the lines in her face betrayed the decades – at least four of them, if I was any judge. She had one of those splendid profiles you see on Roman coins, and I got a good look at it, because her head was turned sideways when I came in. She was looking out the window.
The secretary’s discreet murmur made several things clearer. It was loaded with long, hissing feminine endings. ‘Principessa, Direttoressa . . .’ and then the name. What else? The last of the Concinis was still hanging on in the family mansion.
She meant to make me feel like a great overgrown clod from some barbarian country, and she succeeded. I went clumping across the floor – my feet looked and sounded like size fourteens – hating that Roman profile more every second. I reached the desk and looked in vain for a chair. She gave me thirty seconds – I counted them to myself – and then turned, very slowly. A faint smile curved her full lips. It was a closed smile, with no teeth showing, and I was reminded of the enigmatic smiles of early Greek and Etruscan statues – an expression that some critics find more sinister than gracious.
‘Doctor Bliss? It is a pleasure to welcome a young colleague. Your superior, Herr Professor Schmidt, is an old acquaintance. I hope he is well?’
‘Crazy as ever,’ I said.
I hate being tall. I had a feeling she knew that, and was deliberately forcing me to stand and tower over her. So I looked around for a chair. I spotted a delicate eighteenth-century example, with priceless needlepoint on the seat, yanked it into position beside the desk, and sat down.
She stared at me for a moment. Then her lips parted and she laughed. It was a charming laugh, low pitched like her speaking voice, but vibrant with genuine amusement.
‘It is a pleasure,’ she repeated. ‘You are correct; Professor Schmidt is crazy, that is why he endears himself to his friends. May I serve you in any way, my dear, or is this purely a social call?’
I was disarmed, I admit. She had accepted my response to her challenge like a lady.
‘I wouldn’t take up your time with a purely social call, pleasant though it is,’ I said. ‘I have a rather peculiar story to tell you, Principessa – ’
‘But we are colleagues – you must call me Bianca. And you are . . . ?’
‘Vicky. Thank you . . . This is going to sound as crazy as Professor Schmidt, Prin–– Bianca. But it’s the honest truth.’
I told her the whole story – almost the whole story. She listened intently, her chin propped on one slender ringed hand, her black eyes never leaving my face. The eyes began to sparkle before I had gotten well under way, and when I had finished, her lips were twitching with amusement.
‘My dear,’ she began.
‘I said it would sound crazy.’
‘It does. If your credentials were not so excellent . . . But I know Professor Schmidt; I know his weakness. Confess, Vicky, is this not a story that is just to his taste?’
I laughed ruefully. ‘Yes, it is. But – ’
‘What real evidence have you, after all? A dead man – but dead of natural causes, you said – with a copy of one of your museum pieces. Have you any proof that criminal acts were intended? Forgive me, but it seems to me that you and Professor Schmidt have a postulated a plot on very slim evidence.’
‘That might have been true two days ago,’ I said. ‘But what about the antique shop on the Via delle Cinque Lune?’
‘A sketch, however detailed, is not evidence, my dear. I am glad, by the way, that I do not have to take official notice of your activities. I know the shop, Vicky. Signor Fergamo, the owner, is a most respected man.’
‘He might not know that the shop is being used for criminal purposes,’ I argued. ‘That damn – I mean, that English manager – ’
‘I don’t know him.’ Her delicate brows drew together as she pondered. ‘He must be new. The former manager of the establishment was Fergamo’s son-in-law. Even so . . .’
She paused politely, waiting for me to answer.
She had me over a barrel. The single piece of conclusive, damning evidence I had was the story of my kidnapping, and that was the one thing I had omitted from my narrative. I’m not sure why I hadn’t told her about that; I guess I felt it sounded so demented that it would cast an air of incredibility over an already unbelievable story. After all, she was a member of the old Roman nobility, and so was the man I suspected of being part of the gang. Would she believe an accusation against Count Caravaggio? She was more likely to conclude that I was some kind of escaped lunatic.