‘Naturally,’ he continued, ‘they claimed to be totally surprised that Ragazzo con Cane might have been stolen during the war. They tell me that it, along with a couple of other smaller works, were donated to the gallery in 2011 and 2012 by Benjamin Pfaff, a prominent Baltimore philanthropist.’
Izzy sat up straight in her chair. ‘There’s more than one?’
‘Let’s take it a step at a time, Mrs Milanesi. Why don’t we refer to the packet in front of you?’
I sat down with my coffee. The documentation had been put together as carefully as a PowerPoint presentation. Hutch walked us through the printout, page by page. Each page was like a thread, drawing us inexorably into the next, gradually stepping back in time. I picked up the document and fanned the pages, eager to skip ahead to see where they led, but Hutch gave me the evil eye, so I decided to go with the flow.
‘As I said, Pfaff donated the painting to the Baltimore Art Gallery in 2011, presumably taking a tax write-off in the amount of $250,000, which was the appraised value of the painting at the time.’
Next to me, Izzy gasped.
‘On the next page, we have a bill of sale from the Crown Gallery on North Howard Street in Baltimore, detailing the sale of the painting to Mr Pfaff two years prior for $130,000. So far, so good.’ He flipped to the next page. ‘Here, we find that the work was taken on consignment from the estate of a certain Muzio Buccho, and he…’
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. ‘What?’
Hutch raised a hand, palm out. ‘You’re getting ahead of me, Hannah. Now, the executor of the estate, if you’ll look at the next document, please, is Muzio’s daughter, Filomena.’
I turned to the next page as instructed. It was a photocopy of the relevant page of Muzio Buccho’s will, and there, printed in clear, unambiguous capital letters was the name Filomena Buccho.
I couldn’t believe it. ‘“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world…”’ I quoted.
Izzy simply stared, nodding vigorously. She knew that line from Casablanca, too.
Hutch tapped the tabletop with the tip of his pen, a nervous habit. ‘You know her, Mrs Milanesi?’
‘I do. She manages the dining room at Calvert Colony.’
‘Unbelievable,’ I said.
Hutch shrugged. ‘It happens.’
‘So Filomena’s father, Muzio, brought the paintings with him when he immigrated to Argentina…’ I asked.
‘Not Muzio,’ Hutch interrupted. ‘A guy named Vittorio Piccio. Does that name sound familiar?’
Izzy frowned. ‘Not really.’
‘Well, I did a little digging, and this guy Piccio was a notorious art thief, working hand in glove with the Nazis. If you’ll look ahead to the next page, you’ll see that it was Piccio who was hired to do the official inventory of the contents of an art collection owned by an art dealer in Rome named Giacomo Rossi just a couple of months before the poor fellow was forced to sell out.’
Izzy cried out, ‘That was my father!’
‘I expected that.’ Hutch waited for Izzy to regain her composure, then moved swiftly on. ‘Not only that, but Piccio had the unmitigated gall to charge your father a fee for doing the inventory. You’ll see his itemized receipt. Time, travel, lodging… God, just when I think I’ve seen everything… It makes me ill. But the important thing,’ he continued, ‘is that this inventory actually exists, and we have a copy of it here. There are one hundred and twenty-three paintings and drawings listed, Mrs Milanesi, some of them, like Ragazzo con Cane, specifically by name.’
‘That proves my father owned them.’
‘It does. And the scrapbook that your mother made is further confirmation of that ownership – photographic evidence, if you will. I do hope it can be found.’
‘But how did that particular painting get into the hands of Filomena Buccho?’ I wanted to know.
‘I’m coming to that. If you’ll flip forward to page ten, you’ll notice that we have copies of a customs declaration form dated 1948 when Piccio entered Argentina, and Ragazzo con Cane is listed on it then. Piccio paid a small duty of around four percent on the painting based on the clean bill of sale from your father, Giacomo Rossi, dated September 18, 1943.’
Izzy’s head was bent over the bill of sale, studying it closely, slowly tracing the loops with an index finger. ‘That looks like my father’s signature but it could be a forgery.’
Hutch nodded. ‘Point taken. Moving on, though, after 1948, the works drop out of sight until ten years later, in 1958, when Ragazzo Con Cane and a dozen other works previously owned by your father showed up as part of a larger sale that took place in Buenos Aires. That’s when Adriano Buccho, Muzio’s father and Filomena’s grandfather, acquired the works. The rest of the catalog…’ He shrugged. ‘The sale attracted a lot of attention because of the Fattoris and the Signorinis being offered. They were popular Italian Impressionists. Perhaps you know them.’
Izzy frowned. ‘So, this accounts for only thirteen of my father’s paintings. Where is the rest of his collection?’
‘It’s possible that the Piccio family still owns them.’
Izzy raised an eyebrow. ‘I hear an “or” in your voice, Mr Hutchinson.’
‘Or they could have been sold and are now scattered in galleries and private collections all over the world.’
Izzy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She straightened her back. ‘OK, so what’s the next step?’
‘Well, that’s complicated. As you can see from these documents, which the museum freely provided, by the way, your father legally sold his paintings to Piccio.’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything if the works were extorted from my father in the first place. Father might as well have had a gun aimed at his head!’
‘If we can prove that he was coerced we might be able to persuade the gallery to compensate you for the painting.’
‘Compensate? I don’t want compensation! I want that painting back. It’s my brother!’ Izzy began to sob.
I grabbed the box of tissues off the credenza and set it gently in her lap. While she dabbed at her eyes, I asked, ‘What other paintings does the gallery have that once belonged to Izzy’s family?’
‘Two smaller ones, much less valuable. But they were also bought by Benjamin Pfaff and donated to the gallery in the following year.’
Benjamin Pfaff. It’d been so long since his name was mentioned in this tortuous chain of custody that I’d practically forgotten about him.
‘They’re listed on the next to the last page.’
Izzy blew her nose, tucked the used tissue into her pocket then bent over the photocopies. ‘I remember this one,’ she said, pointing to a reproduction of a girl holding a bowl of cherries. ‘It hung in my parent’s room. And this little one, this still life…’ she tapped the page with her finger. ‘This was in our drawing room, on the wall over my mother’s silver tea service.’ She looked up. ‘They will be pictured in my mother’s scrapbook.’
‘Do you think the museum will give them back?’ I asked.
‘Truthfully? Because of the bill of sale it will be a tough case to make. But it’s not unheard of. There’s case law in New York that supports our position. Basically it says that a thief cannot pass good title. If we can prove that Piccio was a thief…’ His voice trailed off. ‘I should warn you, though, Mrs Milanesi, that if we have to take this to court it could be expensive.’
‘I don’t care about that. I just want my family’s paintings back.’ She leaned forward toward him, arms stretched in supplication across the table. ‘Will you help me?’
‘Of course I will.’
I signaled a time out with my hands. ‘Wait a minute. Help me get this straight. Adriano Bucco bought thirteen paintings at that sale, right?’
Hutch nodded.
‘And they were handed down from Adriano to Muzio and finally to Filomena and her brother.’
‘Presumably.’
‘The Baltimore Art Gallery has three of the Buccho paintings, so where are the other ten?’
‘We’ll hope to find that out, too.’
I wanted to hug my brother-in-law but I settled for a profuse thank you, then added: ‘As much as I want to go back to Calvert Colony and shake Filomena until the truth drops out, I don’t suppose that would be a good idea.’
‘No, you’ll have to let me handle that,’ Hutch drawled. ‘Remember that Filomena Buccho may have absolutely no idea that her grandfather had been purchasing art that was stolen from the Jews. As far as she’s concerned her family legitimately owned the art. It’d been in her family for three generations. It will have been a part of her life since childhood.’
‘Still…’ I began.
Hutch raised a cautionary hand. ‘I tried to contact Filomena this morning, by the way, but she’s a little busy just now. The kitchen at Calvert Colony is in turmoil. It seems that her brother has been taken in for questioning over the murder of Masud Abaza.’