The Rainaldi Quartet (23 page)

‘Carlo Carli, the count's Milanese banker, and incidentally a fine amateur violinist, good enough to play quartets with Paganini. When the Austrians and the French were fighting over Piedmont, Count Cozio had his violin collection removed for safekeeping from his country seat at Salabue, near Casale Monferrato, to Carlo Carli's home in Milan.'

I turned to read out the next letter. This was more specific. After the usual salutations and some discussion relating to the cloth trade, Michele Anselmi had written:
‘“I must now address myself to the question of His Excellency's debts. I have been in communication with Signor Carli and regret to have to inform you that circumstances are but little changed since I last wrote to you. If anything, the situation has worsened. The confiscation of certain properties by the French military command has caused His Excellency much embarrassment…”'

I paused. The next few words were difficult to read. I peered at the text. ‘I'm not sure what comes next.
Regret.
It looks like regret.
I regret
 … something.
I regret
something, something,
unable to repay.
No, the rest is too smudged.'

‘Leave it for the time being and go on,' Guastafeste suggested.

I moved on to the next paragraph.
‘“However, His Excellency, knowing your great interest in music, asks if you would be willing to accept an item from his collection in lieu of payment.”'

I stopped reading. The rest of the letter was just a blur of ink. The paper was stained as if water had been spilt on it. But it didn't matter. We both knew that we'd just heard the most important bit.

‘An item from his collection?' Guastafeste said excitedly. ‘Now we're getting somewhere. What's next?'

It was the third letter that contained the real meat.

‘“I have made all the necessary arrangements to despatch the violin within the week,”'
I read out Michele Anselmi's words.
‘“My son, Paolo, who is undertaking business on my behalf in France, will take the violin as far as Paris where he will arrange for a courier to transport the instrument to England. His Excellency asks me to express his gratitude for your understanding and patience in this matter, and feels assured that you will not find anything lacking in the instrument. It is one of the finest in his collection – indeed one of the finest the Master ever made – and has barely been touched since the day it left the workshop in Cremona. His Excellency is sorry to part with it, but he wishes you great joy in the playing of it.”'

‘That's it,' Guastafeste said. ‘That's the violin we're looking for. It was sent to England, to Thomas Colquhoun. Does it not say who the maker was? If it was one of the finest in Cozio's collection, it must have been a Stradivari surely. What do you think?'

‘No, it doesn't mention the maker, just the words “the Master”, which may mean Stradivari.'

‘So Thomas Colquhoun had the violin. What if it's still here at Highfield Hall? I know Mrs Colquhoun said all his instruments were sold off long ago, but what if she's wrong? This house is full of junk. It could be hidden away somewhere in the attics.'

I shook my head doubtfully. It was a nice thought, that classic cliché of treasure-seeking lore – the dusty attic. But I knew it wouldn't be that easy.

‘Why not?' Guastafeste said. ‘Let's go and look now. Search the whole house. What do we have to lose?'

‘Let's see what the last letter says.'

The handwriting of the fourth letter was the sloppiest and most difficult to read of them all. Either Anselmi had changed secretaries by this point – in which case he could surely have employed one with a rather more obvious talent for calligraphy – or he had written the letter himself. I was inclined to think it was most likely the latter.

Deciphering and translating the text was slow work. It began with a rambling exposition in which Anselmi enquired at length about Colquhoun's health. Then it moved on to more important matters.

‘“I am continuing to make enquiries into the disappearance of the violin. My agent in Paris is endeavouring to trace the courier who was engaged by my son but has, so far, met with little success. It is impossible, at the moment, to be certain whether the instrument ever left Paris or if it did, at what point in the journey to England it was stolen. As the months go by, I begin to fear that the violin will never be recovered and the thief will take the secret of its whereabouts to the grave with him.”'

I looked up from the letter. Guastafeste, so animated only a few moments ago, now had an expression of bleak disappointment on his face. I turned back to the text.

‘“I feel the loss very deeply. His Excellency entrusted to me the safe despatch of the instrument and in this task I have most manifestly failed to be worthy of his trust. As it was through my negligence that this unfortunate loss occurred, I feel honour bound to make due recompense to you. I am therefore enclosing a banker's order for the full amount of the debt owed to you by His Excellency. Knowing you as I do, I must override the objections I know you will make to this arrangement and insist that you present the order for payment. I value your good esteem too much to allow these events to mar our friendship. It is my fervent wish that this debt should be honourably discharged, for only then will my conscience rest easy. I remain, as ever, your most faithful servant, Gio Michele Anselmi di Briata.”'

I put the letter down with the others. For a moment neither of us spoke.

Then Guastafeste said morosely: ‘So that's it then. It's gone. Stolen two hundred years ago. What chance do we have of tracing it?'

His dejection was manifest but, strangely, I felt myself untouched by his dark mood.

‘At least it confirms that there was such a violin,' I said.

‘What use is that?' Guastafeste retorted tetchily. ‘Who knows where it went? It might have resurfaced years ago and is now in someone's collection. Maybe some soloist is playing it and no one knows where it came from.'

‘I don't think so,' I said. ‘Not if it really was a Stradivari. Every surviving Stradivari instrument has its provenance pretty well documented. If there was one that originated from Cozio's collection, but was stolen in transit through France, we would know about it.'

‘So what are you saying?' Guastafeste asked. ‘That it's still out there somewhere waiting to be discovered?'

‘Either that or it's been destroyed.'

The contents of the letters were dispiriting in many ways, but I wasn't going to allow that fact to discourage me. They provided no simple route to the goal we were seeking, but they seemed to indicate that the goal existed – or had existed once – and that was important to me. I wanted to believe in it. I
had
to believe in it. Was I deluding myself? It was possible. The violin might well have been lost for ever, been chopped up for firewood or left to rot, but I would not let myself believe it. In some way, some powerful, inexplicable way that went to the very core of what I was, I needed this search. Not just for Tomaso, but for me too.

I looked out of the window. It was damp and overcast outside, but the mist of the previous evening had lifted. I could see sheep grazing on the moors, the silhouette of a strange weathered rock formation on the skyline.

‘And this is all Tomaso had?' Guastafeste said. ‘These are the letters he showed Forlani? He had nothing more?'

‘These would have been enough for Forlani,' I said. ‘He wanted to believe there was another Messiah out there. It was his dream. Tomaso offered him a way of making that dream come true.'

‘But how? These letters are a dead end. The violin has gone missing on its way to England. No one knows where it is. In all likelihood it was never recovered.'

‘That's possible.'

‘So how could Tomaso have taken it further? Where could he have gone next in his search?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Maybe Tomaso didn't know either. But what does a hunter do when his hounds have lost the scent?'

‘He retraces his steps,' Guastafeste said. ‘Tries to pick it up again somewhere.'

‘And if he doesn't know where along the route to look, what does he do?' I said. ‘He goes back to the beginning. He starts again at the source of the scent and follows it anew.'

I paused. ‘We have to start with Cozio di Salabue and Michele Anselmi di Briata. And that means we have to go to Casale Monferrato.'

11

The Randolph Hotel, in Oxford, was the kind of place I could imagine Tomaso staying. Exclusive, expensive, discreetly luxurious, it would have appealed to his weakness for extravagance.

As we arrived, a coach was coming to a halt outside the hotel, disgorging a party of American tourists and their guide. We waited for the group to go inside and disperse to their rooms before we approached the reception desk and asked to see the manager. Guastafeste and I were not planning on staying there. Guastafeste's police expenses did not run to such an opulent establishment, and I have always been disinclined to waste money on ostentatious hotels when all I need for a night away is a comfortable bed and a washbasin.

The hotel manager, a soft-spoken, smiling man with the conciliatory manner of someone accustomed to dealing with wealthy – and demanding – customers, examined Guastafeste's police identity card carefully before handing it back and explaining – with the utmost regret – that it wasn't company policy to give out information about guests.

‘This is important,' I said, interpreting for Guastafeste. ‘Signor Rainaldi has been murdered. We are not asking for much. We are just trying to establish what he did while he was in Oxford.'

‘Murdered?' The manager looked horrified, then reconsidered his earlier reluctance to help us. ‘What was the date he stayed here again?'

The hotel records divulged very little we didn't already know. Tomaso had stayed for one night, had had dinner alone in the hotel dining room, the cost of the meal being added to his accommodation bill. The manager didn't remember him. One of the receptionists did – ‘The large Italian gentleman with the beard' – but that was as far as it went. She didn't know where – if anywhere – Tomaso had gone during his stay. She certainly couldn't recall him asking for directions or information about any particular location.

We thanked the manager and the receptionist and left the hotel. On the pavement outside I paused, looking across the road at the impressive classical frontage of the Ashmolean Museum.

‘I wonder,' I said.

‘Wonder what?' Guastafeste asked.

‘Maybe that's all Tomaso came here for. A stopover on his way back from Highfield Hall to London. An opportunity to see it.'

‘See what? Oxford, you mean?'

‘I'll show you,' I said.

I took him across the road into the museum, then upstairs to the Hill Music Room. There was nothing special about the room. It was unremarkable, scruffy even. My sitting room at home is bigger. The walls were a dirty off-white, the plaster cornice chipped in places. On the floor were polished cork tiles. Frosted-glass windows obscured by blinds kept out the sunlight so the room was illuminated by lights on a rail around the ceiling. In the midst of these drab surroundings, the violin in the centre of the room shone out like a beacon.

‘
Le Messie,
' I said. ‘The Messiah.'

It was on its own in a glass case, hanging at an angle from a brass bar, its lower bouts resting on a mat of light green felt. I have seen it many times before. On my infrequent trips to England I try to make a point of coming here to look at it – like a pilgrim on a holy trail. And never yet has it failed to move me. This is what violin-making is all about.

‘The Messiah?' Guastafeste said. ‘This is the Messiah?'

I wonder sometimes what others see when they gaze at the violin. Perhaps they simply regard it as an old fiddle – a piece of varnished timber, well made, aesthetically pleasing, but no more impressive than any other old violin. If so, I pity them their blindness, for
Le Messie
is one of the world's great works of art and like all masterpieces, though it can be appreciated by the layman, it takes a practitioner to fully understand its qualities. I know how hard it is to make an instrument like this. I can see the craftsmanship in the contours of the belly and back, in the purfling, the ribs, the scroll; and every time the perfection leaves me breathless.

I walked slowly around the case, my face almost touching the glass. The two-piece maple back had a distinctive curl in the wood, a pattern of light and dark stripes that reminded me of sunlight on a forest floor. The varnish had a lustre, a velvety sheen like oiled skin. Vaguely, as distant as a voice in another room, I heard Guastafeste – prosaic as ever – saying, ‘
That
's worth ten million dollars?' But the words barely registered on my consciousness, I was so absorbed in my study.

The instrument is not as Stradivari left it, of course. Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume lengthened the neck and changed the bass bar and fingerboard. The pegs and tailpiece – ornately carved with a relief of the Virgin Mary and a baby Christ with a halo around his head, two cherubs above them playing the harp and trumpet – are also Vuillaume's work. But they are merely icing, decorations which, rather than detract from the rest of the instrument, seem to highlight the astonishing simplicity of Stradivari's genius.

‘So this is the violin that was heard about, but never seen,' Guastafeste said. ‘It seems a shame to shut it away in a glass case. Shouldn't it be out in a concert hall somewhere being played?'

‘It should,' I agreed. ‘Though I'm glad it's here. Just to be able to see it is a privilege.'

‘What's all this?' Guastafeste asked. He was reading the printed notice on a stand next to the glass case.