Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [92]
Turchetti’s smile was gracious. ‘Johann von Dillis and Friedrich Salathé,’ he said, pronouncing the first name of the second painter as though he were a man nursed on Goethe and Heine.
Brunetti had heard of the first, but he nodded as though both names were familiar to him and wrote them down. Though he had never heard his father-in-law mention either name, the Count was a collector and spent a lot of time in galleries, and so he might have seen them, had Turchetti shown them in his gallery, and thus Brunetti might learn their resale price.
‘And the others?’ Brunetti asked.
Turchetti smiled. ‘I’d have to check my records. It was so long ago.’
‘But the last sale was only …’ Brunetti said, trying to recall the papers Signorina Elettra had given him as he turned a page of his notebook, ‘about three months ago.’
Had Turchetti been a fish, Brunetti would have seen him squirming around as he tried to free himself from the hook in such a manner as to do himself as little harm as possible. Turchetti did not gasp, at least not in the way of a fish: he drew in two long breaths and finally said, ‘Shall we save time, Commissario, and you tell me what it is you want?’
‘I want to know what he sold you and how much they were worth.’
With a smile that would have been flirtatious, had it been directed at a woman, the dealer asked, ‘You don’t want to know what I paid him?’
Brunetti felt the urge to swipe him aside, but Turchetti did not know that since Morandi had so conscientiously deposited the money into his account Brunetti already knew what he had been paid. It was probably impossible for an art dealer to conceive of a person who would sell something and deposit that amount in the bank.
‘No, Signore,’ Brunetti said, removing Turchetti’s title, ‘only what they were worth.’
‘May I estimate?’ Turchetti asked directly, as if he had tired of the game. He no longer bothered talking about his ‘records’. Brunetti had grown up hearing priests speak of indulgences, so he well knew how malleable was the interpretation of value.
‘Feel free,’ Brunetti told him.
‘The Dillis was worth about forty thousand; the Salathé a bit less.’
‘And the others?’ Brunetti said, glancing down at the names of Chiara’s history and geometry teachers.
‘There were some prints: Tiepolo, not worth more than ten or twelve. I think there were six or seven of them.’
‘You didn’t offer him a price for the lot?’
‘No,’ Turchetti said, unable to disguise his irritation. ‘He insisted on bringing them in one at a time.’ Then, unable to disguise his satisfaction at a job well done, he added, ‘He thought he’d get more for them that way.’ So much, his tone stated, for that possibility.
Brunetti refused to give him the satisfaction of a response and asked, ‘What else?’
‘You want to know everything?’ Turchetti asked with carefully orchestrated surprise and another flirtatious smile.
With careful slowness, Brunetti clipped his pen to the inside of the notebook and closed it. He looked across at Turchetti and said, ‘Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough, Signore.’ He moved his lips in something that was not meant to be a smile. ‘I have a list, with amounts and dates, and I want to know what he gave in exchange for the money he received.’
‘And I assume you have the authorization to ask for such information?’ Turchetti asked. All smiles stopped together.
‘Not only can I have it if I ask for it,’ Brunetti said, ‘but I also have the attention of my father-in-law.’
Turchetti could not hide his surprise, nor could he disguise his uneasiness. ‘What does that mean?’
‘That I have only to suggest to him that the provenance given to some of the objects in this gallery is questionable, and I’m sure he’d call around to his friends to ask if they’ve heard the same thing.’ He waited for a moment, and then added, ‘And I suppose they’d call their friends. And so it would go.’ Brunetti returned to smiling and reopened his notebook. He bent over it and said, ‘What else?’
Turchetti, with a precision that Brunetti found exemplary,