Wilful behaviour

Presumably, the Count was arranging the facts in an orderly way so as to tell the story clearly. He went on.. 'He was not an artist, though he did have a minor talent as an illustrator. This served him in very good stead, for he became a muralist and poster designer for the party in power before and during the war’ There were times when Brunetti had no choice but to admire the Count's arrogance: just as a man in his position did not call his servants by their first names, so too did he refuse to pronounce the name of the political party that had reduced his country to ruins.

Brunetti, who was familiar with Fascisti, now remembered where he had heard the name Guzzardi, or at least read it: in a book on Fascist art, page after numbing page of well-fed factory workers and bright-eyed maidens with long braids, dedicated, in the most glaring of colours, to the triumph of people just like themselves.

'He was quite active during the war, Luca Guzzardi’ the Count went on, 'both in Ferrara, where his family was originally from - I believe they dealt in textiles - and here, where both he and his father held positions of some importance.'

Brunetti had long since abandoned any idea of asking his father-in-law to explain how he came by the information he provided, but this time the Count supplied it. 'As Paola may have told you, we had to leave the country in 1939, so none of us was here during the first years of the war. I was still a boy, but my father had many friends who remained, and after the war, when the family came back to Venice, he learned, and so did I, what had gone on while we were away from the city. Little of it was pleasant’

After this brief explanation, he went on, 'Guzzardi padre supplied cloth to the Army, for uniforms and, I think, tents. Thus he made a fortune. The son, because of his artistic talents, had some sort of job in propaganda, designing posters and billboards that showed the appropriate pictures of life in our great nation. He was also one of the people appointed to decide which pieces of decadent art should be disposed of by galleries and museums’

‘Disposed of?' Brunetti asked.

'It was one of the diseases that came down from the North,' the Count said drily, and then continued.

There was a long list of painters who were declared objectionable: Goya, Matisse, Chagall, and the German Expressionists. Many others, as well: it was enough that they were Jewish. Or that the subjects of their paintings weren't pretty or supportive of Party myth. Any evidence had to be removed from the walls of museums, and many people took the precaution of removing paintings from the walls of their houses.'

'Where did they go?' Brunetti asked.

'Well you may ask,' the Count answered. 'Often, they were the first paintings that were sold by people who needed enough money to survive or who wanted to leave the country, though they got very little for them.'

'And the museums?'

The Count smiled, that peculiarly cynical tightening of the lips his daughter had inherited from him. 'It was Guzzardi figlio whose job it was to decide which things had to be removed’

'And was it his job,' Brunetti asked, beginning to see where this might be leading, 'to decide where they were sent and to keep the records of where they were?'

‘I’m so glad to see that all of these years at the police have done nothing to affect the workings of your mind, Guido’ the Count said with affectionate irony.

Brunetti ignored the remark, and the Count continued, 'Many things seem to have disappeared in the chaos. It seems though, that he went too far. I think it was in 1942. There was a Swiss family living on the Grand Canal in an old place that had been in their family for generations. The father, who had some sort of title,' the Count said with an easy dismissal of all claims to aristocracy that did not go back more than a thousand years, 'was the honorary consul, and the son was always in trouble for saying things against the current government here, but he was never arrested because of his father, who was very well connected. Finally, I can't remember when it was, the son was found in the attic with two British Air Force officers he'd hidden there. The story was very unclear, but it seems that the Guzzardis had found out about it and one of them sent in the police.' He stopped talking, and Brunetti watched him try to call back these memories from more than half a century ago.

The police took all of them away,' the Count went on. 'Later, the evening of the same day, both of the Guzzardis paid a call on the father in his palazzo and, well, there was a discussion of some sort. At the end of it, it was agreed that the boy would be sent home and the matter dropped.'

'And the airmen?'

'I've no idea.'

The Guzzardis, then?' Brunetti asked. 'They are reported to have left the palazzo that night with a large parcel.' 'Decadent art?'

'No one knows. The consul was a great collector of early master drawings: Tiziano, Tintoretto, Carpaccio. He was also a great friend of Venice and gave many things to the museums.'

'But not the drawings?'

'They were not in the palazzo at the end of the war’ the Count explained.

'And the Guzzardis?' Brunetti asked.

‘It seems that the Consul had been at school with the man who was sent here as British ambassador right after the war, and the Englishman insisted that something be done about the Guzzardis.'

'And?'

'Guzzardi, the son, was put on trial. I don't remember what the exact charges were, but there was never any question about what would happen. The ambassador was a very wealthy man, you see, as well as a very generous one, and that made him very powerful.' The Count looked at the wall behind Brunetti, where three Tiziano drawings hung in a row, as if to ask them to prompt his memory.

‘I don't know that the drawings were ever seen again. The rumour I heard at the time was that Guzzardi's lawyer had made a deal and he would be acquitted if the drawings were given back, but then he had some sort of collapse or seizure during the trial, real or fake I don't know, and the judges ended up convicting him - now that I think about it, it might have been for extortion - and sending him to San Servolo. There was talk that it was all a charade, put on so that the judges could send him there. Then they'd keep him there for a few months, then let him out, miraculously cured. That way, the ambassador would get what he wanted, but Guzzardi wouldn't really be punished.'

'But he died?'

‘Yes, he died.'

'Anything suspicious about that?'

'No, not that I can remember ever hearing. But San Servolo was a death pit.' The Count considered this for a moment, then added, 'Not that it's much better with the way things are organized now.'

The window of Brunetti's office looked across to the old men's home at San Lorenzo, and what he saw there was enough to confirm everything he believed about the fate of the old, the mad, or the abandoned who came to be cared for by the current public institutions. He drew himself away from these reflections and glanced at his watch; it was past time for the Count to leave, if he was to be in time for lunch. He got to his feet. Thank you. If you remember anything else...'

The Count interrupted and finished the thought for him, 'I'll let you know.' He smiled, not a happy smile, and said, 'It's very strange to think about those times again.'

‘Why?'

Just like the French, we couldn't forget what happened during the war years fast enough. You know my feelings about the Germans,' he began, and Brunetti nodded to acknowledge the unyielding distaste with which the Count viewed that nation. 'But to give them credit, they looked at what they did.'

‘Did they have a choice?' Brunetti asked.

'With Communists in charge of half the country, the Cold War begun, and the Americans terrified which way they'd go, of course they had a choice. The Allies, once the Nuremberg Trials were over, would never have pushed the Germans' noses in it. But they chose to examine the war years, at least to a certain degree. We never did, and so there is no history of those years, at least none that’ s reliable.'

Brunetti was struck by how much the Count sounded like Claudia Leonardo, though they were separated by more than two generations.

At the door of the office, Brunetti turned and asked, 'And the drawings?'

'What about them?'