'That was a most valuable visit,' Pendergast said as they got into the car. 'We now know that Ranier Beckmann lived in Italy, probably in 1974, that he spoke Italian decently, perhaps fluently.'
D'Agosta looked at him, astonished. 'How did you figure that out?'
'It's what he said when he lost at rummy. 'Kay Biskerow.' It's not a name, it's an expression. Che bischero! It's Italian, a Florentine dialect expostulation meaning 'What a jerk!' Only someone who had lived in Florence would know it. The coins in that cigar box are all Italian lire, dated 1974 and before. The fountain behind the four friends, although I don't recognize it, is clearly Italianate.'
D'Agosta shook his head. 'You figured all that out just from that little box of things?'
'Sometimes the small things speak the loudest.' And as the Rolls shot from the curb and accelerated down the street, Pendergast glanced over. 'Would you slide my laptop out of the dash there, Vincent? Let us find out what light Professor Charles F. Ponsonby Jr. can shed on things.'
{ 47 }
As Pendergast drove south, D'Agosta booted the laptop, accessed the Internet via a wireless cellular connection, and initiated a search on Charles F. Ponsonby Jr. Within a few minutes, he had more information than he knew what to do with, starting with the fact that Ponsonby was Lyman Professor of Art History at Princeton University.
'I thought the name was familiar,' Pendergast said. 'A specialist in the Italian Renaissance, I believe. Lucky for us he's still teaching-no doubt as professor emeritus by now. Bring up his curriculum vitae, if you will, Vincent.'
As Pendergast merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike and smoothly accelerated into the afternoon traffic, D'Agosta read off the professor's appointments, awards, and publications. It was a lengthy process, made lengthier by the numerous abstracts Pendergast insisted on hearing recited verbatim.
At last, he was done. Pendergast thanked him, then slipped out his cell phone, dialed, spoke to directory information, redialed, spoke again briefly. 'Ponsonby will see us,' he said as he replaced the phone. 'Reluctantly. We're very close, Vincent. The photograph proves that all four of them were together at least once. Now we need to know exactly where they met, and-even more important-just what happened during that fateful encounter to somehow bind them together for the rest of their lives.'
Pendergast pushed the car still faster. D'Agosta shot a surreptitious glance in his direction. The man looked positively eager, like a hound on a scent.
Ninety minutes later the Rolls was cruising down Nassau Street, quaint shops on the left and the Princeton campus on the right, Gothic buildings rising from manicured lawns. Pendergast slid the Rolls into a parking space and fed the meter, nodding to a crowd of students who stopped to gawk. They crossed the street, passed through the great iron gates, and approached the enormous facade of Firestone Library, the largest open-stack library in the world.
A small man with a thatch of untidy white hair stood before the glass doors. He was exactly what D'Agosta imagined a Professor Ponsonby would look like: fussy, tweedy, and pedantic. The only thing missing was a briar pipe.
'Professor Ponsonby?' Pendergast asked.
'You're the FBI agent?' the man replied in a reedy voice, making a show of examining his watch.
Three minutes late, D'Agosta thought.
Pendergast shook his hand. 'Indeed I am.'
'You didn't say anything about bringing a policeman .'
D'Agosta felt himself bristling at the way he pronounced the word.
'May I present my associate, Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta?'
The professor shook his hand with obvious reluctance. 'I have to tell you, Agent Pendergast, that I don't much like being questioned by the FBI. I will not be bullied into giving out information on former students.'
'Of course. Now, Professor, where may we chat?'
'We can talk right there on that bench. I would rather not bring an FBI agent and a policeman back to my office, if you don't mind.'
'Of course.'
The professor marched stiffly over to a bench beneath ancient sycamores and sat down, fussily cocking one knee over the other. Pendergast strolled over and took a seat beside him. There wasn't room for D'Agosta, so he stood to one side, arms folded.
Ponsonby removed a briar pipe from his pocket, knocked out the dottle, began packing it.
Now it's perfect, thought D'Agosta.
'You aren't the Charles Ponsonby who just won the Berenson Medal in Art History, are you?' asked Pendergast.
'I am.' He removed a box of wooden matches from his pocket, extracted one, and lit the pipe, sucking in the flame with a low gurgle.
'Ah! Then you are the author of that new catalogue raisonne of Pontormo.'
'Correct.'
