The Blue Last

“Have you ever seen an Annunciation painting where Mary looks as if she’s saying, ‘Hey, cool.’ Think about it. I’d probably wear that look if Agatha told me she was moving into Ardry End. Poor Mary.” Melrose wished he could tell the Virgin Mary she should be glad that was only the Archangel Gabriel before her and not Marshall Trueblood, who was disappearing up the shadowy nave.

When Melrose found him in the piazza, Trueblood said, “We can skip the Pitti Palace, if you don’t mind.”

If he didn’t mind? By no means did he mind. All he wanted was to get back to that glove shop. “Okay. Later.”

“Then come on,” Trueblood said testily, reclaiming his lead. Over his shoulder, he said, “Next stop, the church of the Carmine. Where the frescoes are. It’s on the way to Luzi’s.”

Nothing was on the way, thought Melrose, lost in a little maze of alley-like streets. They turned off the Via Sant’ Agostino to the Via De’ Serragli and the church sprang into view-at least into Trueblood’s, for he trumpeted, “There it is! You’ll be astonished!” He squared his shoulders and secured his picture before him like a shield, as if to defend himself against too much astonishment.

Melrose shrugged and said, “Okay, but listen, when we finish here, I want to go back to that glove shop…”

“Glove shop? Am I losing my mind?”

Again, Melrose shrugged. “I don’t know.” He decided he would take dumb rhetorical questions literally from now on. “But I want some gloves even if you don’t.”

This exchange had taken them into the chapel and down the nave to Trueblood’s cherished frescoes, where they now stood. “Melrose, we’re standing before perhaps the greatest frescoes ever painted.”

“I know, but I’m serious about the glove shop.”

Trueblood was carefully undoing the brown paper, which had begun, it appeared, to molt at the creases, light showing through the frayed folds, like a much-read love letter or a whore’s stockings. Holding it up, he looked from St. Who upward to St. Peter, nodding and nodding.

“It looks like the same painter,” said Melrose, “and looks like the same style, still, you’ve got to ask yourself-”

“I’ve asked myself every question in the book,” Trueblood’s eyes riveted on the fresco. Melrose had to admit all of this was astonishing. He’d seen many representations of Adam and Eve’s being drummed out of Paradise, but never with such expressiveness. Eve’s expression was especially harrowing: the mouth a rictus of pain, eyelids closed and slanting down as if she’d just been blinded. There were various scenes from the life of St. Peter: the tribute money, healing the sick with his shadow. “The thing is, didn’t Masolino paint some of this? Didn’t you tell me they worked together?” Melrose looked on the other side of St. Peter’s raising someone from the dead, he wasn’t sure who, to another rendering of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise. “That’s what I mean. Obviously, another painter painted that representation; everything about it is different.” The two figures seemed completely calm and courtly. “That’s a traditional depiction.”

Trueblood nodded. “That’s the difference between them.” He stood and gawked at the frescoes for a good twenty minutes and paced before the frescoes for another ten while Melrose wandered around, stopped at the top of the nave and wondered what would happen if he tossed holy water on his face. Better not. There could be a thunderbolt.

“Time to go!” yelled Trueblood, rewrapping his painting-warmly, as if they were about to be heaved into a Russian winter.

Aldo Luzi lived in the Oltrano in a flaking stone building on a dead-end street running parallel to the river. The flat itself took up all of an upper floor, exquisitely decorated and luxuriously furnished. The materials covering sofas and chairs and footstools ran to damask, velvet, silk and brocade.

Signore Luzi was a scholar; thus, Melrose had expected a small rundown room overflowing with books, more than the bookshelves could accommodate, and stacked in piles and spilling over the worn carpet. Papers, journals in uneven towers. The room should look as crowded as the man’s intellect, heaps of quarterlies and journals reflecting heaps of intelligence. Perhaps an owl on a dusty mantel. Something like that.

Nor did Signore Luzi himself fit Melrose’s preformed idea of a “foremost expert.” One, he was too young (late thirties? early forties?); two, he was too good-looking (where was the bent back, the owlish eye, the spectacles, the unruly gray hair?); three, he was too well dressed, even for informality. The blue shirt was undoubtedly designer, the scarf Hermes. His mind might not belong in this sumptuous setting, but his body did.

They were seated in the spacious living room, Melrose on a dark green damask cloud, Trueblood on its dark blue twin cloud. They had bypassed the usual small talk, Melrose was glad to see, to get to the point. The only concession to the stock formalities was the espresso Luzi had served. Now, he set down his cup on the sleek coffee table to take up Trueblood’s picture.

Luzi nodded at Trueblood’s story of his acquiring this panel while his eyes stayed on the picture. He had a black mustache which he liked to tug at, thoughtfully.

For some moments, Luzi said nothing, but let his eyes rove the room as if trying to decide whether to buy the place. Melrose looked at his host’s painting-covered walls. They were largely Renaissance, and he was surprised to see among them one of those village-nightmare works of Stanley Spencer. Higher up was a picture of a man with a bowed head, stark naked and looking as if he were being stoned to death. It could be a Lucian Freud. There was one dreamy pre-Raphaelite painting that might have been Holman Hunt’s as it resembled his Ophelia. It showed a young woman lying by a brook amid wild flowers that blew like waves gusting back.

Trueblood set his small cup in its saucer and the clink dragged Melrose back from the shores of dreams.

Signore Luzi had been talking: “… They were so much in and out of one another’s pockets-Masaccio, Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, Masolino. There were always the concori-the, uh, competitions-and, also, several different artists might work on one painting or sculpture at different times and in different years. Masolino and Filippino Lippi worked on Masaccio’s Saint Peter Enthroned.” Luzi took up Trueblood’s picture again. “The Pisa polyptych…” He interrupted himself to inquire whether they’d planned to go there.

“To Pisa?” said Trueblood. “Of course; it’s our next stop.”

Oh? thought Melrose. No one had bothered to tell him.

“Ah, I am sorry to disappoint you, but that part of the polyptych has been covered or removed temporarily for some small restoration.”

Trueblood slid down in his chair, looking forlorn. “Well. Oh, well.”

Signore Luzi continued. “Now, several pieces have been discovered in churches, true. It’s just that in your circumstance, finding this in an antique shop, I would think, no, this cannot be.” Still holding the painting, he continued. “Masaccio. It’s hard for me to imagine such talent and reputation in a man so young. Does that happen much anymore?”

Trueblood interrupted. “But it is possible. Eleanor Ickley-do you know her?”

“Of course. I was just reading an article by her.” He pulled again at the tip of his mustache. “Now,” Luzi said, “one real authority on Masaccio is in Siena. A Signore Di Bada-”

Melrose sat bolt upright. Real as opposed to foremost? In Siena? Now that Pisa was dead in a ditch, would they still be making side trips? Oh, surely not!

Oh, surely, yes was Trueblood’s response. “Di Bada. Siena, it’s not far. It’s only-”

“Sixty-five, seventy kilometers.” Luzi shrugged. “An hour’s drive.” Luzi shrugged this distance away.

Trueblood looked at Melrose, not to ask if he acquiesced in the matter of this short journey-it was assumed anyone, even Melrose, would be thrilled to go sleuthing after Masaccio-but to see how soon Melrose wanted to go.

Melrose said nothing.

“We could leave now,” said Trueblood.

“We could,” said Melrose, “but we won’t. I want to go to the glove shop.”

Aldo Luzi laughed. “But of course! Such wonderful leathers! And such colors!”

They all took the glove shop as a point of departure, rose and headed for the door. As they shook hands and said their good-byes, Aldo Luzi leaned against the doorjamb and said, “He was only twenty-seven when he died.” It