The Blue Last

pupils. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, really. It’s just something I felt. Marshall, what are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you chewing your zabaglione? It’s custard.”

“I’m not chewing. But I was thinking, shouldn’t we go to Pisa; even if we can’t see that part of the altarpiece, we could walk around the Carmine to sort of feel the context.”

Melrose knew that Trueblood knew that entreaty would fall on deaf ears.

He glanced quickly at Melrose and said, “No, I expect not.” He had the look of one who had finally discovered his home, only to find the family had been turned out of the house…

Melrose took another swallow of the Chianti and asked himself if Trueblood-running all over Tuscany with his questionable painting-if Trueblood weren’t, like Masaccio, one of the chosen.

Twenty-five

The next morning Melrose was awakened at some intransigent hour by Trueblood’s banging on his door.

“Sorry,” he said when Melrose stumbled to open it. “But just knocking wasn’t enough.”

“At dawn, it usually isn’t.”

“Dawn? Good lord, it’s after eight.”

“Close enough to dawn for me.” Melrose yawned.

The sun had come out yet there was still this ocean of mist at their ankles, and Melrose felt as he had the night before, that he was standing on a ship’s prow, looking out over empty water. After coffee and rolls, they stashed their small bags in the trunk and aimed the car toward Lucca.

This time, Melrose didn’t have to be argued into taking the autostrada. Neither did the Maserati. They flew.

A buxom girl in a dirndl and peasant blouse opened the door, painted an astonishing blue, and said, “Posso aiutarle?”

Melrose did not think she’d asked “What posse of retards are you?” So he assumed it must be something to do with offering help. He asked if she spoke English. “We’re English-inglese?”

“Ah, si, si!”

“We’d like to see Signore Prada. I called-”

“Non capisco…”

She seemed genuinely upset. Melrose put an imaginary phone to his ear and pretended to be dialing. “Mr. Plant? Mr. Trueblood? Called before.”

“Ah, si! Per favore.” Her outstretched arm motioned them in to a hallway pleasantly adorned with more photographs than Melrose had ever seen on one wall, a delicate table with a soft-glowing lamp on it, and the scent of a flower he couldn’t determine. They followed her down the hall to a door she lightly knocked upon.

“Avanti!”

The girl opened the door and let them pass before her. “Grazie,” said Trueblood.

“Prego.” She nodded and left.

The gentleman who had been standing by the window Melrose assumed to be Tomas Prada. “Signore Prada?” said Melrose. He introduced himself and Trueblood. “We called about the painting.”

Tomas Prada, Melrose judged, was somewhere in his late fifties. He had very dark hair and a thick mustache, both of which showed signs of gray. His features were chiseled, his cheekbones and nose sharply defined.

“Ah, yes. The Masaccio. Please, sit.” Prada indicated two comfortable-looking armchairs. He himself continued to stand by the window.

He must also have been a painter; Melrose saw the easel and what looked like fresh paint on the canvas, a study of an olive grove, as nearly as he could tell. “You’re a painter yourself?”

Prada gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Si. I teach at the Accedemi in Florence. Three days a week only, so I choose to continue to live in Lucca.” Prada left the window and came across the room. “Now, let’s see this Masaccio you fancy you’ve found.”

Melrose (who for some reason had today put himself at the helm of this little ship) thought his comment rather patronizing and set him straight: “It’s not precisely our fancy. Mr. Trueblood has shown this to several people, here and in England, all authorities on Renaissance art, including your friend Pietro di Bada. Neither he nor the others feel they can say definitely that it isn’t Masaccio’s work.” Although Di Bada had come damned close.

Prada smiled a rather inky smile. His mustache was all over it. “Wall sitters.” He waved away the other authorities, including his friend Pietro.

Melrose frowned. “ ‘Wall sit…’? Oh, you mean fence-sitters.”

“Those who cannot make their minds up. Let me see.” With both hands he took the panel, which he rested upright on the floor against the easel. He gave it a quick once over. Then he took it to the window and made his examination slower. “First, have you run tests on the material”

“Yes,” said Trueblood.

“And the paints, the surface, they are compatible with the fifteenth century?”

Trueblood nodded.

Prada again leaned the panel against the easel, adjusting its position so that it got more light. He looked at it for some time, one arm across his midsection, the other braced there as he indulged the nervous habit of pulling at his mustache. Prada was silent for some moments, staring at St. Who. After a while he said, “These altarpieces were commonly dismantled, the separate parts to be taken by whatever family had commissioned the work in the first place. Sold perhaps, perhaps passing through many hands. None of the Pisa polyptych is in the church of the Carmine anymore, and only one piece is in Pisa itself, in a museum. This is very interesting.”

Prada moved to the window again to look at the painting. “You know Donatello had a lock put on his workshop because he feared others would steal or plagiarize his work. Which at least one did. There was so much competition for commissions, for they meant not only money, but more commissions.” He said all of this to the painting. Looking up from his examination, Prada sighed. He handed the picture back to Trueblood. “I have a suggestion. You have started at the end of your search. Go back to the beginning.”

“Come?”

“The beginning. Instead of the end. Now, how did you come by this picture?”

“In an antique shop. I’m a dealer myself.”

“And what about the shop that sold this to you? Is it reliable?”

Trueblood nodded.

“What is the provenance? Where did he find it?”

“She. According to the woman who sold it to me, she found it in San Giovanni Valdarno.”

“That is something that tells against it, to claim it was found there. And how could one even entertain the notion that this is part of the Pisa polyptych, and hang it up to sell? No. How much did you pay for it, if I may inquire?”

“Two thousand pounds.”

Prada nodded. “In other circumstances, quite a lot of money, but only a fraction of what this would be worth if it was whole and if it was genuine. You said it was tested for its physical properties?”

“Yes,” said Trueblood, “as well as could be in a short time.”

Prada moved to the easel again. “Would it be St. John the Baptist? He has the weighty form you find in Masaccio’s figures. The chiaroscuro-that shadow just there-” he pointed to the side at what Melrose couldn’t even make out, it was so subtle “-is Masaccio, yes? And the spatial effects. Si… Of course, you know Masaccio was the first to make use of Brunelleschi’s architectural perspective? The receding diagonals giving