‘I think so.’
‘Could they have been stolen?’ Brunetti asked.
Lele considered this for a while before he answered. ‘Perhaps. But major pieces like that, if they’re genuine, people know about them. There’s a record of sales, and people who know majolica have a pretty good idea of who owns the best pieces and when they’re sold. But that’s not an issue with the Florentine pieces. They were fakes.’
‘What was Semenzato’s reaction when you said they were?’
‘Oh, he said that he was very glad I’d discovered it and saved the museum from an embarrassing acquisition. That’s what he called it, “an embarrassing acquisition”, as though it was perfectly all right for the dealer to try to sell pieces that were frauds.’
‘Did you say any of this to him?’ Brunetti asked.
Lele shrugged, a gesture that summed up centuries, perhaps millennia, of survival. ‘I didn’t have the feeling that he wanted to hear anything like that.’
‘And what happened?’
‘He said he’d return them to the dealer and tell him that the museum wasn’t interested in those two pieces.’
‘And the others?’
‘The museum went ahead and bought them.’
‘From the same dealer?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Did you ask who it was?’
That question earned Brunetti another of those looks. ‘You can’t ask that,’ Lele explained.
Brunetti had known Lele all his life, so he asked, ‘Did the curators tell you who he was?’
Lele laughed in open delight at having his high-minded pose so easily shattered. ‘I asked one of them, but they had no idea. Semenzato never mentioned the name.’
‘How did he know the seller wouldn’t try to sell the ones you didn’t buy again, to another museum or to a private collector?’
Lele smiled his crooked smile, one side of his mouth turning down, the other up, a smile Brunetti had always thought best expressed the Italian character, never quite sure of gloom or glee and always ready to switch from one to the other. ‘I saw no point in mentioning it to him.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s always struck me as the kind of man who doesn’t like to be questioned or given advice.’
‘But you were called in to look at the plates.’
Again, that grin. ‘By the curators. That’s why I said he didn’t like to be given advice. He didn’t like it that I said they weren’t genuine. He was gracious and he thanked me for my help, said the museum was grateful. But he still didn’t like it.’
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Very,’ Lele agreed, ‘especially from a man whose job is to protect the integrity of the museum’s collection. And,’ he added, ‘to see that fakes don’t remain on the market.’ He moved in front of Brunetti and crossed the room to straighten a painting hanging on the far wall.
‘Is there anything else I should know about him?’ Brunetti asked.
Facing away from Brunetti, looking at his own painting, Lele replied, ‘I think there’s probably a lot more you should know about him.’
‘Such as?’ he asked.
Lele came back towards him and studied the picture from the greater distance. He seemed pleased with whatever correction he had made. ‘Nothing specific. His reputation is very high in the city, and he has a lot of friends in high places.’
‘Then what do you mean?’
‘Guido, ours is a small world,’ Lele began and then stopped.
‘Do you mean Venice or those of you who work with antiques?’
‘Both, but especially us. There are only about five or ten of us in the city who really count: my brother, Bortoluzzi, Ravanello. And most of what we do is done by suggestions and hints so subtle that no one else would understand what was happening.’ He saw that Brunetti didn’t understand this, so he tried to explain. ‘Last week, someone showed me a polychrome Madonna with the Christ Child lying asleep in her lap. She was perfect fifteenth century. Tuscan. Perhaps even the end of the fourteenth century. But the dealer who showed it to me picked up the baby — they were carved in separate pieces — and pointed to a place on the back of the statue, just below the shoulder, where the faintest of patches could be seen.’ He waited for Brunetti’s response.
When that didn’t come, he continued. ‘That meant it was an angel, not a Christ Child. The patch covered the place where the wings had been, where they had been taken out, who knows when, and covered up so that it would look like a Christ Child.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there have always been more angels than Christs. So the removal of the wings. . .’ Lele’s voice trailed off.
