Chapter Twenty-Five
Quick footsteps disappeared down the hall. Brunetti turned to La Capra. ‘It’s too late, Signor La Capra,’ Brunetti said, straining to keep his voice calm and reasonable. ‘I know she’s here. You’ll just make things worse by trying to do anything to her.’
‘I beg your pardon, Signor Policeman, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,’ La Capra said and smiled in polite puzzlement.
‘About Dottoressa Lynch. I know she’s here.’
La Capra smiled again and waved his hand in a broad, sweeping gesture that took in the room and all the objects it contained. ‘I don’t see why you’re so insistent about this. Surely, if she were here, she’d be with us, enjoying the sight of all this beauty.’ His voice grew even warmer. ‘You hardly believe me capable of keeping such pleasure from her, do you?’
Brunetti’s voice was equally calm. ‘I think it’s time to end the farce, signore.’
La Capra’s laugh, rich with the sound of real delight, broke out when Brunetti said this. ‘Oh, I believe it’s you who is the farceur, Signer Policeman. You are here in my home without invitation; I would guess that your entry was illegal in itself. And so you have no right to tell me what I must and must not do.’ The edge on his voice sharpened perceptibly as he spoke until, when he finished, he was almost hissing with anger. Hearing himself, La Capra recollected the role he was playing, turned away from Brunetti, and took a few steps towards one of the Plexiglas cases.
‘Observe, if you will, the lines on this vase,’ he said. ‘Lovely, simply lovely, the way it serpentines around to the back, don’t you think?’ He made a gossamer loop in the air with his hand, imitating the flow of the painted line across the front of the tall vase inside the case he was observing. ‘I’ve always found it remarkable, the eye for beauty these people had. Thousands of years ago, and still they were in love with beauty.’ Smiling, transforming himself from mere connoisseur to philosopher, he turned to Brunetti and asked, ‘Do you think that’s the secret of humanity, then, the love of beauty?’
When Brunetti made no response to this banality, La Capra let the subject drop and moved to the next case. With a small, private laugh, he said, ‘Dottoressa Lynch would have liked to see this.’
Something in his voice, the tone of dirty secrets, made Brunetti glance across at the case in front of which the other man stood. Inside he saw the same gourd-like shape that he remembered from the picture Brett had shown him. Upright and striding to the left was a human-bodied fox almost identical to the one painted on the vase in the photo Brett had shown him.
Unbidden, the thought was there. If La Capra was willing to show him this vase, then it was clear he no longer had anything to fear from Brett, the one person who could identify its origin. Brunetti wheeled around and took two long strides towards the door. Just before it, he stopped, turned his body to the side, and raised his right leg. With all his force, he kicked out at the door just below the lock. The violence of the kick shocked his entire body, but the door didn’t move.
Behind him, La Capra chuckled. ‘Ah, you Northerners are so impetuous. I’m sorry, but it’s not going to open for you, Signor Policeman, no matter how hard you kick at it. I’m afraid you’re my guest until Salvatore comes back from his errand.’ With complete confidence, he turned back towards the glass cases. ‘This piece here is from the first millennium before Christ. Lovely, isn’t it?’
* * * *