The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald Page A

mature and expand, Commissioner. Let people have their say, allow them their little foibles and foolish beliefs. Don’t always be so direct. No one will want to talk to you or confess to you. All this directness, which, if you don’t mind my revisiting the idea, is terribly American, is not conducive to trust. You’re an isolated man, Commissioner. Learn how to tune into others’ wavelength. We need to be talking, getting to know one another. So I don’t like niggers on TV reading me the local news about my ancient city of Rome, what do you care? You listen, silently disagree, we talk. That’s how it’s done.”
    Blume shoved himself and his chair back from the table. “If you have something important to say, then do me a favor and start at the end with whatever the important thing is.”
    “And talk backwards thereafter? Absolutely not. Anyhow, you’re still investigating. I can tell from the way your eyes keep roaming around this room, looking for things. So I know you’ll be interested in what I already know about Nightingale and Treacy. But before I go any further, did you happen to find any manuscripts, typescripts, memoirs, notebooks, diaries, papers, when you were here earlier?”
    “No,” said Blume.
    “Written in English, possibly? Probably in longhand: I don’t think Treacy would have even recognized a computer.”
    “No.”
    “That’s unfortunate. Have you spoken to Nightingale yet?”
    “No,” said Blume. “I’m here with you, waiting for you to tell me something.”
    “Replicating a picture or doing it in the style of an old master is not a crime, but, of course, you know that. The crime comes when it is offered for sale as if authentic, but Treacy never sold the paintings. That was Nightingale.”
    “Did Nightingale do time?”
    “No,” said the Colonel. “And I’m glad we’re talking like civilized men now. Treacy was caught with faked provenance documents a few times, but he could pretend he was an innocent victim. As for the sale price, Nightingale always feigned a total lack of artistic sensibility. He would ask the buyer to name a price, sometimes even warning about the possibility of forgeries. He allowed buyers to call in experts, if they wanted. If they came back to him and told him it was a fake, which usually they didn’t, you know what he would do?”
    “Withdraw it from sale?”
    “No. He’d apologize, and ask them if they were interested in buying it as a copy or a pastiche instead. Often they said yes, and the painting would go out with just the surname but not the Christian name of the artist, which is the convention used for imitations. The important thing is, it remains legal. Art forgery, dealing, even theft and ownership—all categories that are hard to pin down. Legally speaking, art is a very gray subject.”
    Without warning, Colonel Orazio Farinelli’s face turned the color of a damson plum. It was not until beads of sweat appeared on his forehead that Blume realized what he had taken for an expression of inexplicable rage was the result of the Colonel’s efforts to stand up. When the Colonel had made it off his stool, he placed his hands on the table, lowered his head like a penitent until his face and head returned to white. Then he spoke.
    “You are absolutely sure you didn’t find a manuscript, a diary, anything like that? Or, if you prefer, I could shorten the conversation and ask you where you put the one you found.”
    Blume opened his hands like a priest blessing the broken bread on the table, then he, too, stood up. “I found nothing of the kind. But I am interested in your insistence on these papers. Perhaps we should look for them together?”
    The Colonel said nothing, but walked back into Treacy’s living room, where he eased himself into a leather armchair.
    Blume cleared some art books off the bulging settee, and settled himself on it, and looked over to where the paintings and sketches had been.
    “I see you have been removing things