Sean worried his lip as his eyes darted along the page. “If he was trying to accumulate a pool of cash, you’d never know it from this. Five hundred bucks for clothes! And look at this Visa payment! Something that required all that cash must have come up very suddenly to make him sell his car and cottage.”
“You don’t usually buy expensive things for cash,” I said doubtfully. “Cash suggests something illegal. You don’t think he was being blackmailed?” I asked, hardly conceiving it possible.
Sean examined me over the rim of his coffee cup. “For what? He can’t be an illegal immigrant—his life’s too public.”
“No, it couldn’t be that—he’s had his citizenship for years. His little weaknesses are wine and women.”
“And song,” Sean added, probably because the three words are always linked in our minds.
“Music isn’t illegal. Not even playing the violin. I mean unless you steal somebody else’s composition and claim it for your own. And none of the stuff Victor claims as his own is good enough to bother stealing. He’d root around in old books and find something first class if he meant to pull off plagiarism."
“Maybe he wanted to buy something illegal,” Sean suggested quietly. We were both racking our brains for an answer and coming up with some pretty farfetched ideas.
“He’s not one of those crazy connoisseurs who’d buy stolen
objets d’art
for his own sole covetous enjoyment. If my uncle couldn’t display his purchase to the world, he wouldn’t buy it.”
Sean still wore that quiet air, but there was a sharp look in his eyes that puzzled me. “Are you sure that applies across the board?”
“You’re talking about women? That he does in private. Do you think he’s being blackmailed over some woman?” I didn’t feel in my bones this was the answer. Victor wouldn’t mind a little scandal. He liked pretty women, and if the woman’s husband didn’t like it, it was the woman who’d be in a pickle, not Victor. “He’d never pay the kind of money we’re talking about to a woman. He’s interested in them, not insane.”
“Actually it was music we were talking about,” Sean reminded me.
“I don’t get it.”
“His violin is missing.”
“So? Misplacing a violin isn’t a crime. I wonder if he sold it, too—but surely not just before a concert.”
“A violinist wouldn’t do that unless he was planning to replace it with a better one. What would a really good violin cost—say one of those Stradivariuses you hear about.”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling in wonderment. “A fortune, if you could find one.
"Maybe that’s what he bought then,” he decided in his naiveté.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Sean. They don’t grow on trees, you know. If a Stradivarius had been for sale, the world would have heard about it. It would have been sold through Sotheby’s or one of the international auction houses. When you consider that Stradivari has been dead for over two hundred years, and his output wasn’t that high—well, you get the idea. They’re like the works of the old masters painters— rare."
“How many would he have produced?” he persisted.
“I’ve heard Victor rant on about him occasionally. He said about eleven hundred or so instruments altogether, I think. He made violas and cellos as well, but fewer of them. And, of course, it was so long ago that about half of the instruments have been destroyed.”
"Or lost. It’s possible one of the five hundred and fifty odd ones gone missing has survived.”
"Yes, but they can’t just have ‘survived’ in some old shed. The wood would rot, and anyway they have to be played regularly or they lose their voice and die eventually.”
“Violins don’t die.”
“Well, they fade away.”
“You hear from time to time about a Stradivarius cropping up."
“It usually turns out to be something else—just an old violin that somebody has pasted a label in to con a gullible buyer. Victor wouldn’t be fooled by that.”
“Maybe he got hold of a genuine one,” he insisted with a mulishness that was becoming tiresome.
“As I said, a genuine Stradivarius would be handled publicly through Sotheby’s. And it would cost anywhere from a million up."
“If he planned to sell his apartment as well, he’d have a good down payment. Besides, Victor’s an expert; he’d know the real McCoy, whereas the guy
trying
to sell it to him wouldn’t. It’s possible he spotted one in some antique shop or . . ."
“Be real, Sean. If the store owner was holding Victor up for that kind of money, he’d have a pretty sharp idea he had a genuine Stradivarius on his hands, so why not get it authenticated and make his million? You know how high prices on rare paintings and things go when they’re sold at public auction. The bidders get some kind of mass hysteria or something. A statue of a horse was sold for
over ten million a while ago, and artists that are hardly known go for millions. No, it doesn’t make any sense,” I said and dismissed it.
His next idea was even worse. “Maybe it was stolen,” he said, and shot me an apologetic glance. “That’d require some discretion—and a lot less than a million.”
“What would be the point of buying a stolen violin? He couldn’t play it in public. What you don’t understand is that the existing Stradivarius violins are known. They have names and distinguishing characteristics, like people. The Library of Congress has one—it’s called the Betts. There’s another called the Swan, and one called the Cessol. The Musical Institute at Florence has the Tuscan—all well known, famous instruments. Stradivarius started out as a wood carver; he ornamented some of his violins. They weren’t just churned out by a machine. They have people and animals and leaves and flowers and things on them. They’re individual, very recognizable to people who are interested in such things.”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “I saw a picture of one in the National Geographic. It didn’t look any different from any other violin—no carvings. They can’t all be as fancy as you’re saying. A new Rembrandt turns up from time to time. I don’t see why a Stradivarius couldn’t, since he made over a thousand of them.”
“It’s not impossible,” I relented, “but then it’s within the realm of possibility that Victor was carried off by spacemen too. I think we’d be farther ahead to stick to the probable.”
Sean’s face turned pink, and when he spoke, his voice was slightly out of control. “I’m just trying to fit this grab-bag of unlikely facts together. There’s a saying that when the impossible has been eliminated, what you’re left with is the truth, however improbable.”
“Then let’s start by eliminating the impossible idea that Victor either knowingly bought a stolen violin or was dumb enough to buy one without knowing it was stolen.”
“We’ve got a set of facts here that aren’t going to go away just because you don’t like them. Let’s massage them a little and see what we come up with. One, Victor had a surprise, which he never got to reveal at the concert.”
“That was my capriccio.”
“You weren’t so sure the night of the concert. Two, he was scraping together big bucks. Three, his own violin’s disappeared.”
“And four, Victor’s disappeared. How does that fit into your scenario?”
“God, I hate that word ‘scenario’. Okay, let’s think about it. I don’t know your uncle, but let’s say he came across a Stradivarius and wanted to own it. He wouldn’t tell anybody, especially the owner. Maybe the seller got such a good price out of him by pretending the thing was some other good make, like the one Victor owns—the Guan thing.”
“Guarneri.”
“There must be others as well.”
“There’s Amati—Stradivari studied under him. An Amati might be worth about the price Victor was accumulating,” I admitted.
“So he buys it, not knowing it’s a stolen Stradivarius.”
“But he
would
know—I explained all that.”
Sean exploded in a way that surprised me. I took him for a more gentle sort of a man, but his face turned reddish and he clenched his jaws and still couldn’t stop himself from barking. “Christ, if there are five hundred and fifty of them in the world, he wouldn’t know them
all
intimately.”
I gave him a quelling stare. “Continue with your scenario.”
“So he buys it, thinking he’s made a great coup, then finds out it’s hot.”
“How does he suddenly find out?”
“He takes it to an expert.”
“I guess that’s what he’d do, all right.”
“Who would that be—in Toronto, I mean?”
“He has a friend at the Royal Conservatory, a Dr. Bitwell, who’s the country’s top expert. All right, so Bitwell tells him he got stung. Then he’d go to the police,” I said, with admirable restraint. “Or at least back to the man he bought it
from.”
“Do you think the guy would be dumb enough to still be there?”
“He wouldn’t just run away and leave his antique shop.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a shop. Maybe Victor just met him somewhere—at a party, or something.”
“Oh really, Sean! This is becoming more ridiculous by the minute. This isn’t Raymond Chandler; it’s convoluted enough to be Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes.”
“Just hear me out, will you?” he asked stiffly. “We’ll assume Bitwell told him the thing is stolen—he’d like to get his money back, but maybe he’d like even better just to keep the violin for himself. For a while anyway,” he added quickly when I blasted him with a blistering glare. But I didn’t interrupt verbally.
“Maybe he just wants to cuddle and play the thing for a day or so,” Sean continued.
“Not at the price of a couple of hundred thousand bucks. He’d have gone straight to the police and reported it.”
“Well, he didn’t, so we can rule that out,” Sean insisted.
“We can rule out this whole fabrication. You’ve OD’d on detective stories, Sean. You’re hallucinating.”
“I admit it’s only a theory,” he said defensively. “Of course, where it breaks down is when he learns the thing is stolen.”
“It broke down long before that if you ask me. And you’ve left out the most important fact that Victor is missing.” Something began fomenting in my head, which must have left some trace on my face as Sean was regarding me peculiarly.
“What is it?” he asked.
“That’s why he was kidnapped!” I exclaimed, not a shout, but a shocked whisper. “Whoever he bought the damned thing from followed him and knew he was getting it authenticated when he went to the conservatory. He kept following him till he got the chance to steal the violin back, but Victor wouldn’t give it up, so he had to steal my uncle too.”
I stopped, waiting for Sean to tell me I was crazy. He sat, nodding in total agreement. “But when he kidnapped him, he found out he didn’t have the violin, and he’s been looking for it ever since!” The whole incident reeled around in my head, as sharp as though I were seeing it on the screen. The clues fell into place so neatly I forgot for the moment that the whole thing was founded on quicksand.
Sean seemed to follow this crabbed reasoning with no difficulty. “Exactly,” he said, nodding his head. “What isn’t quite so clear is where the violin got to.”
“That’s right, because if any of this is true, Victor must have had the violin he bought in the case when he went to see Dr. Bitwell.”
“Bitwell!” Sean exclaimed triumphantly. “That’s where Victor left it.”
“The running shoes suggest he took the violin out at the Casa Loma.”
“No, it only suggests he took an empty case into the Casa Loma. He left the Strad with Bitwell before he went to visit you. You’ve got to give Bitwell a call, Cassie.”
But before I did, I wanted to rethink our mad story. How exactly had we got off on this track? It all began with Sean’s idea that Victor had bought a stolen Stradivarius, and there was not one single shred of actual evidence that he’d done anything of the sort. I gently pointed this out to him, but it didn’t budge him an iota.
“What’s it going to cost to phone the guy?” he urged.
“If he had the violin, or even if Victor had been to see him, don’t you think he would have called me, or the police? Or is he another of the covetous ones who wants to keep it for himself?”
“Hey, he could be! I never thought of that!” He smiled benignly on my brilliant inventiveness. “Or it could be that Bitwell’s the one they’ve contacted about the ransom. I mean if they know he has the violin, and they would know if they made Victor talk . . .” He let it hang menacingly. Visions of a poor, tortured Victor rose up like something out of a horror movie.
“I’ll make the call,” I said. There was no answer at the conservatory, but Bitwell was in the phone book, so I called his house. There was no answer there either. “I’ll call back tomorrow.”
“First thing in the morning,” he added, shaking a peremptory finger at me.
“I will call, because I’d feel guilty if I didn’t, but I don’t believe Bitwell will even know what I’m talking about. Victor was being blackmailed—that’s what I think. I don’t know what he did, but it makes more sense than thinking he’s dumb enough to buy a stolen Stradivarius violin.”
Sean relented into a smile. “It won’t do any harm to call.”
“Even if you’re right, which you’re not, it still doesn’t account for the fact that my uncle’s own del Gesù is missing. Where is it in all this tale? He was taking it to Roy Thomson Hall. That’s what he had in that violin case that was suddenly full of my Adidas.”
“He took the money in the case to buy the Stradivarius, and after he bought it, he put the Strad in the case,” Sean explained patiently, as though to an idiot. “Or possibly he gave the del Gesù plus the money in exchange for the Stradivarius. The very fact that it’s missing points that way. Yeah, that’d account for it.” He appeared perfectly satisfied now, all the little ragged ends tucked into place.
"That violin was his wife. He wouldn’t trade it in on a different one.”
“I believe you mentioned your uncle is divorced?” I resisted the impulse to dash my coffee in his smug face.
“He wouldn’t plan to play the Strad the very day he bought it. He’d want a few weeks to get used to the feel of it and work it into prime voice. He didn’t sell the del Gesù the day of a big concert. And besides, whoever sold the Stradivarius to him must have known he’d want to have it authenticated. So why follow him and steal it back?”