Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists by Barbara Wilson

Author:Barbara Wilson [Wilson, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5519-1
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
Published: 2013-10-09T15:41:00+00:00

Twelve

THE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC was housed in a sprawling old palazzo off Campo San Stefano. Once white, the enormous building was now stained with the soot of pollution and rain. The exterior was studded barbarically with blackened heads, but there was an undeniable, though broken-down grandeur to the place. A vast, ghostly courtyard of colonnades, bounded at one end by mesh netting full of pigeon feathers, added to the derelict effect. A great Venetian family had lived where now a few hundred students studied. From the upper stories came piano chords and snatches of saxophone and trumpet.

I hadn’t expected Nicky to be on time and was a little late myself, yet there she was, in a corner of the square in front of the conservatory, attempting to blend into the base of a statue. She was dressed, unusually for her, in a sober suit of gray with a long skirt. She’d purchased sensible oxfords and had managed to twist her auburn curls up into a knot. This must be her notion of what a researcher might wear. She even had glasses on a chain around her neck and an elegant leather briefcase.

Boyish in jeans and running shoes, Roberta was lounging impatiently at the peeling front door. “Quick,” she said, after shaking hands with Nicky. “The chief librarian is at lunch. My friend Giovanna is going to take us up. Otherwise they never let anyone into the library.”

“Why, are the materials so precious?” I asked.

“No, they are too lazy,” she said.

The interior of the building was as grand as the outside. We went up a massive staircase to the piano nobile, its floor inlaid with pink and gray marble. It was empty save for some large Rococo paintings and a few gilt chairs, and a number of doors. In that, it was like the Sandrettis’ home, but on a much grander scale. All the rooms led off from the piano nobile, giving a fairy-tale sense of choice: Which door led to the sacks of gold and which to the dungeon? Which to the tiger and which to the woman? We opened one door and found ourselves in the library, which, especially in comparison to the grand empty hall outside, was small and cramped. A young man was paging through librettos and making copies at a photocopier. A woman with green-rimmed round glasses and an inch of strawberry-pink hair was flipping through the New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers in front of her on a long wooden table. Her short sleeveless dress was strawberry to match her hair.

“Giovanna,” Roberta said in English for Nicky’s benefit, “is a teacher of the violin here. She knows a great deal about the Baroque era.”

Giovanna looked more like a ladybug than a music professor, but she had a winning smile and serious eyes.

“Shall we?” Giovanna said, and without another word the four of us disappeared into a back room filled with shelves and files.

“Are these Vivaldi manuscripts?” I asked, as Giovanna began to pull out boxes full of scores.

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