The Jewels of Paradise by Donna Leon

turnarounds, with omissions and additions, and corrections and afterthoughts, of what she had heard at the Foundation, read, and imagined. In essence, it filled in some of the gaps left in the story Caterina had been told by Dottor Moretti and what she had inferred from her meetings with the two cousins. Letters from Steffani existed in which he spoke of the poverty of his life. When she heard Roseanna say this, Caterina tried to recall ever having seen a letter from a Baroque-era composer—indeed, any composer—who complained of the excessive richness of his life. But there also existed a letter—Roseanna had indeed put in her time reading at the Marciana—written in the last year of his life in which he mentioned some of the objects in his possession, among them books and pictures and a casket and jewels. The catalogue of the more than five hundred books he owned listed first editions of Luther, which would be of enormous value today.
    “Is that the treasure?”
    Roseanna stopped and pulled her arm free to raise it, along with the other, in a gesture of complete exasperation. “My God, listen to me. We don’t even know if there are papers in the chests—or what’s in them—and here I am talking about treasure. The whole thing’s crazy.”
    Caterina took great comfort from the other woman’s unconscious use of the plural. And yet Roseanna had a point in saying that they were all crazy. Caterina was swiftly approaching the same view. If the cousins had learned of the possibility of unearned wealth, Caterina had seen enough of them to know how they would be driven wild by the thought of so-called treasure.
    As to the likelihood that any papers in the trunk would lead to the discovery of a treasure, Caterina was less certain. It was unlikely that any treasure—whatever it was—would still be resting, safely undiscovered, in the place where it had been put. Realizing that her speculations led nowhere, Caterina asked, “What else did you learn?” Producing her easiest and most relaxed smile, she coaxed, “I had to do a lot of that sort of reading while I was in school. It’s comforting to know that someone else finds it interesting.”
    Roseanna, who had been spared the experience of reading back issues of Studies in Early Baroque Counterpoint , gave Caterina an uncertain glance and said, “I understood only the historical parts, not the musicological.”
    “Good,” Caterina said with a smile, “the historical part’s usually more interesting.”
    This earned her another puzzled glance, enough to warn her to treat her profession with greater seriousness. “What else did you read?”
    “One of the articles said that his possessions went to a Vatican organization called Propaganda Fide and disappeared, then these two trunks turned up a few years ago when an inventory was made. Then somehow the cousins managed to have them sent here. I was never told how that happened.”
    Caterina realized there was little to be gained from trying to penetrate any of the mysteries created by the cousins. Thinking out loud and returning to the question of the trunks, Caterina said, “If they were autograph scores, then the music would have a certain value.”
    “What does certain value mean?” Roseanna asked.
    “I have no idea. That usually depends on how famous the composer is and how many of his manuscripts are on the market. But Steffani’s star isn’t in the ascendant, so no one’s going to be paying a fortune for whatever might be there.”
    Nudged by curiosity about when she would be able to begin her research, Caterina asked, “Did Dottor Moretti tell you when they’d come to open the chests?”
    “Noon,” Roseanna said and looked at her watch. Then, sounding like a guilty schoolgirl and not at all like the acting director of the Fondazione Musicale Italo-Tedesca, she said, “We better get back.”

Six
    T HEY HAD BEEN IN R OSEANNA’S OFFICE ONLY A FEW MINUTES when they heard the front door open and close.