Free Murder at the National Gallery by Margaret Truman

Rental counter. Annabel decided to wait until he’d finished his transaction before getting in line for Customs and Passport Control. She idly crossed the terminal and came up behind Luther, who was going over a map with the rental-car agent. Annabel was close enough to hear their conversation. He was going to a town called Ravello, off the A2, south of Pompeii.
    Mason seemed startled when he realized she was so close.
    “Long drive ahead of you?” Annabel asked pleasantly.
    “No. Just a few hours.”
    “Thank you again, Luther, for these past two days.”
    He smiled and shook her hand. “Drive safely,” she said. “You know how Italians are on the road.”
    “I’m well aware,” he said. “Carlo missed his calling. I think he got his license at a Monte Carlo rally. Have a pleasant flight, Annabel. At least Mr. Giliberti won’t be your pilot.”
    Of all the places in Italy Mason had visited over the years, Ravello ranked high on his list of favorites. It was situated high, oncliffs above Amalfi, approximately twenty miles northeast of Positano and two hundred miles northwest of Cosenza, where the fledgling mafioso, Giovanni Saltore, had his career cut short after stealing paintings from San Francesco di Assisi.
    Ravello represented to Mason almost everything lovely about Italy. He knew he was not alone in that assessment. In 1880, Wagner was so taken by the romantic splendor of Ravello’s Villa Rufolo that he exclaimed, “The magic garden of Klingsor has been found.” Mason had attended the annual July Wagner Festival held in Ravello on two occasions. And once, during a sabbatical from the Gallery, he’d lived there for two months.
    He arrived before noon, checked into the Villa Maria Hotel, and enjoyed a light lunch. Later, he sipped a sweet vermouth on the grassy terrace, transfixed by the view before him, the sea far in the distance, framed by the majestic hills of Amalfi.
    He spent an hour in the town’s cathedral before getting into his rented car and driving twenty minutes to a small church with crumbling masonry. Weeds and vines obscured its façade. A wooden sign that had once announced the times of services was broken; pieces of it lay on the ground.
    Mason got out and approached the overgrown front door. He was about to knock when the door opened. A short, spare man wearing a blue chambray shirt, baggy gray pants, and sandals faced him. Mason judged him to be in his seventies. He was mostly bald; hair that appeared to have been dyed black was wet and combed close to his temples. His eyes were small and black, set close together in the thin, angular face. A carefully trimmed pencil moustache looked as though it had been painted on his upper lip with a black felt marker. “Father Giocondi?” Mason said.
    “
Si
. You are Signor Mason.”
    “Yes.”
    “Come in, come in.”
    They entered a large room where once pews and an altar had dominated. But that was when the parish had a congregation and before its beloved priest had cut his deal with the Vatican.
    Besides being a man of the cloth, Father Pasquale Giocondihad been a thief. Dirt poor, he’d entered the priesthood at the outbreak of World War II as a safer alternative to joining the Italian army and soon discovered there were fringe benefits to having become
Father
Giocondi. No reason to give up his earlier vocation. There were black-market goods to be laundered and sold and favors to dispense to politicians and businessmen. The war was good to Giocondi; he did not celebrate its end. For years afterward he tended to his faithful flock in the small church outside Ravello and took a little extra off the top of the collection plate in return for dispensing his blessings upon them. Eventually, his misdeeds were discovered—and proved by a papal board of inquiry—causing the good father to do what any citizen might do. He hired a lawyer, who hard-bargained with Vatican attorneys: “The church doesn’t need this sort of scandal,” the attorney