Free Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon

Prince Farnese in Rome had managed to sell a lot of things through him. But, anyway, people contacted the agents, who came and had a look at what they had to sell, and then they offered to buy what they liked or thought they could sell.’ Again, Lele stopped.
    Puzzled about what in all of this could have turned Lele pyrotechnic, Brunetti prompted. ‘And?’
    ‘And they’d offer a fraction of what the objects were worth and say that’s all they could expect to get for them.’ Even before Brunetti could ask the obvious question, Lele explained. ‘Everyone knew it wasn’t worth the trouble to contact anyone else. They’d formed a cartel, and as soon as one of them gave prices, he’d tell all the others what the prices were, and none of them would offer more.’
    ‘But what about men like your father? Couldn’t people contact him?’
    ‘By then my father was in prison.’ Lele’s voice was like ice.
    ‘On what charge?’
    ‘Who knows? What does it matter? He was reported to have made defeatist remarks. Of course he did. Everyone knew we had no chance of winning the war. But he made those remarks only at home, only with us. It was the other agents. They gave his name and the police came around and took him away, and it was made clear to him while he was being questioned that he should no longer work as an agent.’
    ‘For people who wanted to leave the country?’
    ‘Among others. He was never told just whom he shouldn’t deal with, but he didn’t have to be, did he? My father got the message. By the third beating, he got the message. So when they let him go, and he came home, he no longer attempted to help those people.’
    ‘Jews?’ Brunetti asked.
    ‘Primarily, yes. But also non-Jewish families. Your father-in-law’s, for example.’
    ‘Are you serious, Lele?’ Brunetti asked, unable to disguise his astonishment.
    ‘This is a subject about which I do not joke, Guido,’ Lele said with unusual asperity. ‘Your father-in-law’s father had to leave the country, and he came to my father and asked if he would handle the sale of certain items for him.’
    ‘And did he?’
    ‘He took them. I think there were thirty-four paintings and a large collection of Manutius first editions.’
    ‘He wasn’t afraid of the warning he’d just had?’
    ‘He didn’t sell them. He gave the Count a certain sum of money and told him he’d keep the paintings and books for him until he came back to Venice.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘The family, including your father-in-law, went overland to Portugal and then to England. They were among the lucky ones.’
    ‘And the things your father had?’
    ‘He put them in a safe place, and when the Count and his family came back after the war, he returned all of them.’
    ‘Where did he keep them?’ Brunetti asked, not because it made any difference but because the historian in him needed to know.
    ‘I had an aunt who was a Dominican abbess, in the convent over by the Miracoli. She put all of them under her bed.’ Brunetti was too amazed to say anything, but Lele explained, anyway. ‘Actually , there was a large space beneath the floor of the abbess’s bedroom, and she placed her bed directly over the entrance to it. I never thought it polite to ask what an abbess would want to hide there, so I don’t know what its original purpose was.’
    ‘We can but hope,’ Brunetti observed, recalling childhood tales of the misbehaviour between priests and nuns.
    ‘Indeed. At any rate, it all stayed there until the war was over and the Faliers came home, when my father gave everything back. The Count gave him the money. He also gave him a small Carpaccio, the one that’s now in our bedroom.’
    After considering all of this, Brunetti said, ‘I’ve never heard about this, not in all the time I’ve known him.’
    ‘Orazio doesn’t talk about what happened during the war.’
    Surprised that Lele should speak so familiarly of a man Brunetti had never addressed, not in more than