The Price of Silence-The Valenti Family: Book One

An Unfortunate Interest in Dead People

By the time Clara Bennett arrived in Naples, her suitcase had lost a wheel, her presentation had acquired an inexplicable formatting problem, and the airline had managed to seat her beside a man who believed the entire history of Western civilization could be explained through the decline of the Roman Empire and the invention of feminism.

He’d explained both theories before the drinks cart reached their row.

Clara had a doctorate in art history and very little patience for men who mistook certainty for knowledge. She’d spent most of the flight pretending to sleep.

Closing her eyes had only encouraged him to lecture the seatback in front of him.

“Women don’t understand history,” he’d informed her somewhere over the Atlantic. “They tend to look at it emotionally.”

She had opened one eye.

“That’s fascinating,” she’d said. “You should write a book.”

He’d looked pleased.

“Of course, you’d have to learn something about history first.”

For the remainder of the flight, he had confined his historical analysis to the in-flight magazine.

Outside Naples International Airport, the heat struck her as she dragged her seventy-nine-dollar suitcase toward the taxi stand. It had survived three flights of stairs in Boston but lost a wheel somewhere over the Atlantic. Now it listed sharply to the left every few feet, determined to take her into traffic.

She stopped beside the taxi stand and called her best friend.

Daphne answered on the fourth ring, sounding distracted by something happening in her university office.

“Have you arrived in one piece?”

“Almost. My suitcase is down a wheel, and a man on the plane spent six hours explaining the Roman Empire to me.”

“You must have loved that.”

“I’ve never felt closer to committing a felony.”

Daphne laughed. She’d witnessed the grant applications, the rejected archive requests, and Clara’s spectacular response to a colleague who’d dismissed provenance research as genealogy for expensive furniture. She knew what this trip meant.

“Send me a picture when you get to the hotel,” Daphne said. “And call if you need anything.”

“I will. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Clara ended the call and hauled her lopsided suitcase toward the taxi queue.

The itinerary had taken months of applications, permissions, and polite reminders. By the time the funding came through, the journey itself felt like a minor scholarly achievement.

She had three weeks in Italy: a conference in Naples, followed by archival appointments in Florence and Rome. Her department was covering the travel and the university had approved the access fees. For once, she wouldn’t have to squeeze a research project into four exhausting days.

She intended to conduct serious research and eat pasta in quantities that would alarm her doctor. A holiday romance would be welcome, should one present itself.

She refused, however, to rearrange an archive appointment for a handsome stranger.

At thirty-two, Clara had reached the pleasant stage of adulthood in which she understood that sex could be wonderful, relationships could be enjoyable, and neither was worth sacrificing an otherwise perfectly good life.

In Boston she had an apartment full of books, friends who knew when to come over and when to leave her alone, and work she loved except when it involved university administration.

She liked deciding what to do with a Saturday without consulting anybody.

She especially liked leaving her shoes wherever they happened to land.

After several years alone, those small liberties had become difficult to imagine surrendering.

The taxi driver, a compact man with silver hair and an expression of permanent skepticism, examined her suitcase before attempting to lift it into the trunk.

“One wheel missing,” he observed.

“It’s been a difficult journey for both of us.”

He tested the weight of the case, gave her a look that suggested she had packed stones, and asked where she was staying. When she showed him the address, his expression improved.

“Very nice hotel. Very expensive.”

“Fortunately, the university is paying.”

“Ah.” He smiled and shut the trunk. “Then you must enjoy it.”

Clara decided she liked him.

The taxi joined a stream of scooters and buses whose drivers regarded lane markings as suggestions. Laundry hung from balconies above graffiti-scarred walls. A motorcyclist slipped between two cars with barely an inch to spare, and Clara found herself bracing against the door.

The taxi stopped behind two men debating fiercely through the open windows of their cars. When the light changed, neither appeared to notice.

A woman shouted from a balcony to someone below. Outside a café, two elderly men argued with the solemn intensity of diplomats negotiating a border.

Clara pressed her forehead lightly against the window.

She had been to Italy before, but never Naples. Rome had impressed her. Florence had seduced her. Naples, she suspected, was going to require rather more stamina.

As they approached the waterfront, the city opened toward the sea. Across the bay, Vesuvius rose in the afternoon haze, enormous and faintly menacing.

It was beautiful.

It was also, Clara thought, a rather unsettling reminder that some of the most magnificent things in the world had a history of killing people.

An appropriate subject for an art historian.

* * *

The Hotel Vesuvio was exactly the kind of establishment that made Clara feel briefly wealthy before remembering that her university would be reimbursing her expenses according to an extremely detailed policy involving breakfast allowances.

The lobby smelled faintly of polished wood, fresh flowers, and money. Marble floors reflected the light from elaborate chandeliers. A discreetly dressed woman at reception greeted Clara in English so polished it made her suddenly self-conscious about her Italian.

Clara’s Italian was serviceable, provided nobody spoke too quickly or asked her to discuss anything more complicated than Renaissance painting, train schedules, or the location of a bathroom.

She had once spent forty minutes attempting to explain a problem with a rental car and accidentally informed the employee that she had murdered the clutch.

The distinction between killed and destroyed had apparently escaped her.

Her room overlooked the bay.

Clara dropped her handbag onto a chair, crossed to the balcony, and opened the doors.

Warm air rolled in, carrying the smell of salt and exhaust and something delicious cooking nearby. Below, traffic moved along the waterfront. Beyond it, the Mediterranean glittered beneath the descending sun.

“Oh,” she said softly.

For a moment, she simply stood there.

She took a photograph and sent it to Daphne, who responded within seconds that the view was lovely but did not constitute evidence of a handsome Italian man.

Clara smiled, put the phone aside, and unpacked.

Her presentation was scheduled for ten the following morning. She had a reception that evening, a meeting with an Italian colleague on Friday, and an appointment at a private archive the following week.

The archive was the reason she had been particularly determined to secure funding for this trip.

For nearly eighteen months, Clara had been researching a relatively obscure seventeenth-century painting known as Saint Cecilia at the Organ, attributed to a minor follower of Artemisia Gentileschi.

The painting was competent rather than inspired: Saint Cecilia seated in a dim room, her narrow hands at the keys of an elaborate instrument. The disputed attribution mattered less to Clara than the paper trail. Its owners kept changing, sometimes without a corresponding record of a sale.

It had appeared in several private collections over the centuries, disappeared during the Second World War, resurfaced in Switzerland in the 1960s, and eventually entered the possession of an Italian family whose identity was protected by a confidentiality agreement.

The confidentiality agreement had been particularly effective at stopping questions, which made Clara want to ask more of them.

She believed very strongly that confidentiality agreements had no business interfering with the historical record, although this opinion had not made her particularly popular with wealthy collectors.

The records presented a problem no reputable catalogue could afford to ignore.

Two inventories gave different dimensions. The dates of successive transfers overlapped. Most troubling was a deed witnessed by a notary who, according to municipal records, had died fourteen months before signing it.

None of it necessarily proved anything sinister.

The international art market was full of inaccurate records, misplaced documents, wishful thinking, and the occasional spectacular fraud.

Clara had taped copies of the conflicting records above her desk in Boston. The contradiction involving the dead notary was still there, impossible to explain away as a transcription error.

Two months earlier, she had received an email from a private archival foundation in Naples offering access to a collection of estate papers that might clarify the painting’s history.

The message had been unusually specific.

The foundation claimed to possess correspondence concerning the painting’s transfer from a Swiss collector to an Italian intermediary in 1978, along with photographs and property inventories.

Clara had nearly spilled coffee on her laptop.

It was the kind of discovery that could transform an interesting scholarly article into a substantial piece of original research.

She’d answered before finishing her coffee.

After several exchanges the foundation offered a date and promised access to the papers.

Now, overlooking Naples, Clara had the first real chance to test the theory she’d been developing in Boston.

Clara opened her laptop, located the presentation she’d spent three weeks preparing, and discovered that the image on slide fourteen had shifted several inches to the right.

“For the love of God.”

She fixed it.

Then she fixed slide nineteen.

Then she spent fifteen minutes looking for a missing footnote before discovering that she’d accidentally changed its font color to white.

At seven, she showered and dressed for the reception.

A sleeveless emerald-green dress, low heels, and small gold earrings. Her chestnut hair fell just past her shoulders, still slightly damp at the ends. She considered doing something elaborate with it, then remembered the humidity and abandoned the idea.

In the mirror, she looked like a reasonably competent professional woman who had slept poorly and spent much of the day dragging a suitcase through an airport.

Which was accurate.

“Good enough,” she told her reflection.

She picked up her conference badge and headed downstairs.

* * *

The reception was being held at a restored palazzo near the historic center, a building so extravagantly beautiful that Clara briefly considered stealing one of the ceiling frescoes.

She was standing beneath an enormous chandelier, contemplating the logistics of such an operation, when someone called her name.

“Clara Bennett!”

She turned to find Dr. Tommaso Ricci approaching with both arms extended. The art historian from the University of Bologna was a tall, slightly disheveled man in his late fifties who wore beautifully tailored suits and perpetually looked as though he had forgotten something important.

They had met at a symposium in London four years earlier and subsequently developed a friendship based on mutual intellectual interests, professional gossip, and a shared suspicion that most art-historical attribution disputes would be improved by the participants drinking less wine.

“Tommaso!” She kissed both his cheeks. “I’m delighted to see you.”

“And I you. You’ve survived another year in America, I see.” He reached for his glasses to inspect her conference badge, then began patting the pockets of his jacket.

“They’re on your head,” Clara said.

He found them, looking only momentarily embarrassed. “There. You see? This is why I like having you at conferences. Now, come. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

He took her arm and steered her through the crowded room.

The reception had attracted the usual international mixture of scholars, curators, collectors, institutional donors, and people whose precise function was difficult to identify but who always seemed to be standing nearest the expensive wine.

Clara recognized several colleagues. She exchanged greetings, accepted a glass of prosecco, and allowed Tommaso to guide her toward a small group near the windows.

“Clara,” he announced, “this is Professor Enrico Bellini, from Rome. Enrico, Dr. Clara Bennett, the American scholar I told you about.”

Bellini was perhaps sixty, with silver hair, an elegant suit, and the calm expression of a man accustomed to being listened to.

“Dr. Bennett,” he said, taking her hand. “I’ve read your article on the attribution of the Lucrezia paintings. Excellent work.”

“Thank you. Although I should warn you that the conclusion has made me spectacularly unpopular in certain circles.”

“Then it was probably worth writing.”

Clara smiled.

Bellini asked about her latest paper. When she mentioned the argument over attribution, he knew precisely which evidence her critics had challenged.

He listened without interrupting—a distinction Clara had learned not to take for granted at conferences.

But at the name Saint Cecilia at the Organ, his expression tightened.

Tommaso continued speaking. Bellini no longer appeared to hear him.

His smile stayed in place, though he set down his glass.

“Saint Cecilia,” Bellini repeated. The name seemed to catch his attention. “I thought your work was principally concerned with attribution.”

“It usually is. But I’ve been trying to reconstruct the painting’s ownership history, and there are gaps I can’t explain.” Clara told him about the inventories and the disputed transfer. “I’ve arranged to see some private records next week.”

Bellini glanced toward Tommaso. “Where?”

“Fondazione Belladonna.”

Tommaso stopped watching a waiter with a tray of pastries. “Belladonna?”

The change in both men’s expressions was brief, but Clara noticed it. “Is that a problem?”

“Not a problem,” Bellini said. “They have a reputation for discretion. Who is your contact there?”

“Elisabetta Greco. She’s been helpful so far, though I haven’t met her.”

Bellini repeated the surname almost under his breath. He looked toward the crowd before asking if Clara would share what she found.

“Assuming they let me see anything worthwhile, certainly,” she said. “You seem to know the place. Have you worked with the collection?”

“Not directly.”

Clara waited, but he offered nothing further. She knew scholars who could turn a question about lunch into a twenty-minute lecture; his reluctance was unusual.

“Is there something I should know before going?”

“Only that some private collections are difficult to work with.” He smiled, though the expression seemed practiced. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”

Tommaso touched her elbow and nodded toward the food. “I’m rescuing her now, Enrico. She hasn’t eaten since the airplane, and I refuse to have an American colleague collapse at a Neapolitan reception.”

Tommaso pressed a plate into Clara’s hand.

Bellini gave a slight bow and turned away.

Clara watched him cross the room, where he stopped beside a woman in a dark suit and spoke quietly into her ear.

The woman looked toward Clara.

Their eyes met.

Then the woman turned away.

Clara frowned.

“Do you know the woman he’s speaking to?” Clara asked.

Tommaso followed her gaze. “Not well. Why?”

“She was staring at me.”

“Half the room is staring at someone. That’s what academics do when we run out of interesting things to say.” He considered the woman again, then added, less lightly, “Private collections attract strange company. Best not to worry about it tonight.”

Clara wasn’t convinced, but Tommaso had already begun describing a newly restored fresco he wanted her to see, and she let the subject drop.

* * *

Two hours later, the reception had become louder, warmer, and significantly less scholarly.

Clara had eaten enough miniature pastries to constitute dinner and was contemplating whether a third glass of prosecco would compromise her ability to deliver a coherent presentation the following morning.

She decided it would.

Instead, she stepped onto a small terrace overlooking the courtyard.

The night air was softer now. Below, the courtyard fountain murmured beneath the conversations drifting from the open doors. Somewhere nearby, someone was playing music.

Clara leaned against the stone balustrade and checked her phone.

Daphne had sent a photograph of an exceptionally ugly dog, accompanied by the suggestion that he would make Clara an excellent husband. Clara was still deciding whether the animal’s pronounced underbite constituted a deal-breaker when her phone rang.

An Italian number.

She almost ignored it.

Then she remembered the archive.

“Pronto?”

“Dottoressa Bennett? This is Elisabetta Greco, from Fondazione Belladonna. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all.” Clara moved away from the terrace doors, where a group of guests had started laughing loudly. “Is everything all right with the appointment?”

“Very well, thank you. In fact, we’ve finished cataloguing several additional items—correspondence, photographs, some financial papers—that I think may interest you. The material may date from before the 1978 transfer.”

Clara stopped pacing. Earlier correspondence could be exactly what she needed. She asked whether she could see a description of the documents before her visit.

“I’m afraid our owner would rather discuss them in person,” Elisabetta said. “But we could receive you tomorrow afternoon instead of next Tuesday, if your schedule allows.”

Tomorrow was Friday. Clara’s presentation ended at eleven, followed by a panel discussion and lunch. She had intended to spend the afternoon recovering, possibly with a glass of wine and an obscene quantity of gelato. An unexpected archival appointment, however, was not something to turn down.

“I could be there after three. Where exactly are you located?”

“Outside the city. We can have a driver collect you from your hotel at four.”

“I could take a taxi. I’d rather not put you to any trouble.”

“The property is difficult to find, and the driver knows the entrance our visitors use. It really would be easier.”

Clara had once spent three hours navigating rural France in search of a collection stored above a pharmacy. The offer was welcome, if unusually insistent.

“All right. Four o’clock, then. Please send me the address and the details in writing.”

“Of course. One other thing: the owner does not permit additional visitors. You will be coming alone?”

“Yes. I’m traveling on my own.”

“Bene. We look forward to meeting you, Dottoressa Bennett.”

Clara thanked her and ended the call.

Clara looked down at her phone.

It was unusual, certainly. Private archives could be eccentric, though, particularly when wealthy owners were involved. She had encountered collectors who demanded signed nondisclosure agreements, curators who insisted she wear cotton gloves to handle laminated photographs, and one elderly countess who required visitors to remove their shoes before entering a room containing eighteenth-century furniture.

People did peculiar things when they possessed valuable objects.

She checked her email.

Nothing yet.

Then she went back inside.

* * *

At eleven thirty, Clara returned to the hotel, kicked off her shoes, and found a message from Daphne asking how the reception had gone.

Clara called her rather than attempt a summary on the tiny keyboard. Daphne answered from her apartment in Boston, where the television was playing and something crackled in a frying pan.

“The reception was lovely,” Clara said. “I met a professor from Rome who’s actually read my work, though he became distinctly strange when I mentioned the archive.”

“Strange how?” Daphne asked, and Clara recounted the conversation while her friend moved a pan off the stove. Before Daphne could offer a theory, Clara added that the foundation had called and moved her appointment to the following afternoon.

“You think he knows something,” Daphne said.

“Or knows somebody who does.” Clara described the foundation’s unexpected invitation and the forged-looking transfer witnessed by a notary who had been dead for fourteen months.

“Maybe he was very dedicated,” Daphne said.

Clara laughed. Then she explained why it mattered: if the record had been forged, someone had gone to considerable trouble to obscure the painting’s ownership, despite its relatively modest value. That was what she wanted to understand. Not the painting itself, exactly, but the people who had moved it from one collection to another and left such an untidy trail behind them.

Daphne listened, asking the occasional question. She knew little about seventeenth-century painting, but she understood what it sounded like when Clara was chasing an idea. She had listened to enough impassioned accounts of badly catalogued collections to recognize that particular mixture of excitement and indignation.

When Clara finished, Daphne asked whether she was enjoying herself.

“I’ve only been here a day.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Clara looked past the open balcony doors. The night was warm, the water beyond the city nearly black. She was in Naples, preparing to give a paper she believed in, with three weeks of work and travel stretching ahead of her.

“Yes,” she said. “I really am.”

They spoke for a few more minutes about ordinary things: Daphne’s impossible supervisor, Clara’s ruined suitcase, the errands waiting in Boston that could now safely wait a little longer. It was the kind of conversation that had sustained their friendship for years. Nothing needed solving; neither woman needed to be particularly interesting.

After they said goodnight, Clara set her phone beside the bed.

Her career had taken years to build. Even when a student confused Michelangelo with a man named Michael Angelo—or described the Renaissance as an era of significant advancements in dinosaurs—she liked the work. She liked the apartment and the friends waiting in Boston, too. Being here did not require her to wish for another life.

She had the conference in the morning, the archive in the afternoon, and then Florence and Rome. There was room in the itinerary for museums without appointments, leisurely dinners, and perhaps a day in which nobody expected her to accomplish anything.

She switched off the lamp and lay awake a little longer, rearranging the questions she’d ask Elisabetta Greco. By the time she decided which one mattered most, she was asleep.

* * *

Across the city, in an office overlooking the harbor, a woman named Elisabetta Greco ended a telephone call.

She sat at a desk beneath a framed photograph of the Bay of Naples. The room was almost entirely dark, illuminated only by a small brass lamp and the blue light of her computer monitor.

On the screen was a photograph of Clara Bennett.

It had been taken from the university website: Clara standing beside a group of students, smiling at something outside the frame.

Elisabetta studied the photograph for a moment.

Then she opened an encrypted messaging application and typed:

She accepted. Tomorrow at sixteen hundred.

The response arrived almost immediately.

Does she suspect anything?

Elisabetta thought of the cheerful American voice on the telephone.

No.

A pause.

Then another message appeared.

The buyer?

Elisabetta checked the second window open on her computer.

A photograph showed a handsome dark-haired man in a charcoal suit emerging from a black car, his head turned toward someone just outside the frame. He was smiling, one hand raised in what appeared to be a dismissive gesture.

Lorenzo Valenti.

The photograph had been taken three days earlier outside a restaurant in Naples.

Elisabetta typed her reply.

His attendance is confirmed.

The next response was brief.

Proceed.

She closed the application.

For several minutes, she sat without moving.

Then she opened Clara’s university biography again.

Dr. Clara Bennett. Associate Professor of Art History. Specialist in Renaissance and Baroque attribution and provenance.

Thirty-two years old.

Unmarried.

No children.

Currently traveling alone.

Elisabetta looked at the photograph one final time.

“Mi dispiace,” she murmured.

I’m sorry.

Then she switched off the computer and went home.