The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

came to claim them that the candy-striped box would be handed over to its owner. That, at least, was the plan.
    The Pensione Garibaldi was one of the quietest and most respectable pensions in Rome. It had been established in the nineteen twenties by a retired civil servant who had secured a lucrative contract for the accommodating of other middle-ranking civil servants visiting Rome from the provinces. These were people who could not afford to stay in the hotels de luxe, but who expected a standard of comfort in keeping with their position. After all, if you were the Deputy Head of the customs office in Bari, in Rome for a three-day meeting on preferential tariffs, you would be entitled to expect a reasonable view and your own table in the dining room. You would also expect a desk clerk who would address you properly as ‘
Ragioniere
’ and take any telephone calls without asking for your name to be spelled out letter by letter. The Garibaldi provided all this, and more, and when the civil servants went elsewhere they were easily replaced by German scholars in Rome to avail themselves of the city’s libraries and galleries. It was in the Pensione Garibaldi that the art historian, Gustave Hochler, stayed while writing his
Life of Caravaggio
, and it was at the much sought-after table in the window of the pension’s small library that Professor Edmond Winterberg penned his devastating critique of Humperdinck, suggesting that it was Wagner who wrote passages of Humperdinck rather than the other way round!
    Prinzel had been the first to discover the Garibaldi and had in due course recommended it to von Igelfeld.
    ‘Rome is so noisy,’ he had said. ‘It’s almost as bad as Naples in that respect. The Garibaldi is a haven of quiet.’
    Von Igelfeld had spent two weeks there while visiting
la Sapienza
and had fully endorsed Prinzel’s views. Now the three of them were back again, and there was the same man at the desk who greeted them all as if they had never been away. Von Igelfeld was given the room he had occupied last time, and the Prinzels were given a room at the back, overlooking the carefully cultivated garden with its white marble figure of Augustus and its lily-covered pond.
    Von Igelfeld lost no time in ensuring that the reliquary was safely stored in his wardrobe. This was a large mahogany cupboard with a sturdy lock, and it was clear that nobody would be able to gain entry to it without the exertion of considerable force. In an establishment like the Garibaldi, with its well-ordered atmosphere, the prospect of that happening was slight.
    The bones secured, von Igelfeld went out and took a coffee in the small coffee bar at the end of the street. He felt a strange sense of exhilaration: not only had he a month of stimulating work ahead of him but he could also look forward to enjoyable architectural rambles with his friends the Prinzels. In every respect, it promised to be a most rewarding time. Not even the newspaper, which he read over his coffee, could dampen his mood. It reported that the Government had fallen – which was nothing unusual, thought von Igelfeld – and one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Italy had shot a fellow judge in the course of an argument. Again, there was nothing surprising in that, reflected von Igelfeld. Fortunately the judge had survived and had taken a remarkably tolerant view of his brother justice’s action.
    ‘We are all human,’ he had said from his hospital bed. ‘
Nihil
humanum mihi alienum est.
The work of the court must go on.’
    The following day, while the Prinzels went off to the nearby Villa Borghese Gardens, von Igelfeld made his way to the Vatican Library. He had secured advance permission to work in the Library, which he had used before. He was interested, in particular, in the manuscript sources, including several volumes of bound correspondence from early Jesuit missionaries in Goa. Although they wrote their formal reports to the Vatican in Latin, a