Giotto's hand

by Iain Pears

  9

  For all Bottando’s strictures about her expenses, Flavia took a taxi from the airport; she had a busy time ahead of her, and no time to waste saving money. First stop was the British police, to explain herself. Nothing ever upsets people more than foreigners wandering around the place. And she thought that she might well need their assistance; all the more reason to be as open as possible with them.

  “Good evening, miss. Welcome to England.” The man in charge was unusually youthful; no more than his late thirties and most unlike any other English policemen she’d ever come across. Generally, the need to plod the beat before going on to more intellectually challenging activities makes British policemen a bit dull; the more lively ones balk at the prospect of spending a few years breaking up pub brawls and do something else instead. Such, at least, is their European reputation.

  Manstead was a bit different. He managed to project a level of intelligence and alertness that was rare. On the other hand, it quickly became clear that he knew almost nothing about his job at all. After the preliminaries were taken care of—the journey, the weather, the traffic—he expressed his pleasure at having the opportunity to meet a member of the continent’s longest-surviving Art Squad.

  “We’re just getting going,” he explained with a sigh. “A policy change again. The old Art Squad was set up a long time ago; then it was shut down and merged with local forces, then the party line shifted and we were reborn—but only after all the contacts and expertise and files had been dispersed.”

  “Do you all have a background in the art market?”

  He snorted derisively. “Oh, no. Of course not. Put in people who know something about the job? What an idea. No. We were just assigned detectives who were interested, and told to get on with it.”

  “So you rely heavily on outside advisers?”

  “Would do, if we had the money. But we don’t have a big enough budget to pay people with any regularity. So we have to survive on people being willing to do us favours.”

  “Sounds pretty dire.”

  “It is. It’s all politics. If we had some resounding success that got splashed over the newspapers, we’d attract attention and be given more. To he who hath, shall be given. It should be our motto. Still,” he said, reluctantly abandoning a favourite topic, “you haven’t come here to listen to me complaining about the collapse of the British police.”

  Flavia smiled apologetically. “I reckon we could match you, atrocity for atrocity. What I need to hear about is this man Forster.”

  Manstead nodded. “Nothing to do with us. That is, we’ve looked through our files and there is no mention of him at all. Not even a whisper. We’re asking around for you, though.”

  Flavia looked disappointed, even though she was not surprised. Bottando’s Giotto was not the sort of person whose proclivities would have been common knowledge. If he existed, he would be an absolutely, squeaky-clean, one hundred-percent good citizen. In some ways, the lack of a file on him in British hands made her more prepared to entertain the notion of him as bent. “Not even any gossip?” she asked.

  Manstead thought carefully; he was a carefully-thinking sort of man. “Nobody seems to have liked him much; there is that to be said. But when I asked whether, now he was dead, they felt like saying what they thought of his business practices, everyone denied ever having heard a thing.”

  “I see. So if someone, for example, suggested he’d ripped off every major collection in Europe over the past twenty-five years, you reckon they’d be surprised?”

  “I think everyone would be astonished,” Manstead said. “Is that what your boss is on about? Is that what you think as well?”

  She shook her head. “Not really,” she said regretfully.

  “But your boss does?”

  “Not exactly. Somebody in the administration doesn’t.”

  Manstead eyed her with a faintly amused whisper of a smile. “I see,” he said slowly. “At least I think I do. One of those, eh?”

  Flavia sniffed with a disapproval that came directly from a sense of embarrassment.

  “So what’s your interest in his death?” Manstead asked, deciding that if she didn’t want to burden him with details that was fine by him.

  “None whatsoever, which I imagine will make life a good deal easier for everyone. Except, of course, it would be much more interesting if he was murdered.”

  “Of course. But unfortunately, the evidence is very ambiguous there. It’s really only the fact that this colleague of yours… What’s his name?”

  “Colleague?” Flavia was a little puzzled for a moment. “Oh. Jonathan. Yes. What about him?”

  “Well, it’s only really because he was on the scene, talking about theft and pointing out coincidences, that the police are taking it so seriously. Otherwise, I think they might well have concluded he drank a wee bit too much, and slipped on a loose stair. And they may well still do so.”

  “And who knows, they may well be right,” Flavia added.

  “Who knows indeed?” Manstead said easily.

  “But I’m sure we will get to the bottom of it eventually. Now, would you care for a drink yourself?”

  At about the same time that Flavia’s plane was squeaking to a halt at Heathrow, Argyll’s time and labour was being redirected from late nineteenth-century English plumbing into areas where he could more reasonably claim some sort of expertise. This was the doing of Manstead who, being conscientious, rang the Norfolk police to tell them that such was the international interest in Forster that a very high-ranking expert from Italy was flying in especially to offer assistance.

  So he exaggerated a little, and alarmed the local police quite considerably. Their response was to go round and collect Argyll. Not that they thought for a moment he was perfect, but he did answer a practical need: which was to put a stop to any form of interference from London. Forster’s death may have had something to do with paintings. They didn’t know much about the workings of the art market so, if they weren’t careful, they would have to hand over large chunks of the case to Manstead who, desperate as he was for a bit of publicity, might well claim whatever credit was going should the case be solved satisfactorily. Consequently, they had to bone up on things artistic as quickly as possible, and try and tie that end of the case up to avoid being burdened with Manstead’s help.

  But people knowledgeable about old masters are a little difficult to get hold of in the countryside at short notice. So they decided they would have to make use of the only one readily to hand, and get him to give Forster’s papers a quick look over: if there was reference to something dodgy in there, Argyll might spot it for them.

  So he was taken back to the house and allowed to wander around under the discreet and watchful eye of Constable Hanson. The house was bigger than it appeared from the outside, with a roof space that had been converted at some stage into a long, low room that had evidently functioned as Forster’s office. At one end were all the trappings of the modern art dealer—the books, the telephones, the fax machines and the filing cabinets. At the other end were those bits of his stock in trade that were not hanging on the walls of the dining room, hallway or sitting room downstairs. In a comer was the stairwell which began with the board whose wobbly state may well have precipitated Forster’s fall. Argyll trod carefully as he went up and down.

  Then he went through Forster’s stock of paintings methodically, rapidly and with a combination of mounting disapproval and superior disdain. Nasty, crude stuff; all of it shoddy and most of it ugly. The prices listed were outrageous. He himself was no success as a dealer, he knew, but at least he liked the stuff he couldn’t unload on to others. This was the sort of tat only a real cynic would deal in, not someone with much of an eye. And not someone like Giotto—a person who’d stolen an example of work by almost every master of the Renaissance would hardly deal in stuff like that. On the other hand, he thought, thinking along the same lines as Flavia with Manstead, what better disguise than to have everybody asso
ciate you with the second rate, the tawdry and the ugly? Who, seeing this stuff, would ever dream…?

  Then he turned his attention to the contents of the filing cabinet, although these were not at all interesting. Inventories and the rudimentary accounts that art dealers make out for themselves and the taxman are generally little more than one small column of fanciful numbers which end in an equally fanciful total at the bottom. Even Argyll, who had little talent in mathematics, could manage, although he generally sought the help of Flavia.

  “What do you mean?” she’d said the first time she’d helped him out, “where are your expenses?”

  “Didn’t really have any,” he replied.

  “We went on holiday, didn’t we? You went to a museum during the holiday?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “ ‘Item: one research trip.’ How much do you reckon? Three million lire? Now, the car. You delivered a picture in it once. So, maintenance, petrol and depreciation. Let’s say another million.”

  “But…”

  “Oh, use your imagination, Jonathan,” she had said crossly, and proceeded to go through the entire form, adding a nought here, subtracting one there until, by the end, his little business as an art dealer had unaccountably swung from a small profit into a sudden and alarming loss. For the next six months, he’d been convinced that any day a taxman would come knocking on the door. Just needing a little clarification, Dottore Argyll.

  The point was that Geoffrey Forster’s accounts made his own modest efforts look like something produced in a primary school. Figures all over the place, and Argyll was damned if he could make any sense of it at all. After about three hours of work, the only conclusion he’d come to was that the police had picked on the wrong man if they wanted help from him. He was as bad an accountant as he was a plumber.

  He’d developed a thudding headache by the time he came to the end. Nor was it particularly enlightening: Forster’s income was variable but often quite high, so much so that he had bought not only his own house but two cottages in the village a few years back, although efforts to raise the money to tart them up and sell them to Londoners for weekend houses had not progressed too far. One of the cottages, he remembered, was inhabited by George Barton. His turnover of paintings—officially, at least—had dwindled to virtually nothing in the past couple of years, no doubt being hit by the recession like everyone else.

  Several years back, his income had received a boost from being given a salary—not a huge one, he noted— by Miss Beaumont for what were ambiguously called services, but this stopped abruptly in January—presumably when Veronica died and Mary Verney gave him his marching orders. What, exactly, he had done for his money was far from clear. Nor did he seem to have bought all that much recently; like many dealers, he kept the catalogues of auction sales where he’d bought things, but there were no more than a couple of dozen of these, going back over five years. Not nearly enough to generate much of an income.

  All in all, he appeared to be a man with some financial problems. Unless, of course, there were sources of money which he had kindly decided he needn’t waste the taxman’s time with. Certainly, it wasn’t obviously the financial profile of supposedly the finest art thief of his generation. But you would expect the finest art thief also to be a bit of a whiz in financial skulduggery as well: it was hardly likely that his tax forms would be full of entries like ‘item: one stolen Uccello’…

  That, however, was an unproductive line of enquiry. As was the fact that when Forster severed his ties with Weller House, he had apparently not bothered to return some of the papers concerned with it: at least, Argyll assumed that was why there was a probate inventory of the Weller House paintings in one of the files. Dated some fifteen years back, so Argyll assumed that it had been drawn up on the death of Uncle Godfrey. Not hugely illuminating, as the seventy-two paintings and twenty-seven drawings mentioned were treated in a somewhat cursory fashion. But as it might be the only listing there was, and as it clearly wasn’t Forster’s property anyway, he slipped it into his pocket for return to the rightful owner. He noted that the drawing of the hand was described as anonymous French eighteenth-century, which didn’t satisfy him, although it was better than Mrs. Verney’s assessment. It had also been given a value of thirty pounds, which did seem about right.

  Argyll yawned from sheer boredom and decided to rest on his laurels. He marked his place, shoved the whole lot in a drawer of the desk, locked it to comply with police wishes on security, and told the ever-patient Hanson that he was finished. There was still three-quarters of the filing cabinet to go through, but that could wait until tomorrow. The police could have a quick job, or a thorough one. On their behalf, Argyll decided they would have the latter: he needed a drink, and the now off-duty Hanson readily accepted the invitation to come along as well.

  He arrived back at Weller House at half past seven on the dot, as the last F1-11 of the day rocketed through the chimney pots, bearing a bottle of not very good wine which he’d bought at the pub after turning down old George’s offer of a pint.

  “There you are,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

  “I’ve been helping the police with their enquiries, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Rumbled you at last, eh?”

  “Certainly not. I’ve been reading Forster’s accounts and papers.”

  “Profitably?”

  “Nope. The finer points of accountancy have never been my great strength. He could be as pure as a Trappist or as bent as Al Capone, and I wouldn’t notice.”

  “Neither sounds right to me.”

  “Hmm. I did find this, though.” He handed over the inventory. She looked at it without much interest.

  “He took it, did he? Doesn’t surprise me. If there’s anything else there which belongs to me, could you bring that back as well?”

  “As long as the police don’t mind. But it’s curious that he told your cousin there was nothing like this at all.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want her to know what he was up to. Still, too late to worry about that now. What’s gone is gone. I hope you like rabbit.”

  “I love rabbit.”

  “Good. I strangled it myself. Mass murder is another skill of mine. Some people in these parts can’t see a furry animal without wanting to disembowel it. Killing things is a country occupation.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Eh?”

  “Forster. I gather they’ve arrested someone.”

  “Oh, that,” she said dismissively. “Gordon. I know. More wishful thinking on their part, I fear.”

  “You’re very trusting of your neighbours,” Argyll observed.

  “Am I? In what way?”

  “Well, I tell you Forster may have been a crook, and you pooh-pooh the idea, even though you loathed him. The police arrest Gordon and you dismiss the notion that he might be a murderer, even though you reckon he’s a burglar.”

  She shrugged. “I prefer to think that I reach a balanced account of people. I mean, please don’t stop trying to prove Geoffrey was a thief: nothing I’d like better. Who knows, you may even be right. I’m willing to be persuaded. Give me that cooking wine, will you? On the side over there.”

  “Oh. Tell me more about him,” he said directly, sitting himself down at the kitchen table in a companionable fashion and, rather shame-facedly, pouring the contents of his own contribution into two glasses.

  “More? What do you want to know now?”

  “Everything. Did you know him well? What was he like?”

  “Ah,” she said, stirring thoughtfully. “Complicated story.” She paused for a while as she added a bit of pepper to her potatoes, then stirred furiously again. “Why not, though? Everyone’s dead. You know he was my cousin’s lover?”

  “It was hinted at in the pub,” he replied. “But it was a little ambiguous.”

  “That’s unlike them. They’re normally quite graphic. Anyway, Forster met her a long time back, I gather. He knew the family off and on, a
nd got his foot in the door when Uncle Godfrey died, helping with fending off the inheritance taxes. But he really locked on to her a couple of years before she died. Pure exploitation, of course.”

  “In what way?”

  “Veronica was not the world’s most attractive person, alas. I don’t mean physically, but she was—well, not exactly a warm and vibrant personality, if you see what I mean. And you may have heard that she was a little unstable. Forster spotted her weakness, and when his business got into trouble, he laid siege to her, simply to get his hands on the family silver, as far as I can see. I’m not entirely certain what he sold; nor was Veronica, she always said she trusted him and what was the point of expert advisers if you had to check up on them all the time? I’ll give him this, he was a great actor.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “I mean, one knew he was loathsome: that was obvious to everyone except Veronica. But one never knew quite why he was loathsome, or what he was up to. You just knew that he wasn’t to be trusted. God knows how his wife ever put up with him.”

  “Ah, yes. The wife. Where is she?”

  “I gather on the grapevine that she was spending a few days in London when he died. She should be back any moment. At least she isn’t going to be suspected of giving him a good shove.”

  “Why do you say that? Is that you just being optimistic about human nature again?”

  She looked puzzled for a moment at the need to explain. “Because it’s absolutely inconceivable, that’s why. Though the Lord knows, she has motive.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Simple and innocent, swept off her feet by an older man with forked tongue before she’s old enough to know any better. Not that age had much to do with it, in her case, I fear. Very, very stupid. One of life’s victims. Not much character, I’m afraid: a bit colourless. The sort who looks as though she washes her face in bleach every evening. Doesn’t know how to look after herself. She’s quite sweet, but no resilience; she put up with him for years and years. Why should she suddenly snap now?”