Giotto's hand

by Iain Pears

“Not necessarily,” Flavia said thoughtfully. “After all, I assume you would have sold it on the London market, wouldn’t you? And it might have been awkward had it reappeared. After all, I assume you are good at your job—you must be to have achieved your current position—so you would have done a proper check on the painting’s provenance, and perhaps discovered one or two inconsistencies. Was the painting sold?”

  “I believe not,” Winterton said.

  “And you told the family that it was a bit doubtful.”

  He nodded.

  “There you are then. One quiet word, and Forster stops a sale which might have caused him considerable problems. Perhaps he was not as stupid as you think. Now, how about Forster’s clients? Do you know any names?”

  “Not many,” he said, replying now with great reluctance and scarcely concealed irritation. “He did business at one stage helping families sell off their possessions, I know. When the market turned down he went into that line of business more or less full time. He virtually became an estate manager for the house near where he lived.”

  “We know that.”

  “That is the only name I know, I’m afraid, and I can’t help you with any details, never having acted for the family myself. And I gather his work ended when a new owner took over. But as I say, I had little to do with him.

  “Now, then,” he said, standing up in an end-of-interview way, “please don’t hesitate to contact me if you think I may be of further assistance to you…”

  “Of course,” Flavia murmured. Indeed, she was surprised that they’d been there for so long, and that they’d got so much out of him.

  “What did you think?” she asked Manstead as they emerged once more on to the street.

  “Outrageous!” he replied.

  “You are new at this game, aren’t you?” she said with a faint smile.

  “You mean that’s common?”

  “Refusing a decent commission merely because of a little matter like a painting being stolen? Very uncommon. He’s more honest than I’d anticipated. Assuming he’s telling the truth. He might have gone ahead and sold it anyway, using someone else as a cover. Could you check?”

  “What is this picture? Another one on Bottando’s list of Giotto’s greatest hits?”

  “Yes, it is. That’s three connections. Uccello, Fra Angelico and Pollaiuolo. In fact, they’re beginning to pop up so fast I’m amazed Forster stayed out of jail long enough to die at home. Can you look into this Belgian collection?”

  “I don’t know many people in Belgium.”

  Flavia took out her notebook and scribbled a name and number on it. “Try him. Tell him I sent you. He’ll do his best.”

  Manstead took the number and stuffed it in his pocket.

  Flavia beamed at him. “I bet you’re getting sick of me.”

  Manstead sighed. “Not at all,” he said gallantly.

  Argyll’s own metropolitan labours—apart from picking up some clean clothes—took the form of a social call on an old friend of his called Lucy Carton. Old friend was, perhaps, pushing it a bit. considering that they had only vaguely known each other some years back, but it is amazing how fondly you begin to think of even virtual strangers when you need a favour of them.

  Argyll’s logic was simple. Although he had not talked to her for years now, idle gossip with mutual acquaintances had kept him approximately in touch with her movements since she had left university and hurled herself into the mêlée of the London art world, sliding elegantly up the greasy pole from being an assistant (read, secretary) to being an exhibition organizer, and on to the slightly more lofty heights as an expert valuer at one of the smaller auction houses which attempted to chip away at the duopoly of Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

  More to the point, it was the same auction house at which Forster had bought and sold paintings, and Argyll, eager to find out more about the man’s activities, thought that it would be a good idea to see exactly what he had been doing. His problem was Forster’s position as effective curator of the Weller House paintings, a collection which had done quite nicely for the past century or so without being looked after at all. If Forster was spending his time running around Europe stealing paintings, why go to all the bother of seeking out Veronica Beaumont (as he had apparently done) and take on a job which provided an income that was little more than chickenfeed in comparison to what Fra Angelicos and the like must have brought in. Answer: because it must have served a useful purpose. To Argyll’s way of thinking that seemed obvious. Unfortunately, it wasn’t at all obvious what that useful purpose was.

  Besides which, he thought he might be able to render a small service to Mrs. Verney, which he was keen on doing merely for its own sake, and not simply because it might make her think of using his services should she decide that selling off some paintings might be a way to restore herself to solvency.

  Such was the aim, although as he was shown into Lucy’s office (must be doing quite well if she had an office) he was not sufficiently naive as to think that achieving it was going to be so easy. What were your connections with this suspected criminal? Not many auction houses like such questions, and he remembered that Lucy was more than bright enough to work out what his questions meant, however carefully he might phrase them. No harm in trying, though.

  Fortunately, she seemed perfectly pleased to see him, even though the surprise at his sudden materialization was evident. She had quite a sweet face, although Argyll remembered that behind the soft, almost chubby features lurked a mind that was surprisingly steely. The contrast between appearance and reality quite possibly accounted in some measure for her possession of an office. Argyll confessed that he had not come merely for the pleasure of seeing her.

  “I sort of guessed that. You don’t want a job, do you?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, a little startled.

  “That’s good. We don’t have any.”

  “No. I’ve come to ask you a question or two about a client.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow in a that’s confidential, you know that, we never disclose anything about clients, fashion.

  “An ex-client, in fact. A man called Geoffrey Forster. Who is now safely dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Fell down the stairs.”

  She shrugged. “That’s all right, then. I vaguely remember the name.”

  “He did buy and sell through you?”

  “Think so. I can’t remember any details. Why?”

  “It’s his pictures, you see,” Argyll said, nervously getting to the difficult bit. “There’s a certain amount of confusion about them which needs to be sorted out.”

  She looked patiently at him.

  “Where they came from. Where they went.”

  “Who needs to sort it out?”

  Argyll coughed. “Well, the police, really. You see, they might not have been his.”

  She was looking sufficiently alarmed by now for Argyll to realize he might as well jettison the subtle approach and tell her everything. Unless she had changed a good deal, she was a common-sensical sort of person who would probably be amenable to a dose of honesty. It seemed to work; or at least, the more detail he went into about Forster’s possible career as a thief, the more she seemed to relax, and even to enjoy the account.

  “But these were Italian pictures mainly, is that right? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “For the most part, yes. Fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”

  She shook her head. “I do Dutch and English, you see. I’m not allowed to touch Italian. Alex does Italian.”

  “Who’s Alex?”

  “My boss. He reckons he’s the great expert. He doesn’t like me. Tried to stop me getting a job here. Italian’s the one thing I really know about, and he always makes a fuss if I so much as look at one of the pictures he sees as his. He is determined that no one but him will do them. His empire. He’s worried about people finding out he’s an idiot.”

  “So if Forster slipped some stolen Italian paintings throug
h here…”

  “Alex would have assessed them. How very interesting,” she said and thought this over for a while. “And if they turn out to be dodgy, and if there’s any trouble about why we didn’t notice… Hmm.”

  There was another long pause, as Lucy thought some more and Argyll reflected about the adverse impact of office politics on character. “Now. Tell me,” she went on, coming out of her reverie, “what exactly do you want?”

  “That depends on how much you’re prepared to help.”

  “We have a policy of the utmost cooperation with the police to assist them in trying to make the art market a more honest and reputable place.”

  “Really?”

  “No. But in this particular case I think we should make a start. What do you want?”

  “Two things, then. Firstly, a list of everything Forster sold through you. And bought, I suppose. Secondly, I’d like to know whether your firm did the inventory on Weller House.”

  “Post-mortem?”

  He nodded. “Somebody did; it would have been official valuers and Forster was in charge then. It struck me he might well have chosen you. Your firm does that sort of thing, doesn’t it?”

  She grunted. “Oh, yes. If the owners decide to sell it gives us a head start. That at least I can help you with. On the other hand, his trading might be a bit more difficult. All the details will be in Alex’s office and I don’t want to disturb him, if you see what I mean.”

  “Of course.”

  “Hold on.”

  And she disappeared into the next office, carefully making sure that there was no one in it. Argyll heard the sound of file drawers being slid in and out, then a pause, then the whirring and clunking of a photocopying machine. Eventually, she returned, bearing a few sheets of paper.

  “I’ve got the inventory at least. We did it at the end of January,” she said. “I only copied the paintings for you; I’d have been there all day if I’d done the furniture as well.”

  “That’s fine.”

  She handed the sheets over. “Pretty motley collection,” she said. “We’re not the greatest auction house in the world, but even we get to deal with higher quality stuff. Ninety-nine in all.”

  “Paintings?”

  “Er, hold on.” She counted quickly. “Seventy-two paintings. The rest are drawings. What’s the matter? You look disappointed.”

  “There’s more than I was expecting.”

  “Oh. Anyway, there’s scarcely anything worth bothering about in the whole lot. Nearly all pretty ordinary family portraits. One supposed Kneller, but that apparently is a bit dubious. There’s a note from the person who did it saying if that’s a Kneller, he’s a cucumber. The rest are even worse.”

  He nodded. “Now, I’ve taken more of your time than I should. I should leave you.”

  “Not before you promise to keep me fully informed of everything that you find that concerns us.”

  Argyll agreed.

  “And put me up for a week when I come to Rome in September.”

  Argyll agreed.

  “And sell pictures through us if you ever use a London auction house.”

  He agreed to that.

  “And take me out for dinner before you leave.”

  And that. As he left he wondered whether he could give the bill to Bottando.

  11

  He got back to Byrnes’s gallery about half an hour after Flavia, and the two of them then slogged their way across central London to get to the station. Liverpool Street Station at five-thirty in the evening requires a strong stomach and nerves of steel even when you’re used to it; for Flavia it resembled nothing so much as a scene from Dante’s Inferno. A post-modern, recently-restored Inferno, no doubt, but even the fine restoration work on the station could not disguise the basic chaos of the transport.

  “Dear God,” she said as she followed Argyll towards what was flagged as the 5:15 to Norwich, but which was still hanging around in the station, “are you serious?”

  She looked at the ancient carriages with the doors hanging open, the windows filthy with years of grime and the paint peeling off, then shook her head in disbelief. Then she peered through the caked mud and saw the hundreds of commuters crammed in with barely a square millimetre of space, each one gamely reading a newspaper and pretending this was a civilized way of spending their brief sojourn on earth. “Is this the express service to Belsen, or something?” she asked.

  Argyll coughed with embarrassment. It’s always awkward, being in the position of feeling patriotically obliged to defend the indefensible. “It’ll get us there,” he said lamely. “I hope.”

  “But why don’t these people just get off and put a match to the thing?” she asked with the incredulity that only someone who lives in a country with an effective train service can muster.

  Argyll was halfway through explaining that British Rail would just transfer the charred wrecks to the Brighton line when a loud crackle was followed by an incomprehensible booming around the station.

  “What?” asked Flavia, frowning and trying to make it out.

  “I don’t know.”

  The grunting and mumbling seemed to be understood by the passengers on the train, however. With one huge collective sigh, they folded their newspapers, picked up their briefcases, got off and organized themselves on the platform. None seemed particularly perturbed by the fact that the train should have pulled out of the station twenty minutes ago.

  “Excuse me,” Flavia asked a well-dressed, fifty-year-old man who had come to stand placidly nearby. “What did that announcement say?”

  He raised an eyebrow, surprised at the disturbance. “The train has been cancelled again,” he explained. “The next one’s in an hour.”

  This is ridiculous,” she said firmly after she’d digested the information and decided that patience could be overdone. “I’m not hanging around here for an hour to be squeezed into a cattle truck. If these people want to stand around like a bunch of sheep, that’s their problem. I’m getting out of here.”

  Suppressing a desire to point out that sheep don’t travel in cattle trucks, Argyll trooped after her, out of the station and into a car rental place around the comer.

  He reckoned they averaged about three miles an hour all the way to Norwich. He still thought they would have arrived faster if they’d waited for the train, but, in the circumstances, didn’t want to say so. It did give them plenty of time to talk about the late Geoffrey Forster, and the varying possibilities that he was either a major criminal or, alternatively, the biggest waste of time for years. Argyll summarized his findings in the afternoon.

  “So?” Flavia said as they slowed to a halt somewhere. “What do you think?”

  “Well. It’s interesting, isn’t it? All these little hints.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Forster busied himself for several years selling paintings from Weller House. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “Now, when Uncle Godfrey shuffled off the mortal coil fifteen years back, there were seventy-two paintings listed in the inventory taken when he died. When Cousin Veronica followed suit another inventory was taken. And guess what?”

  She shook her head. “Amaze me.”

  “Still seventy-two pictures in the collection.”

  The queue of traffic got moving again, and Flavia paused while she tried to manoeuvre herself into a position to burst mightily through the twenty miles-an-hour barrier.

  “Which means,” she resumed as she gave up the effort a few moments later, “that either he was buying new ones, which I assume you can check from comparing the two lists. or he wasn’t selling anything.”

  Argyll nodded enthusiastically.

  “Using Weller House as a sort of Laundromat?” she suggested. “Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “That’s it. Forster steals a painting, which is bought by someone. Problem: how to disguise where it comes from, so it can satisfy the curious. For a picture not to have any provenance is a bit suspi
cious these days, and the last thing you want is to give the impression it might have come from Italy. So, you find an old country house collection that hasn’t been examined by anyone for years. If there is any old documentation, you burn it so no one can double check. Then you begin to sell the pictures, perhaps going through an auction house to be doubly sure, claiming they came from there.”

  “And” Flavia continued, “although some people might wonder, no one can ever prove it was stolen because Forster has made sure his targets were from badly catalogued, uninsured collections. And the new owners will be cautious enough to make sure no photographs of their new possession are taken either.”

  “Exactly. There’s some risk, but given the number of pictures in the world and the small number of people able to recognize them, it’s not that big.”

  Flavia nodded. “This woman is going to send you a list of his sales and purchases, is she?”

  “In a couple of days. She doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “I could do with the evidence now.”

  Argyll thought this over. Some people are in such a hurry all the time. They’d only heard of Forster less than a week ago, after all.

  “The statements about him aren’t good enough?”

  “One person, thirty years out of date and with a grudge. Sandano I’m not sure we can use: I promised him confidentiality. Delia Quercia is too batty to be relied on. All Winterton says is that Forster recognized a possibly stolen painting. It’s a pity Veronica Beaumont is dead. Evidence that Forster was selling pictures supposedly from Weller House, and proof that they didn’t come from there would be very useful. We might then be able to find out where they got to. Was there anything in his papers about his sales?”

  “Not so far. But I haven’t finished them yet.”

  Then it was her turn to think and to change the subject. “What do people in this village think of him? Nobody this afternoon seemed to have a high opinion. Winterton thought he had bad taste—which Bottando’s Giotto most certainly did not have, if he existed. Byrnes sneers about Forster being charming. Why would anyone sneer at someone being charming?”