Giotto's hand

by Iain Pears

  15

  Bottando’s return to his little office was not a pleasant one. Like most people, he had the tendency to assume that reality only existed within his eyesight and earshot; everybody else, he liked to think, froze into immobility whenever he was not around. If he left the office for the better part of the day, he fondly expected to find things pretty much the same when he got back again in the evening.

  Such theories were severely undermined when he returned that particular evening to discover that, in fact, almost everybody had been in a frenzy of activity more or less since the moment that he’d left Rome that morning. Even worse, it appeared that Argan had used his absence to practise running the department.

  “A nasty robbery in Naples,” the loathsome man said when Bottando came in and found him squatting at Bottando’s own desk. “While you were away.”

  Really?” Bottando said drily, unceremoniously easing him out of his chair and recapturing it for his own use.

  “Yes. In your absence, I took control. I hope you don’t mind.”

  Bottando waved his hand in a be-my-guestish fashion.

  “And a church ransacked outside Cremona.”

  “Took control again, did you?”

  Argan nodded. “I thought it best. What with you being so preoccupied.”

  “Ah-ha.”

  “How are the researches?” Argan went on with the faint purr of a cat toying with an injured bird.

  “What researches are those?”

  “Into Giotto.”

  “Good God! Has someone stolen Assisi in my absence as well? I hope you took control there too.”

  Argan smirked. “In a fashion. I talked this afternoon to one of the controllers of the budget.”

  “Did you? I hope you found it passed the time.”

  “A bit of a distressing conversation, in fact. He’s very concerned—as are a lot of people in the Budget office, you know—about the cost/effectiveness ratio of this department.”

  “You mean they think we should catch more people. Couldn’t agree more.”

  “Good. But I noticed a tone of hostility in his voice, you know.”

  I wonder who put it there, Bottando thought.

  “Anyway, you know me. Loyalty. So I came up with this brilliant idea for getting them off our backs.”

  Our backs? Bottando thought. Here it comes.

  “Of course, I should have consulted you. But as you weren’t there…”

  “You took control.”

  “Exactly. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Bottando sighed.

  “So I said that the perceptions of the department’s ineffectiveness were quite misplaced. And I told them that the General was at this very moment working on a most important case that would produce an extraordinary result. I told them a bit about Forster, just how much time and effort you’d put into pursuing this man.”

  “Did you?”

  “And they asked for a full-scale meeting to discuss it with you. Tomorrow? At four o’clock?”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. They’re so keen to hear of how you tracked down this man, that the minister himself will be coming to hear about the triumph of your skill.”

  “I shall look forward to it.”

  “So will I,” said Argan. “There are few things more rewarding than listening to an expert account of the virtues of experience. It will be very interesting.”

  While Flavia was finishing with Dr. Johnson and moving on to talk to the police once again, checking and crosschecking facts without, she hoped, giving much in return, Argyll went for a walk to take advantage of the brief spell of sun. He had a lot to think over and, as is usual in such circumstances, wandered about aimlessly, inspecting nothing in particular with great care before moving on again in a dream.

  It was the Leonardo that occupied his mind. How to approach Mary Verney? He briefly toyed with not telling her, and concocting some story about wanting it because he liked it so much, giving her fifty pounds for it. Not worth it, of course, but…

  Then he dismissed the idea. Not his sort of thing. He couldn’t do it, and would only hate himself for all eternity if he even tried. So he’d tell her what it was, and hope she’d give him the commission to sell it. It would pay her debts and have more than enough left over to rebuild the house. He could tell Flavia at the same time. It would be something for them all to celebrate before they went back home, case resolutely unsolved.

  He wandered in the direction of the church in the hope that a bit more exercise might clear his mind of the lingering regrets that he wasn’t nastier and more unscrupulous. Nothing like a good church for cheering you up in such circumstances, he always considered, so he went through the churchyard gate and paused awhile to examine the noticeboard which had rotas for church wardens (George Barton the first Sunday, Henry Jones the second. Young Witherspoon the third and Old Witherspoon the fourth), a note, dated five months ago, of a parish council meeting, an announcement about the village fête on the second Saturday in July, as usual (with the proclamation that Mrs. Mary Verney would graciously open it crossed out and the name of the vicar substituted instead) and a warning about not using hosepipes because of the drought.

  He looked at it all, read it carefully, and forgot it just as quickly. That source of information exhausted, he went in and spent some time staring at the gravestones. One had fresh wild flowers; Joan Barton, beloved wife of George, and mother of Louise and Alice. Next to it was Harry Barton, beloved brother of George, and husband of Anne. born 1935, died 1967. A bit young, poor soul. Didn’t last long, these Bartons.

  Thus rendered appropriately melancholic, he wandered around, past the black marble stones of the twentieth century, through the local stone slabs of the nineteenth and on to the more elaborately carved efforts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some were as carefully tended as a suburban garden, others preferred the wild look. The same names cropped up again and again: dozens of Bartons, generations of Browns. He even found Veronica’s husband: Henry Finsey-Groat, tragically drowned, beloved husband, fondly remembered, died 1966. Only the last seemed reliable: farcically drowned seemed more appropriate and, if the overgrown and entirely neglected grave was anything to go by, beloved husband, fondly remembered, seemed less than accurate.

  Then he went into the church and examined its run of brasses and eighteenth-century monuments in memory of the various members of the Beaumont family. There had been rather a lot of them. He studied the simple plaque for Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont, she of the wedding present and Kneller portrait, and read how she’d died in 1680 at the age of sixty, greatly missed by her family and all who knew her as a pious wife, devoted mother of fifteen children, and generous giver of eight shillings a year to the poor of the parish. He wondered what Geoffrey Forster’s memorial would say; even given the willingness of memorialists to stretch the truth, greatly missed might seem a little inappropriate. Nobody, so far, seemed to be greatly missing him. Except his wife, who was the only person who had a good word for him. Although how genuine that was seemed unsure.

  Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont’s tombstone was on the west wall of the north transept, spoiled only by having a huge pile of old parish magazines stacked beneath and around it. He looked through them at random standard contents: raffles and recipes, fêtes and fundraising and harvest festivals. Every year the same: the first cuckoo, the weather, and Miss Beaumont’s gracious speech opening the fête. The very stuff of the rustic myth. Wonderful as long as you don’t live near it.

  Then back to the tombstones, especially the flashier eighteenth-century efforts, all Latin poetry and swooning maidens which got the prime space in the crossing and the choir. Much more ostentatious than the more modest tombstones in the graveyard outside. Joan Barton got a simple stone slab with carving, these people were inside in the dry church, with swags and ornaments and cherubs and paeans of praise for their goodness. Joan Barton, however, got fresh wild flowers; these were just objects of mild interest for the occasi
onal passing tourist. Take your pick.

  Jonathan Argyll, tourist, was tucked into the transept thinking about death and pictures, when he had a prickling feeling under his skin. Into his mind popped, quite unbidden and quite unconnected to anything else, the memory that Godfrey Kneller had come to England in the 1670s. And Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont had been married before 1646, must have been, so she could be given a natty little Leonardo sketch by Arundel. He was just about to pin down why this was important when his attention was distracted again. From the small door on the other side, the room where the vicar kept his vestments, and stacked spare prayer books and empty vases, came a murmur of voices. One he thought he recognized.

  Argyll was not a nosy person, so he thought, although he would frequently admit to being inquisitive. And it was in the spirit of enquiry, rather than one of nosiness, that he found himself approaching the door softly, just to confirm who it was. He honestly believed that he had not the slightest intention of listening in, an activity he firmly thought was most impolite.

  However, it is inevitable that, in order to ascertain the ownership of voices, you have to hear at least a little of what they are saying. Only a pedant would try to make a distinction between listening to the sound of voices, and listening to the words those sounds embody. Whether motivated by nosiness or curious enquiry, therefore, Argyll ended up listening to a conversation between Mary Verney and George Barton.

  Overcoming his instincts for discretion, Argyll concentrated on the words they were saying.

  “So what do you think you should do?” came the clear, melodious and kindly voice of Mary Verney.

  “I dunno. Nothing, I guess.”

  “It’s very serious, as you know. If the police find out, you’ll go to jail. For a long time. Is there anything you want from me?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Verney. As long as you say nothing, then everything will be fine, I reckon. So stupid, the whole thing. If I hadn’t had the fight with him, I wouldn’t have drunk too much, and if I hadn’t drunk too much, I wouldn’t have gone back there and…”

  “Yes, I understand. But you did, and here you are, talking to me about it. But let me get this clear. You can live with it? You don’t want just to go to the police and get it over with?”

  “Nah. If that idiot Gordon were going to take the blame, then yes, I’d have to. Of course I would. I wouldn’t let him go to jail, no matter what the cost. You know that. But Gordon’s been let out.”

  “Well. I don’t know what to say.”

  “He had it coming,” George said with a sudden intensity. “He deserved it. You know something, Mrs. Verney? The world’s a better place without him. Do as you’re done by, that’s what I say. So he’s no reason to complain. He was a nasty man and justice has been done, as far as I’m concerned. That’s all there is to be said about it. I’m not going to lose one jot of sleep over him.”

  Fascinating though it was, Argyll did not stay to hear any more. He felt a sneeze coming on and, rather than being caught red-handed, or rather red-eared, by the vestry door, he scuttled off behind a tomb and let rip there. It was the flower arrangements that did it, he decided later. Very pretty and showing proper community spirit, but the pollen really went up his nose. Any further conversation was, anyway, cut short fairly abruptly when his monumental sneeze erupted and echoed around the church. By the time Mary Verney emerged, he was to be found standing far away, oblivious to the world and staring enraptured at a mid-eighteenth-century tablet extolling the virtues of Sir Henry Beaumont, man of commerce and of charity, greatly missed by all who knew him.

  “Oh, hello,” he said lightly and, to his mind with an utterly false tone of surprise in his voice. “I thought I was alone in here. Where did you spring from?”

  Mary Verney, for the first time since he had met her, seemed ill at ease. “I was doing some tidying,” she said. “In the vestry.”

  As she talked, Argyll thought he heard a faint click of the door from the vestry into the churchyard closing. George Barton making his getaway.

  “I didn’t know you were a God-fearing member of the parish,” he rabbited on.

  “I’m not. But one has to do one’s bit. It’s expected.”

  “Oh, indeed. Although I must say I think that not having to do one’s bit is one of the advantages of the big city. It is a lovely church, isn’t it?”

  “Beautiful. Wool money, you know. Did you see our misericords?”

  Argyll confessed he hadn’t. He’d only been in the church for a few seconds, he said, slipping the information in. It seemed to make her much more relaxed. Then he followed patiently while she gave him a guided tour of the misericords (one of the finest sets in the county, fourteenth century, elbow rests with leaf work, underseats with monsters, birds and scenes of country life). Very pretty, but even Argyll, who normally liked nothing better than a nice misericord, found it hard to concentrate.

  16

  Flavia got back from talking to Manstead and the locals in a sombre and discontented mood. The essence of the discussion was that the Norfolk police were putting Forster on the backburner until such time as any actual evidence turned up. They had, so they said, quite enough thieves and murders on their hands already: there simply wasn’t time to deal with something like this.

  “You see,” Manstead said with a slight tone of apology in his voice, “we can’t even prove Forster was murdered. Not convincingly, anyway. And as for his being a thief…”

  “No evidence, either? The Dunkeld wedding?”

  “That was our one real chance, I think. And nothing. We even got them to look at his photograph to see if that rang any bells, but nothing. I mean, I hardly expected it to after all these years, but you can’t say we haven’t tried.”

  “I know,” Flavia said. “And I think I’d do the same, if I were you. I’m grateful for the effort.”

  “As I say, if we had anything to go on at all…”

  “Yes. Thank you. By the way, Veronica Beaumont was on the guest list, wasn’t she?”

  Manstead referred the question to Inspector Wilson, who nodded. “That’s right. As was most of Burke’s Peerage, as far as I can see.”

  “Ah. Did you, by any chance, reinterview George Barton?”

  “Yes, we did, and thank you for that. But I’m afraid that his son-in-law was defending him quite unnecessarily. He did see Forster that evening, but it was long before Forster died. And then he went to see his daughter. Which, of course, Gordon would have known had he not been fooling around with Sally. Or if George had actually been on talking terms with him.”

  “So that was a waste of time as well.”

  “Yes. And Mrs. Forster has been scratched too.”

  “Why?”

  “We demonstrated that she wasn’t at the cinema that night.”

  “Ah.”

  “No. But her husband was having an affair, so she thought she’d do the same…”

  “Jesus, not another one.”

  “I know. Scratch the surface. But anyway, she’s off the list.”

  “I see. Tell me, when she was interviewed first time round, did she know that her husband was being investigated for theft?”

  Manstead handed over a few sheets of paper. “Look for yourself. It was a preliminary chat. Where were you, what were you doing? Nothing fancy like thefts at all. That came later. This morning, in fact. And she said the first she’d heard of it was from you. It may not be true, but can we prove differently? We cannot. And until we can…”

  Then she came back and sat on a chair in the entrance hall to ring Bottando to report, which was where Argyll found her, listening with a pained expression on her face.

  “The whole lot of them will be there,” Bottando told her after he’d monopolized the conversation by fulminating about Argan’s plan for a final showdown. “To listen to the fruits of my experience. Argan could hardly contain himself. I thought the little bastard was being unnaturally quiet. Now I know why. I’ve been going through
his disks again. He’s already written another detailed memorandum on the whole thing. You can guess what’s in it.”

  “Old fool, put him out to pasture?” Flavia said, a little tactlessly. There was a long silence from the Italian end.

  “That’s about it.”

  “You seem very calm about it.”

  “No point in being anything else. I’m sure everything will be fine once I give my explanation. I’m sure I can drag a rabbit or two out of a hat for the occasion. How are you doing?”

  Flavia paused to consider. “I hate to say this…”

  “What?”

  “Forster was a nasty bit of work. But I don’t think I’ll be able to prove he was Giotto. Certainly not by tomorrow afternoon. I’m doing my best, but the police here are shutting up shop.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because basically there’s nothing whatsoever to go on which is any more substantial than early morning mist.”

  A long digestive pause from central Rome. “Ah, well. No matter. It’s not your fault. You can’t create criminals—or evidence—where none exist. If you can come back by tomorrow that would be helpful.”

  She put the phone down, and sat quietly, lost in thought about the various options, all of them unsavoury, which presented themselves.

  “Poor old Bottando,” Argyll commented.

  “Hmm. I think he’s deluding himself about the support he’s going to get. Personally, I don’t think anyone will help him. I think he’s losing his grip on political realities, you know.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  She pursed her lips and thought. “My best, I suppose,” she said without much conviction that this was going to be good enough. “I’ll have to go back. I can’t say I relish watching the old fellow being gored to death, but at least I’ll be able to give what support I can. Come on. I think I need a chat with Mrs. Verney. And a stiff drink.”

  It’s awkward to go asking pointed questions of your hostess, not least because she might take offence and render you suddenly homeless. On top of that, Flavia rather liked the woman. She was generous, lively, and very good company.