The Bernini Bust

by Iain Pears

  One voice, he noted - voice two, so to speak - was protesting, and accusing voice one of being a vulture. Voice one identified itself as Josiah Ansty, attorney at law, specialist in auto damage claims, and said it was looking after the interests of injured citizens. If voice two hadn't rented out badly maintained vehicles, it wouldn't be sued. He was going to have to pay for this.

  This gave Argyll a lot to think about. Voice two he identified as the man called Chuck who rented him his nice 1971 Cadillac, which, he now remembered, had gone through the window of that shop. The other point was the bit about suing. Whoever said anything about that?

  The conversation was continuing, meanwhile, over his prostrate body. The voice of Josiah Ansty, attorney, was saying that the brake cable had been badly maintained.

  Chuck interrupted here, and said that was a pile of crap. He himself had serviced the car only last week. That brake cable was screwed on tight with a double screw. No way could it have come loose. No way.

  Ansty said that merely proved how culpably incompetent he was, and went on to request that he not be poked in the chest like that.

  Chuck then called Ansty a little creep, and there drifted into Argyll's slumbering consciousness the vague sound of grunts and scuffling followed by a shout from a long way away saying to stop that immediately and that this was a hospital not a place for a barroom brawl.

  Oh, he thought, as a loud cry of pain accompanied that tinkling sound that results when a shelf of surgical equipment crashes to the ground, that's where I am. In hospital.

  That's all right, then, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep to the sound of people calling for the police. Now I know.

  'You OK?' came a voice as Argyll surfaced again, hours later.

  Oh, God, not again, he thought.

  'Hear you've been causing a bit of excitement.'

  This time he placed the voice. Detective Morelli. For the first time his eyes opened, more or less focused, and turned his head without regretting it.

  'Me?'

  'People fighting over your body all morning. A lawyer and a car rental man; nearly wrecked the place. Didn't you notice?'

  'Vaguely. I remember something. What was a lawyer doing here?'

  'Oh, them. Jackals. They turn up everywhere. How are you doing?'

  'Fine, I think. Let's see.' He quickly checked to see that everything was where it ought to be.

  'What's wrong with my leg?'

  'You broke it. Clean snap, so they say. Nothing to worry about. You'll have to give up jogging for a bit.'

  'That's a pity.'

  'No permanent damage, anyway. I thought I'd come and see how you're getting on. So I can tell your girlfriend.'

  'Who?'

  'That Italian woman? She been ringing up every few hours for the last couple of days, driving the entire department nuts. The whole homicide squad's on first name terms with her now. She's pretty gone on you, isn't she?'

  'Is she?' Argyll said with grave interest. Morelli didn't bother to reply. Seemed pretty obvious to him.

  'So, now I see you're OK, I'll leave you in peace.'

  'Double screw,' Argyll said, a vague memory coming into his mind.

  Morelli looked surprised.

  'The brake cable couldn't have come undone on it's own. So I'm told.'

  'Yeah, well, I was going to mention that . . .'

  'Which means,' he went on, thinking hard, 'what does it mean?'

  Morelli scratched his chin. Amazing. The man never seemed to shave. 'Well,' he said, 'it sort of struck us, down in the department, that maybe someone gave it a tug.'

  'Seems a bit silly to me. I might have been hurt. I can't imagine who'd do something like that.'

  'How about the person who killed Hector di Souza? And Moresby? And stole that bust?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Di Souza's body was found this morning. He'd been shot.'

  Argyll stared at him. 'You're not serious.'

  Morelli nodded.

  A long pause followed. 'You OK?' he asked eventually.

  'Umm? Oh, yes,' Argyll began, then stopped and reconsidered.

  'In fact, no. I'm not. It never occurred to me that something might have happened to the poor old sod. He's not the sort who gets killed. Why on earth would anybody want to kill Hector? I didn't like the man much, but he was part of the landscape, and pretty harmless. Unless you bought something from him, that is. Poor bugger.'

  Morelli, of course, was scarcely upset at all. In his career he had seen the murdered remains of nice people, nasty people, old ones, young ones, rich and poor, saints and sinners. Di Souza was just one more, and he had never even met him.

  Argyll stirred from his mournful reflection and asked for more information. Morelli kindly spared him most of the details. He'd been up early to go to the bit of woodland where the body had been found in a shallow grave, and could remember it all far too well to share with someone in Argyll's delicate state of health.

  'It's a bit difficult to tell, but the experts reckon he must have died less than twenty-four hours after he vanished. One bullet, in the back of the head. Never felt a thing.'

  'They always say that. I can't say I've ever found it too convincing. Personally, I suspect being shot hurts. Do you know where the gun came from?'

  'No. A small pistol. We found it thrown into some scrub nearby. They don't know any more yet, except that it's almost certainly the gun that killed Moresby as well. We'll find out something about it eventually.'

  'And I suppose it'll be up to me to get him back to Rome,' he said reflectively. 'Typical.'

  'Do you think that's a good idea?' Morelli rubbed his gum with his finger again, in an exploratory fashion.

  'Still hurting?'

  He nodded. 'Hmm. It seems to be getting worse, damn the thing.'

  'You should go to a dentist.'

  Morelli snorted. 'When? I'm swamped with work because of this murder. Besides, do you know how far ahead you have to make an appointment with dentists? It's easier to get an audience with the Pope. Why do you feel responsible for di Souza?'

  Argyll shrugged. 'I don't know. But there it is; I do. Hector would never forgive me if I left him here. He was a professional Roman and an aesthete. I don't think a graveyard in Los Angeles would please him at all.'

  'We have very good cemeteries.'

  'Oh, I'm sure. But he was very fussy. Besides, I don't know of any relations or anything.'

  Takes all sorts. Morelli was very much less sentimental. Argyll, on the other hand, reckoned that the least he could do was give the old man a decent send-off in the style to which he was accustomed. Full requiem with all the trimmings in a church of suitable magnificence, weeping friends at the grave, all that.

  'Very clever of you to find him,' Argyll said, not being able to think of anything else to keep the conversation going.

  'Hardly. We got a tip-off.'

  'Who from?'

  'Someone hunting out of season, I reckon. It often happens. They want to report a body, but don't want the risk of being prosecuted.' Morelli said it as though illegal hunters tripped over corpses every day.

  'Sort of lets Hector off your list of suspects, doesn't it?'

  'Maybe. Maybe not. But we're certainly short of at least one murderer at the moment. You were one of the last people to talk to him at that party, weren't you?'

  Argyll nodded.

  'Can you remember what he said?'

  'But I've told you, more or less.'

  'Exactly. Word for word.'

  'Why do you want to know?'

  'Because if someone at some stage loosened the brake cable of your car, then it stands to reason they wanted to kill you. With all due respect, why would anyone want to kill you? Unless you know something that you haven't told us.'

  Argyll thought hard, and could come up with nothing that might, somehow, solve the problem.

  'He said that he could sort everything out with Moresby,' he said eventually.

  'Did he say how?'


  'Yes.'

  'Tell me, then.'

  'Well, you see, the trouble is, I didn't listen. I was thinking of something else. And Hector does tend to go on. I asked him to repeat it but he wouldn't.'

  Morelli gave him a nasty look.

  'Sorry.'

  'And who may have overheard this?'

  Argyll scratched his head as he thought. 'Lots of people, I suppose,' he said eventually. 'Let's see. Streeter, Thanet, Mrs. Moresby, that lawyer man were all there. Young Jack had gone, Old Moresby hadn't turned up . . .'

  'But who was close enough to hear?'

  Argyll shrugged. No idea.

  'You're not a dream witness, do you know that?'

  'Sorry.'

  'Yeah, well, if you remember . . .'

  'I’ll call. I don't know that it would do much good though.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because we were speaking in Italian. Langton speaks Italian, but he wasn't anywhere near. Hector was looking for him. I suspect that none of the others speak it.'

  Morelli looked even more disappointed in him, so Argyll switched the subject.

  'Have you found the bust yet?'

  The detective shook his head. 'No. And I don't imagine we will. It's probably been thrown in the sea.'

  'That's daft,' Argyll said with conviction. 'Why steal something and throw it away?'

  Morelli snorted. 'Don't ask me.'

  'But somebody must have seen something.'

  'Why?'

  'Because marble is bloody heavy, that's why. You can't just stick it in your pocket and stroll off. If you stagger down the street with a Bernini in your arms, somebody should notice.'

  Morelli smiled cynically. Just goes to show how little people know. 'Just as somebody should notice a murderer trotting about the administrative block, or hear a shot. And no one did. Nobody ever sees anything in this city. Nobody's ever around and if they are they're too busy going somewhere. I sometimes think you could steal the city hall and there'd be no witnesses.

  'Anyway,' he went on, getting up to leave. 'This bust is not really my main concern. Your friends in Rome are taking that one on. They think it's the genuine article and they've lodged an official complaint with the Moresby about illegal export. They're going to harass the museum until they get it back. Don't blame them, either. This friend of yours is coming over to try and recover it.'

  'Flavia?' Argyll asked with surprise.

  'That's the one. That Bottando told me. That'll cheer you up, won't it?'

  Argyll thanked him for the news.

  'You OK, there?'

  Oh, the limits of conversational gambits in this part of the world, Argyll thought, and turned to look at the new visitor.

  'Mr. Thanet,' he said, with real surprise. The director did not seem the sort to go running around hospital wards bearing bunches of grapes. But, there he was, standing by the bed looking anxiously at him. 'How nice of you to come.'

  'Least I could do. I was most distressed to hear of your mishap. Most upsetting for you. And for us, of course.'

  'It's not your week, is it?'

  Thanet opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and sat down instead. Argyll looked at him carefully. Clearly the man had come with good intentions, to cheer and console. But equally clearly it wasn't going to work out like that. Thanet had a captive audience - with his leg sticking up in the air there was nowhere for Argyll to run - and it looked as though he wanted to unburden himself.

  'What's up?' Argyll asked, inviting the man to get on with it. 'You look worried.'

  This was something of an understatement. In fact, Thanet looked dreadful. His normally anxious-looking face had developed vast bags under the eyes indicating he had had little sleep in the past few days. Everything about him, from the tired and creaky way he moved, to the almost random gestures of exhaustion, indicated a man on the edge. Hadn't lost weight, though.

  'We're in an appalling situation. You wouldn't believe what's been going on.'

  'Sounds bad,' Argyll said sympathetically, turning cautiously to rearrange his pillows and make himself comfortable. This could be a long haul.

  Thanet sighed the sigh of the almost deranged. 'I fear the museum might close. And we were so near to clinching the most exciting project. It's terrible.'

  It sounded a bit like exaggeration, and Argyll suggested Thanet might be overreacting. Whoever heard of museums closing, after all? They just got more expensive in his experience. By the time he died, he reckoned that the whole of Italy would have come under the aegis of the National Museum.

  'This is America, and this is a private museum. Whatever the owner decides happens. The new owner of the Moresby Museum is, it seems, Anne Moresby. And you have witnessed for yourself how high we rank in her regard.'

  'I thought that there was meant to be a trust fund or something set up to guarantee your future?'

  'So there was. But Mr. Moresby hadn't signed the papers yet. He was going to announce it at the party and sign at a little ceremony the following morning. He never signed. Never signed.'

  Clearly, this omission was weighing on Thanet a little.

  'But the museum administrators have money anyway, don't they?'

  Thanet shook his head. 'No.'

  'None?'

  'Not a cent. Not of our own. Everything was paid for by Moresby personally. It was awful - we never knew from one year to the next what our budget would be. We didn't even know whether we would have one at all. We had to ask him personally every time we wanted to buy something. It was his way of making sure we knew our place.'

  He sighed heavily as he contemplated what might have been. 'Three billion dollars. That's what we would have got if he'd lived another twenty-four hours and signed those papers.'

  'But he might have changed his mind anyway, mightn't he? His son said he was always doing that.'

  The very thought of Jack Moresby made Thanet look pained, but he conceded that it was accurate. 'But not this time. That's the good thing about trusts. Once it was set up, it couldn't have been dismantled without the agreement of all the trustees. And I was going to be one of them.'

  'So what's the situation now?'

  'Disastrous. Anne Moresby inherits everything.'

  'And what about his son?'

  'I can't say I've thought about him much. There will be a monumental legal squabble, of course, but considering that he was legally and properly cut out of the will and has little money to pay lawyers, I doubt he'll get much. If anything. At least his position hasn't changed because of all this.'

  'And what about you?'

  Thanet looked heavenwards for support. 'What do you think?' he said bitterly. 'Mrs. Moresby has made it clear over the years that she thinks this museum is a complete waste of time. It's such a tragedy. After five years, I thought we could finally get on with building a great collection. And on top of that, the police in Italy are breathing down my neck about this bust. Do you realise, they've made a complaint about illegal export?'

  'What I'd like to know is where it came from.'

  Thanet shook his head. Minor detail, to his way of thinking. 'I don't know anything about it. You know that. You'll have to ask Langton. Of course, he's made himself scarce.'

  Argyll looked at him incredulously. 'Do you really expect anyone to believe a director of a museum saying he doesn't even know where his pieces come from?'

  Thanet gazed at him sadly with a slight tinge of despair. 'People don't, but it's true nonetheless. You must know the history of the museum?'

  Argyll shook his head. Always willing to learn something new.

  'Mr. Langton used to be in charge of Moresby's private collection, before the old man had the idea of founding a museum. When the museum project came up, he naturally expected to be made director. I can't say I blame him.

  'That, of course, was not Moresby's way of doing things. He decided it was going to be a prestige project and so he wanted a prestigious person to head it.'

  'You?' Ar
gyll asked, trying hard to keep a tone of slight incredulity from seeping in at the edges.

  Thanet nodded. 'That's right. Yale, Metropolitan, National Gallery. A glittering career. Langton had never worked in a major museum; so, in short, he was shunted aside. Naturally I wanted the job, but I thought it was unfair, the treatment he got. So I created a post for him in Europe.'