by Iain Pears
'So,' he replied, concentrating hard so the words came out comprehensibly. 'There was a purple truck behind us for a while as we drove here. I didn't think anything of it. And it's parked in the next street down.'
She stared blankly at him, syringe in hand.
'Oh, my God,' she said.
'And, what's more, if you'll get the registration number and hand me that file on the back seat, I think I can tell you who owns it . . .'
But Flavia didn't wait for the details. She thrust the syringe into Morelli's hand, reached under his jacket and grabbed his gun. Then slid towards the door.
'Wait for me,' he called after her.
'No time,' she called back.
And she ran as though her life depended on it. It didn't, but Argyll's did, and she flew around the corner, jumping over hedges, nearly tripping over hosepipes, trampling flowerbeds, anything to cut a second, even a fraction of a second, from the time it would take to get back to the house.
What could Argyll possibly do to defend himself? He wouldn't stand a chance. He had no weapon, he had a leg in plaster and, in truth, violence was not his forte.
It wasn't hers either, but she scarcely thought of that. She would have surprise and a gun. They would have to do. What did they tell her in that self-defence course Bottando had sent her on? Damned if she could remember. Shows how useless these things were.
An expert would probably have counselled a cautious approach. Reconnaissance, as the military would have it. Sneak up to the window, see what's going on, locate your target, plan your mode of attack. A second's calm reflection can save lives.
But Flavia was proceeding by instinct, and would almost certainly have disregarded an expert's advice even had she remembered it. Rather than the calm approach, she ran up the little driveway and round the back of the house as fast as her legs would carry her.
Instead of cautious reconnaissance, she charged at the back door with all her force, crashing into it with her shoulder at such speed that it sprang open.
And instead of patient situation assessment and target location, she slid to the floor on her knees, swung the gun up in both hands and pointed it at the figure standing over the inert form by the living room door.
'Get off him,' she screamed at the top of her voice.
And pulled the trigger.
'All I can say,' Argyll said heavily when he recovered from the fright, 'is thank God for safety catches. Although killing me by nearly scaring me to death is almost as effective.'
When Flavia put in her appearance he'd been feeling quite pleased with himself. But the sudden apparition and the gun - particularly the gun, as it was rather long and pointed at him - made his self-congratulatory mood ebb a little. He hurled himself to one side, and cracked his elbow on a side table as he did so. Just at that point where the funny bone is particularly vulnerable. Brought tears to the eyes.
He lay there gasping and clutching his elbow and Flavia, thoroughly winded from her sprint, her shoulder hurting damnably from the way she'd crashed through the door, and speechless from terror over so nearly blowing Argyll's head off, collapsed on the sofa and panted. That was the other thing they'd taught her on the course, she remembered. Take the safety catch off. Just as well she hadn't paid much attention.
'So what happened?' she asked eventually.
He thought for a moment, trying to choose between the paths of honesty and dissimulation. In the circumstances, he thought that a little light editing might be permissible. So he left out the bit about being on the verge of bolting after them because he was too frightened to be on his own.
'I was in the kitchen and heard someone outside the door. So I hid behind it; I thought it was probably you, but wasn't sure. Anyway, in he came. Saw me, pulled out a gun.'
'And?'
'So I kicked him. When in doubt, you know. Probably wouldn't have done much good except for the plaster cast. It must have been like being hit by a train. Down he went, but began crawling after the gun. So I hopped after him and brought him a sharp crack over the head with my crutch.
'I was a bit worried that he might come round while I was looking for something to tie him up with, and I didn't feel like leaving him alone. So I was just standing, wondering what to do when you came in and nearly killed me.'
'Sorry.'
'That's OK. It's the thought that counts.'
'A small detail,' she went on.
'What?'
She pointed at the recumbent form. 'Who is it?'
'Oh, him. I'm sorry.' He pulled the figure over so she could see his face. 'I forgot, you've never met. Flavia; meet Jack Moresby.'
Chapter Fifteen
By the time all the other invitees had drifted along, the atmosphere in Streeter's living room was almost jolly. Well, not quite. Anne Moresby, causing a local stir by arriving in her absurd limousine, was no more charming than usual. Samuel Thanet had bags under his eyes the size of full suitcases, James Langton had the look of someone prepared for a fight and even David Barclay looked concerned about the on-going situation.
Morelli had turned up only a few minutes after Flavia burst in, doing his best to give support. Quite admirable, really; he had taken the syringeful of painkiller, and injected the whole lot into his gum. All on his own. The very idea gave Argyll the quivers. It's bad enough when a dentist does it. Then he'd grabbed his regulation-issue shotgun and come after Flavia. His run along the street was observed by a back-up car, and they had followed him. Another back-up summoned reinforcements, and that turned the street outside into something resembling a battlefield. Grim-faced men in camouflage talking into radios and marching around with machine-guns; the works. That of, course, alerted the vultures, and within half an hour the press had arrived in full force as well. You could see local residents didn't approve. The neighbourhood watch committee was going to have something pretty severe to say about this at the annual meeting.
They were all a bit late, as well. By that time all the excitement was over. But as Morelli said, it would look great on the news, and he had a promotion to worry about.
Not that he was very talkative; in his haste and enthusiasm he had rather overdone the painkiller, and the lower part of his head felt like a large block of ice. But his tooth had stopped hurting. However, it did curtail his conversational powers.
So, when explanations were demanded, all he could do was mumble incomprehensibly and ultimately indicate through sign language that Flavia would have to do the talking. He thought it better to preserve his strength for the reporters outside.
'It's all quite simple, really, once you think about it,' she said. Personally, she would have preferred to have gone back to the hotel and thought it out at leisure. It was, after all, not very long since her careful exposition of what had happened had been revealed as a bit wrong. She was thinking furiously to find out why.
'It was two separate cases, operating in parallel. Once you see that, it becomes easy. The problem was that we tended to assume that the two parts - the bust and the murder – were connected.
'Let's start with the murder of Moresby. As you know, we've just arrested his son; we laid a trap by spreading a story about a fictitious tape. Unfortunately, he didn't fall for it; but he knew that Jonathan Argyll would be here. He followed us, saw Morelli and I leave to get painkillers, and spotted his opportunity to get Jonathan alone. He needed to kill Argyll, but fortunately he was equally keen on staying alive himself.
'Why kill Argyll? Simple. After he left the party at the museum, Jonathan went to eat, then began walking back to his hotel. He must have left the restaurant about forty minutes after the murder, and was crossing a road about ten minutes later. His head was in the clouds as usual, and he was nearly run over.
'As he lives in Rome and constantly dices with death in this fashion anyway, he didn't pay much attention to it. A minor incident, but he mentioned it to Jack Moresby, to whom he had taken a liking at the party. Typical, he said, to be run over by a truck. A purple one, to boot.
>
'Moresby, I discover, drives a purple truck, and his alibi for the murder was that he went home and stayed there. And it was clearly damaging if anyone could say they saw him in the area of the museum fifty minutes or so afterwards. What was he doing there? He was sitting on a time bomb. The least comment might forge a connection and that might start people thinking. A small risk, but any at all was too big. So he loosened the brake cable while Argyll was eating at a restaurant in Venice. I always had trouble imagining Anne Moresby under a car with a spanner in her hands. It's not her style, somehow. Anyway, the result was one broken leg, and he was lucky it wasn't his neck.'
Argyll glared indignantly at Moresby. Moresby shrugged.
'Prove it,' he said simply.
'Back to the point. How did son kill father, and why? We assumed he had nothing to gain from his father's death. But he would have had something to gain, if his stepmother was convicted of the murder.
'Criminals cannot benefit from their crimes. If Barclay and Anne Moresby were convicted of conspiracy to murder in order to get their hands on the old man's money, then she could not inherit. The money would go to the next of kin, which was Jack Moresby. The will didn't say he was not to get anything, it just left him out. As it was clear his father would never change his mind, it was the only possible way he could ever become the heir.
'The murder of Arthur Moresby had clearly been decided on, and some of it planned, in advance. The day comes more rapidly than Jack anticipates because he discovers that his father is about to set up the trust for the Big Museum. He comes to the party at the museum - the sort of function that ordinarily he would not be seen dead at - to find out what is going on. He discovers, through Argyll and others, that his father plans to finalise the arrangements very soon - Moresby junior needs to act that same night, or wave goodbye to several billion dollars.
'So straight away he starts laying the groundwork. To Argyll, for example, he drops the information about his stepmother having an affair with Barclay, and says his father knows about it . . .'
'But I wasn't,' Barclay interrupted.
'So you say,' replied Morelli.
'But look. . .'
Flavia raised her voice, lest she lose her tenuous grip on events. 'Jack Moresby,' she said, and waited until she had everybody's attention again. 'Overhears di Souza saying he wants Moresby to inspect the bust in Thanet's office, and spots an opportunity.
'So he leaves, saying goodbye so everyone knows he's going. Back to his truck, gets the gun, then waits. When di Souza leaves he walks up the stairs to the office, kills his father, then gets in his car and drives home.'
'Hold on, there,' said Thanet, raising a tentative hand in protest. 'This is all very interesting, but I don't think it fits.'
'And why not,' she asked, a little annoyed to be interrupted in mid-peroration.
'Because of the camera. If, as you suggest, Jack decided to kill his father in my office only about half an hour before he did it, how come the camera was knocked out about two hours before? That suggests much more advanced thought.'
'No, it doesn't,' she said. 'I'll deal with that later. You'll see. Anyone else have any points they want clearing up?'
Silence.
'Good. Where was I?'
'You've just shot Moresby,' Argyll prompted.
'Yes. Anyway, everything else,' she resumed, 'happened as the various statements said. Summoned by a call from Arthur Moresby, Barclay makes his way over to the administration block, discovers the body, rushes back to call the police and everybody stands around waiting for them to arrive, except for Langton who, considerate and caring man that he is, goes and makes his phone calls.'
This was a weak spot; Flavia knew it, and so did Jack Moresby. 'Yeah, but my alibi,' he said. 'Langton called and I was home. Ten minutes after the body was discovered - and the murder can only have been committed a few minutes before that. Because of that call my father made to Barclay.'
Flavia frowned at him, and so did Argyll.
'Of course,' he said. 'And if your father had indeed made the phone call to Barclay, then you could not have killed him, because you couldn't have got home in time to take Langton's call. But he was already dead by then. You made that call. Easily done, after all. It's not hard for children to be mistaken for parents - they often have the same accent, mannerisms and intonations. You shot your father, went home, then phoned. The records prove it. The call summoning Barclay came on an external line. Therefore it couldn't have come from Thanet's office. Therefore it couldn't have been your father.'
Flavia looked at him thankfully. A concise explanation, she thought. Nicely put.
'From there on, the police go into action,' Flavia continued calmly, as though she'd been clear on this point all along. 'They hear about the trust not being signed; they hear about this affair; they hear that Moresby had been told; they hear he is a vengeful man; they can assume he would not be at all happy; and eventually they find and identify the gun.
'Careful planning has given Anne Moresby and Barclay means, motive and opportunity to kill Moresby. Jack Moresby, seemingly, had none at all.
'The trouble was that it all immediately began to go wrong, because of the missing bust. When the police turn up, one of the first things they discover is the empty case. They assume, reasonably enough, that there is some link between murder and robbery, and everybody wastes a huge amount of time trying to work out what it is. The camera is knocked out too early, as Mr. Thanet noted; the bust vanishes. Query, where is Hector di Souza?'
Here again, her narrative was interrupted by a contemptuous snort from Moresby who was leaning back in his seat with a passable smile of amusement. Indeed, he looked very confident; sufficiently so to make Flavia feel uncomfortable. She would have much preferred him to be quivering with fright and offering to make a confession. Evidently he was made of sterner stuff.
'You expect anyone to believe this garbage? You're planning to take this to a jury?'
She gave him as nasty a look as she could manage, and tried to resume her story. But she was feeling rattled; this was so far an exercise in creative speculation, undertaken in the hope that something would turn up in time so that they wouldn't be forced to let Moresby go. She, as well as anyone, was aware that the evidence so far wasn't that good. It wouldn't even stand in Italy, let alone in America. What was worse, Moresby clearly realised this as well.
'For reasons which need not detain us here, we have already established that the bust was not stolen, and that the appearance of a theft was a scheme by Langton to unseat Thanet and enrich himself in the process.'
This was the stage at which Langton joined Jack Moresby in scowling ferociously and sniffing contemptuously.
'It wasn't difficult for Langton to work out what was going on. Clearly, Jack Moresby wanted police attention to focus on his stepmother, and equally obviously Hector di Souza was going to be prime suspect.'
'Very flattering,' Langton commented drily. 'Although I must say I don't see how I'm so clever if the combined resources of two police forces had such trouble.'
'Firstly,' she replied tartly, 'because you knew the bust business was mere piffle. Secondly, because you were outside the museum, captured on the camera, at the time when Moresby went over to the office and when Jack Moresby must have left. Jonathan used to sit on the same lump of marble for his smoke as well. If he could see all comings and goings in the administrative block very clearly, so could you.'
'Prove it,' he said. Jack Moresby gave him an understanding smirk.
'Langton saw Jack Moresby leave the administrative block, and was smart enough to realise what was going on,' she continued doggedly. 'He also knew that the existence of di Souza meant it was going to go wrong. That is to say, Hector di Souza was going to be the main suspect. It had also dawned on him that Hector knew more about this bust than he'd thought.
'What about Hector? Somehow he knows that whatever is in that case, it isn't the bust he once owned in 1951. Old Moresby, I imagine, t
ells him to go back to Rome and get the proof. He has no love of di Souza but this looks like a fraud by a close associate. Hector runs back to the hotel and prepares to leave, booking himself on a two a.m. plane.
'Both Langton and Jack Moresby have a great interest in getting di Souza out of the way. Killing Hector meant that he couldn't say what he knew about the bust and also that Anne Moresby and Barclay would again become the main suspects.'
More speculation, of course. Any lawyer would make mincemeat of it.
'In essence, I suspect the telephone conversation said either you will be arrested or di Souza will be; but certainly neither Mrs. Moresby nor Barclay will come under suspicion unless you do something fast. Will you confirm that, Mr. Langton?'
'No,' said he uncooperatively. He and Moresby exchanged comradely smiles. Flavia ploughed on.