by Iain Pears
“Could you go down to that monastery and see this Menzies man?”’ He sounded irritated.
“Why?”’
“He’ll meet you there. I’ve just had a load of abuse hurled at me down the telephone; he’s extremely annoyed and blaming us.”
“But what for?”’
“In between the shouting, I gather that some paper has published an article about him, saying the police are investigating his activities.”
“What?”’
“And that he’s been wasting police time by planting fake stories about thefts to generate publicity. Do you know anything about this?”’
“Ah.”
“You do. You haven’t been talking to journalists, have you?”’ He said it with a slightly incredulous inflection in his voice. In Bottando’s list of human sin, talking to journalists came somewhere between infanticide and arson.
“No. But I probably know who has. Leave it to me. I’ll go and sort it all out.”
“Don’t tell him who’s responsible,” Bottando said. “We don’t want a murder on our hands. And deal with it quickly, will you? I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense at the moment. And I don’t want complaints being made, either.”
There was obviously no point in going to San Giovanni via the office; and no point in going too early and still less in trying to take a bus or taxi. So she and Argyll, in peaceful harmony for the first time in days after a successfully restful and uninterrupted evening together the previous night, had a quiet breakfast on their little terrace, watching the sun beginning to heat up the stones of the city, then walked off together in the direction of the Aventino just before eight. The gentle start successfully soothed Flavia’s irritation about Bartolo, who had obviously had the bright idea of using her to attack Menzies.
Argyll accompanied her because he had nothing to do until a lecture on the early Borromini at noon, but had given up the guilty pleasure of sitting around doing nothing all morning. Very Roman, very agreeable; but not the best way of cutting a dash in the world. Slogging in a dark and sunless archive in the search for that vital publication, alas, was. Especially as Father Jean, when he’d asked, had seemed more than happy to let him have free run of the archives to see what he could find out about St Catherine.
When breakfast was followed by a gentle stroll, walking arm-in-arm through the little back streets of the city, she arrived at their destination feeling totally, if only temporarily, at peace with the world. So what, she thought, if pictures got stolen? What was that in comparison to the morning sun on a crumbling Roman inscription set into a garden wall, half covered in ivy? Who cared about forgers, when she could distract herself with a pigeon that had made its roost in the mouth of an old statue? And who was really interested in irate restorers and their private battles?
“What a lovely place,” she said appreciatively when Father Paul had responded to the doorbell and let them both in. She also found Father Paul quite something as well.
“It is,” said Argyll. “No doubt because it’s under the special protection of the Virgin. So I’m told.”
Rather than smiling at the very idea, Father Paul nodded seriously, and Flavia, who had these turns sometimes, also looked appreciative.
“You’ve heard about that, have you?”’ said Father Paul. “It’s one of those stories we don’t really know what to do with these days.”
“What is the story?”’
“I thought you knew,” he said as he led them towards the block of buildings containing the offices and archives. “How there was a plague in the city, and the monks prayed for help, and an angel flew down bringing the icon. He told them that if they treated it properly, then they would be forever under Our Lady’s protection. So they prayed for its help, and the plague abated and not a single one of them died. As you can see from the building, she got us through the Sack of Rome, World War Two and so far has fended off the property developers as well. But of course, they tend to find that sort of thing awkward nowadays.”
“They?”’
“Ah, you caught me,” he said with a faint smile. “Where I come from we have no trouble at all with things like that. Here they are all very Vatican Two and rational, you see, and have a great deal of trouble dealing with the miraculous. Considering that they are all priests, I find that strange, don’t you? After all, everything we believe in is based on a miracle. If you doubt them, what’s left?”’
“So you believe it?”’
He nodded. “I am prepared to. Otherwise you have to attribute everything to chance, and I find that much too far-fetched. It’s the one thing in this place I wouldn’t part with, I think. And the local population are fond of it. Were, in any case, until Father Xavier closed the doors. We still get scowls over that.”
“Has Mr Menzies arrived yet?”’ This was the voice of Father Jean, who came through the door with a worried frown on his face. “I think I should talk to him.”
“Not seen him,” said Argyll, then introduced Flavia. “Good morning, signorina. I’m very concerned about this. I think Mr Menzies will be very angry.”
“This” was a copy of a newspaper in his hand, opened at the arts pages.
“Ah, yes,” Flavia said, scanning it quickly. “In fact, I can tell you he is very angry. That’s why I’m here. To tell him it’s nothing to do with us.”
It was short, but effective. Menzies, greatly criticized for some of his past restorations, was a shameless publicist being investigated for wasting police time. They suspected him of making bogus phone calls to drum up publicity as part of his campaign to get the job to clean the Farnesina. It remained to be seen whether a corrupt and barbaric government would sink so low as to allow one of the nation’s greatest masterpieces to fall into the hands of such a latter-day Visigoth. Or, at least, that was the general line communicated without ever stooping so low as to make any direct accusations.
Argyll tutted as he read, Father Paul looked unconcerned, and Father Jean seemed upset, but more for the way the order was being dragged into public controversy than anything else. “I do think it was a mistake to let Mr Menzies in here, you know.”
“This is hardly his fault,” Father Paul said gently. “Perhaps we’d better go and talk to him now?”’
Such was the awe in which Menzies’s anger was held that, safety in numbers, a sort of unofficial delegation was formed, with all of them shuffling off nervously in the direction of the church, so the reaction could be absorbed collectively.
They never got there; the bell rang again and Father Paul headed off to see who it was. As he seemed to be the sort of person whose natural calm and authority might best deal with an irate restorer, the rest waited for him to return. He came back with someone Flavia recognized. Father Paul also had a look of vague alarm about him as well.
“Hello, Alberto,” Flavia said with surprise. “What are you doing here?”’
She introduced her colleague from the carabinieri, a tall, thin man who managed to have an air of vague perplexity about him all the time. Strange, she thought; he always looked like that. At the moment he also looked like someone who knew full well he was wasting his time when he could be getting on with his paperwork.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The emergency services had an anonymous call …”
Flavia scowled. “Another one? What in God’s name is going on here?”’
“I have no idea. But this call was to say someone had been injured. They’re a bit short of ambulances and get really pissed off with cranks wasting their time, so it was passed on to us. And here I am. Nothing going on, is there?”’
He was unsurprised when Father Jean assured him that, as far as they knew, all was well. No illness, injury or death all night.
Flavia was puzzled, though. And a little alarmed. “This is the second time in a few days,” she said. “We’d better have a look around. What exactly did this call say?”’
“Just that. Nothing else. It came in an hour or so ago. We’ve just heard abo
ut it.”
Fathers Jean and Paul exchanged looks, and then the group, augmented by one, resumed their collective move. There was no sign of Menzies; the door of the church was still firmly closed.
So they unlocked it and went in to check. It was unlit, and there was not a sound, certainly none of the grunting and scuffling and whistling that normally accompanied Menzies’s labours. They went over to the transept that Menzies was using for his studio, but that again was empty; the Caravaggio stood there, still a mess but undoubtedly otherwise safe. That was one less thing to be concerned about at least.
Then they stood around, wondering what to do next. “I suppose we just wait. He’ll turn up eventually.”
Both Father Jean and Father Paul were just coming up with very good reasons why they had to go about their business, Alberto was becoming ever more convinced that the perverted sense of humour of some Italians had wasted his time, and the three were preparing to leave Flavia with the task of dealing with Menzies.
From the other side of the church there came a hideous scream, made all the worse by the resounding echo in the building, which made the high-pitched wail and strangled sob, and repeated ululations reverberate all around, seemingly growing louder and louder rather than fading away.
“Jesus …” Argyll began. All of them turned and began to run the short distance to where the scream seemed to have come from, and Father Paul, with more practical sense than all the rest of them put together, walked purposefully in the opposite direction and began switching on all the lights, so that one by one, the gloom receded and they could see what the noise was about.
It was perfectly obvious. The cleaning lady, with her broom tangled in her legs, knelt frantically in front of the bank of candles, scrabbling desperately at the wall in supplication as she continued to cry and scream. The bucket of dirty water was upturned where she had dropped it and flowing all over the floor; the wet broom had fallen against a bank of extinguished candles and knocked them flying and the woman’s old pink slippers, with pom-poms, rested in the thick, sticky blood that had flowed so horrifyingly freely from the broken skull of Father Xavier Munster, thirty-ninth superior general of the order of St John the Pietist.
It took another quarter of an hour before anyone noticed that the little painting of the Virgin to which Argyll had given a candle had been taken out of its frame and had vanished.
“Is there any chance that this might be kept private? Until we know what happened?”’ Father Jean asked humbly of Flavia. “Must the newspapers know?”’
Everybody was slowly calming down after the frenzy of activity that had followed the moment of stunned silence that the sight had caused in all of them. Father Paul, with impeccable resourcefulness, was the first to recover and, as Father Jean said later, had probably saved the superior’s life—if, indeed, it could be saved. He staunched the flow of blood, organized blankets to keep the man warm, summoned the first aid kit and called the ambulance from the hospital which, as it was only a mile or two down the road, arrived with unusual speed. Everybody else more or less stood around as the old man was given emergency treatment, loaded on a stretcher and then rushed to the hospital.
His chances were not great, one of the ambulance men said. But it was a miracle he was alive. He must be a tough old bird even to be still breathing.
Flavia shook her head at Father Jean’s question. “Not a chance, I’m afraid. Somebody will tell a reporter. And it will look very much worse if we try to hide it. I’m afraid you’ll just have to keep your heads down.”
“Will you be investigating, Signorina?”’
“That depends. Assault is not normally our line of business. On the other hand, it looks as though Father Xavier might have been attacked trying to prevent someone stealing that painting.”
“And that would help? If that’s what happened?”’
“We would be involved, certainly.”
“That’s good.”
“Why does it matter?”’ Flavia asked, curious that he should be so concerned with such matters which, in comparison to Father Xavier, seemed almost trivial even to her.
“It’s always best to have someone who is delicate, and tactful, I think. Obviously, the attacker must be apprehended. That must be the first priority. But Father Xavier, I feel sure, would not want his misfortune to bring dishonour upon us.”
“Being attacked is hardly a dishonour.”
Father Jean nodded, and seemed about to say something, but decided not to, just at the moment.
“Do you have any idea …?”’
“What happened? None. And I know enough not even to think of it yet. We’ll see later on. You certainly know more than I do at the moment. Now, if you could show me to a telephone …”
She walked off with the priest so she could telephone Bottando, and Argyll watched her go, rather abandoned, sitting on a pew. It always gave him something of a shock, watching her at work. She was so very calm and good at it. While he had felt almost weak at the knees at the sight of the blood, Flavia had shown no reaction at all, once the paleness caused by the initial shock had passed. In fact, he had even noticed her stifle a yawn at one point.
For his part, he needed a drink, early though it was. So he walked out of the building and down the road to the nearest bar. A gaggle of locals, men having their coffee and roll before going off to work, eyed him curiously.
“Ambulance at the monastery, I see,” one said conversationally.
“And police,” agreed another. “I know those number plates.”
“You wouldn’t know what it was about?”’ added a third, looking at Argyll.
“Well …” he began.
“Body being taken out? What’s been going on?”’
“I think there has been a theft. The superior was attacked. He’s still alive, though.”
A lot of tutting and shaking of heads at this. The way of the world, what are we coming to? Still, what do you expect?
“What they take, then?”’ said one of the more jovial ones.
“Oh, not much, as far as they know,” he said reassuringly. “Only a picture. They didn’t even take the valuable one. They lifted a little Madonna instead.”
One of the men put his coffee cup down on the counter and looked Argyll firmly in the eye.
“A Madonna? Not My Lady?”’
“A little icon.” Argyll gestured to indicate the size. “Very dirty.”
“In the side chapel?”’
“That’s the one, I think.”
There was a lot of muttering at this, and Argyll noticed one of the men surreptitiously pull out a handkerchief from his jacket and dab his eye.
“Oh, no,” one of the others cried. “Surely not?”’
As is usual in such cases, Argyll glanced at the barman to get an indication of what exactly was going on. He, he thought, would be reliable. A youngish man, with fashionably cut hair and the sort of casual air of someone who had never been troubled by a sombre thought in his life. He also had turned grim-faced, and was drying a beer glass with an unusual intensity.
“The bastards,” this man said. “The bastards.”
A chord had been struck. The cheerful atmosphere of the bar dissolved under the impact of Argyll’s words like an ice cream in the July sun. In its place was genuine anger and, he thought, real distress. Almost worry.
“I’m sorry to bring bad news,” he said, trying to back pedal from his insouciant approach of a few seconds ago and adopt a more fitting demeanour. “I didn’t realize you would mind so much. No one ever goes in there, do they?”’
“It was locked. By that man.”
“But still …”
“She was there. That’s what counted.”
“I see.” Then he saw, with profound relief, the reassuring figure of Father Paul come through the door. Could he come back? Signorina di Stefano wanted to talk to him.
“Was Father Xavier in the chapel all night, do you think?”’ he asked the priest as they walked back to th
e monastery.
Father Paul shrugged. “I really don’t know, Mr Argyll. I really don’t know. It was my job to do the rounds and make sure everything was locked up, and I didn’t notice anything wrong then.”
“When was that?”’
“Just after eleven. We have evening prayers, we are allowed an hour to ourselves, and the lights go off at ten. Then the person on duty goes round and checks everything is closed. It was something introduced after the last burglary.”
“And you saw nothing?”’
A shake of the head.
There were five cars parked outside the monastery, which Argyll assumed contained all those specialists who emerge from under stones on these occasions. Flavia was standing in the courtyard, arguing fiercely with Alberto.
“Look, I don’t want to argue with you,” she was saying, clearly not telling the truth at all. “It’s not my concern whether this is investigated by you or by me.” Another blatant fib. “I was asked to come here about a possible theft, and I proposed to find out what was going on. I don’t want to take on anything else if I can help it …”
Extraordinary how she could string together so many untruths and look so convincing. The other man was grumbling, but seemed prepared to retreat and let other people fight for his department’s honour. They agreed that the entire matter should be passed on to their respective superiors and, that little bit of necessary posturing over, seemed quite content to resume normal relations.
“Jonathan!” She called him over. “You’ll have to give a statement, you know. This is the man who’ll be taking it.”
Argyll nodded. “Fine. Although it’ll be short and less than helpful. Do you want it now?”’
Alberto shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. We’ll let the experts do their stuff and clear out. Then everything might get a little bit calmer.”
“Waiting around all day?”’
“I’m afraid so.”
“Would it matter if I waited somewhere else? I was only going to be here for an hour or so, and then I’m meant to be delivering a lecture.”
Alberto puffed and blew but, what are friends for? Flavia vouched for his good behaviour and he was let out with a promise that he come back immediately afterwards. He wasn’t entirely certain whether he felt glad or not.