The Immaculate Deception ja-7

by Iain Pears

  "He isn't particularly successful, as his particular brand of heavy-handed social critique is a bit out of tune with our cynical age. He's regarded, indeed, as rather quaint, and quite possibly gets gallery space out of nostalgia rather than for any serious admiration for what he does. Most of the people handing out the money, after all, are of the same generation. That's how it appears, anyway. There is, I suppose, a certain kudos to be had in patronizing a terrorist, even one who is a bit long in the tooth.

  "There we are. He only has a file with us for cross-referencing purposes, so it's not complete. But it does indicate a tendency toward whimsical parodies of crime, the chocolates, daft face masks, and a habit of working alone. Combine that with a career going nowhere and the possibility of raising large sums of money.”

  Flavia thought. That Bottando had produced the goods was almost certain. But she was annoyed he'd sat on the information.

  He did, at least, have the grace to look sheepish.

  "Now, what I was going to do was tie it all up for you, and present him on a plate.

  My swan song. I didn't intend to take the credit, you understand. Just have a final fling before retirement. Unfortunately ...”

  "Oh no.”

  "Possibly a good thing. I was contacted by the prime minister's office, and told that I was to take charge of this personally. I did protest on your behalf, but they were quite adamant on the matter.”

  Flavia scowled. Even she noticed she was scowling a lot these days.

  "I also mentioned that I—we—could quite possibly recover the painting without paying any ransom, given a moderate bit of good fortune. But I was very firmly told to do nothing of the sort, as you were as well. Pay the money, get the picture back, and forget it. It was made clear that any attempts to prosecute would probably be squashed in that devious way that the state has sometimes. I imagine that the reasoning is that there could be no trial without publicity. And publicity is just what they want to avoid.”

  "Hmm.”

  "Hmm is as good a reaction as any," Bottando commented.

  "I assume that this man Sabbatini has vanished?”

  "Of course. You'd hardly expect him to be at home.”

  Flavia shook her head in disbelief. "You really could have told me all this ...”

  Bottando looked properly shamefaced. "Of course I should have. You're quite right, my dear. Quite right. I should have. But has it made any difference?”

  She paused. "I suppose not. It's just that I always seem to be the last to know anything these days." She tried, but failed, to make her objection sound as though it was more than mere pique.

  "So now we have to bring this thing to a conclusion. Which means we need the money, and some routine for swapping it.”

  She sighed heavily, and told him about her morning.

  "You have three million dollars in a suitcase in your office?”

  "In the safe. And it's in a cardboard box, not a suitcase.”

  "Whose money is it?”

  "How should I know? Someone close to the prime minister, obviously. Apart from that, I've not a clue.”

  "Any arrangements made for the swap?”

  "In the next couple of days.”

  "I'd better do that, I think.”

  Flavia began to protest.

  "Orders, Flavia, orders. And probably better in any case. If something goes wrong, I get blamed, not you. I think Friday would be best.”

  "Why Friday?”

  "Because my retirement starts officially on Friday. Caution, you know. Too late to take my rather reduced pension away, even if it is a complete fiasco.”

  8

  While all this was going on, Argyll was doing his best to live the life of a country gentleman, absorbing the quiet and peaceful atmosphere of the Tuscan countryside at its most beautiful.

  Then he reluctantly puttered into the muniments room, where the superefficient librarian had already got out the Stonehouse dossiers for him and put them on a table by the open doors, and sat down to read.

  He did quite well, in the circumstances, these being the growing warmth of the air, the lazy buzzing of the early bees, and the chirruping of the birds as they flew around making their nests in preparation for the summer of endeavor that lay ahead. It would have been so much easier to sit back in his chair and watch them at it, to have let his mind drift while he monitored the thin wispy clouds passing in a leisurely fashion across the sky.

  And in truth he did a fair amount of that; several of the clouds received more attention than they strictly deserved. But he did at least drag his mind away for long enough to make a dent in the dreary buff-colored files that lay in front of him. Long enough, indeed, to garner everything he needed for his paper, thanks to the librarian and her photocopying machine. While she was busy, he turned his attention to searching for information on the little painting of the Virgin.

  A painting of the Immaculate Conception: late fifteenth century, oil on wood, with no previous history; it simply popped into visibility as an indeterminate Madonna in 1940

  when Stonehouse bought it in London after he'd fled back there at the start of the war.

  Not even the name of a dealer to help out. There was nothing odd about that: only a privileged few paintings can be traced back very far, and the reluctance of auctioneers to help out makes matters worse. Stone-house bought it for forty guineas; hardly vast riches, even for the period.

  He then took it back to his villa in Tuscany, had it cleaned—a bill for 125 lire was attached—and hung it in a bedroom on the second floor where it stayed until it was moved to London and put up for sale with most of the other Stonehouse pictures in 1966. This, according to the papers, was something of a scandal, which was good; there is nothing like a bit of naughtiness for putting up value. The newspaper clippings demonstrated the impact the auction had made; not because the sale was so valuable but because the collection was the biggest example of wholesale smuggling in recent Italian history.

  To take a painting out of the country without permission was one thing; to take 124

  of them without so much as a by-your-leave was quite another. The younger Stonehouse had maintained (rightly) that nearly all the pictures had been bought in London in the first place and he was merely taking them home. The Italians maintained (also rightly) that they were still Italian pictures and export permission was required.

  Sorting it all out took six months and a vast amount of correspondence, none of which, fortunately, was necessary for Argyll's case.

  Unfortunately, it seemed ever more likely that the picture, however old, was no great masterpiece. He was disappointed, but not surprised. In the listing of the Stonehouse collection the attribution was the same as the one in the auction catalog, and the picture hadn't even been on general display; rather, it had been consigned to a lesser bedroom where it had as company a pastel portrait of the collector's grandmother by one of the more unmemorable Scottish painters of the Edwardian era on its left and a French revolutionary print depicting the execution of Marie Antoinette on its right. What could you make of that? Did Stonehouse see granny as a cross between the Virgin Mary and the Queen of France?

  There was one simple and obvious answer. Go and have a short walk in the park and a nap for the rest of the afternoon before drinks with Stonehouse Junior. Then a good night's sleep, and back home the next day. One of the rare advantages of art history is that, when you do find yourself with time on your hands, you are often in an excellent position to make the most of it. There have to be some compensations for the salary, after all.

  This plan he followed without deviation, apart from briefly postponing his nap by five minutes to phone Flavia, failing to reach her. Thus, at six o'clock sharp, he was to be found walking slowly up the path to Robert Stonehouse's cottage. Or what Stone-house called a cottage. He may have come down in the world, but not to the level occupied by most of mankind; the house was still impressively large, with a huge and opulently decorated entrance hall, the black-and-
white—patterned marble of the floor already doing its job of damping down the heat of the day and rendering the interior pleasantly cool.

  Stonehouse was all hospitality and apology, both for his incivility of the morning and for his inability to offer him anything more than a drink or two.

  "I do not cook myself," he said with no regret at all. "I know I should and that it demonstrates how I live in the past. It is just that I find the past a more pleasant place.

  I would rather live there with bread and cheese than in the present by a stove.”

  "You must eat more than that.”

  "Five days a week someone from the village comes to look after me. Today is not one of her days. She is old, unfortunately. If she dies on me I will be faced with a choice. Modern life or starvation. Which do you think is best?”

  Argyll, who rather prided himself on his skills with pot and pan—largely without justification, although his abilities were superior to those of his wife—acknowledged that it was a difficult choice, but suggested that some people found that cooking gave considerable pleasure. Stonehouse was not convinced.

  "Wear a pinny, have your fingers smelling of garlic or fish? No; I see the pleasure in eating, just as there is delight in the appreciation of art. But the idea that cooks, or painters for that matter, are anything but vulgar artisans I find unacceptable. Have you ever met a pleasant, intelligent painter? One you would be happy to have in your house? Of course not.”

  "I imagine you must have been brought up with painters in the house.”

  "Good heavens, no. My father once made the mistake of inviting that Modigliani fellow, but threw him out. Damn man tried to seduce my mother. That was before I was born, of course.”

  "Very bad manners," Argyll agreed.

  "And wanted to be paid for the portrait," the old man continued, the indignation still in his voice.

  "You have a portrait by Modigliani? Of your mother?”

  "Certainly not. My father took it into the garden and burnt it. No great loss.”

  "Well . . ." Argyll said, trying to remember how much the last Modigliani to be sold had fetched.

  "There's more to life than money, Mr Argyll. How do you think I would have felt knowing there was a painting of my mother with no clothes on in some American museum?”

  "I see your point.”

  There was a lot to be asked here, Argyll thought. Like, what was his mother doing taking her clothes off in the first place? On the other hand, it might have been considered tactless to mention it.

  "It was very kind of you to invite me this evening," he said, swerving on to what he hoped would be a less complicated topic. "I wanted to ask you about a painting in your collection; I've spent the day going through the archives at Buonaterra but they didn't have anything I needed.”

  Stonehouse considered becoming indignant at the mention of his old house, but decided against it. "Oblige if I can," he said.

  "An Immaculate Conception.”

  Stonehouse furrowed his brow.

  "Little thing," Argyll continued hopefully. "On panel. Florentine, maybe. Didn't fetch much at the auction. Used to hang in a bedroom. Called a Madonna, then. The Immaculate Conception bit is my guess.”

  "Oh yes," he said. "That one. I remember now. The one that got stolen.”

  Argyll's heart lurched as it always did when the words "painting" and "stolen"

  appeared too closely together, then slotted back into its normal position. After all, it wasn't his picture.

  "Very odd business," Stonehouse was saying.

  Argyll forced his mind to pay attention. "Ah.”

  "Can't tell you the details. I only arrived at the last moment, so much of what I say is secondhand. As I understand it, someone noticed one morning that it had gone. My father called the police, they found it and brought it back. End of story, really.”

  "Who stole it?”

  "They never found out. Or, at least, no one said. Someone obviously knew more than they were letting on.”

  "What makes you think that?”

  "Because they said they found it in a ditch about half a mile away from the house.

  The story was that the burglar had stolen it, then panicked and thrown it away when he discovered it wasn't the painting he wanted. Or some such.”

  "And what was wrong with that?”

  "It was a painting on wood. Quite resilient on one side, relatively speaking, but very porous on the back. And it had been raining. There would have been at least some damage. In fact there was none at all. My father reckoned that it had been kept indoors throughout its absence. But we didn't bother to inquire. After all, we'd got it back speedily and if we'd made a fuss the insurance company might have taken too much interest and put up the premiums. Besides, I think my father knew who had stolen it.”

  "Really?”

  "Or at least, who had wanted it stolen. Ever heard of Ettore Finzi?”

  Argyll shook his head. Stonehouse chuckled. "You have just made my father very happy in his grave, young man. Finzi was my father's greatest rival for this sort of picture. It was a battle that lasted over thirty years. Whenever it was heard my father was going to bid for a painting, Finzi would turn up as well, even if it meant traveling to London from his house in Rome for the purpose. Their rivalry bid prices up quite unnecessarily. Finzi hated my father, and my father, in return, came to have a complete detestation for Finzi, because of his behavior.”

  "Just the rivalry of collectors?”

  "Oh no. A complete clash of personalities. They were different in every way.

  Inherited money and a life of ease on my father's side, self-made man on the other.

  Different background, different upbringing, different nationality, different attitude to art in every respect. Finzi wanted his collection to batter his way into the establishment.

  Whereas my father considered it a triumph to pay as little as possible, Finzi was most pleased when he spent as much as possible. Entirely different, you see.”

  "And this painting? Why would he want it?”

  "According to the story, which my father used to tell perhaps too loudly to make Finzi seem ridiculous, because he couldn't change a car tire.”

  "Pardon?”

  "Whenever it was. The dealer where my father bought it. I don't know who heard about the picture first, but there was a dash through the streets to the dealer. My father got there first as Finzi's Rolls-Royce had a puncture and he didn't know how to change a tire. So he had to walk the last half mile and by the time he arrived, my father had bought the picture for a bargain price. And insisted that Finzi admire it in the street when he arrived, all breathless and flustered. Within a few days everyone in Rome had heard the story, and Finzi never forgave him. My father told me the story when the picture was stolen.”

  "This was nineteen forty?" Argyll asked.

  "Nineteen thirty-eight, I believe.”

  "Are you sure it wasn't later?”

  "Oh no. It came from a dealer in Rome, I'm sure of that. My father left Italy in late 1939. Finzi smuggled himself out later.”

  "Why?”

  Stonehouse looked puzzled, then remembered he'd missed out a bit of the story. "He was Jewish. And realized he had better make a dash for it. I don't know how he managed it but he arrived very hard up, apparently. My father lent him money to tide him over, although that didn't heal the rift between them in artistic matters. Hostilities were resumed on that front the moment hostilities ended on the other.”

  "And the picture was stolen . . . ?”

  "Nineteen sixty-two.”

  "That's a long time to harbor a grudge.”

  "Not for a man like Finzi," Stonehouse said. "He vowed that one day he would have that picture, and knew that time was running out. He was old and ill—in fact, he died the following year. So he was in a hurry.”

  "But there was never any evidence.”

  "Oh no. But then it didn't matter. He didn't get it and he was ill. Why persecute him in his last months? Al
though I suspect that knowing my father couldn't even be bothered to take any action was the last straw for him. It might well have been that last show of disdain that tipped him into his grave.”

  A paper on the psychology of collecting? Argyll thought. The rivalry that drives men—always men, how many women collectors have there been in history?—to such extremes that they will steal from each other to possess the things they want. A bit of connoisseurship, bit of Freud, bit of history? Maybe.

  "But who actually stole the picture?”

  Stonehouse looked uninterested. "I've no idea. I wasn't there, alas. The only people in the house were my father, a young student who'd taken his fancy, and a few of his fellow connoisseurs. Most of whom are now dead, I imagine, except Bulovius, who is still on this earth—although not for much longer. Must be ninety if he's a day.”

  The good old days indeed. Argyll had heard of Tancred Bulovius, one of those hybrid collector-scholars who no longer exists in any great number. One of the more opinionated connoisseurs in his heyday, which was properly the late 1940s and 1950s.

  Probably a detestable man, but encyclopedic in his knowledge, the representative of a time when scholars might properly hope to collect the works of art they wrote about, publish only when they had something to say, and stay as guests for weeks on end at the country houses whose archives they were using. Changed days. Argyll, for a fleeting, nostalgic moment, could grasp Stonehouse's objection to the modern world.

  "I've never met him.”

  "You should hurry if you want to. He won't be around much longer. Can't say I ever liked him. He didn't know what to do with the young, except deliver monologues at them. But it may be that he's mellowed since he hit ninety. At least he must have given up chasing after everything female that comes within four miles of him.”

  "I didn't know that was part of his reputation.”

  "Oh, Lord, yes. Quite incorrigible he was. Not a man to take no for an answer. The poor student who was here eventually fled the house, he was such a pest. Poor girl.

  Pity; she was a pretty young thing. And recently married, as well, if I remember rightly.

  Not that details like that ever stopped Bulovius. You seem remarkably interested in this, if I may say so.”