The Raphael Affair

by Iain Pears

  ‘Tell me where to find you. Oh, by the way, you might want to look at this.’ He reached into his jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper.

  ‘Telex from Janet. Poor man complains about having to do so much work for us, but don’t let that concern you. I’m sure he got someone else to do it for him. He’s been tracking down picture-buying. Score, Byrnes three, Morneau six, everybody else, nil.’

  ‘May I?’ said Argyll, reaching over to take it. He unfolded it and read the communication carefully.

  ‘That’s it. That must be it.’ He pointed at a line of type after a few moments’ perusal. ‘“Portrait of a lady, copy after Fra Bartolommeo.” Three thousand Belgian francs, to Jean-Luc Morneau. Seventy centimetres by a hundred and forty. Right size, more or less, and about the right age. Right style. That would have been perfect. Your colleague didn’t send a photograph as well, did he?’ he asked hopefully.

  Bottando rummaged around in his pockets once more. ‘Yes,’ he said, handing over another sheet of paper. ‘Not very good, I’m afraid. Just a photocopy from the sale catalogue. Pretty good service though, don’t you think?’

  Argyll was too busy looking at it to reply. He handed it over to Flavia, a satisfied look on his face. She looked disappointed. It was, in truth, unimpressive: very dirty, a three-quarter-length of a large middle-aged woman with a prospective double chin and a few other obvious attractions. Dressed in a dark, full-sleeved dress. Black hair, as far as he could tell through the dirt, and overloaded with vulgar jewellery: a tiara, a vast necklace and a thick, intricate ring.

  ‘Not a great loss if it was used. The portrait of Elisabetta he put on top was much better,’ she commented.

  ‘True. But look at the window and external scenery in the left background. Very similar to the fake Raphael, and exactly where the tests were taken. I think that’s pretty conclusive, myself.’

  Bottando nodded approvingly. ‘You’ve got a good eye,’ he said. ‘I noticed the same thing myself, with a photograph of the Raphael to help.’

  ‘Which proves Morneau painted it, and that lets Spello off the hook,’ Flavia added with satisfaction.

  ‘Alas, no. Morneau was also an advisor to the Vatican, back in the 1940s, and he must have known Spello then. That’s one example of why these books are so useful.’

  He got up and brushed breadcrumbs from his lap. ‘Time to get back to the office. I have to work even if you two don’t.’

  They parted, Flavia and Argyll heading east, while Bottando walked back to the office. He was worried. He hadn’t mentioned it to Flavia, not only because Argyll was there, but also because he didn’t want to concern her unnecessarily. But he knew he was about to take a huge risk with them. And it concerned him greatly.

  Less burdened with cares than Bottando, Flavia and Argyll spent a delightful evening, once the business of washing themselves and clothes, and other domestic matters had been taken care of. Flavia had put on the washing machine, opened her mail and fussed about the apartment while Argyll had read some of the books he had brought with him.

  While he sat with his leg over the arm of her one comfortable seat, he read out extracts from the books he was looking through. This was a change from the plane flight home, when he had read intensely and said scarcely a word. Flavia had noticed that a guide book to the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena had been one of the volumes.

  Argyll laughed. ‘Listen to this. It’s a letter from Viscount Perceval about Lady Arabella. A great diarist and observer of eighteenth-century London, that man. She gets more and more remarkable every time I come across her. It wasn’t only husband two who had wayward habits. Number one also couldn’t keep his hands to himself either. She broke a cello over his head at a royal levee because of it. Then tried to beat him up with her fists. In public. Must have made everybody’s evening.’

  Or later: ‘Another bit. Clomorton told the Duchess of Albemarle he was in love with a “dark-haired beauty”. That was a mistake, poor sod. He must have known she was the worst tattle-tale in London. Perceval says she wrote to Lady Arabella directly. That must be what she was talking about in that letter I read you in London. Think of the reception the poor man would have got. Luckily for him he dropped dead first.’

  ‘What are you reading this for? Does it have anything to do with Siena?’

  ‘No. I was just looking to see if there was any mention of Sam Paris, Raphael or whatever. A very arty man, Perceval, and a great observer of the London scene. Nothing happened without him noticing it and jotting it down in his diary. A Raphael on the market, or a scandal about one, would be in here somewhere. There isn’t, which makes me more convinced I’m right.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me? Or am I to be treated like the General?’

  He took her hand and kissed it absent-mindedly, letting go when he realised what he’d done. ‘Silly. Of course not. After dinner you will hear all.’

  They had ended up digesting their evening meal by walking blissfully around the city. Flavia pointed out to Argyll her favourite buildings and spots; they had wandered around the old ghetto, looking affectionately at the run-down buildings, Imperial fragments and tranquil, beautiful piazzas that suddenly appear as you turn unpromising-looking corners. Argyll gave an impromptu disquisition on the beauties of the Farnese Palace. Flavia wasn’t entirely persuaded, but liked his sense of conviction. She had responded by dredging through the memories of her university days and identifying all the large medallions on the Palazzo Spada a little down the road.

  ‘I can do that too,’ Argyll said. ‘Come with me.’ He grabbed her hand and led her to the other side of the Piazza Farnese, down the via Giulia and then left down a side street. He pointed to an emblem above one of the large wooden gates that shut prying eyes from the courtyard beyond. ‘There. Two pelicans intertwined, surmounted by a crown and the symbol of a castle. Whose is it?’

  Flavia chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Don’t know. Whose?’

  ‘That’s the di Parma symbol. This was their Roman palace.’

  She grinned. ‘So this is where it all started. I knew the palace was around here somewhere, but I never got around to looking. What’s in there now?’

  ‘Just apartments, I imagine. It looks very tatty. The point is, however, that Mantini lived there, which explains why he was brought in for this job in the first place.’ Argyll pointed to a door a few yards up on the other side of the street.

  ‘As for the picture,’ he went on, ‘the di Parmas didn’t have it, nor the Clomortons, nor the dealer Sam Paris. Mantini was the only man involved who was left. Lots of motive as he was always hard up. Or maybe love of the painting was more important and he didn’t want it to leave Italy and be bought by a clod like Clomorton. So he paints over the Raphael, makes a copy of the same picture which he gives to the dealer, and keeps the real thing himself.

  ‘He couldn’t uncover it either, because he lived almost next door to the di Parmas, who might have got upset. But there’d be no rush if he wanted the picture for itself, not the money it could bring. So it could sit there and wait until he retired back to his home town, or something.

  ‘But he never made it to retirement. He has a seizure and dies in 1727, at the age of fifty-two. Perfect health, just drops dead one afternoon in the street. No time, you see, for deathbed confessions or secret instructions about his picture. His daughter inherits his small fortune and remaining pictures. She returns to her father’s native paese, where she marries a silversmith.’

  ‘Siena.’

  ‘Quite right. And he, because silversmiths were highly thought of, gets on the town council and dies, wealthy and greatly respected, in 1782. And he leaves to the city a couple of pictures. One portrait of himself, naturally, and the other a memento of that great Sienese painter, his own father-in-law, the superlative Carlo Mantini.’

  ‘Very good. But how do you know it’s the right one?’

  ‘Because it must be. Process of elimination. It’s a ruin, which fits in with the evidence available, and
it’s the only picture which could possibly have concealed the Raphael.’

  This was the weak spot in an otherwise convincing argument, the area his supervisor would have pounced on, had he been there to listen. But he wasn’t, and Flavia said nothing, so he hurried on. ‘I did about a month’s work in a day and a half. Quite a lot of shortcuts, I admit. But if no one else has it, and they appear not to, it’s the only other possibility. I hope you’re proud of me.’

  Flavia patted him on the back. ‘Well done. Now all we have to do is go there and see if you’re right. Come on. Let’s go home.’

  13

  Flavia and Argyll set out for Siena at eight sharp the next morning, Argyll in the passenger seat, Flavia driving her old but well-maintained Alfa Spider like a banshee. In a brief moment of feminine submissiveness she had suggested that Argyll might drive. In a long-standing tradition of English cowardice, he had declined. Nothing, he declared as they forced their way onto the main northern artery, would ever get him to drive in Rome. Not after the last time.

  It was a wise decision. Flavia drove with knowledge, skill and determination; Argyll would have driven with his eyes shut. The maniacal early morning traffic died away to something more human fairly quickly, and they made rapid progress north.

  It’s a long, five-hour voyage to Siena, even if you drive – as Flavia did – far too fast on the motorway. It’s also a very beautiful trip. The autostrada, one of the best in the country and one of the longest in Europe, starts outside Reggio di Calabria at the very tip of the south-western peninsula. It curls through the parched hills of the south to Naples, then turns up through the poor countryside of Calabria and Latium to Rome. Then it heads for Florence and swings east, through a series of giant tunnels and dizzying climbs, over the Apennines to Bologna. Here it splits, one arm reaching out to Venice, the other travelling on to Milan.

  Even on the relatively small segment between Rome and Siena, it takes the traveller within easy reach of some of the most wonderful places in the world: Orvieto, Montefiascone, Pienza and Montepulciano; the Umbrian hill-towns of Assisi, Perugia, Todi, Gubbio. The stepped hills of vines and lowland pastures of goats and sheep mix perfectly with the rivers, the steep drops, and the dozens of often largely ignored medieval fortress-towns, perched on top of their protective hills as if the Medicis still reigned supreme.

  It was wonderful. Argyll had travelled around Italy for years, had seen nearly all the major sights several times over, but never tired of seeing them all again. For a brief interlude, he forgot his woes, enjoyed the scenery and tried to pay no attention to his companion’s driving.

  Five hours almost to the minute later, they swung off the motorway, paid the fee at the toll and headed down the hilly road through Rapolano to Siena, having spent their journey in a mood of cheerful contentment and buoyant optimism. Contentment on Argyll’s part, optimism on Flavia’s. Then Argyll said: ‘How are we going to go about this little expedition? After all, we can hardly wander into the palazzo, take the picture off the wall and attack it with a knife. Curators don’t like that. It upsets them.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I thought about it last night. We’ll just go and make sure it’s still there, then make an official visit tomorrow.’

  They were a little delayed getting to their hotel. Siena is a town where the streets have changed not at all since the thirteenth century, and to cope with modern traffic flows, the authorities have instituted one of the most ferociously complex one-way systems ever devised. A single mistake anywhere, and you are flung off in entirely the wrong direction without the slightest chance of doing anything about it. They had driven – quite illegally as the area is closed to traffic – past the cathedral twice before Flavia reversed the wrong way down a narrow one-way street and found the road she wanted at the end.

  She had chosen a comfortable, elegant and expensive hotel to serve as their temporary headquarters. It also served a remarkable lunch, which Argyll suspected might have weighed more heavily in its favour. They had a preliminary drink, and Argyll leaned back in his chair to gaze at the Tuscan hills out of the window. ‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘The Italian police really do things in style.’

  Flavia shrugged. ‘The very last thing the General said to me was that we were to take care of ourselves.’

  ‘I don’t think this is quite what he had in mind.’

  She spread her hands out wide in a very Italian gesture. ‘Who can tell? Find this picture and no one will care. Besides, I’ve always wanted to stay in this place. And my expenses in London were derisory. This will make up for it a little. I’ve booked us in over the weekend. We can sort the picture out, then have a couple of days relaxing. Do you mind?’

  ‘Am I complaining? This time last month I was sitting in a sandwich shop in London eating a cheese and pickle roll. This arrangement seems slightly preferable, whatever the dire consequences of failure.’

  ‘Are you afraid of that?’

  ‘Of failing or the consequences? Yes and no. I think you will have your proof by tomorrow, whatever happens. Do you carry a gun, by the way?’

  Flavia frowned at the apparent non sequitur, trying to work out the mental leaps that took her companion from one subject to another. ‘No,’ she said, giving up the effort. ‘I’m not in the police, remember. Just a civilian. Why do you ask?’

  He shook his head and smiled at her reassuringly. ‘No reason. Just wondering. This painting has been unlucky.’

  Getting back to a more comfortable topic, Flavia announced that they had more than enough time for lunch, and that, speaking personally, she needed some. Then they examined the local church, slowly and in a relaxing fashion, and walked, equally gently, in to the centre. Striding up the hill was a little tiring, Argyll not having had much in the way of exercise for months, and his enjoyment of the stroll was spoiled by his trying to seem not too much out of breath. Flavia seemed not at all affected by the incline.

  They reached the Campo at four, after a brief pause while Flavia did some shopping. How she could think of shopping at a time like this was beyond him, but he put it all down to cultural relativism. Some people do odd things to work off tension, and despite their relaxing start, he could tell that both of them were starting to feel just a little nervous.

  The square they were heading for is a bizarre shape, like the outline of a cup, which runs downhill from the curved portion to a flat plane at the end. The straight side is almost entirely taken up by the palace; the centre of administration back in the days when Siena was a major city-state whose power, briefly, rivalled that of Florence itself.

  The days of greatness had long since gone, however. A couple of unfortunate sixteenth-century decisions concerning the choice of enemies, a rapid war, and Siena settled into the role of minor provincial backwater. Since the seventeenth century, when some wise burgher had the bright idea of inventing the Palio – the annual horse race round the Campo – it had survived mainly on tourist income.

  This year’s contingent was beginning to flow in nicely. All the numerous cafés along the curved sides at the top of the Campo had laid out their chairs, tables and umbrellas and waiters were flitting to and fro, delivering glasses of pastis, coffees, bottles of mineral water and the inevitable Coca-Colas. Little posses of tourists stood around gaping at the sight, or heading for the entrance to the palace.

  There was not a lot of time to admire the view. Flavia led Argyll rapidly to the palazzo entrance, paid the two thousand five hundred lire entrance fee and wasted a few minutes complaining to the ticket seller about the disgraceful expense. This preliminary over, they crossed the courtyard and set about being sightseers. They had timed it quite well. Most Italian museums stop admitting new visitors at about twenty-five minutes before closing time; they had bought their tickets with five minutes to spare.

  In the lower hall, where the great frescos by Sodoma are displayed, they split up, Flavia to examine the doors and windows, Argyll to locate the Mantini. An unpleasant shock awaited him when he arr
ived in the upper saloon. According to the picture in his guide book, 1975 edition, the picture should have been in a dark corner at the back, above a glass case of miscellaneous Renaissance silverware and just to the left of a vast nineteenth-century painting of Vittorio Emanuele, unifier of Italy, striking a heroic pose on a horse.

  It wasn’t. Instead, there was a group of early twentieth-century town councillors, done in the degenerate style of portraiture that proved that Italy was long since past its best in the picture department. Argyll’s heart sank. After his enormous confidence that his plan would go off smoothly, he was now going to have to explain himself. This would be a little hard for Flavia to swallow. He could almost see the stern look of disapproval on her face, and her opinion of him dwindling into nothing as he told her.

  He walked over to the guardian of the room, took out his guide book and jabbed his finger at the photograph. ‘You see this picture? Where is it? I’ve come all the way from England just to see it, and it’s not there.’

  The guardian looked at him pityingly. ‘You came from England to see that? Listen: take my advice. Go downstairs to the Mappamondo. It’s much better, one of the finest things in all Siena.’

  ‘I know that,’ Argyll retorted testily, feeling his aesthetic integrity was being impugned, ‘but I want to see this. Where has it gone to?’

  The guard shrugged. ‘How should I know? I’ve only been working here a few weeks. I only know what’s in here. Go next door and ask Enrico.’

  He did as he was told and found Enrico, a man of at least sixty, sitting lifelessly on a wooden chair by the door, staring without any sort of interest at the tourists coming and going. He did not look like a man who enjoyed his work overmuch. Argyll explained that Giulio had sent him, and did he know where this was?

  Enrico looked at the picture. ‘Oh. That. Yes, that went years ago. The curator reckoned it was cluttering up the room. They took it down when the room was restored. He didn’t want anything before 1850 in there.’