The Raphael Affair

by Iain Pears

  Argyll was annoyed. ‘They took this down and left that monstrosity of Vittorio Emanuele up? That’s a disgrace.’

  ‘That’s different. It’s after 1850. Besides, it’s so big it won’t go anywhere else.’ The guard shrugged again. The little fads of curators was evidently not a subject that enlivened him.

  ‘Where’s it now, then?’

  The guard looked at the picture again and frowned. ‘Tower room,’ he said. ‘Don’t know why everyone’s so interested in that, all of a sudden. No one’s shown the slightest concern about it for years. Listen, why don’t you go downstairs and look at the Mappamondo. It’s one of the finest…’

  ‘Everyone? What do you mean? Someone else asked about it? When?’ Argyll interrupted the sales pitch in panic.

  ‘About an hour ago. Man came in here and asked the same question as you did. Sent him up to the tower room, too.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘You think I’m on first name terms with every visitor who comes here? How should I know?’ The guard turned to bellow at some Germans on the other side of the room, and moved away. They weren’t doing anything wrong, but Italian museum guards don’t seem to like Germans overmuch. Besides, it ended a conversation he clearly found tedious.

  Jesus, why the hell didn’t he tell me that in the first place, Argyll thought as he ran desperately up the two flights of twisting stone stairs to the tower room. It was a long way up, and the last room en route to the great Campanile that dominates both the Campo and all of Siena. He arrived breathless, in a small bare room, crowded with faded and dirty prints and a jumble of pictures. There was a small table of inlaid wood in the centre. It was evidently where the museum stored the pictures it thought no one wanted to see. Most people probably walked straight through on their way to the platform at the top, three hundred feet above the square below.

  His anxieties faded a little. It was still there, at least. He had not been out-manoeuvred yet. There, in one corner, surrounded by old maps of Siena in glass frames, was an undoubted, genuine piece of the oeuvre of Carlo Mantini. It was a landscape, which was a little awkward. Typical stuff: a stream in the middle background, and a few blobs of paint signifying peasants tending sheep or goats. Speaking personally, he wouldn’t have called it a landscape with ruins. But, a small hill on the right had a ruined castle on it, which revived his flagging confidence a little. The sky was clear and, had it not been so dirty, would have been a light blue. All of Mantini’s skies were light blue. He couldn’t paint them any other way.

  Argyll stared at it with adoration. There it was. What a beautiful piece. What a gem. What a masterwork. He squinted at it. Looked a little smaller than it should, but that might be the effect of the frame. A pity it would have to be a touch damaged, but he was sure Mantini wouldn’t mind if he knew what it would do for his only biographer’s career. And it was going to be famous, if all went well.

  He was still staring when a deafening alarm went off. ‘Christ, please, not a fire,’ was his initial reaction. Then it occurred to him it must be the bell to warn visitors that the museum was closing. He ran down the stairs again, a much easier task, and went searching for Flavia. She was standing in the main council room.

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve been standing here for hours.’

  ‘Nonsense. We only arrived twenty minutes ago. I was looking for the picture. They moved it upstairs. Listen, he’s here. He followed us. The guard told me someone was asking about the picture. What do we do now?’

  She looked very alarmed at his urgent tone. ‘Who’s here?’

  ‘Byrnes.’

  ‘The picture’s not been touched?’ He shook his head. ‘Good.’ She walked around in little circles and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. ‘We’ve no choice,’ she said decisively after a few moments. ‘We’ll have to go ahead now. It’s too risky to go outside and wait until tomorrow. Come on.’

  She headed off. ‘Where are you going?’ he called after her.

  ‘Just to the toilet. Don’t worry.’

  Argyll’s leg was long since dead of any sensation. He moved awkwardly, trying to get comfortable. ‘Was this the best you could think of?’ he asked peevishly.

  Flavia was sitting on his knee. ‘Keep quiet. I think it’s perfect. They’ve inspected the place already. They won’t come again. Now we just have to sit tight for another three hours or so.’

  ‘Three hours? We’ve been here for days already. It’s all right for you. You’ve got my warm comfortable knee to sit on. I’m the one wedged into this damned lavatory seat. And you might have said, then I could’ve eaten more lunch. I’m starving.’

  ‘Stop complaining. You were all secretive so why couldn’t I be? Besides, I told you to eat up. Here, I bought this in the shop.’

  She reached down by the side of the toilet bowl, picked up her handbag and fished out a bar of chocolate.

  ‘Why are you so certain the alarms won’t go off? We’re going to be very unpopular if we’re arrested. Wouldn’t it have been easier to flash your ID card and ask to examine it?’

  ‘And have everybody know within hours? You know as well as I do that people in the art world are incapable of keeping their mouths shut. Besides, if we wait, it might not be here tomorrow. Anyway, we won’t be caught. The guards will only be round once more; I checked the rota in the entrance. And the alarms are only on the entrances and exits. Obviously they think that any robber will try and get away. We won’t. We just examine the picture, wait until morning, go out with the first visitors, phone Bottando, and finish. There won’t be anything missing, so no one will notice.’

  ‘We’ve got to spend all night here?’ he hissed in horror. ‘In a women’s toilet? Why not the men’s, at least?’

  ‘Eucht. What a dreadful idea. Dirty beasts, men.’

  Argyll ate his chocolate morosely. ‘Couldn’t we just forget the Mantini?’ he asked hopefully, trying to get his plan back on course. ‘After all, with Byrnes here, that’s enough. I think we should just nip off to the hotel, call Bottando, have Byrnes arrested and come back in the morning.’ He finished the chocolate and remembered he’d omitted to offer her any.

  ‘What makes you think it’s Byrnes? The guard didn’t describe him or anything like that.’

  ‘Well,’ said Argyll dubiously. ‘It must be, mustn’t it? I mean, it stands to reason…’

  ‘Not at all. All we know is that someone asked about that picture. Byrnes is the last person it could be. There’s no way he could have found out where we are.’

  Argyll shifted uncomfortably on the toilet seat as she spoke. She took a hard look at him, an uneasy feeling coming over her.

  ‘Jonathan? What have you done, damn you?’

  ‘It’s just that I thought, that, well…I told him, that’s all.’

  Flavia didn’t reply, but leant her forehead against the cool white tiles of the cubicle. ‘What did you do that for?’ she asked faintly when she’d recovered herself.

  ‘It seemed a good idea,’ he explained feebly. ‘You see, even if we found the picture, it wouldn’t get us any further in finding who was responsible. So I thought, if I told Byrnes, he’d have to do something about it. He’d come trotting out to Siena, and the police could arrest him as he entered the city.’

  ‘And you didn’t think it worth mentioning this before? Perhaps it just slipped your memory? One of those little details, of no significance, that you just forgot about? You great dolt.’

  ‘Of course I didn’t forget,’ he protested, his voice rising in pitch as he realised that his masterstroke wasn’t getting the appreciation it deserved.

  ‘Don’t squeak at me like that.’

  ‘Well, why not? I’m getting tired of this,’ he continued – might as well let off steam now – ‘everything I’ve done so far you’ve taken as evidence of my guilt. You’re rude, objectionable and too clever for your own good. Obviously I couldn’t tell you what I planned. You would have locked me up. And if we’re now in a mess, it’s just as much your faul
t as mine. If you hadn’t known best all the time, and maybe trusted me a little more, I would have been more forthcoming. Besides which…’

  ‘Oh, no. Don’t say that. I hate it when you say that. Besides what?’

  Argyll positively squirmed, as much as any man can when sandwiched between a lavatory seat and a semi-official member of the Italian police. He shouldn’t have said it. His burst of wounded indignation had been very impressively delivered, and now he’d gone and spoiled the effect.

  ‘Besides which,’ he went on reluctantly, ‘I’m not entirely convinced I’ve got the right picture. I think I have,’ he hurried on before she could say anything, ‘but I did say I had to cut a few corners.’

  ‘God preserve me,’ Flavia said quietly, to no one in particular. ‘We’re up here, possibly on a fool’s errand. Bottando is fast asleep in Rome and knows nothing about it. You appear to have successfully lured a murderer here without bothering to get any protection at all either for us or the picture. Well done. A fine achievement.’

  ‘I’ll protect you,’ Argyll said gallantly, hoping to make some form of amends.

  ‘Gee. Thanks, mister. That makes me feel a lot better.’ She would have continued in this vein, but felt it hardly worth wasting her breath.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Argyll had lapsed into a sullen, morose silence and ate his way steadily through the contents of Flavia’s handbag. She had stocked it with enough food to withstand a siege. He desperately craved a cigarette.

  Flavia had also lost her conversational flair. Clearly little could be done to repair their once promising relationship until that picture had been looked at. Then, perhaps, all would be forgotten and forgiven. He still thought it was a good plan, and was a little hurt that she’d reacted so badly. Maybe she was jealous of him for thinking it up?

  When she finally decided that it was safe and time to go, it took about ten minutes to restore life to his leg. When he stood up for the first time, it collapsed under him and he fell, knocking over a large bucket with a toilet brush in it. It rattled over the floor, and the noise echoed around the room. They watched as it rolled slowly to a halt in the corner. ‘Be quiet, for God’s sake,’ Flavia yelled in fright.

  ‘You’re making as much noise as I am. At least I’m not shouting my head off,’ he hissed back.

  ‘I don’t want us to get caught now. It would be very embarrassing.’

  He smiled in a half-way attempt to be conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to this sort of escapade. It’s not included in the introductory course for art history graduates.’

  She glared at him, still not ready to forgive. ‘Just keep quiet, all right? Now, let’s get going.’

  She poked her head into the corridor, then disappeared through the door, gesturing for him to follow. They walked down to the main saloon again, and tiptoed, quietly and cautiously, over to the door that led to the staircase. It opened. No alarms. That at least was one worrying part over.

  Once on the top floor, she flicked on a small torch, another purchase from the shop. ‘Now tell me I don’t think of everything,’ she murmured to him as they walked. She went lightly and without a sound. Argyll, wearing his usual heavy, metal-tipped brogues, clattered after, despite all attempts to keep quiet. Had she mentioned she was proposing amateur cat burglary, he would have dressed appropriately.

  The room was as he had left it six hours earlier. Flavia went over, quietly closed the heavy wooden shutters over the windows, and flipped the metal fastener to keep them secure. Then she closed the door, and pushed down the light switch.

  ‘There. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to see what we’re doing for a bit. No one will be along here for at least an hour. How long will this take you?’

  ‘Not long at all,’ he replied as they gently took the picture off the hook that kept it on the wall and blew off the thin coat of dust all over it. ‘I’ll have to be careful, but no more than five minutes, I reckon.’

  He had taken a book on the restoration and cleaning of pictures out of the library and had read the subject up on the plane flight. In principle it was simple. You just needed some form of solvent and a cloth. Then you brushed away until the right amount of dirt or paint was removed.

  He pulled the tools he had bought in the art supply shop in London out of his pocket. A very small but very sharp knife, a large bundle of cotton wool and a small aerosol. ‘Combination of acid and alcohol. The man in the shop said it’s the best thing you can buy.’ He grinned at her. ‘I think of everything, you see.’ No response.

  As is often the case, practice turned out to be more complex than principle suggested. Argyll wanted to be careful not to do too much damage to the painting; after all, he was no restorer and had only the vaguest idea of what he was doing. So he concentrated on a very small amount of canvas in the bottom-left corner. But this meant he could only spray a small squirt from the aerosol at any time, in case it spread out too far.

  So he settled down to squirt and rub, squirt and rub, only removing a tiny amount of dirt, varnish and paint at a time. It was hard work that required a lot of concentration. Every time he swabbed the cotton wool over the canvas, he hoped to see the tell-tale signs that indicated a masterpiece underneath.

  ‘How’s it going? You’ve been at it for nearly twenty minutes now.’ She spoke quietly but urgently, leaning against a table a few feet away to give him light. She rubbed her arms. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

  He rubbed for another five minutes, the pile of dirty cotton-wool balls getting ever bigger. Then, as he gently slid a new ball across the paintwork, he stopped, and stared intently, scarcely believing his eyes.

  ‘What is it? Have you found it?’ She spoke excitedly, leaning forward for a better view.

  ‘Paint,’ he said. ‘Green paint underneath…Flavia, put that light back on. What are you doing?’

  Flavia didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. The room was plunged into darkness. If both of them hadn’t been concentrating so hard on the picture, they might have noticed the movement of the door opening. But they didn’t, and the first time Flavia realised something was wrong was when she was hit on the side of the head with a thick length of wood. She fell on the floor, silent, with blood flowing swiftly from a broad cut in her scalp.

  Argyll looked up at the sound, saw her collapse, and saw a shadowy figure advancing towards him. ‘Oh my God…’ he began, but had no time to finish the remark. He had never been kicked in the stomach before, certainly not that hard, and had never imagined that anything could hurt so much.

  Badly winded, he doubled up in agony, clutching at his stomach as though that might lessen the torment. He was pushed away from the picture and fell heavily on the floor. He liked, later, to think that he was moaning softly. In truth, his groans were probably a good deal louder. He didn’t notice; his stomach fully occupied his consciousness, but he did reach out and touch Flavia, afraid of what he might discover.

  ‘Don’t you dare die on me. Keep going or I’ll kill you,’ he whispered in her ear. He felt for her pulse, and couldn’t find it. But he’d never been able to find his own either. He reached for her head and brushed her hair lightly, and felt the soft breath coming from her mouth and nose. She was still alive. But she wouldn’t be for long unless he got his act together here. Nor would he, for that matter. ‘Looks like neither of us thought of everything,’ he said to her sadly.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t move. The pain was too intense. All he could do was watch as the dark outline of the man who had given him such misery took a small, and evidently very sharp, knife and cut the painting, swiftly and without fuss, out of the back of the frame. At least, he assumed that was what was going on; all he could see was the occasional glint of metal. He didn’t like the look of that knife, which was evidently a versatile instrument which could be put to many uses. He wheezed on the floor as the man rolled up the canvas, put it in a cardboard tube, and sealed it. Very methodical, in no rush at all.

  That do
ne, he picked up his knife again. ‘Oh, Lord,’ thought Argyll. ‘Here we go.’ He exploded from his sitting position and cannoned into the man’s chest, knocking him off balance by sheer fluke. It used up all the reserves of energy and will-power he had. More, in fact. Men with knives can bring out the best in you.

  But it was immediately obvious that his best wasn’t enough. His antagonist slipped over, but Argyll simply didn’t have the resources to do what was plainly required; that is, leap decisively up and down on his head with his heavy, metal-tipped shoes. Instead, he just stood there, still half hunched over with pain as his opponent rolled over, recovered his knife and began coming towards him again.

  There was only one course left, and he took it. In the gloom, he could dimly make out that the infernal creature was between him and the door leading to the staircase down. So Argyll dashed through the other one and began to climb up. It was the best he could do to fulfil his promise to Flavia to protect her, even though she’d plainly been dismissive of his offer. With luck her assailant would follow him, giving Flavia a chance to regain consciousness and raise the alarm.

  I hope he comes after me, anyway, he thought as he wheezed and puffed his way up the stairs. But what if he does something to Flavia first? Maybe I should have stayed down there.

  It was a noble thought, and the fact that it was plainly impractical didn’t make him feel less awful. He would have been killed and Flavia would have followed soon after. Which may yet be the case anyway, Argyll reflected.

  He ran blindly up the stairs in the pitch dark, half-tripping, missing steps, but going as fast as he could. It got harder and harder. Earlier in the afternoon even the climb up the hill had been enough to wind him; the way he felt now, the man behind wasn’t even going to have to bother sticking in a knife. It was what came of sitting in libraries when he should have been out jogging away and lifting weights. If he survived this, Argyll promised himself, he’d buy a rowing machine. The next time some tall, dark forger tried to knife him in a Sienese tower in the middle of the night, he’d be prepared for it. Up the stairs like the wind, he’d go.