by Iain Pears
7
She was sitting apathetically at the breakfast table when Argyll arrived once more. She waved him over and he plonked himself down heavily opposite. The dynamic art dealer of the night before was a little under the weather this morning.
‘How are you?’ he asked flatly. ‘You look a bit peaky.’
She grunted. ‘OK, I suppose. You don’t seem so great either. What’s up?’
Argyll eyed the breakfast with distaste. ‘Well, maybe nothing,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But I was due to go round to the Marchesa’s today to make the arrangements for picking up the pictures. Remember? So I rang up, just to say when I would arrive, and got a very frosty reception. I spoke to Pianta again, who seems to be trying to interpose her body, as it were. She said I was not to come. Can’t think why.’
‘Maybe they’re going shopping or something. Doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, the Marchesa has agreed to sell.’
‘I hope so. But I haven’t got the contract yet. It just makes me a little uneasy. Instinct. You’re not eating much, I note. Always a bad sign.’
She poked a croissant miserably. ‘That’s because I’m not doing very well up here. I was sent to help clear up one death. And, blow me, now there’re two of them. And I can’t help feeling that it’s my fault.’
‘Why?’
‘Obvious, isn’t it? Something in the way I questioned them set things off. Then, splat.’
‘Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t sound as though any of them were unduly disturbed. You hardly approached them as though you were eyeing them up for a prison cell. But I must admit that to the outside world a second murder won’t be instantly applauded as rapid progress.’
Flavia grunted once more. She could see that without his pointing it out. ‘You reckon it was a murder, then, despite Bovolo? Have you had breakfast?’
‘Yes and no. And yes. That is, I think it was murder, I haven’t had breakfast and, in answer to your unspoken question, I would love some. My appetite increases when I’m worried.’
She ordered for him and, after a moment’s consideration, decided to abstain herself. Argyll looked at her with concern.
‘I suppose,’ he said after a brief pause, ‘that he could have tripped. But you must admit it seems a bit unlikely.’
One thing about Argyll – idiot though he often was – he did tend to take her point of view. She was about to answer when the waiter, that angel of mercy, that deliverer of good tidings, returned in a soft glide of polished shoes and glinting chromium. She studied the pile of fresh rolls and croissants and jam piled up in front of Argyll, and began to feel a mite peckish.
‘Perhaps. But it doesn’t sound as though Bovolo will agree,’ she said, reaching for a roll and covering it daintily with jam. Force yourself to eat something, she thought. Stop brooding.
‘An accident would, of course, be a simple solution.’
‘Nonsense,’ she replied brusquely, wiping her lips and eyeing a croissant.
‘So you keep on hunting.’
‘Can’t do that. The report goes to the local investigating magistrate’s office. If he decides the case is closed, that’s that.’
‘Except, of course, that it may be wrong.’
‘Apart from that little detail, yes. Why do you think it was murder?’ she asked, spearing a few cubes of melon.
‘Too much coincidence, that’s all. It seems more reasonable to assume that someone popped him one. You’ve eaten all of my breakfast, did you know that?’ he ended with a disappointed tone in his voice.
She had no chance to defend herself. She was about to recommend ordering some more when she noticed a large and portly figure heading towards them from the dining-room entrance.
‘Good God,’ she said.
‘Ah. I thought I might find you in the dining-room,’ said Bottando with an air of complacent satisfaction on his face as he approached. ‘Just a hunch, you know.’
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Work, of course. What else would bring me to this awful place? I did try to ring, but you’ve always been a sound sleeper. Some more pictures have gone missing. Thought I’d come and have a poke around, and see how you were getting on. I hope you appreciate my presence as fully as you should. I’ve just suffered a whole miserable hour on one of those flying tin cans to get here and I feel very fragile. I gather,’ he added, glancing at the breakfast plates, ‘that there’s been another death.’
He paused, ordered some breakfast and added an extra order for Flavia to be sure of getting some himself.
‘Mr Argyll. What a surprise.’ He made it sound as though it was nothing of the sort. Argyll suddenly had the feeling that the General was deducing things from their joint breakfast.
‘We were discussing this case,’ he explained, trying to set the record straight as quickly as possible. ‘I seem to have got involved in it a little.’
Bottando shut his eyes and groaned quietly. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘And I was rather hoping this would be a day trip.’
‘Jonathan’s been extremely helpful,’ Flavia explained. She knew that Bottando had always considered Argyll to be a little accident-prone, the sort of person who could make simple things elaborately complicated. Admittedly, he had some reason for thinking this. But justice demanded she explain matters properly.
‘I’m sure he has,’ Bottando said grumpily. ‘The trouble is, that it’s largely because of him that I’m here.’
Argyll just beat Flavia to raising his eyebrows in surprise. He did it faster; but she was able to raise them one at a time, an accomplishment he’d always envied. ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ he observed.
‘I’m not surprised. Last night, at about eleven, a dozen or so pictures were pinched from a palazzo in Venice. Nothing exciting about that. Happens all the time. But as the owner said she thought the most likely person to have pinched them was Jonathan Argyll, I thought that –’
‘What!’ Argyll squeaked in horror. ‘Me? Why would anyone say that I –’
‘The pictures were – or are, I suppose, if you want to be technical – owned by the Marchesa di Mulino. It seems you were negotiating to buy them. You didn’t like the price being asked, so went ahead and obtained them much more cheaply. So she reckons. Or rather the person who lodged the complaint does, a Signora Pianta.’
Argyll was getting considerable practice at rocking backwards and forwards on his chair. He did it again now, opened his mouth several times with no sound coming out and wiped his hand over his forehead in what appeared to be a gesture of concern. Bottando, who had encountered the Englishman’s occasional moments of incoherence before, was not tempted to interpret the display as necessarily a sign of guilt.
‘Of course,’ he said, filling in the empty space until Argyll should recover himself enough to regain his speech, ‘it seems a little unlikely. But, what with one thing and another, I thought it best to take on the investigation myself.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘I hope you appreciate this. I left the budget submissions behind at a very delicate stage.’
‘They’re gone?’ Argyll said, callously ignoring Bottando’s administrative problems. ‘How? It’s ridiculous. I’d agreed to buy them already. I was going round this morning to sign the contract. This is terrible,’ he babbled.
Bottando spread his stubby hands on the table. ‘I’m merely repeating the story as it came to me very early this morning. Very early, I repeat. Not that I expect thanks. I don’t suppose you have an alibi for the time in question, do you?’
‘Of course. I was with Flavia.’
Bottando, something of a romantic at heart, beamed at him in a way which indicated he had misunderstood the situation entirely. ‘Excellent. But I suppose that means you didn’t steal them.’
‘Of course not,’ Argyll said indignantly.
‘What a shame. Think how much easier it would be for me. You wouldn’t like to make a tiny little confession, just to make an old man’s declining
years that bit easier, I suppose?’
‘No. I didn’t pinch the damn things. I wouldn’t know how to begin. Besides, where do you think I put them? In my hotel room? What was stolen anyway?’
Bottando produced a list and handed it over. ‘I knew you weren’t going to be helpful, somehow,’ he commented wistfully.
Argyll read and Flavia craned over to see. ‘All my pictures,’ he said miserably.
‘Including the Masterson portrait,’ Flavia added. Bottando asked her to explain.
‘Louise Masterson was interested in one of these very unimportant pictures Jonathan was negotiating to buy. At the moment we don’t know why.’
‘I knew it,’ her boss said heavily. ‘I think I shall get this friend of yours deported. Go on then. Tell me all.’
Bottando had almost finished eating by the time she stopped. True to his word, he had kept absolutely silent, apart from the odd grunt and nod as she spoke. He was a good listener, and always respectful. It was one of his better qualities. His mood also seemed to improve notably as he recovered from the epic of the morning flight from Rome. Flavia could never understand how someone like him could get into such a tizz over aircraft.
‘You see, I was right,’ he said benevolently when she finished. ‘The moment Mr Argyll here gets involved things become tortuous and thoroughly difficult. When I sent you up here it was a simple mugging. Now look at it. A complete mess.’ There was, however, a hint of a twinkle in his eye as he spoke. It seemed to refresh him that such an apparently dull affair might have something in it to justify his coming all this way after all. ‘What are your opinions?’
He addressed both of them, implicitly signalling to Argyll that his presence was forgiven and he could feel free to speak. Still, the latter, feeling a little bruised by the traumas of the morning, thought it better to keep a low profile.
‘I haven’t interviewed everyone yet,’ she began. ‘But if we assume Masterson was killed by someone who knew her, rather than by a mythical Sicilian, then there are five likely candidates – the other people on the committee. If you knock out Roberts – as someone else already has, so to speak – then we’re down to four.’
‘So,’ interrupted Bottando, ‘perhaps it would be best just to wait another forty-eight hours and narrow the field down a bit more?’
‘Ho, ho. As I was saying, all have decent alibis, so there is no way at the moment of eliminating them that way. Firstly, there is Miller. He was condescending about her. Implied she was all flash and ambition; not a real scholar at all. Certain amount of jealousy there; she was much more successful. On the other hand, no real motive and needed her for a reference. Equally, seems to have been Roberts’ little poodle.’
Bottando nodded. ‘Not very convincing,’ he said happily. ‘Try again.’
‘Secondly, there is Kollmar. I’m seeing him this morning but it is common knowledge he and Masterson had a spat about a picture he’d examined. The two did not get on, although he and Roberts were long-time colleagues. Also seems a bit under Roberts’ thumb. The point is, Roberts wanted Kollmar to deliver some papers to him yesterday evening, and the body was found floating down the canal near where he lived. Alibi for Masterson good.’
‘Still not convincing, but worth looking into,’ Bottando observed.
‘Thirdly Roberts. No motive at all for doing in Masterson, as far as I could see. And, of course, he is dead himself. He was a precious little toad but was Masterson’s patron.’
Bottando nodded.
‘Finally, leaving aside Lorenzo whom I also haven’t seen yet, there is Van Heteren, whose affair with Masterson may have blown a fuse. Bit of jealousy, perhaps. An impetuous man, I guess, possible candidate for a Crime of Passion, but the sort of person – I would have thought – who would be overcome with remorse and confess immediately afterwards. Besides, another good alibi and no reason that I can see for rubbing out Roberts.’
‘What was she doing in that garden?’
‘Don’t know. Bovolo reckons she was waiting for a taxi to get back to the island because of the transport strike, but it’s still a mystery. The theft of these pictures is a new one, assuming that there’s a connection.’
‘Why should there be?’
‘Search me. But when a woman is interested in an obscure picture, she gets murdered and the picture is stolen a few days later, then I begin to get a little itch.’
Bottando poured himself another coffee, added a minuscule amount of milk and a vast quantity of sugar, and stirred meditatively.
‘It’s very thin,’ he said carefully, not wishing to cause offence. ‘I know you’ve only been at it for a day or so, but there’s nothing solid here at all.’
She nodded sadly. ‘I know. But Bovolo is such a pain it’s amazing I’ve got that far. I’ll spend the day talking to them again. I also thought that maybe Jonathan here could go through all the papers and committee minutes and so on that Bovolo gave me. The carabinieri didn’t notice anything of interest, but you never know. That is, I thought it would be a good idea until you turned up and –’
‘And suggested I might be involved as well,’ Argyll added. ‘Touchy. Maybe I ought to bow out here and go back to Rome. Otherwise I might end up being accused of murder as well. Besides which, I don’t want to damage the department. Wouldn’t look good, you using a suspected felon as an unofficial assistant.’
‘Good heavens, young man, no. I’m sure there’s no need for that. I’ve no doubt your alibi is delightful for both murders. And, if you had nothing to do with those, then there is no reason to think you had anything to do with the theft,’ he said, although he did not succeed in reassuring the Englishman overmuch.
‘Anyway, this theft is under my authority, not that of the carabinieri. So I can authorise you to do as Flavia suggests. As long as my authority lasts, which may not be very long, the way things are going.’
‘Still the budgets?’
‘Afraid so. Getting very sticky. It’s not quite reached the stage of colleagues asking me what I shall do during my retirement, but it’s getting close. Oh, well,’ he went on, folding up his napkin with care. ‘Nothing to be done about that at the moment. Mr Argyll, you spend the morning reading. Flavia, you will have to stay on and go about your interviews, and I will trot off and see what I can do with your friend Commissario Bovolo. What’s he like, by the way?’
‘Not your sort,’ she told him. ‘Cold, unwelcoming and as thick as two short planks. You won’t get on, especially if you threaten to complicate a case he wants to gift wrap and hand over to the investigating magistrate as soon as possible. Besides, he views the impending end of the department with peculiar glee, although why it concerns him I don’t know. See you later.’ She got up, checked her bag, and marched off.
While Bottando and Flavia were dealing with the living and the only recently deceased, Argyll spent the morning engrossed in the study of the long-since dead. To wit, he went to the Biblioteca Marciana, the long and delightful hall of learning that occupies a good part of the southern side of the Piazza San Marco. His plan was simple and he was rather proud of it.
For a start, he was going to spend a few hours not worrying about the business of buying pictures, earning a living and other distressing things. He’d considered rushing straight round to the Marchesa and making sure he could, at least, acquire the few paintings that remained. But as he reckoned it might be better to let the General reassure everyone about his innocence first, he decided to wait until everybody calmed down.
He was meant to go through the committee’s business papers and so glanced through them fast without noticing anything of interest. Mainly a record of paintings examined, reports written, votes taken. He scribbled a few notes for the purpose of looking conscientious, then turned to other, more interesting questions.
He had planned to use his charm and persuasive powers to get the librarian to hand over the slips of paper Masterson would have used to order up her books. The task was much easier than he’d anticipated
. He’d just launched into his explanation about Masterson to the somewhat forbidding lady in charge of the desk, when she leant over to poke around in a box on the floor and pulled out a large envelope.
If the American was dead, she asked irritably, who was going to pay for these? These, it turned out, being a pile of photocopies Masterson had ordered the evening she was killed. She managed to convey the impression that it was the height of discourtesy to get yourself murdered before paying your bills.
Argyll’s volunteering to take the packet off her hands cheered her up immensely, however, and, once he had gone over to the cash desk and handed out what seemed to him an outrageous sum in payment, he went back, took delivery, and settled down to read what she’d been up to.
Whatever her personal spikiness, Masterson was no slowcoach, that was clear. In a single evening, she appeared to have ploughed her way through more than a dozen books. Argyll, who could rarely get through a chapter in a library without falling sound asleep, was duly impressed. Such industry always made him feel inferior. Suppressing a sigh, he steeled himself for the arduous task of dogging her literary footsteps wherever they might lead.
Which was, as far as he could tell after the first hour, not very far. She seemed to have already adopted her resolution to forget about the committee and concentrate on Giorgione. There was Vasari’s and Ridolfi’s Lives of the Painters, both in rather handsome seventeenth-century editions. Leather covers, nice gold tooling on the spine, that sort of thing. As far as Giorgione was concerned, the only fact they seemed to agree on was that his mistress was called Violante di Modena. With proper Renaissance morality, they noted she dropped dead soon after leaving him, although they disagreed about whose arms she was in at the time. Still, both reckoned that it served her right for two-timing a genius, and were upset that Giorgione had seen fit to die of a broken heart as a result.
Next a brief biography of Pietro Luzzi, the pupil of Giorgione tipped as the more likely candidate for the post of red-hot lover who’d seduced and run off with Violante. Evidence seemed a bit thin here. Apart from the fact that he was killed in a battle in 1511, the writer seemed to know nothing about him. Nor, indeed, did he seem to care, hinting rather strongly that painters of Luzzi’s limited ability and dubious character were best forgotten.