The Bernini Bust

6

Flavia arrived at the office at ten in the morning, feeling very much the worse for wear. She had, after all, been up until the early hours chasing phantom art dealers, and had spent what little remained of the night in bed, strangely disturbed about Argyll’s likely condition. An expensive phone call to the hospital yielded only platitudes and a point-blank refusal to let her talk to him. He was as fine as could be expected and asleep; and anyway, who was she?

A friend, she said. If there was any change in his condition would they call immediately. They said they were not authorised to make overseas calls. So call Detective Morelli, then. This they agreed to do.

It was mere habit that brought her into the office, combined with the simple realisation that there was not much else to do. She was summoned immediately to Bottando’s office when she arrived.

‘Good God, you look awful,’ he said as she staggered in. ‘Anyone would think you’d been up all night.’

She tried, but failed, to stifle a yawn and did her best to focus on him properly. ‘I suppose you want to hear about di Souza,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t on the plane.’

‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been having another long chat with that Morelli. He’s launched a request – official this time – for our help.’

‘If his murderer’s not here, I don’t see what we can do. What sort of help?’

‘This bust. May have come from here, probably smuggled, certainly stolen from a packing case next to the body. Perhaps a connection. They want to know what it is. So do I. As you’ve looked into this already, I thought you’d better continue with it. If you’re up to it.’

She was halfway to protesting that she’d wasted enough time on this already, but Bottando’s implied reference to female frailty swung her decision the other way. Of course she was up to it. Just a little woozy, that was all.

Bottando, of course, who’d known her for several years now, had been certain that the comment was just the deft little touch that was required. For himself, he was largely of the opinion that the matter could wait, certainly until the Americans actually recovered the thing, and they could find out whether it was worth trying to get back.

But international co-operation was always prestigious, and he was quite pleased that his department was getting involved rather than the carabinieri. It looked good on the annual report, that sort of thing, and his fiefdom was small enough and vulnerable enough not to be able to turn its nose up at high-profile activities, no matter how futile they were likely to prove.

On top of that, of course, Morelli had mentioned that Argyll had suggested the contact, so he owed him one. Putting Flavia on to it, he reckoned, paid the debt promptly and generously. Judging by what Morelli had said – the Englishman with a broken leg and liable to be sued for enough money to restock an entire shop full of French lingerie, quite apart from hospital bills – he needed all the help he could get at the moment.

‘So,’ she said, yawning again and overcoming a reluctance to get involved in anything concerning Argyll, sorry for him though she felt, ‘what do you want me to do?’

‘First,’ he said, listing the points on the fingers of a pudgy little hand, ‘go out, and buy yourself several of the strongest coffees you can lay your hands on. Second, drink them. Third, get the paper – Herald Tribune would be the best – and see what it says about this whole business. Then see what you can find out about this bust. Finally, go and see the man who bought it. Man called Langton, apparently. He lives in Rome, and is flying back today.’

‘He bought Argyll’s Titian,’ she said absentmindedly.

‘Hmm. Find out where he got the Bernini from, how much he paid for it, how it left the country, what di Souza’s gripe was. You’d better dig out di Souza’s file as well. There must be one somewhere around here. I really must get our filing system sorted out. Go and see his friends, search his apartment. Usual stuff.’

‘And then?’

‘Then,’ he said, smiling slightly as he noticed that she was beginning to revive a little. Got her, he thought. Stage one complete. ‘Then you can stop for lunch.’

Of course, it took longer than that; drinking coffee and reading newspapers can’t be hurried. A couple of hours later, Flavia had learnt what there was to know about the case from the fulsome reports in the papers, drunk the better part of a litre of coffee and then decided to go straight into lunch to consider matters.

She was feeling very much better. For all her reluctance, the case had tickled her fancy a little, and Argyll’s mishap had done something to soften her hostile thoughts. He was still an idiot, of course, but he was manifestly a bigger danger to himself than he was to anyone else.

As for the case itself, she could not see any clear explanation for what had happened. This was not surprising – if it had been obvious to her then undoubtedly the Los Angeles police would have leapt to the same conclusion. However, it seemed that Moresby and di Souza had gone to the office to discuss the Spaniard’s gripe about this bust; and that it must have been fairly important for a man like Moresby to interrupt his evening to talk to a mere art dealer.

Now, if you are going to talk about something, it helps to see it. So, it was reasonable to suppose that the first thing they did was peer inside the case containing the bust. Moresby then summoned his lawyer or aide or whatever he was, and moments later he was shot and di Souza legged it.

As far as she was concerned, this indicated that the bust was pretty central to proceedings.

She finally located the office record on Hector di Souza – filed under ‘H’ for some reason – and read it carefully. A bit of a lad, our Hector, she thought. Even though the file was thin – the department had only existed for a few years and early material had been begged, borrowed or stolen from somewhat inadequate carabinieri archives – it was clear that di Souza was one of that breed who couldn’t help pulling a fast one on gullible clients. He’d been in operation since about 1948, when he’d been washed up in Rome after the war. A lot of people got into the art business then, in a period when tens of thousands of works of art were drifting around the continent, their owners dead, or lost or forgotten. A lot of money to be made if you knew what you were doing and didn’t mind cutting a few corners.

Di Souza was a master corner-cutter. For some reason he had never been prosecuted for anything, but he had sold some dodgy stuff, and almost certainly fobbed newly made fakes on to the unsuspecting for high prices. There was, in fact, the name of a sculptor in Gubbio who had worked for him occasionally. Many years ago, certainly, but old habits…

She noted that down thoughtfully. Pity the information was so scanty. Of course, if you open a box and find you have paid four million dollars for a fake, you might get annoyed. Demand your money back.

James Langton, the Moresby agent in Rome who had assiduously plundered the galleries and collections of the country for the past few years to stock the museum, was clearly the place to start. Flavia checked her watch, and reckoned that he should have got back by now. Then she picked up a phone book, found the address and summoned a taxi.

Langton, however, was hard to get hold of; he had gone straight to bed and was evidently reluctant to get out of it again. She had to lean on his doorbell before he appeared, frowsy, ill-humoured and very much the worse for wear. That was his problem; she had a job to do. So she pestered him with officialese until he agreed to get dressed, and then took pity on him and steered him off to get some coffee in him. The fresh air seemed to do something to wake him up.

‘Terrible thing, terrible,’ he said as they walked across to a small piazza that contained a dingy bar. ‘I’d known old Moresby for years. Imagine, being killed like that. Have you heard anything new? Have they arrested di Souza yet?’

Flavia said they hadn’t, and asked why he thought they would. Couldn’t see who else might have done it, he said.

Langton broke off to order a coffee. Decaffeinated, he insisted. Caffeine made his heart race. ‘Bit outside your area of operations, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought you dealt with art thefts?’

‘We do. There’s been one. Your Bernini,’ she went on. ‘Quite apart from the fact that it was material to the murder, we have reason to believe it may have left this country illegally. If so, we’ll want it back. You know the laws about exporting works of art as well as I do, I’m sure.’

‘So what do you want to know?’

‘First routine details, if you don’t mind. I’ll read, stop me if I go wrong. James Robert Langton, nationality British, born 1941, educated London University, worked as a dealer until employed by Arthur Moresby in 1972. OK so far?’

He nodded.

‘Curator of Moresby collection in Los Angeles until three years ago, then chief buyer in Europe based in Rome.’

He nodded again.

‘A few weeks ago you bought a bust said to be by Bernini…’

‘It was.’

‘Said to be of Pius V.’

‘It is.’

‘Where did you get it from? What was it like?’

‘It was perfect,’ he said. ‘Undoubtedly genuine. Excellent condition. I can let you have my written assessment, if you want.’

‘Thank you. I’d like to see it. Where did it come from?’

‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘That’s a bit tricky.’

‘Why’s that?’

Langton adopted the look of someone whose sense of professional propriety was coming under strain. ‘Confidential,’ he said at last. She waited for him to go on. ‘The owners were most insistent. Family matter, I gather.’

Flavia assured him that, while she was ordinarily very aware of the difficulties of families, she wanted to know where that bust came from. Discretion assured. He still didn’t seem convinced, so she also told him that, in order to continue his career in Italy, he’d need to get his residence permit renewed in a few months. And smiled sweetly in the way you do when you have the power to make the Interior Ministry get awkward. Not that she had, and anyway it didn’t seem to have much effect. He said he anticipated leaving the country to go and live in America again soon. Having him deported wasn’t much of a threat. So she tried the all-buddies-in-this-together approach.

‘Listen, Mr Langton,’ she said in her kindest of voices, ‘you know as well as I do that an unknown seller is the oldest trick in the book for covering up smuggled goods. Unless you want us to go all the way back until we get to the marble dust underneath Bernini’s fingernails, you’d better tell us where that thing came from. Because we’ll be after you until we get it back.’

Oddly enough, it didn’t work. What more could she possibly do? All he did was smile at her and shake his head slowly. It seemed that the more she pushed, the more relaxed he got. Strange.

‘I can’t stop you investigating,’ he said smugly. ‘But I’m absolutely certain you won’t find anything at all to incriminate me. I bought it fairly, and the museum paid for it when it arrived in America. As far as smuggling goes – well, you’re right, it was. No harm in admitting that. Di Souza took it out of the country, and the previous possessors owned it until it arrived at the museum. Di Souza and they bear the responsibility, not me. That’s why I’m not going to tell you who they are. And, frankly, there’s not much you can do about it now.’

The statement made Flavia twitch with anger. Because Langton was essentially correct. The most they could do was fine the owner for smuggling – if they ever worked out who it was – and perhaps di Souza for complicity, if he also turned up. As the bust was not paid for until it arrived in America, it remained the old owner’s property until then. The museum had done nothing at all that was actionable. It was enough to make her hope they didn’t recover it.

‘You will at least confirm that Hector transported it?’

This Langton was happy to do.

‘But he didn’t know what it was. You can’t blame him.’

‘A contract’s a contract,’ he said. ‘Besides, you don’t really believe that Hector was such an innocent, do you?’

Flavia drummed her fingers on the table with frustration and tried one last time. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘You know very well we’re not interested in you, or in this family, or in prosecuting anyone. We want that bust back, but more importantly we’re trying to help the Los Angeles police sort out Moresby’s murder. Your employer, after all. His death had something to do with that bust. So why don’t you just tell us where you got it from?’

Langton shook his head slowly. ‘Sorry,’ he said, again with the slight glimmering of a smile on his face. ‘Can’t. And you’re wasting your time pressing me.’

‘You’re not being very helpful, you know.’

‘Why should I be helpful? If I thought incriminating this family might be of use I would be bending over backwards to help. But there’s nothing I can do or say. That’s why I’m back here. The police there didn’t want me for anything. I told them I’d bought the bust, that di Souza had transported it, I’d been at the party and hadn’t seen anything unusual. They confirmed from the video cameras that I was sitting on a lump of marble smoking a cigarette at the critical moment so couldn’t have killed anyone. That’s all I have to tell you as well. Telling you where the bust came from is entirely irrelevant and would achieve nothing but compromise my reputation for integrity.’

‘You have one?’

He smirked at her. ‘I do. And I intend to keep it. So mind your own business.’

He dusted a fleck of ash from his jacket and stood up. ‘Nice to meet you.’ With this sardonic comment he walked off, leaving Flavia to pay the bill.

That settles it, she thought, leaving the money on the table and stumping out. I’ll have him. And that bust.

Back to basics. Flavia went straight to the office and started ringing old friends, people who owed her a favour and some other people to whom she was prepared to owe a favour.

What she was after was any official mention of either Moresby or Langton. There was very little to be had, except for a file on Moresby held by the security forces who, as usual, were not all that keen on letting outsiders see what they had. She only began to make progress when she solicited Bottando’s help. He remembered a senior civil servant connected with Intelligence had once illegally sold a Guardi through a London auction house and the department had buried the affair under a pile of paper.

‘Ring him up and remind him,’ he said complacently, noting that there was a bit of colour back in her cheeks and her sense of purpose was returning. ‘You see, you’re always so critical when I do that sort of thing. Now you see how helpful it can be.’

Hmmph. Flavia still thought the civil servant should have been prosecuted, but who was she to complain at the moment?

On the second attempt, security promised the file for that afternoon.

That accomplished, she leant back in her chair and thought. Bernini. How to find out about Bernini? Answer, ask an expert on Bernini. And where do you find an expert? Answer, in the museum that owns lots of Berninis.

Flavia picked up her coat, walked out into the sunlit piazza, and grabbed another taxi.

‘Borghese Museum, please,’ she said.

The Borghese, one of the nicest museums in the world, not so grand it causes indigestion but every piece in it a marvel, is based on the collection of the Borghese family, one of whom, Scipione, was the first and most enthusiastic patron of Bernini. So keen was he, indeed, that the museum has Berninis coming out of its ears. It’s a bit of a shock to discover that the cutlery in the tea room wasn’t hand-sculpted by the man as well.

Like all museums, the Borghese houses its employees in a less stately fashion than it does its pieces. Lumps of marble get the full stucco and gilt and painted-ceiling treatment, staff occupy grubby little shoeboxes formerly inhabited by lesser domestic servants. In this respect, at least, museum priorities are pretty much the same the world over. Flavia ended up in a tiny, grim and dark little office, asking her questions.

As might have been expected, the resident Bernini man was on sabbatical in Hamburg for the year, although no one was entirely certain what he was doing there. His deputy was at a seminar in Milan, and the third under-deputy had disappeared at eleven and not come back. In fact, the nearest they had to a resident expert at the moment was a young foreign intern called Collins, working his passage for a year before using the experience (and patronage) as leverage to get a job which actually had a salary attached.

And he confessed after the introductions were performed that he was more of a seventeenth-century Dutch man himself and didn’t really know much about sculpture. He was just filling in while everyone else was on holiday. Sorry, on sabbatical. But he was willing to do what he could, as long as it wasn’t too complicated.

‘Bernini,’ Flavia said, resigning herself.

‘Oh,’ he replied.

‘I think a bust of Pius V may have been smuggled out the country. I want to know as much about it as possible. Owners. Where it’s been. A photograph would be nice, as well.’

‘Pius V?’ he said, suddenly interested. ‘Has this got something to do with the Moresby murder that’s all over the papers?’

She nodded. Of course it had.

This information galvanised Collins into action. He got up from his seat and headed out the door. He was going into battle with the filing system and would be back as soon as possible.

‘This could take time,’ he said as he disappeared. ‘There’s so many Berninis around. And those files…well, let’s just say they could be organised a little better. The man who set them up preferred to keep everything in his head. And he died last year without passing his system on to anyone.’

So Flavia sat and admired the view, after deciding that yet another cup of coffee might not be such a good idea. She had a tolerant stomach, but it could be pushed too far.

Collins came back remarkably quickly, triumphantly waving a thin brown file. ‘Stroke of luck. Got something for you,’ he said. ‘More than I expected, in fact. It’s a bit out of date, but all there is.’

Flavia was twitching with anticipation. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Anything will do. Let’s have a look.’

He opened the file, and Flavia saw it contained only a couple of pieces of paper, musty with age and covered in tiny crabbed handwriting that was almost indecipherable. ‘Here you are. It’s all rather curious, in fact. It seems to have passed through the museum very briefly in 1951. This sheet is an assessment of a bust, said to be of your Pope Pius by Bernini. Brought in by the customs police for examination.’

He glanced up at Flavia, who was staring at him blankly. ‘Dated September 3, 1951,’ he went on. ‘Great enthusiasm, detailed description. Conclusion, that this work was undoubtedly by the Man Himself, and a work of national importance. OK?’

Flavia virtually snatched the document from his hands and studied it with the intensity of someone who scarcely credited it.

‘Now, as you will see, there is this strange note at the end.’

Collins turned the paper over and pointed out a line, written in the same crabbed hand. Flavia read it.

‘“Discharged from the museum by E Alberghi. September 9, 1951.” And signed. What does that mean?’

‘Just what it says. In essence, the museum decided it didn’t want it and Alberghi authorised it leaving the museum.’

‘But Alberghi?’

‘Enrico Alberghi – keeper of sculpture here for years. The man who set up the files. He was a very great authority. A nasty man by reputation, but the best. Never made a mistake and used to terrify everybody. One of the old breed; a collector as well as a connoisseur. Nowadays we’re all too poor, but…’

‘Hold it. What did he collect?’

The young man shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Before my time. But he was an expert on baroque sculpture.’

‘Tell me about this report, then. What does it mean?’

He shrugged. ‘Not a clue. This really is outside my area of expertise. All I can tell you is the obvious: Alberghi concluded it was genuine, and the museum didn’t keep it.’

‘Could they have done?’

He groaned slightly. ‘I’m really not the right person to ask,’ he repeated. ‘But as far as I understand Italian law, yes. If it’s caught being smuggled out, then it can be confiscated. Museums can then try and acquire it, or it gets sold off.’

‘Wouldn’t this museum have wanted another Bernini?’

He shrugged. ‘I would have thought so. But evidently not. This document is a little vague. Alberghi might have bought it for himself for all I know. But at least it wasn’t returned to the owner.’

‘What owner?’

He picked up the file and handed her the other piece of paper. It was a carbon copy of a typewritten letter, dated October 1951, saying that in the circumstances, of which the owner was only too aware, the bust would not be returned and there would be no further communication on the subject.

The letter was addressed to Hector di Souza.

‘Well, how very interesting,’ Bottando said, as he scratched his stomach and considered what Flavia had just told him. ‘So you reckon this Alberghi character liked the bust so much he stuck it in his briefcase and took it home, where it stayed until it was pinched a month or so ago?’

‘I don’t know, but there’s a remarkable connection there,’ she said. ‘All I know is that di Souza owned a Bernini in 1951 and it was confiscated. What happened after that I’ve no idea. He may even have got it back eventually and been waiting for another chance.’

‘Hardly seems likely, though, does it? I mean, a character like di Souza. A real Bernini is a goldmine, and he wasn’t so rich. I can’t see him sitting on a potential pile of money like that for forty years or so.’

‘Unless he was afraid to attract attention by selling it,’ she said. ‘That would explain it. He might have been waiting for Alberghi to die.’

‘True, but you don’t think that’s what happened, do you?’

‘Not really. Morelli reckons di Souza was surprised when he heard the director’s announcement. It seems more likely that this awfully confidential family was a blind and the bust came from Bracciano. The point to be cleared up, of course, is who pinched it.’

‘Chronology? Does it all fit?’

She picked up her notes and proffered them. Bottando waved them aside. He was prepared to take her word for it.

‘Very well, I think,’ she said. ‘As far as I can work out the burglary took place a few weeks before the case left the country. Perfect timing.’

‘If di Souza either owned it or stole it, it’s hardly likely he would be surprised about its appearance in the Moresby Museum.’

‘He might have been simply alarmed at it being announced publicly, with Argyll there to hear. After all, the first thing he did was ring me up to tell me about it.’

Bottando thought about this for a while, looking out of his window at the big clock on the church of San Ignazio opposite. ‘And if your Argyll wasn’t there, we might never have been put on to it. There’s a coincidence for you. The trouble is,’ he added, ‘Alberghi’s heir can’t confirm what was stolen. We’ll have to wait until the Americans recover it before there’s any chance of identifying it.’

Flavia nodded. ‘What this doesn’t clear up, of course, is why it got stolen a second time. That doesn’t make any sort of sense. Now, if it had been a fake…’

‘Do we know it wasn’t?’ Bottando asked idly, still watching the clock. ‘I mean, the only real indication we have is a report written forty years ago by someone who died – very conveniently if you ask me – last year. Didn’t you say di Souza had a long-standing connection with a sculptor?’

‘Man called Borunna, in Gubbio. That’s right. It’s what the file says, anyway.’

‘Go and see him. It’ll be worth examining all the angles. Meantime, I’ll put someone on to checking auction catalogues and dealers. See if anything stolen from Alberghi has surfaced. Waste of time, I think, but you never know.’

Flavia got up to go. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll go up tomorrow. I’m a bit whacked at the moment.’

He peered at her, then nodded. ‘Fine. No great rush. You might go and give di Souza’s apartment a going over, though, if you feel like it. Don’t want you getting bored.’

‘Is there anything else going on in America?’

Bottando shook his head. ‘Not really, no. I had another word with Morelli, but he didn’t have much to add. Your Argyll is coming along nicely. The accident wasn’t his fault, apparently. The brake cable of his car dropped off, simple enough. Do you, by any chance, have a passport?’

‘Of course I do. You know that. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing. It’s just that I’ve booked you on to a plane for Los Angeles tomorrow. You’ll have time to go to Gubbio first. But I thought you ought to pop off and recover this bust yourself. Get you out of the office for a bit.’

She gave him a suspicious look, and he smiled sweetly and innocently back at her.

Flavia directed her third taxi of the day to an apartment block in a street off the via Veneto. No missing art dealers were in residence, and the apartment was as well defended as the American Embassy down the street.

But the caretaker had a set of keys, and it didn’t take long to persuade him to hand them over, even though he was not at all impressed by the warrant Flavia had written out for herself in the back of the taxi. She also relieved him of the mail, to give herself something interesting to read in the elevator.

Di Souza’s letters were not enlightening. Flavia learnt only that he was in danger of having his electricity cut off for non-payment, was being asked to tear his American Express card in two and send both halves back to the organisation, and had unaccountably failed to settle an outstanding bill with a tailor.

When she finally got through the formidable array of locks and metal plating on the door, she began to search. Initially not knowing where to start, she employed the impressionistic method, flitting about and inspecting whatever took her fancy, particularly satisfying her curiosity about what lay under the bed. Not even fluff. A tidy man, she decided. The cavity under her own bed resembled a full-blown dust storm.

Then she settled down to a more methodical approach, beginning at the inlaid Empire writing desk, moving on to the filing cabinet before the more whimsical business of investigating down the sides of gilt Venetian sofas or peering behind baroque history pieces on the walls.

Neither fancy nor professionalism produced much to justify her diligence. The only thing Flavia was sure of at the end was that Hector di Souza was no businessman. His accounting procedure was more than a little quaint. Notes of purchases were written on the back of cigarette packets which were then crushed and filed. Most of his assets – except for those which were used for sitting on or hung on walls – seemed to be in a moderately sized bundle of bank notes stuffed in a drawer. His bank statement revealed wild and inexplicable fluctuations, but nothing so grand as to suggest that several million dollars had recently come his way. That, indeed, tallied with the checks Bottando had instituted with assorted banks. He had found no trace of surreptitious Swiss accounts and the bank manager in Rome, asked if di Souza had recently made an enormous deposit, guffawed heartily. Any deposit at all, he indicated, would have been a bit of a novelty. Apart from that, there was a small file labelled ‘Stock’ but it contained no note of a Bernini. Not even an Algardi.

So, what did the apartment tell her? Di Souza was not in the big league of dealers. The apartment was fairly small and the furniture not of the highest quality. You can tell an art dealer by the chairs he sits on. Argyll’s, she remembered, had the stuffing coming out of them. Di Souza made a reasonable income, assuming that most of it was hidden and never appeared in his account books. No one could live off the tiny sums entered officially for taxation purposes. A purveyor of middle-ranking stuff to middle-ranking collectors. In all, not the sort of man you’d expect to find selling major works of art to places like the Moresby. No more than Argyll was, really.

But there they both were, selling stuff to the place. Was this relevant? Probably not, or at least, not yet. But it was a coincidence, as Bottando had noted. She put the thought to the back of her mind, in case it came in handy later on.