The Immaculate Deception

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 pottered into the muniments room, where the super-efficient 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 endeavour that lay ahead. It would have been so much easier to sit back in his chair and watch them at it, to 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-coloured 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 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 on 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. Stonehouse 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 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 it was so valuable but because it was the biggest example of wholesale smuggling in recent Italian history.

To take one 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 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 catalogue, and it 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 his 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 and fail 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 he called a cottage, in any case. 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 still 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. ‘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 second-hand. As I understand it, someone noticed one morning that it had gone. My father called the police, and eight days later 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. 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 was 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 travelling 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 behaviour.’

‘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 tyre.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Wherever 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 tyre. So he had to walk the last half mile and by the time he arrived, my father had bought the picture for a knock-down price, and insisted that Finzi admire it in the street, 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.’

‘But this was when?’ Argyll asked.

‘Nineteen thirty-eight, I believe.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t later? The records say 1940.’

‘Oh, no. It was 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 harbour 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? Although 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 it?’

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. Even Argyll had heard of Tancred Bulovius, one of those hybrid collector-scholars who no longer exist. One of the more opinionated connoisseurs of his age, which was properly the late 1940s and ’50s. Probably a detestable man, but encyclopaedic 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 eighty. At least he must have given up chasing after everything female which 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.’

‘A friend now owns the picture,’ he said. ‘So when I found your father’s mark on the back, I thought I’d find out about it for him. I take it he’s not in possession of stolen goods?’

‘No, no. It was recovered, as I say. And then sold along with everything else.’

‘I’d like to know more about the theft. Spicy details like that always add a little cachet to a picture.’

Stonehouse considered this. ‘I can’t help you. The only people who might would be this young girl …’

‘Name?’

‘Can’t remember. She was only here for a few days. Mainly lived in Poggio di Amoretta. That’s a village near here. Close to where you must have got off the bus, in fact. Then there’s the investigating magistrate …’

‘Name?’ Argyll said hopefully.

‘Ah, now, I remember that. His name was Balesto. I remember him because I read that he died about six months ago. I’m now at the age when I find obituary columns quite fascinating.’

‘Ah.’

‘Bulovius, of course. He’s still alive. Just.’

‘What about the policeman?’

Stonehouse squinted at him, his head held to one side. ‘Policeman,’ he said. ‘Can’t say I paid too much attention to him. Let’s see now.’ He made a Herculean effort to remember the trivialities of the people he had met.

‘No. Can’t remember,’ he said. ‘There were two of ’em. One old, fat and stupid. Trying to ingratiate himself. Wanted to be invited for dinner, I think. The other was young, gangling and hair that was much too long. I remember wondering how he got away with it.’

‘And the names? I don’t suppose you remember either of them?’

Another shake of the head. ‘No. However, I believe you will find them in my father’s papers at Buonaterra. This man kindly gave some advice about protecting the villa and wrote it all down for my father to send to the insurance company. Look in there, and you’ll probably come across them. And there’ll be the report on the theft there as well.’

Argyll had reached a dead end, and knew it. So he turned the discussion on to Stonehouse’s father, his collection, what it was like being brought up in a Tuscan villa after the war – better than an English school, it seemed, although he sort of knew that already – all the sort of subjects Stonehouse loved talking about.

He left an hour and two bottles later, and weaved his way back to his bed. He had rather enjoyed himself.

The next day, Argyll went back to Rome, but not before reading the insurance file and the police report it contained. A summary only, little more than the initial deposition by Stonehouse and an account of the picture being found. He also discovered from the files that the policeman who had recovered the painting was a youthful, inexperienced, tall, gangling, long-haired Taddeo Bottando.