The Last Judgement

7

Six o’clock in the morning. That is, seven hours and forty-five minutes since he got in, seven hours and fifteen minutes since he went to bed. Not a wink of sleep and, more to the point, no Flavia either. What the hell was she doing? She’d gone off with the Carabinieri. And that was the last he’d heard. Normally Argyll was a tranquil soul, but Fabriano had irritated him beyond measure. All this muscular masculinity in a confined space, the sneering and posturing. What, he wondered for the tenth time, had she ever seen in him? Something, evidently. He rolled over again, eyes wide open. Had she been there, Flavia would have informed him dourly that all he was suffering from was a bad case of over-excitement, dangerous in someone who liked a quiet life. Murders, robberies, interviews, too much in a short space of time. What he needed was a glass of whisky and a good night’s sleep.

With which diagnosis he would have agreed, and indeed he had been agreeing with it all night, as he tossed and turned. Go to sleep, he told himself. Stop being ridiculous. But he couldn’t manage either and, when he could no longer endure listening to central Rome’s limited bird population saluting the morn, he admitted final defeat, got out of bed and wondered what to do next.

Go to Paris, he’d been told, so maybe he should. If Flavia could absent herself in such an inconsiderate way, he could demonstrate this was no monopoly of hers. Besides, it would get an unprofitable task over and done with. He looked at his watch as the coffee boiled. Early enough to get the first plane to Paris. There by ten, get the four o’clock back and be back home by six. If planes, trains and air-traffic controllers were in a co-operative mood, that is. He only hoped the nightman at the Art Theft Department had instructions to allow him to take the painting away. If he was fortunate, he could be back by evening. And then he could go and see about that apartment. If Flavia didn’t like the idea, then tough.

So, his decision made, he scrawled a hurried note and left it on the table as he walked out.

About twenty minutes after he went out, Flavia came in. She too was utterly exhausted, although for different reasons. A long haul. It was amazing how much paper these police could generate in such a short time, and Fabriano had fought hard to avoid giving it to her. It was only when she’d threatened to complain to his boss that he reluctantly gave way. Had she been in a better mood, or less tired, she would just about have seen his point. He was working long hours on this case. It was his big chance, and he wasn’t going to let it get away. He certainly wasn’t going to share the credit with her if he could avoid it. The trouble was, his attitude had the effect of hardening hers. The more he resisted, the more she demanded. The more he — and Bottando, in fact — wanted to keep her out, the more she was determined to take it further. So she’d sat and read. Hundreds of sheets of paper, of interviews and documentation and snapshots and inventories.

But for all the vast quantities of information, there was little of any importance to be discovered. Meticulous lists of the contents of Ellman’s hotel room produced nothing of any interest at all. Preliminary enquiries indicated no criminal record in either Switzerland or Germany; not even a driving offence to besmirch his good name. Then there was a mound of interviews, taken after they had gone back to Bottando’s office. Waiters, doormen, passers-by, visitors to the hotel restaurant and bar, cleaners and guests. Starting with a Madame Armand in the room opposite who believed she may have caught a glimpse of Ellman that morning, but who spent more time complaining loudly about missing her plane than offering useful clues, right through the alphabet to Signor Zenobi who confessed, with much guilt, that he had been entertaining a, ah, friend and didn’t listen to anything and there wasn’t any need for his wife to know anything about this, was there?

After hours of concentrated reading, Flavia gave up and walked home to talk it over with Argyll in the short space of time before she disappeared to Switzerland.

‘Jonathan?’ she called in her sweetest of voices as she let herself in. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Jonathan?’ she said a little more loudly.

‘Jonathan!’ she shouted when there was still no reply.

‘Oh, bugger,’ she added when she glanced down and saw his little note on the table. Then the phone went. It was Bottando, wanting her in his office as soon as possible.

The General had a problem which had surfaced almost the moment he had put the finishing touches to his carefully considered scheme to keep Flavia and this investigation at arm’s length from each other. It was a linguistic problem, in essence, and surfaced when Helen Mackenzie arrived on the plane direct from Toronto. Mrs Mackenzie spoke English and a little French. Giulio Fabriano, who was meant to be conducting the interview, spoke neither — a handicap he had been told more than once might hinder his career in this age of European integration. Try as he might with cassettes and books and lists of words, however, nothing could make any of it stick. According to researchers, about 6 per cent of any population is incapable of learning a new language, however proficient they may be in their own. Fabriano was, unfortunately for himself, a member of that small and increasingly persecuted minority.

Bottando himself had more aptitude, but scarcely any more proficiency, although at his age and rank it scarcely mattered. He could scrape along in French, had a word or so of German, and for anything more demanding could call on the services of Flavia, who was disgustingly good at this sort of thing.

Hence his phone call, breaking his self-imposed rule within five minutes of its dawning that the interview could take weeks and be completely inaccurate unless help arrived soon. Flavia staggered in about half an hour after he called, bleary-eyed, crumpled and far from ready to conduct searching interrogations.

So matters were delayed awhile as Bottando, using his very own hands (something of a rarity but his secretary was late), made the thickest coffee he could manage, stumped off to the nearest bar for food and cigarettes, and encouraged her at least to try and stay awake. It did her stomach no good at all, but the shock treatment did at least stop the compulsive yawning.

After the twelve-hour flight from Canada Mrs Mackenzie was scarcely in better shape, and the proceedings, when they finally began, were punctuated by yawning fits as one set off the other. She was quite a nice lady, Flavia decided. Very trim and attractive, obviously deeply upset at the death of her brother but one of the practical sort who had decided that her grieving should take place in private. For the moment, she wanted to provide as much information as possible; catching the person responsible was her first obligation now.

She was somewhat surprised when Flavia staggered in, notebook and tape recorder in one hand, coffee-pot in the other. It was not her idea of a proper police inquiry. Far too young, far too attractive, far too tired. But the young Italian, she decided, had the most charming smile and won at least the chance to prove herself by a practical account of the inquiry so far. There had been, she said, another murder, almost certainly linked to the death of Muller. She was sorry to start asking questions so quickly after the plane arrived, she went on, but they were obviously in something of a hurry.

‘I quite understand,’ Helen Mackenzie said. ‘In fact I find your speed reassuring. Could you tell me, though, how Arthur died?’

Ah, Flavia thought. The last thing she wanted was to give details. Maybe the woman had a right to know. For her part, if the roles were reversed, she would rather be kept in the dark.

‘He was shot,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid he was badly beaten beforehand.’ Leave it at that, she reckoned.

‘Oh, poor Arthur. And do you know why?’

‘We don’t know,’ she said frankly. ‘One possibility concerns a painting. He had just bought — or almost bought one. The day before, someone tried to steal it as it was leaving Paris, and the thief was seen outside his apartment the day he died. As you may have noticed, there is rather a lot we don’t know at the moment. I’m afraid that all we have are hazy ideas that need looking into. His accounts show nothing unusual, his work, his friends and his colleagues are all models of ordinariness.’

Mrs Mackenzie nodded in agreement. ‘That sounds like him. He lived an odd life. Very little amusement or pleasure in it. A sort of flat existence, really. He had few friends, few interests. That’s why he didn’t mind travelling and being posted from one country to the next year after year. He never had much to leave behind him.’

‘So,’ Flavia resumed, ‘this picture. He said, apparently, that it belonged to his father. We can find no trace of this. Who was his — your — father?’

She smiled. ‘That’s two separate questions. My father was Doctor John Muller, who died eight years ago. Arthur was adopted. His father was a Frenchman called Jules Hartung.’

Flavia noted this down. ‘When did he die?’

‘In 1945. He hanged himself. Shortly before he was due to go on trial as a war criminal.’

She looked up and paused for thought. ‘Really? I see. Perhaps you’d better tell me in greater detail. A potted history, so to speak. I don’t know that it’ll be relevant—’

‘It may well be,’ the Canadian woman interrupted, ‘if this picture was a factor in Arthur’s death. He’d been trying to find out about his father for the last couple of years. Ever since my mother died.’

‘Why since then?’

‘Because that was when he got his parents’ letters. She’d never passed them on. She and Dad didn’t want to rake up the past. They felt that Arthur had enough to deal with—’

Flavia held up her hand. ‘From the beginning...?’ she suggested.

‘Very well. Arthur came to Canada in 1944, after a long voyage via Argentina. He’d been evacuated from France when his parents felt it was too dangerous for him to stay. How they got him out I’m not sure. He was only four when he arrived, and didn’t remember much. All he could recall was being told by his mother to be good, and everything would be all right. And being cold, hidden in the backs of lorries and carts as he crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, then a long boat ride to Buenos Aires, then moving from person to person until he was shipped off to Canada and my parents. He was frightened all the time. My parents agreed to take him in. Family and business connections. I think the idea was to look after him until peace came, then he’d go home. But peace did come, and both his parents were dead.’

‘What happened to his mother?’

She held up her hand to stop her. ‘I’ll come to that.’ She paused to gather her thoughts, then restarted. ‘He had no family of any real sort who wanted him, and so my parents adopted him legally. Gave him their name, and tried to erase everything that had happened. Pretend it never had happened.

‘Psychologists now say it’s the worst thing you can do. That was not what they thought then. My parents were good people; they consulted everybody about what to do for the best. But children should know who they are and where they come from. They can deal better with unpleasant truths they know than with phantasms. In Arthur’s case he constructed an entire fantasy world to fill out the gaps in his knowledge. His father was a great man. A hero, killed in battle defending France. He had maps showing where his father had fought, where he’d fallen surrounded by mourning comrades. Where he’d died in the arms of his devoted and loving wife. He discovered the truth when he was ten. An impressionable age. Perhaps the worst possible moment.’

‘And that truth was...?’

‘That truth was that his father was a traitor, a Nazi sympathizer and a murderer, who had spied on and betrayed members of the Resistance to the occupation forces in 1943. His wife, Arthur’s own mother, was one of the people whom he betrayed. She was arrested and apparently executed without his doing a thing to save her. When he was exposed he fled the country, then came back after the Liberation. But he was recognized and arrested, and hanged himself as the case against him was being prepared. He didn’t even have the courage to face his trial.

‘How Arthur discovered this I don’t know. And I can’t even begin to guess how some of his fellow pupils at the local school found out. But they did, as kids do, and tormented him. Children are often cruel, and this was 1950, when the memory of the war was still strong. Arthur’s life was sheer hell and there was not much we could do. It was uncertain whom he hated more: his father for what he did, his fellow pupils for persecuting him, or us for concealing it. But from about then all he wanted to do was leave. Get out of the small town where we lived, get out of Canada, and go away.

‘He managed it when he was eighteen. He went to university, then got a job in America. He never lived in Canada again, and never really had much contact with any of us afterwards, except for the occasional letter and phone call. As he grew older I think he accepted more that my parents had done their best; but family life, of any sort, he could never take. He never married; never even had any serious relationship with anyone, as far as I know. He wasn’t strong enough or confident enough. Instead he got on with living and making a success of himself. In work at least, he succeeded.’

‘And then your mother died?’

She nodded. ‘That’s right. Two years ago, and we had to clear out her house. A sad job; all those years of papers and documents and photographs, all to be got rid of. And there was the will, of course. There wasn’t much; my parents had never been rich, but they still treated Arthur as though he was their son, as they always had, even though he’d gone his own way. I think he was grateful for that; he appreciated the effort, even though he couldn’t respond. He came back for the funeral, then stayed to help me clear out the house. We’d always got on well. I think that I was as close to him as anyone ever was.’

‘So what happened?’ Flavia was uncertain whether this detail was necessary; but by now she was caught up in the story. She had no idea what it must have been like to have been Arthur Muller. But she felt for the pain and the sheer loneliness he must have experienced. He was one of the hidden casualties of the war; never appearing on any balance sheet, but still suffering the consequences half a century after the last shot was fired.

‘We found some letters, as I say,’ she said simply. ‘One from his mother, and one from his father. He’d never been allowed to see them. He thought that was the greatest betrayal. I tried to say that they thought it best, but he wouldn’t accept it. Maybe he was right; they had kept them, after all, rather than throwing them away. Anyway, he left the same afternoon. From then on, the few times I phoned him all he would talk about was his hunt to find out about his father.’

‘And the letters?’

‘His mother’s letter he’d brought with him; apparently when he arrived at our house for the first time, he was clutching it in his hand; he’d refused to let it go right the way across Europe and across the Atlantic.’

‘What did it say?’

‘Not a great deal, really. It was a letter of introduction, in effect; written to the friends in Argentina he was sent to first. Thanking them for looking after her son, and saying she would send for him when the world became safer. It said he was a good child, if a little wilful, and took very much after his father, who was a strong, courageous and heroic man. She hoped that he would grow up to be as upright and as honest as he was.’

She paused and smiled faintly. ‘I imagine that was why he got the idea that Hartung was a hero. And why my parents hid it away eventually. It was too bitter, the way she was deluded as well.’

Flavia nodded. ‘And the second letter?’

‘That was from his father. It was written in French as well. I can still remember sitting on the floor-boards in the attic, with him kneeling down, concentrating on the paper, getting more and more excited and angry as he read.’

‘And?’

‘It was written in late 1945, just before he hanged himself. I didn’t find it enormously illuminating, as an outsider. But Arthur was predisposed to interpret anything in a positive light. He twisted the narrative until it meant what he wanted it to mean.

‘I found it a cold, horrible letter. Hartung just referred to Arthur as “the boy.” Said he didn’t feel any responsibility for him, but would look after him when this little problem was resolved. This he was confident of doing, if he could get his hands on certain resources he’d hidden away before he’d left France. I suppose he thought he could buy his way out of trouble. It was a whining letter, describing the person who’d identified him back in France as having betrayed him. Considering what he’d done that was a bit much, I thought. And he said that, if nothing else, the last judgement would exonerate him. I must say, the optimism didn’t carry conviction.’

‘You remember it well.’

‘Every word is engraved on my memory. It was an awful moment. I thought Arthur was going to flip entirely. Then it got worse, as he read and reread.’

‘Why?’

‘I said he’d lived in a fantasy world as a kid. He still did, in a way, only when he grew up he’d learned to subordinate it and keep it under control. It’s not surprising, as I say. Hartung was Jewish. Can you imagine what it must be like to deal with the fact — and I’m afraid it is a fact — that he betrayed friends to the Nazis, of all people? Arthur would do anything not to believe it, to construct an alternative truth. For years he coped by blocking it all out. Then these letters provided him with the opportunity to go back to fantasy.

‘The first thing he latched on to was the reference to judgement. Jews don’t believe in that sort of thing, he said — not that I knew that — so why the reference? Hartung may have got religon in his last days, but not that sort of religion. Therefore the reference must mean something else. Then he switched to this hidden treasure Hartung thought would buy him out of trouble. He never got hold of it; it was hidden where no one would find it. Obviously, QED, the reference to treasure and the reference to judgement were linked. Madness, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Then Arthur left again, and all I got was the occasional progress report from around the world. All his spare moments he devoted to hunting down his father. He wrote to archives and ministries in France to ask for records. He contacted historians and people who might have known his father, to ask them. And he tried to crack the puzzle of his father’s treasure. He got more and more obsessed with that. He said he was building up an enormous file of—’

‘What?’ said Flavia suddenly. It wasn’t that her attention was wandering, although it would have been excusable if it had. But suddenly she was much more engaged. ‘A file?’

‘That’s right. That and the two letters were his two most treasured possessions. Why?’

She thought hard. ‘There was no file that we saw. No letters either. I’ll get them to check again to make sure.’ Somehow she thought it wasn’t going to turn up.

‘I’m sorry,’ she went on. ‘I interrupted. Please continue.’

‘I don’t have much else to say,’ she said. ‘My contacts with Arthur were few and far between. I think I’ve told you all I can. Does any of it help?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. In fact, almost certainly. Although I think you’ve given us as many new problems as you’ve solved.’

‘Why is that?’

‘It may be — and this is only a guess, which may be wrong — that this is where the picture comes in. You said he became convinced that this reference to the last judgement was a clue.’

‘That’s right.’

‘OK. This picture was part of a series of paintings. Of four paintings on legal themes. Of judgements, in fact. This was the last one to be painted.’

‘Oh.’

‘So it may well be that your stepbrother believed that the painting contained what he was looking for. Only—’

‘Yes?’

‘Only it didn’t. Either he was wrong and you are right about him constructing fantasies or, just perhaps, somebody had already found whatever it was. Either way, Jona — the dealer who delivered it said that Mr Muller was very excited when the picture first arrived, then became disappointed and decided he didn’t want it. That only makes sense if he was after not the picture itself, but something in or on the picture. Which wasn’t there.

‘Then he was murdered, and we have not noticed this file among his possessions. There is evidently something about this painting we’re missing.’

She was musing again, and beginning to fantasize herself now, the sleepiness returning and taking her mind off formal matters. With a bit of an effort, she concentrated on the interview. She would be grateful, she said, if Mrs Mackenzie could come back in the afternoon to read over the statement and sign it. Muller’s company was seeing to all the practical matters of dealing with his effects and arranging the funeral. Was there anything she needed?

Mrs Mackenzie said there wasn’t, and thanked her. Flavia escorted her to the door, then went up to discuss matters with Bottando.

‘So what is this, a treasure hunt?’ Bottando said. ‘Is that it?’

‘Just an idea,’ she said. ‘It does fit.’

‘If your interpretation of the reference to the Last Judgement is correct, and if Muller thought the same. Which may be doubted. On the other hand, he did want that picture.’

Bottando thought a moment. ‘Can I see Mr Argyll’s statement?’ he continued. ‘Do you have it on you?’

Flavia rummaged in her file and handed it over, then sat while Bottando read. ‘It says here that when he delivered the painting, he unwrapped it, then went into the kitchen to pour himself a coffee. Beforehand, Muller was excited. When Argyll came back Muller said he didn’t want it.’

‘So he did.’

‘So we have three possibilities, don’t we? One that whatever he was after was not there; he discovered this, realized he’d been wrong and got rid of the thing. The second is that he was right, and removed whatever it was while Mr Argyll was in the kitchen.’

‘But in that case,’ Flavia said reasonably, ‘he wouldn’t have seemed so downcast. Unless he was a good actor.’

‘And the final possibility, of course, is that this whole story is merest moonshine and there is a better, simpler and more correct explanation.’

‘Perhaps he missed something,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we did as well. I think we should have another look at it.’

‘A bit late for that. Your friend Argyll picked it up this morning and took it back to Paris.’

‘Damnation. I forgot about that. I was so tired I didn’t think. He’s going to give it to Janet, is he?’

Bottando nodded. ‘I assume so. At least, I do very much hope he’s not going to stick his nose in where it isn’t needed.’

‘Do you think I ought to take another look at this thing? Go on to Paris after Basle? You could ask Janet to look up some stuff for me to pick up when I get there.’

‘Such as?’

‘Anything on this man Hartung, in essence. It would also be nice to know where this picture came from. We need more background on Ellman as well. Perhaps you could ask the Swiss...?’

Bottando sighed. ‘Oh, very well. Is there anything else?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. Except that you could forward a copy of the interview to Fabriano when it’s been typed out. I want to go home, shower and pack a bag. There’s a flight at four to Basle, and I don’t want to miss it.’

‘Whatever you say, my dear. Oh, and by the way...’

‘Hmm?’

‘Don’t get too carefree. Muller died in a very nasty fashion, Ellman in a neat one. I don’t want you — or even Mr Argyll — to suffer either fate. Watch yourself. I intend to say the same thing to him when he gets back.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said reassuringly. ‘This is perfectly safe.’