The Raphael Affair

10

It was seven-thirty in the evening. Bottando sat in his office, waiting for Manzoni to show up. He wanted to see the man, especially since Manzoni had rung up in the early afternoon to say that he had found something which might be of interest. But the restorer was late. Often the case with these sort of people, but Bottando, who still retained some vague elements of his earlier military training, was irritated nonetheless. Punctuality, he thought, was a very great virtue; not that so many of his countrymen agreed with him. He filled the time catching up on some work and trying to control his mounting ill-humour.

While he was muttering about lack of consideration and the indignity of full generals being made to wait by junior restorers, Flavia had arrived at Argyll’s flat to see what progress he’d made during his day’s work. There was no answer. Despite her express request that he be there, he’d gone out. Damn him. She thought for a moment that maybe the bell didn’t work. It was an old, run-down block and that was a distinct possibility. So she went into a bar and telephoned. Still no answer.

She was furious, and started thinking along the lines that were currently occupying her boss back in the office. She’d had a tiring day and was frustrated at having worked so hard for almost no result. And to be stood up by someone who was lucky not to be in jail already was outrageous.

The high point, or low point, of her day’s business had been a visit to Sir Edward Byrnes. Unlike Bottando, she had not been faced with a virtual confession, and she’d found it difficult to ask all the questions she needed without bringing up their suspicions about the origins of the picture.

Byrnes had to believe that all they were after was the person with the wandering aerosol. There was no need to show all their cards, especially as, in her book, the successful and wealthy Englishman was far and away the most likely suspect.

She found him in his hotel: it was highly expensive and, typically, not one of the more obviously opulent affairs that are to be found around the via Veneto. Rather, Byrnes’s combination of money and exquisite taste had landed him in a highly anonymous but very private and splendidly elegant palazzo off the Corso, where the few guests allowed in reposed as though they were at home with the servants.

In the delicate pink-and-white drawing room, deserted apart from the two of them, Byrnes sat Flavia down on a sofa, arranged himself opposite her in a tapestry-covered armchair, and summoned a waiter with a brief wave of his hand. He was at their side in a commendably respectful matter of seconds.

‘A drink, Signorina?’ he asked in flawless Italian. ‘Or are you going to say “not while I’m on duty,” eh?’ He blinked in an amiably owlish fashion from behind thick pebble-like glasses as he spoke. There were two ways of interpreting that, Flavia decided. On the one hand, it might be a good-natured look that goes along with someone trying to make himself agreeable. On the other, it might be an expression of contentment from someone who knows he’s got away with it.

‘Not me, Sir Edward. I think that’s only for the English police. Besides, I’m not in the police.’

‘Good. Very sensible.’ She wasn’t sure what part of her reply he referred to. He ordered two glasses of champagne kir without asking her opinion on the matter. ‘Now, how can I help you?’

Not, thought Flavia, ‘What do you want?’ He’s keen to sound more accommodating than that. Doesn’t mean he will be any more forthcoming, mind you.

Flavia smiled at him. He was ordinarily not someone who let anybody do the talking, let alone a woman. ‘Obviously it’s about the Raphael, and the events of yesterday...’

‘And you want to know whether I habitually go around with aerosols of gasoline in my pocket? Or if I saw anyone looking especially furtive?’

‘Something like that. Routine questioning of everyone in the museum yesterday evening, you understand.’

‘Especially if they happened to be responsible for the picture being there in the first place,’ he observed, taking out a short stubby pipe and beginning to fill it from a leather pouch. The trouble with everybody in this business is that they’re too quick on the uptake, she thought.

‘I wish I could provide you with some helpful comment. I am, of course, deeply upset by the whole thing. I’d formed a great attachment to the picture, and was very proud of my role in it. I gather it’s beyond repair?’

If Byrnes hadn’t been responsible for burning the picture, he would, naturally, want to know how successful the attack had been. Flavia nodded, and he nodded back in acknowledgement. He was still filling the pipe, which was evidently a highly complex and technical operation. His head was bent over as he shovelled a remarkable amount of tobacco into the bowl, then tamped it into place with a little metal device apparently designed for just such a purpose. While he was doing this, with immense concentration, she couldn’t see his face at all well. Eventually he looked up at her again, stuck the pipe in his mouth and continued, not having noticed the long break in the conversation.

‘You get fond of them, when you’re with them for a long time,’ he said absently. ‘Especially this one. I watched over it very carefully, once I realised what it was. The high point of my career. And now this. It was an appalling thing to happen. From what I’ve read, it would have been difficult to prevent as well. You seem to be looking for a madman, and it’s impossible to guard against random acts.’ He now began on the equally intricate business of turning the pipe bowl into a minor inferno. Smoke billowed out in profusion, and drifted in a thick smog across the room.

‘I’m sure you understand that we have to establish everybody’s whereabouts for the entire evening?’ Flavia said, tearing her eyes away from the pipe and getting back to business.

‘Of course. That’s simple. I arrived at the hotel at about six, checked in and walked straight to the museum. I talked to various people and was still there when the announcement about the, ah, incident was made at about eight.’ He reeled off a list of names. She jotted them down.

‘And how long did you spend talking to each of these people? With Argyll, for instance,’ she said casually. He didn’t appear to make any connection of significance.

‘With him longer than most, I suppose. As he may have told you already, I’m financing his trip here, and I quite like talking to him.’

She nodded. ‘May I ask why you gave him this money?’

‘Mild guilt. Or rather sympathy. Or is it empathy? I heard afterwards that he, like the person who commissioned me, was on the trail of this picture, but that I got there faster. That often happens, of course, and I’ve been pipped at the post myself. Ordinarily I just see it as the luck of the game. Except that it was such a big prize and Argyll was clearly counting on it for his work, rather than for simple financial profit. So I thought that the least I could do would be to offer some form of recompense. He does, in fact, deserve it. His work is much better than he makes out. A little sloppy over details...’

That’s true, thought Flavia to herself.

‘...but essentially well-researched and interesting. Not nearly as narrow as the subject suggests. So I’m not giving favours to the undeserving poor,’ he concluded.

‘So you noticed nothing at this party and were never on your own?’

‘Only when Argyll disappeared off to the toilet, or to get some drinks, or something like that. He was quite flustered all evening. I think he was excited at being back in Rome.’

Well, maybe so. She switched the subject once more. ‘You talk about being commissioned?’ she prompted.

‘My little secret,’ he replied. ‘Most of my colleagues and rivals still believe I owned the picture. I let them think it because it drives them into such paroxysms of jealousy. All I did was act as an agent. I shipped it back, sent it to the restorers and organised the sale.’

‘Why did you choose these particular people?’

‘No reason. They were available, I’d worked with them before and knew them to be reliable. They were very excited. They were in the office from the moment the crate arrived: we could hardly keep them away from it.’

‘Could you give me their names?’

‘By all means. I’m sure they would be pleased to talk to you. One of them rang me this morning, very upset indeed. They became very proprietorial about it — always saying how lucky I was to own such a picture. I couldn’t bear to disillusion them.’

‘Who did it belong to then?’ Flavia leant forward in her chair in anticipation. He might lie. Almost certainly would. But even so it might provide something to go on. Even if it turned out to be a lie, his assertion would prove something.

Byrnes spread his hands over the desk. ‘I wish I knew. I was given instructions by letter from a lawyer in Luxembourg. It was a bit odd, I know, but such procedures are not entirely unknown. There is often a certain amount of disguise when some rich family wants to raise some cash discreetly. To buy and sell a picture anonymously is more unusual, but at the time I thought the picture was not especially valuable. So I could see no reason for not going ahead.’

‘But you weren’t tempted to keep the picture when you knew what it was?’

Byrnes smiled at her. ‘It occurred to me, of course. But by that time I’d signed a contract as the agent. Besides, it’s not the way I operate. As you know, the art-dealing community is not noted for its impeccable integrity,’ — here Flavia grinned — ‘but there is a sort of honour among thieves, and not pinching someone else’s discovery is part of it. That’s why I felt a little guilty about Argyll.

‘But quite apart from the moral issue, I didn’t know who was behind it all. For all I know, it might have been the Vatican itself. It always needs ready money these days, and this method might have been a way of circumventing the objections to the sale which would otherwise have developed. It never does to offend someone if you don’t know who you are offending. Besides, the retainer alone was very generous.’

‘You were never suspicious that something might be wrong?’ Flavia asked doubtfully.

‘Of course. I haven’t worked in the art business for quarter of a century without learning to trust no one. But I chose the people who tested it. They were in no doubt that it was genuine, nor was the Museo Nazionale. I could see nothing wrong. If I’d had the slightest doubt, I’d never have agreed to the museum’s terms in the sale contract.’

‘Which were?’

‘Simply that if the painting’s authenticity was called into question I’d be responsible for refunding the money as agent for the owner. Very tight and carefully drafted. They included it, I suppose, to satisfy the finance ministry that they were being careful with the taxpayers’ money. Besides, Tommaso was involved and we’ve never got on, even though we keep up an appearance of friendliness.’

Flavia said nothing in reply to this, but sat quietly, waiting to see if he would continue on his own. In a fit of what was either calculating revelation, or confessional zeal, he did so.

‘You see, I once sold Tommaso a Correggio. Doubts were cast on its authenticity, and Tommaso threatened me, saying that if I didn’t take it back, I’d never sell another picture in Italy. There was nothing in the contract which said I had to. But I did, out of a sense of pride. Nonetheless, he still made life as difficult for me as possible for the next fifteen years. So it was quite a triumph to get him to take that Raphael, even if the terms were stiff. He hated doing it, but his desire for the picture was too great.’

He shrugged as a way of showing his bewilderment with the ways of God and men. ‘Ah well. That’s all past history now. The terms of that contract seem to be redundant. The painting’s destroyed.’ He smiled gently at her. ‘So there’s nothing for me to take back even if they wanted me to, is there?’

That, essentially, had been the interesting part of the day; the rest was spent listening to people explain how — and why — they hadn’t seen anything interesting or significant at the party. Out of more than eighty people, some sixty-five, Flavia reckoned, could easily have slipped out of the room unnoticed, gone upstairs, set light to the picture and come back down again. Of that sixty-five, around fifty knew about the alarm system. Of the remaining fifteen, nearly all could easily have found out.

More frustrating and personally irritating was the fact that she found herself quite liking Byrnes and being seduced — well, perhaps seduced was not the right word — by his charm. She’d gone in to see him determined to be distant, cold and efficient, but despite these laudable intentions, she found herself enjoying talking to him, and warming to his odd combination of vagueness and business acumen.

And the man had taken advantage of the fact. As she was leaving, he’d casually mentioned he was going back to London that evening, and would he be required for the investigation any more? Damn right, he would; but she could find no pretext upon which to detain him. He was evidently intent on going and they could not require him to stay without announcing that he was a suspect. But on what grounds if she couldn’t mention the forgery? Equally, by politely asking permission to leave, he had countered any suggestion that he was hotfooting it to safety.

All she could do was lamely say that, of course, it was quite in order for him to go. He’d spent some time laying out his motives for destroying the picture — revenge, greed, the works — and all she could do at the end was wish him a safe trip home. He’d thanked her soberly, and wished her luck in the investigation. Was he laughing at her? Surely he was, but that poker face, moderated by thick glasses and clouds of smoke, had been impenetrable.

Then there had been the interminable interviews, often tramping over ground that — she found to her irritation — had already been worked over by Bottando, and, on top of that, her ears ringing and her head spinning, her useless visit to Argyll’s apartment. At quarter to eight, tired, weary and wanting only to go home and have a bath and an early night, she dragged herself up the stairs of the office to write up a few reports. This made her feel virtuous, but did nothing else to cheer her up at all. She had a feeling that disaster was just around the corner.

She was wrong, as she often seemed to be these days: it was lumbering down the stairs, in the shape of a perspiring, out of breath and evidently troubled Bottando.

‘Flavia. Good. Come with me,’ was all he said as he hurried past her. She turned round and followed him to his car in the square. Clearly it was serious; it took more than a small crisis to break the General out of his habitual slow amble. They both got in the back, Bottando gave the driver an address in Trastevere, and told him to hurry. He did so, complete with sirens, horn and screeching tyres for dramatic effect.

‘What’s happened now?’ she asked as she regained her balance after a particularly vicious corner.

‘I told you about Manzoni, the restorer?’ She nodded. ‘He was meant to come and see me at seven. He didn’t show up. The Trastevere police just rang: he didn’t come because he was dead. It seems that someone has murdered him.’

Flavia sat stunned. Things were going from bad to worse. ‘Are they sure it was murder?’

‘Knife in the back,’ he replied simply.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. Complications, nothing but complications. It wouldn’t make Bottando look any better to have a witness murdered under his nose. It made solving the case more difficult, and now there was a murder mixed up in it all, there would be demarcation disputes with the murder squad and others, as they squabbled over who should be in charge. The investigation could disintegrate into one of those well-known Italian situations where everybody spends their time fighting their colleagues, and nothing whatsoever gets done. She’d seen it before. The General was evidently thinking along the same lines.

‘Listen,’ he said as the car drew up at their destination. ‘Leave the talking to me here. Don’t say anything more than you need to, all right?’

Following behind him at a distance suitable for a junior tagging along, therefore, she climbed the stairs and entered Manzoni’s apartment. It was full of policemen, photographers, fingerprint men, neighbours and people just hanging around. The usual chaos. Bottando was spotted by the senior local detective, who came over and introduced himself.

‘When we discovered he worked at the museum I decided it might have something to do with you, so I called,’ he explained after relating how the body had been discovered by a neighbour peering in through the open front-door as she passed.

Bottando shrugged and walked over to the body, ignoring the invitation to talk. ‘Any idea when he was killed?’

‘After five-thirty, when he was seen coming home, and before seven, when the body was discovered. So far we can’t be more precise than that. Right-hand blow to the back and into the heart. Kitchen knife.’

‘No one saw any strangers hanging about, I suppose?’

The detective shook his head. ‘Any idea what it may be about?’

Bottando pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. ‘No,’ he lied. ‘My first inclination is to suggest coincidence, much as I dislike them. He certainly wasn’t a hot tip for our arsonist. Nor was there any connection I know of between him and any of our suspects.’

The detective looked disgruntled. He knew Bottando was being elusive, but in the very hierarchical police force, there is no way you can press a general without running the risk of getting yourself into trouble. He would have to find someone of equivalent rank to do that for him.

While the little interchange was going on, and while her boss wandered around the apartment looking vainly for hints, Flavia leant on the small round table in the sitting-room and pursued her own thoughts. They didn’t lead anywhere, except to the depressing conclusion that while they had had two crimes and too many suspects this morning; now they had three crimes and too many suspects. Not her idea of progress.

She told Bottando this after they left the apartment. He dismissed the car, explaining that walking helped him think. Besides, it was one of the few things he found pleasant at the moment. She fell in step with him and talked. He marched morosely by her side, not saying a word in reply for several minutes.

‘So what you’re basically saying is that we’re no further on at all? And in fact we’re more confused than ever?’ he said when her exposition was finished.

‘Well, yes, I suppose I am. But we could try and narrow it down a little.’ Bottando grunted, but kept quiet. Flavia was wearing baggy trousers and a jacket, and now thrust her hands into the pockets to help her concentrate. They crossed the Tiber as the dusk was deepening into dark. A thin but chilly wind was coming up the river, making her shiver as they walked.

‘OK then,’ she began after a few moments. ‘Either the picture was a forgery or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, then we must look for a madman or someone in the museum. Correct?’ It was a rhetorical question. Even had it not been it probably wouldn’t have got a reply from her companion, who was staring moodily at the pavement.

‘Main candidates, Manzoni, deceased, and Spello. Both disliking Tommaso, prompted into desperate action by the announcement of his retirement.’

‘Who killed Manzoni?’

‘Spello,’ she said firmly. ‘Realised Manzoni had wrecked the painting. Overcome with rage that he’d destroyed such a beautiful object. Or realised Manzoni knew he’d burnt the picture, so killed him to shut him up.’

‘This is narrowing it down, is it?’

Flavia ploughed on, ignoring the interruption. ‘Other candidate: Argyll, overcome with remorse at his lost opportunity...’

She got no further in what she considered a masterly exposition of the options. ‘Flavia, dear, this is not cheering me up. Do you, in fact, have the slightest idea who might be responsible for this?’

‘Well, um, no.’

‘I thought not. Now, why the timing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, why was the picture burnt yesterday? After all, we’d just come across the evidence it was a fake and hadn’t told anyone. And the evidence, it seems, wasn’t as good as we thought. So why destroy it?’

This one stumped her, so he carried on on his own. ‘I think,’ he pointed out, mentally counting, ‘you have just listed about a dozen combinations of possibilities, without a shred of real evidence for any of them. Which goes to show that armchair detection is no good for anything. We need evidence of something. I reckon it’s about time you stopped thinking and started looking.’

‘Where do you suggest?’

‘Go to London. Manzoni seems to have come up with something, and we need to know what it was. If those tests have a hole, the only place you’ll find out is there. Go and see those restorers. That might provide something. Could you get on a plane tomorrow?’

She nodded. ‘As long as someone can keep an eye on Argyll while I’m away,’ she said. ‘Perhaps,’ she added, ‘I should nip off now and see if he’s back in. You never know, he might open the door covered in blood.’

‘And might stick a knife in you for good measure.’

‘I can’t see him doing something like that. But I can’t see any of them doing anything like that. That’s the trouble.’

‘Don’t let your intuition run away with you. If it wasn’t for the timing of all this, he’d be charged already. So watch yourself. Unless he comes up with a very good reason for what he’s been up to, let me know and I’ll pull him in.

‘I feel uncomfortable about all this,’ he continued. ‘I’m missing something which should be obvious. Something a long time ago which isn’t right. I woke up this morning and almost had it, but it slipped away. It’s driving me quietly crazy. Having an impossible task is bad enough, but when you suspect it’s because of your own failing memory it becomes insufferable.’

They parted at the next corner, Bottando walking northwards, slowly, absent-mindedly and morosely; she with the brisk step of a person who cannot remain bothered and overburdened for too long.

Argyll was at home this time, let her in, and burbled happily about his day for the first few minutes, not letting Flavia get a word in edgeways. She sat quietly and waited for him to stop.

‘There’s nothing like the prospect of spending the rest of your life in jail to make you get a move on,’ he said. ‘I reckon if my supervisor had threatened to send me to Wormwood Scrubs for a year or two, I could have had my thesis finished ages ago.’

He gestured over to a desk piled high with files, filecards, used coffee cups and stacks of paper. ‘See that? I’ve been working like a demon all day.’

‘All day?’ she asked quietly.

‘Yup. Non-stop. Quite possessed I was. I’ve got it down to about twenty possibles. Assuming, that is, that it exists at all. But if I didn’t assume that, I’d lose heart. With a bit of luck I’ll be off your list of potential jail fodder within a week or so.’

‘All day?’ she repeated. ‘What about when I came round at seven?’

He paused. ‘Oh. I’d forgotten all about that. That’s what comes of concentrating. You were meant to come round, weren’t you?’

She nodded. ‘And I did. At seven. And you weren’t here.’

‘Yes I was. I’d just forgotten all about it. I had my Walkman on, so I suppose I didn’t hear the bell.’

‘Was anyone else here? Can anyone give you an alibi?’

Argyll looked flustered. ‘An alibi? For heaven’s sake! Of course not. I was here all on my own. I know it was careless of me. I’m sorry. But is it really such a big thing?’

‘Yes,’ she said. And explained why. The colour drained from his cheeks as she spoke.

‘So you think I slipped out, knifed him, came home and pretended I’d been here all the time, not hearing you because of the music?’

‘Fits the facts, doesn’t it?’

‘Rather well,’ he agreed unhappily. ‘Except, of course, that it’s not at all what I was doing. I was here.’

He rummaged around in Beckett’s drinks cupboard, pulled out a bottle of grappa and poured a healthy glassful. ‘I don’t suppose he’d object in the circumstances.’ He took a heavy suck on the glass, coughed slightly, then offered her a drink herself. She declined.

‘I suppose,’ he restarted with some hesitation, ferociously scratching the top of his head in a way that indicated profound misgivings inside, ‘I suppose that what I was planning to do next will make things worse.’

He stopped, and she gazed at him enquiringly. ‘I was about to tell you,’ he went on, ‘that to finish the search for this picture I would have to go to look at some things in London. I was thinking of going tomorrow.’

He looked at her hopefully. ‘Remarkable timing,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Especially considering that Byrnes headed off for England this evening as well.’

It was not the reassurance that Argyll had been looking for. Indeed, it made him even less comfortable. The drink rested on the floor, completely forgotten.

‘So it would look better if I stayed here?’

‘It would look better. But practically speaking, I suppose, it might be better if you went. As long as I go with you and you tell me exactly where you’ll be at every moment of the day. One more slip and I’ll pull you in. And I mean that. Depending on what turns up, I might do it anyway. Agreed?’

He nodded. ‘I suppose so. I’m grateful for your trust in me.’

‘Don’t be sarcastic. And I don’t trust you. Except, of course, that I find it difficult to believe that anyone could have forged a picture like that and act as dimwittedly as you have. At the moment the only thing you’ve got going for you is stupidity. You’re very lucky not to be in a cell already.’

So, sometimes you say the wrong thing. Flavia could, at times, be a little harsh in her conversational gambits, and the characteristic tended to show itself when she was tired or frustrated. This evening she was both of these, and worried as well. The combination eroded the natural kindness which generally masked her occasional tinge of verbal brutality.

Argyll, however, disregarded these extenuating circumstances and exploded.

‘I think we ought to get one thing clear here,’ he began coldly. ‘I never said that picture was a Raphael, I simply came out to Rome to check. I went by the rulebook, not making claims I couldn’t substantiate or prove. Whatever happened thereafter was nothing to do with me. So remember that. Secondly, it was me, not you, who first suggested it might be a fake. If it wasn’t for my research, which you sneer at so much, you’d be running around wringing your hands at the loss of a masterpiece. Thirdly, you don’t have any evidence against me at all. If you had, you’d have locked me up already. So don’t imply you’re doing me any favours.

‘And finally, at the moment, you need my help more than I need yours. If you think you can find that picture on your own, go ahead. But you can’t. I can, maybe. And I’m not going to help you if I’m going to be subjected to sneering little taunts from you all the time. Is that clear?’

On the whole, it was not a bad speech at all. Later on, lying in bed, thinking about it and making little improvements for the benefit of posterity, he was struck by his simple eloquence. Forceful, no-nonsense stuff, in fact. He was quite pleased with himself. Opportunities for righteous indignation come up only very infrequently, and he normally never thought of the appropriately devastating response until, on average, about forty-five minutes afterwards.

More satisfying still, it stopped the voluble Italian woman dead in her tracks. He was ordinarily very mild-mannered; his expressions of rage were most visibly expressed in a faint look of distress or a mumbled sentence of mild disapproval. Oratory was quite out of character and the suddenness of the speech, combined with the real feeling that apparently went into it, momentarily caught Flavia unawares. She stared at him in surprise, dismissed the temptation to fire back a full broadside, then apologised.

‘I’m sorry. It’s been a bad day. Truce? No more comments until you’re cleared?’

He stumped around the room, closed the curtains, shut a cupboard door or two while he worked off his indignation, then nodded. ‘Or arrested, I suppose,’ he added. ‘OK. A deal. When do we leave?’

‘There’s a plane at seven-thirty. I shall pick you up here at six-thirty.’

‘That early? How horrible.’

‘Get used to it,’ she said as she got ready to leave. ‘In Italian prisons they wake you up at five...Sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘Shouldn’t have said that.’