The Titian Committee

8

Although obviously coming from one of those families which had hung on by their fingernails to social respectability since Napoleon invaded and destroyed the Venetian republic at the end of the eighteenth century, the Marchesa di Mulino still lived in some considerable state.

Old and battered her palazzo might have been, like its owner, but it was still worth a considerable amount of money. Most of the family pictures had long been dispersed, but Bottando’s expert eye noted that what was left was of quite good quality. A little Tintoretto in the hallway surrounded by family portraits, a couple of what looked like Watteau drawings at the base of the staircase. Interesting point, that, he noted. And the usual tapestries, statuettes, and heavy sixteenth-century Venetian furniture. All in need of restoration but genuine stuff nonetheless.

She received him in bed. An old-fashioned touch, excused by her advanced age and the fact that she now rarely left the floor where the room was situated. The bed was gigantic, big enough for an entire family with room to spare, and the occupant was tiny, propped up by half a dozen embroidered pillows and looking like a neglected little doll. The old woman had a face that once upon a time had been beautiful; not handsome, or merely attractive, but ravishing. Even the lines and frailness of age could not conceal what once had been there.

And she had the manners of someone who was used to being deferred to and obeyed. She waved Bottando to a seat, as small for his bulk as the bed was big for hers, and looked him over carefully. No welcome, no thank you for coming. None of that. It was an honour for him to be allowed to see her, and he was not to forget it.

When she did finally speak, the impression of frailness was proven to be just that – an impression. Ancient though she was, there was nothing to suggest that her mind was anything but well-turned. Nor had advanced years softened her view of the world.

‘Come to find my little pictures, eh? All the way from Rome? And a full General as well? My goodness, what service we get from our police these days,’ she said with a little smile after the policeman had performed his introductory remarks.

‘We try to please,’ he replied cautiously.

‘Nonsense,’ she snorted. ‘Why else are you here?’

Bottando shook his head with indignation and a bit of surprise that she could apparently read his mind so well. ‘That’s all,’ he said. ‘Just to find your stolen pictures. It’s our speciality, you know.’

She glanced at him slyly in a way which indicated she didn’t believe a word of it, but let it go. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said firmly. ‘If that’s all you’ve come for, go back to Rome.’

‘We do have considerable expertise in matters of this kind,’ Bottando said pompously. ‘We often pick up pictures when they are put up for sale.’

‘Nonsense,’ she repeated firmly. ‘Go home.’

Bottando shifted uncomfortably on the seat, conscious of large portions of his anatomy hanging off the edges and wondering whether it could support him for long. He decided not to find out, and walked to the window clasping his hands behind his back.

‘Oh, do stop wandering about, man,’ she said acidly. ‘If you’re too fat for that seat, come and sit on the bed. Here,’ she patted the bed firmly.

Bottando had not been loosely attached to the army for nearly forty years without learning to obey commands. He did as he was told, conscious that this interview was not proceeding along orthodox lines.

‘Well done,’ she said, patting his hand and smiling encouragingly as though he was a little boy who had successfully blown his own nose for the first time. ‘I suppose you need to ask lots of silly questions. Go ahead. You have five minutes. Then I have to sleep. I must have complete quiet.’

‘Well, then,’ said Bottando, still rather alarmed at his inability to get a word in, ‘why do you think we won’t get them back?’

‘Because you’re idiots. All policemen are,’ she said confidingly, in case he might not be aware of the fact. ‘Not your fault, but there it is. Only fools want to be policemen.’

It was a view Bottando frequently expressed himself, although it was disturbing to be included in the condemnation. Especially as it came from someone he was meant to be helping.

‘But,’ he said, fighting valiantly, ‘what makes you think that the Englishman, Argyll, stole them?’

She laughed. ‘Him? Couldn’t steal a packet of sweets from a shop. Lord, he even had trouble trying to buy them.’

‘But we had a complaint –’

‘From Signora Pianta, no doubt. She would say that. She’s a fool, too. A bit odd in the head, you know?’ She squinted at him conspiratorially and dropped her voice. ‘Sees thieves, murderers and rapists everywhere. Comes of having a television in her room. Never watched one, myself. Do you have a television?’

Bottando was opening his mouth to confess that, indeed, he did have a set, although the pressure of work meant he rarely had time to watch it, when he checked himself and frowned. ‘As this theft was reported, we have to check it out, you know.’

‘She should never have reported it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Scandal. Can’t stand it. Won’t stand for it. I refuse to see my name in the papers.’

‘Being robbed is hardly scandalous. It happens to all the best people, nowadays.’

She sniffed. Evidently she thought that being robbed was a very bourgeois pastime.

‘Who is this Pianta woman?’ he asked. He had Argyll’s description, but reckoned he was perhaps a little biased. No one could be that bad.

‘My secretary, or companion, call her what you will. Hanger-on, basically. A distant relative, of the poorer variety. Dreadful woman, but useful for daily tasks. I’m used to her and I’m too old to change the people around me now. Besides, she annoys my interfering nephew even more than she does me.’

He sighed heavily. ‘With your permission, I’ll see how the pictures were taken out afterwards. Just in case. I understand from Mr Argyll that someone else was also interested in buying them.’

She looked scornful again. ‘Gibberish,’ she said firmly. ‘Utter nonsense. Sounds like one of Pianta’s little tricks again to get more money. No one has been interested in buying any of them for decades. Someone did write saying she wanted to examine one of the pictures, but there was no reason to think she was interested in buying.’

‘She?’

‘Oh, dear, you do go on,’ she said wearily. ‘Very well, then. Bring me that cabinet over there.’ She gestured at what looked like a sewing box on the desk in the corner. Bottando got up thankfully from the bed and fetched it. She fished out an envelope and handed it over.

Bottando was pleased to see his assumption proved correct. It was a letter from Louise Masterson, postmarked from New York, asking for permission to photograph an anonymous portrait in the Marchesa’s possession which she had noticed during a party thrown by Dr Lorenzo last year. She found the picture most interesting and would like to examine it under calmer circumstances. It was connected with a book she was planning to write.

‘And you replied to this,’ he said.

‘I told Pianta to write something, but I don’t know if she ever got around to it. Stupid woman. She’s not very efficient, you know, for all that she complains about everyone else.’

Bottando asked to keep the letter, then informed her he didn’t think it likely that the woman would be keeping the appointment. She seemed untroubled by the news.

The conversation with Maddelena Pianta was less confusing, but also much less agreeable. Whereas the first was perhaps a little scatterbrained, she was lively, intelligent and had a sense of humour. At Bottando’s expense, maybe, but she was clearly someone who had enjoyed her life and intended to have as good a time as possible in what little remained of it. Signora Pianta was the very opposite. Dour, humourless, suspicious, she did not appear to have had a good laugh since the early 1950s. And showed no signs of gearing up for another.

She answered Bottando’s comments rapidly and with no elaboration whatsoever; yes, no, with everything else dragged out of her. She had accused Argyll, she said, because he was obviously responsible. He was a foreigner, wanted the pictures and objected to the price being asked.

Clearly, Argyll had made a bit of a hit here. Had she, he asked next, replied to Masterson’s letter?

She was awkward and uncomfortable at the question, and then with obvious, although incomprehensible, reluctance admitted she had, to say that Masterson was welcome to see the picture if it had not been sold by the next time she was in Venice. She had phoned the fondazione on Friday morning to organise an appointment and had left a message with a functionary – she didn’t know who but he seemed Italian – for Masterson to visit at nine that evening. She arranged to meet her on the Zecco, opposite the Giardinetti Reali and a few minutes’ walk from the palazzo. That was because Pianta was going to the cinema and didn’t want her arriving before she got back. Masterson had never turned up.

‘I suppose you realise that while you were sipping your coffee and waiting, she was being murdered about a hundred metres away? It never occurred to you to report this?’

It had, she said, with an attempt at irritation to hide her discomfort. But she didn’t see what relevance it had. Besides, the Marchesa would have been furious at her getting involved in a scandal. No, she had seen no one acting suspiciously.

Bottando shook his head. Indeed, a silly woman. At least they now knew why Masterson was there. However, he was grudgingly forced to admit that it got them no nearer identifying the murderer. So he gave up, and told her she was obliged to make a formal statement on the matter. He tried to deal with her evident alarm by assuring her that there was no reason why it should ever feature in the newspapers.

The comment made her act a little more co-operatively, so he got her to show him where the pictures had once hung, and where, in her view, they were removed from the house.

The front door. Or rather, what had once served as the ceremonial entrance way from the Grand Canal, where the gondolas would pull up to let their passengers out with all due pomp and ceremony. Scarcely, if ever, used any more. The private gondola business is not what it was.

Bottando looked over the great door with a professional eye. Very old, perhaps eighteenth century, he thought. With wood that had been exposed to damp and heat continuously. Still very strong but held with a large and imposing lock that would have detained the average burglar for about thirty seconds. The same old story. What was the point of having heavy iron bars on all the windows if you leave the front door open?

While he was thinking, Signora Pianta told him in no uncertain terms that Argyll and his confederates – she still clearly saw him as some sort of latter-day Raffles, which seemed to Bottando one of the most unlikely comparisons he had ever heard – must have come here in dead of night, loaded the pictures up and sailed off to hide them. No one had heard anything as most of the bedrooms were on the third floor and the Marchesa habitually took a sleeping pill last thing at night. Bottando grunted as she rattled on, opened the door and walked out on to the landing stage.

There was a wonderful view up and down the canal, despite the overcast sky. The white, wedding-cake-like church of the Salute was immediately ahead, and he could just see San Giorgio further out in the lagoon.

Boats of all sorts ploughed up and down the Grand Canal, making waves which lapped up the wooden landing stage with a faint sloshing noise. A few multicoloured umbrellas were still outside the cafés, bravely pretending that summer was not yet over. The wind was fresh and cold, coming in from the sea with that particularly tangy smell that gave no idea of what a horribly polluted place it really was.

A fairly busy part of the city, he thought to himself, dragging his mind back to his duty. Could someone really load up pictures and steam off with no one noticing? Despite the enquiries of Bovolo’s cohorts, they had as yet found no witnesses. Amazing how few witnesses there were to any aspect of this case.

‘When was this entrance last used?’ he asked, tapping his foot on the frail wooden planks. ‘Officially, I mean?’

‘About a year ago. By Dr Lorenzo, the Marchesa’s nephew. He gave a party at the start of a meeting for this new committee of his and arranged for everyone to be brought in by boat. He and the Marchesa were in one of their brief moments of talking to each other. It happens about once a year, then they fall out again over the inheritance.’

He nodded absently and carefully studied the vast old piles of wood driven deep into the canal mud to hold the entire structure in place. Nothing noticeable. He pursed his lips as he thought, and then carefully examined the planking. Furrowed his brow to look thoughtful and marched briskly inside. He’d be back later, he said as he shook the woman’s hand and prepared to go.

‘So,’ he concluded later that evening. ‘We now know what Louise Masterson was doing wandering around that part of the city before she was killed. And we also have at last some firm links between this committee, the murders and these infernal pictures. That is, Lorenzo was to inherit them when the Marchesa died, Masterson was to look at one of them and someone else on the island knew it. You would have thought,’ he said in passing, ‘that this little connection might have been discovered by your good friend and colleague Commissario Bovolo, but apparently not. Perhaps he thought it of no importance. Perhaps he is right.’

He sipped his drink and looked thoughtful. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. They all deny taking the message from Pianta or hearing anyone else on the phone. I rang them to check. Presumably at least one of them is fibbing a bit.

‘Now, where exactly all this takes us is another matter, of course, but it represents a form of progress. I think.’ He was being modest. In reality, he was feeling rather pleased with himself.

‘And you officially exonerate me from steaming off into the night with a boatload of paintings?’ Argyll asked, relieved that he appeared to be fast coming off the wanted list.

‘Oh, I think we can do that. Of course, we might have to arrest you as a diversionary tactic if we don’t come up with anyone better before budget day, but I’m sure you’ll understand,’ Bottando replied gravely. ‘Apart from anything else, no one steamed off into the night with them.’

‘I thought the door was opened,’ Flavia said, perusing the menu with great attention before ordering a zuppa inglese to fill up those awkward little corners.

‘So it was. But that landing stage hadn’t been used for a year. You can’t load up a boat without making some scratches, or leaving some signs behind. And there was nothing at all.’

‘So how was it done?’

‘Ah, well, that’s a different question. All I know is what didn’t happen. Ladies and gentlemen. Your thoughts, please?’

‘What’s the fight between the Marchesa and Lorenzo?’ Argyll asked.

Bottando wagged his finger at him. ‘She can’t disinherit him, if that’s what you’re thinking. The estate was left to him by his uncle, to be used by his wife during her lifetime. Which has, undoubtedly, proved longer than anyone expected.’

‘Any idea if Masterson’s wanting to see this picture might have triggered her murder?’

‘No.’

‘That phone call by Pianta to the foundation intrigues me,’ Flavia said, brow puckered as she counted through the options. ‘If the message was taken by one of Masterson’s colleagues, that person would have known where to find her that evening. And therefore becomes an odds-on favourite for the role of knife wielder. How many people could be mistaken for Italian? Not Van Heteren or Miller, who both have heavy foreign accents. Kollmar, on a good day. Roberts certainly. And, of course, Lorenzo, although Pianta should have recognised his voice.’

‘True, but Lorenzo, it seems, wasn’t there. That leaves just Roberts, but Van Heteren says he was with him all the time and insists he didn’t speak to anyone. And I can’t see why he should want to lie about that.’

‘He would if he killed both of them.’

‘True. Very true. Maybe we should spend some time checking his alibi a little more closely.’

‘I have,’ Flavia said. ‘Find me a way he could slip out of a dinner party unnoticed for the hour and a half it would need to cross Venice, kill Masterson and slip back, and I will happily suggest he’s our man.’

They all paused for a moment to sip their drinks and ponder the unfairness of life.

‘While we’re on the subject,’ she went on, ‘it is quite possible to leave the Fenice, get to the garden, kill Masterson and get back in time. But Frau Kollmar insists neither Roberts nor her husband was out of her sight for more than a few minutes.’

Compared to Flavia’s enthusiastic reconstructions of possible scenarios and Bottando’s successful interrogation of Pianta, Argyll’s own efforts seemed less than useful. He was, accordingly, a little shamefaced when asked what he’d done that afternoon.

As he’d said to Flavia, his weakness as a dealer was that he tended to get interested in the paintings he was trying to buy. So it was with murder victims as well, it seemed. He had rung up his employer, Sir Edward Byrnes, and asked him about Benedetti, the owner of the picture that caused the squabble between Masterson and Kollmar.

He’d also brought his employer up to date about his recent disappointments. Byrnes had conceded that these things did happen, although he had never heard of pictures being stolen at the last minute before. He urged Argyll to get back to Rome and start earning money again. This Argyll had promised to do.

‘As for the picture, Byrnes knew nothing scurrilous about the owner at all and seemed very dubious about the idea of this man putting out contracts on art historians. But he said he’d have a sniff around. Apart from that, I decided it would be a good idea to go to Padua.’

‘Ah,’ said Bottando, taken by surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Hagiography,’ he answered mysteriously. ‘Lives of the saints,’ he added, just in case the word was too long for them. ‘Flavia here says Masterson went to Padua last Thursday when she should have been at the committee meeting, and in the library she was reading accounts of Titian’s frescoes in the Scuola di San’ Antonio there. I thought it might be an idea to go and search for inspiration at the shrine of the saint.’

‘And what do you expect to find?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, really. Whatever Masterson found, I hope. She went there, announced she was going to rewrite her paper and was promptly done to death.’

Bottando grunted that if Argyll thought the trip was worthwhile then he should naturally follow his instincts. Far be it from him to order him around. He clearly didn’t feel there would be much point, and he had some doubts about Argyll’s ability to discover one even if it existed. Then he stumped off to bed and Flavia suggested a digestive walk.

They got lost again and were beginning to get thoroughly irritated by the refusal of Venice to conform to the normal layout of cities. Most, after all, are fairly straightforward: cathedral at one end, railway station at the other, everything else in between with taxis to ferry you around. Venice, alas, is not like that at all and, much as Flavia liked the place, it was making her increasingly frustrated. She had gone to see Bovolo, and got lost, then to see Lorenzo, and got lost again, now she was slowly going nowhere in particular and had got lost for the third time. It reminded her of her progress on this case a little too vividly to be comfortable.

Argyll, walking by her side with careless insouciance, didn’t seem to mind as much. An incorrigible tourist, he spent his time craning his neck round looking at the buildings, trying every now and then to persuade her to stop talking and admire a church façade instead. She, in contrast, kept doggedly walking, fending off the feeling that she was doing little else but go round in ever diminishing circles.

‘Here,’ she said eventually, thrusting the crumpled map at her companion. ‘I give up. Work out where we are and take me home.’

He squinted at the map, looked around to try and find out the name of the alleyway they had stopped in. Then he turned it upside down and looked again, walked off, turned right and said: ‘How about that?’

She wasn’t impressed. ‘This isn’t the place,’ she observed tartly.

‘I know that,’ he said, walking on to the high arched bridge leading to the other side of the little canal. ‘But it is where Roberts was fished out. That’s not bad for a start. We’re not too far away. You can surely work out the rest yourself. Roberts lived down that way,’ he said pointing to his left. ‘And the Grand Canal is that way,’ he added, pointing to his right.

‘Which means that we’ – he paused, thought, then pointed again – ‘should go this way,’ he said, erroneously but with an air of triumph.

He handed the map back to her so that she could see for herself what a magnificent navigator he was. While she was admiring his confidence but doubting his conclusions, he took out his cigarettes. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something,’ he muttered, sticking his finger in the packet in the vain hope that there might, perhaps, be one left in there somewhere. ‘Damn.’

He scrunched up the packet and tossed it casually over the side of the bridge.

‘Not very public spirited of you,’ Flavia observed.

He glanced down into the dirty water. The white crumpled packet was floating on the surface, surrounded by half a dozen empty plastic bottles, what might once have been a dead rat, several pages of newspaper and a motley assortment of household garbage. They watched the collection drift slowly in the direction of the Grand Canal, where it would undoubtedly join many more bits and pieces before ending up in that great waste disposal unit known as the Adriatic Sea.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that.’

They watched the rubbish move slowly on the journey for a few moments more. There was something…Then Flavia said: ‘It’s going the wrong way.’

They examined it more carefully as it moved gently in the direction of what was now downstream. ‘So it is,’ he said after a while. ‘The water was flowing away from the Grand Canal last night, now it’s heading towards it. Isn’t that odd?’

‘Flow,’ she said, with an air of certainty.

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing. How do you feel like going boating?’

It was not an invitation he’d expected; generally she was rather averse to fun and frivolity, at least while working. But who was he to dissuade her from taking an hour off? The timing was a little eccentric, though.

‘Now? At eleven o’clock on a cold October night? What do you want? Gondola and bottle of wine?’

‘Don’t be absurd. No, I meant tomorrow. I’ll organise it all. We can go when you get back from Padua.’ She paused and regarded him carefully before saying sternly, ‘Jonathan, do be careful.’

It was a warning she gave fairly frequently when in his company. He had the habit of not really watching where he was going and crashing into obstacles, like lampposts and street signs, placed by local authorities trying to trip up the unwary. So it was now. Argyll had caught a glimpse of what appeared to be an unusually interesting statue of a saint picked out by the lights on the church of San Barnaba and had taken a couple of steps backward to improve his angle of vision. He was fond of statues of saints.

The manoeuvre had brought his ankle into sharp contact with a concrete bollard, put there to inform the more normally observant that the canal was about to begin. As he was facing the wrong way, he now tripped, took another couple of steps back to regain his balance and vanished over the edge with a sharp cry of alarm that ended abruptly as his head disappeared, with a mighty splash, underneath the black, cold and smelly water.

Flavia ran to the side, fearing that yet another art historian, even if a retired one, was about to be claimed by the Venetian lagoon. She was worrying unnecessarily. After a few seconds of thrashing around and cursing violently, Argyll stood up, knee deep in water and with an embarrassed expression on what little could be seen of his face. Apart from being imbedded in the thick and slimy mud, soaked and feeling generally humiliated, he appeared to have suffered little damage.

She giggled at the sight, then looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You OK down there?’ she asked.

‘Never better. How nice of you to ask. How are you?’ he replied, before slipping once more.

‘The water’s not very deep,’ she observed.

‘You don’t say.’

‘I mean, about a metre. There’s not much chance of your drowning, is there?’

He tried to wipe some of the mud off himself, and shivered violently. ‘Not unless I try really hard, no. But I might freeze to death. Will you stop talking and help me out of here?’

‘Oh, sorry.’ She rolled up her sleeve and held out a hand with some distaste.

‘What I meant,’ she went on as he clambered out and she retreated upwind, ‘was that if you were in no danger of drowning, nor was Roberts. If he slipped, that is. I mean, he’d just have to walk to the side and hop out, wouldn’t he?’

She thought that was fascinating, and was going to offer further observations, but the very nasty look that Argyll gave her suggested he wasn’t so interested at the moment. So, keeping at a discreet distance, she accompanied him back to his hotel and ordered him a whisky while he made an atrocious mess of the bathroom.