The Titian Committee

10

She was sitting, wrapped up in the waterproof clothes she had brought with her from Rome, in an old boat by the Accademia bridge. The rain was still drizzling down and it was getting late; there was only about another hour before the autumn darkness would make it difficult to see anything at all. Beside her, sitting and talking volubly, was an old walnut of a man, his hands flailing through the air as he chattered away. Even from a distance, Argyll could see that Flavia was being sweetly polite, as she always was with her elders, no matter how irritating she found them. As he approached, he thought he made out the words, ‘Flow. That’s what it is, flow…’

He greeted them from the quay, and gingerly made his way down into the little boat. The last thing he wanted was to fall into the water again. Flavia introduced the old man as Signor Dandolo, a retired gondolier she had met a few days earlier.

Argyll shook the man’s hand. ‘Signor Dandolo. You have a very distinguished name,’ he commented. A fine compliment, and well received. Dandolo beamed at him.

‘That’s right. Doges several times over in my family. Venetians since time began.’

A little exaggeration here, surely, but no matter. Dandolo was pleased and Flavia was in the good mood that came over her when she felt she was doing something useful. Only Argyll felt thoroughly discontented.

‘This is not my idea of a romantic boating trip,’ he grumbled as he drew his coat closer round him to fend off the chill evening air. ‘I’m soaked and it’s bloody freezing. I’m not expected to burst into song, am I?’

Flavia ignored the remark, frowning as she looked ahead to see where they were going. She clutched the side of the boat quickly as a vaporetto ploughed past and the wake made their little skiff rock from side to side.

‘You’re not seasick, are you?’ he asked incredulously.

She shook her head with determination, but kept her mouth shut. The frown deepened. ‘Indigestion,’ she said faintly after a while. ‘Must have eaten too much.’

Impossible. She was seasick. Amazing. Twenty metres from the side of the Grand Canal and she was turning green already. Argyll shook his head and looked at the view. There was little else to do; Flavia was not at her conversational best. So he talked to the steadily rowing Dandolo, who glanced sympathetically at Flavia. She had won an admirer.

Like many Venetians, he was concerned to defend his city against the suggestion it might have any little flaws. The rough waters and inclement weather, he explained, were entirely unnatural for the time of the year. This was the first rain for weeks. Dry as a bone until then. Not a drop. He hinted that the rain was also the fault of the city planners, Romans and Milanese to a man. It had not rained, he seemed to imply, in the days of his ancestors, the doges.

After about ten minutes’ hard rowing, Dandolo swung the boat sharply to the left and propelled it at high speed down the rio di San Barnaba, past the site where Roberts was discovered. The swell of the water eased off noticeably and, by the time they reached the spot where Argyll had taken his plunge the night before, Flavia’s complexion, if not back to its usual healthy tan, had at least lost the jaundiced hue so apparent on the Grand Canal. It was replaced by a return of her conversational powers.

‘Flow,’ she said when finally prepared to answer Argyll’s question about the point of the trip. ‘The current was reversed. Signor Dandolo here reckons it’s because of new channels dug in the lagoon. The young policeman that Bovolo shut up realised it as well. So, instead of Roberts falling in near the Grand Canal, he must have dropped in a couple of hundred metres in the other direction. And, as you demonstrated last night, he couldn’t have drowned accidentally.’

‘He could if he was unconscious.’

‘Or if he was held under the water. But how do you do that in one of the most crowded parts of Venice without anyone noticing? Answer, a couple of hundred metres up the canal is Roberts’ house. There, in fact,’ she said, pointing with one hand and hanging on to the side of the boat with the other.

The house was on the corner with a little alley just past a bridge. The street along the rio di San Barnaba had given out by that stage, so the building backed straight on to the canal. Dandolo stopped rowing and the boat slid quietly along.

‘Now what?’ Argyll asked. It was all very interesting, but he didn’t really see why they couldn’t have found this out from their hotel. ‘What’s that, by the way?’

‘That’ was a dark hole at water level which disappeared underneath the house.

‘Covered canal,’ Dandolo said. ‘There’re hundreds of them. For sewage. You can also run a boat in. That’s how you get furniture in and out. And refuse, of course, sometimes.’

‘Can you get us in?’ Flavia asked a bit half-heartedly.

Dandolo turned the boat, headed it straight at the hole and at the last moment shipped the oars. The boat slid in with a few inches to spare on either side.

‘I knew this torch would come in useful,’ Flavia said, fishing around in her handbag.

‘You don’t have a couple of gasmasks in there as well, do you?’ asked Argyll plaintively. The smell was indeed fairly remarkable, although considering they were sailing down an open sewer serving half a dozen or more houses, it was no more than should be expected.

‘It should widen a bit shortly,’ said Dandolo, who appeared entirely unaffected. ‘There. Told you.’

He was, they dimly saw in the almost complete dark, correct. Flavia switched on the torch and moved the beam around. They were in a low, vaulted, brick tunnel, and to their right was a small landing stage. In the far wall was a door.

‘Could you pull over there?’ she asked the boatman, and he patiently complied. Flavia stood up as the boat nudged against the stone flagging and, hanging on to Argyll to keep her balance, eased herself on to the jetty.

‘God, this is repulsive,’ she said in a disgusted tone which echoed bleakly down the dark and damp tunnel. ‘It’s covered in green slime. Smells worse than you did last night.’

‘Don’t worry, the rain will wash it off. Why don’t you stay in the boat? You can see as well,’ Argyll asked, considering, then rejecting, the idea of following her.

‘Because I’m looking,’ she said absently, crawling around on her hands and knees and playing the light of the torch around. She took a handkerchief out of her pocket, stood up as best she could in the circumstances and wiped some of the green slime off her knees. She eyed the result with disgust.

‘Do you have any idea how much these trousers cost?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Look at that. Ruined. The things you do. If I weren’t so good at this job I might seriously consider going off to do something a little more dignified.’

‘Does that mean you’ve found something?’

‘Of course I have.’ She shone her torch from the doorway to the side of the canal. ‘Something – or rather someone – was dragged along here not very long ago. Guess who?’

‘Roberts?’ he suggested, with no great display of genius.

‘Just so,’ she said with satisfaction, reaching into her handbag once more and producing a small camera. ‘It would be better to have professional snaps,’ she said as the flashgun went off, ‘but these will have to do for the time being. Bovolo would complain about interference again. Last thing I want is for him to start up. He’s already refusing to give Bottando information I wanted.’

‘How about fingerprints?’

She shook her head. ‘Not my area of expertise, but I doubt it very much. The surface is too rough to hold them. Ah, well. Can’t have everything. Do you fancy an impromptu visit to Professor Roberts’ house?’

In fact, that proved impossible. The door which, she confidently told him, led into Roberts’ cellars, was firmly locked and Argyll was unwilling to try to kick it down, despite her encouragement.

‘Are you mad? It’s solid oak and about a foot thick. Besides, I’m cold.’

He was right, although Flavia, who was enjoying herself enormously now that her sickness had passed off, considered him a bit of a kill-joy. She reluctantly levered herself back into the boat and Dandolo began the process of reversing the boat back into the canal.

‘That’s clear, anyway,’ Flavia said decisively. ‘We can scrub the accident theory.’

‘You reckon.’

‘I reckon. Roberts gets a visit from Masterson’s killer. Roberts accuses him, and whoever it is decides he has to be shut up. He grabs him by the neck, hence the red marks. Down to the cellar and on to the jetty, holds him under the water until he drowns and then trots off home for dinner. Roberts, meanwhile, drifts off into the sunset until found by Bovolo and his mob. Simple.’

‘OK, then. Now for the difficult ones. Who, why?’

Flavia shrugged, and fell silent.

Argyll shivered once more. ‘That phone call? Roberts took it, Van Heteren overheard, and was afraid Roberts might tell us?’

‘Maybe. The old Crime of Passion scenario again. Still the problem of his alibi, of course.’

‘Kollmar, then? He was here at about the right time?’

She shrugged noncommittally. They were back on the canal and the wind was picking up. He studied the sky. ‘Dammit, it’s still raining,’ he said.

Dandolo grunted as he pulled on the oars. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Going to get worse, as well. Could flood if it’s heavy enough. Depends on the wind when it’s high tide on Sunday. Do you want me to take you back to your hotel?’

The thought of bobbing in his tiny boat all the way along the Grand Canal terrified both Argyll and Flavia equally. They assured him simultaneously that it was quite all right and they’d taken up far too much of his time already and he shouldn’t even think of it. So he dropped them at the Ca’ Rezzonico vaporetto stop, Flavia handed over generous amounts of money, and he disappeared into the darkness and drizzle, weaving in and out of the heavy traffic of the canal.

‘How was Padua?’ she said as the little boat vanished in the gloom.

Argyll shrugged. ‘I don’t know really. Masterson was there, certainly. What she was doing is another matter. She had important errands, she said, but I’ve no idea what they were. I’m beginning to get a feeling, though…’

Flavia looked concerned. Argyll’s theories were dangerous, not least because they tended to be wrong for the first half dozen tries. ‘What is it then?’

The boat came and they got on, and Argyll changed the subject. It was not that he didn’t want to say, he explained, it was just that he had little to go on and she always tended to be rather severe with him when he got it wrong. So if she didn’t mind…

Flavia did mind, although she could hardly blame him. Anyway, the afternoon had been fairly successful and she was looking forward to presenting Bottando with her conclusions. So she forgot the matter, and went back to her hotel while Argyll trotted off in the other direction to do a little shopping.

Friday brought another train trip. Originally, Bottando had proposed going with Flavia himself, leaving Argyll behind to do whatever it was he thought art dealers did with themselves in their idle moments. However, the little excursion to Venice had already taken up more time than he liked and, as he kept on mentioning to the point of obsession, it was budget season. Tables of statistics had to be prepared, bureaucrats buttered up, past triumphs listed and mishaps carefully hidden from view. So, with much reluctance and even more preparatory doses of aspirin, he set off in great ill-humour to return to his desk in Rome.

Why didn’t Flavia take Argyll with her, he had suggested with what appeared to be a knowing look before he went? It had always been one of his little illusions that, in that pair, lay a great love affair waiting for the appropriate circumstances to surface. To Flavia that had always seemed less than likely, mainly due to Argyll’s chronic indecisiveness. But it pleased Bottando to take an avuncular interest in these matters, and she felt disinclined to spoil his romantic notions.

Argyll was quite happy to go, as long as they went by train and not by car. Otherwise, he said, he would stay where he was. Although she had not yet involved him in a crash, and indeed was an extraordinarily accurate driver, he was pusillanimously convinced that it was only a matter of time. High speed is an exhilarating thing, and Flavia’s habit of looking deep in your eyes when talking to you was charmingly appealing. Both at once was not, to his mind, the happiest of combinations.

Flavia, of course, thought going by train not nearly as much fun, but fell in with his wishes. So they took the ten o’clock express, occupied the first-class seats she had booked and, at her not entirely unforeseen suggestion, immediately abandoned them in favour of the restaurant car.

They ate in companionable silence and after the last crumb had vanished, Argyll sprang his little surprise, the one he had been thinking about since the previous evening. He took out Masterson’s photographs of Padua developed from the film he had removed from her camera yesterday.

‘Hmph,’ she said after studying them for a moment. She always said that when she knew she was meant to say something intelligent but couldn’t think what it was.

‘Surely you can do a bit better than that,’ Argyll said in a slightly disappointed tone. ‘Do you want a hint?’

She clearly did, so he went on: ‘The face in the two pictures painted by Titian in Padua is the same as the self-portrait of the Marchesa’s. I thought you would have seen that immediately.’

‘So I might have done, if I had seen this mysterious portrait,’ she replied snappily. ‘Anyway, so what?’

Argyll was a little crestfallen, considering that he had immediately assumed it to be of vast significance. There was certainly no room for doubt at all. The beaky nose, thin cheeks and lank hair were confirmation enough. What he didn’t understand was why she wasn’t all excited.

‘But don’t you see? It explains why the picture was stolen.’

‘I don’t see that. It demonstrates that four hundred years ago there was a connection between the two pictures and you can assume that Masterson knew it. I can’t see what else it shows. Unless you are going to suggest the Marchesa’s picture is a Titian self-portrait.’

‘No. It’s certainly not. We know very well what he looked like.’

‘So where does that get us?’

‘I thought it was rather interesting…’ he began.

‘No doubt. And normally I’d agree with you. But there isn’t time for that sort of thing at the moment. You will have to drop everything not connected to this murder.’

‘It is connected to the murder, I think,’ he protested.

‘Maybe. But you don’t know what the connections are.’

Argyll shook his head. ‘Well, not yet,’ he admitted. ‘You’re sometimes very demanding, you know. I thought I was being very helpful.’

‘And so you are,’ she replied in a most irritating fashion. ‘It’s just that I was imagining Bottando’s face if he heard all this. All he would say is: “Who killed Masterson and Roberts, who stole the paintings and where are they, and where’s the proof?” We don’t know.’

‘I think you’re being most ungrateful,’ Argyll sniffed in a hurt manner. ‘When all my research leads inevitably to the correct identification of the felon, I might very well keep the information to myself.’

Flavia grinned broadly at him and patted him on the back. ‘Nonsense. You’ll rush round and tell me. I know you. And I don’t mean to be discouraging. But your task is to find those pictures. I very much hope you do, but you’re nowhere near yet.’

True enough, and the memory of his employer, sitting in London and presumably getting ever more impatient for results, put him into a reflective reverie for the next half-hour. Then, to pass the time as the train whistled through the flat, boring Veneto plain and moved into the flat, boring Lombardy plain, he took out his book. He had brought with him a detective novel of immense frivolity, but Flavia confiscated it.

‘Read this instead,’ she said, handing over Masterson’s work on Renaissance iconography. ‘It’s good for the soul.’

‘Must I?’ he asked plaintively.

‘Yes. It would take me weeks to plough through that much English. Flick through it and tell me what you think. It won’t take you long.’

He eyed it suspiciously. It was awfully long, and he noticed with irritation that Flavia had bought herself a much more interesting magazine to while away the time. He looked at the pictures, which was the bit he always enjoyed best, and then reached over to pick up a ticket stub that fell out of the middle.

‘She got around in her last days,’ he observed.

‘Mmm?’ Flavia said inattentively, engrossed as she was in her horoscope, which was confidently predicting dire financial troubles mingled with exciting romantic entanglements for one twelth of the world’s population over the next thirty days.

‘She arrived in Venice by train from St Gall. Where is St Gall?’

‘Switzerland, I think,’ she replied. ‘What’s your sign?’

‘Leo,’ he said. ‘Why would she go to St Gall?’

‘Leo? Are you sure? You’re meant to be aggressive and determined. It’s on the shores of Lake Constance. Nice place. Maybe she just wanted a day’s rest to prepare herself. Like Miller and his swimming.’

‘What do you mean, “meant to be”?’ he said huffily, but she didn’t reply. Nor did she tell him what the stars had in store for him that month.

At the great station in Milan, Flavia hailed a taxi with a whistle that made it sound as though the days of steam trains had returned once more, and they headed off through the busy and noisy streets to Benedetti’s apartment. Argyll felt oddly uncomfortable until he realised that, even after only a few days in Venice, he had got used to not seeing, hearing, smelling or avoiding cars everywhere he went. A lot to be said for canals after all.

Signor Benedetti was a bit crumbly and, in the fashion of the elderly, fast asleep in his post-prandial nap when they entered. His maid gave him a good shake to bring him round. He yawned, and blinked, and rubbed his eyes as she explained who the visitors were and reminded him that they had an appointment. Then she helped him out of the old leather armchair and he hobbled over to greet them, burbling apologies for his discourtesy in not being better prepared for their arrival.

‘That’s quite all right,’ Flavia assured him. ‘It’s very good of you to see us at all at such short notice.’

‘Good heavens, my dear young lady, I am delighted. An old man like myself rarely has the opportunity to welcome young people into his house. Especially beautiful young women like yourself.’

No mention of handsome young men, Argyll noted. Ah well. At least he paid his compliments with decorum. No slobbering over hands or any nonsense like that.

They sat down, Argyll and Flavia on a thin-legged and rather insubstantial settecento sofa, Benedetti in the much more voluminous leather armchair. Both of the visitors studied their host carefully as the maid, who appeared to double up as a nurse, arranged a heavy woollen blanket around him. He was probably in his eighties. Not very well preserved, but evidently looked after himself well. A wizened and cherubic old face that the shrinkage of the years had made to look several sizes too big for the little body underneath it. When he was all tucked in and comfortable, he looked steadily at them both, waiting for them to begin.

Flavia explained how Masterson was murdered while doing some work on the old man’s painting. He nodded quietly and listened to her patiently. He was most distressed to hear it, he said quietly. A charming woman.

‘You met her, then?’

Indeed, he said. She’d paid a brief visit the previous week. His friend Georges Bralle wrote to introduce her and he was more than happy for her to come. Especially as she was interested in his pictures.

‘I am very proud of my little collection, even if that committee was less impressed. A great shame that.’

‘Do you know Bralle well?’

‘Not well. When I thought of selling the sketch a couple of years ago Georges suggested I consult his committee officially. That, of course, was before they had a fight and he retired in protest.’

‘They had a fight?’

‘Something like that. Maybe not. Georges was always a bit prickly about that committee. Tended to regard it as his personal property. I’m sure it was all his fault. Charming man, but a bit difficult.’

‘So did you consult the committee?’

‘I did. And eventually Professor Roberts came to see it.’

‘And he said he believed your work was not by Titian?’

‘Not at all. He made it clear it was only a preliminary visit and that follow-up examination by a colleague was necessary. But I reckoned by his reaction that he thought it was very much genuine, especially when I showed him the documentary evidence Bralle had sent me.’

Now this was a puzzle. No one had mentioned documentary evidence before. Quite the opposite. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Georges sent me various gleanings from his research over the years – when he remembered – I haven’t actually seen him for a decade or more. You know, fragments from here and there. He never studied the picture particularly, but would occasionally come across a little snippet and send it. Taken altogether I thought it looked quite impressive. On the desk,’ he said, gesturing in that direction.

Flavia went and picked up a file he had brought out in preparation. Clearly he was acute enough to work out what they were coming for. She glanced at the contents – the letter of introduction from Bralle, sale contracts from the 1940s, cleaning and framing bills and so on. Nothing else. She pointed this out.

‘Oh, silly me. Of course, I gave it all to Professor Roberts to hand over to his colleague.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘I don’t know. Roberts said that side of things would be handled by his colleague, who would draw up the final report, incorporating his own findings. Evidently this man didn’t find the evidence convincing enough. I was most disappointed, I can tell you, as was Georges when I told him the result.’

‘And what did Dr Masterson think?’

‘I don’t know that either. She said she would tell me later, when all her work was done. We didn’t discuss it for very long. I’m afraid I talked too much. I don’t get many visitors these days, and when I do I get carried away. I must have bored her dreadfully with my little anecdotes, but she didn’t admit it. She sat and listened to me for a long time, and even missed her train. Very kind, I thought.’

‘So she didn’t see any documents?’

‘I offered to get her copies, but she said she didn’t need them. I was a little surprised, I must say.’

‘When Professor Roberts was here, what did you talk about?’

He thought again, and remained silent for an alarmingly long time. Eventually, he nodded slowly to himself as he pinned the memory down. ‘Most of the time, nothing. I showed him the picture and left him alone with it. That took about an hour. Then I gave him a drink, he declined my offer of lunch and he went. We spent some time discussing my wish to sell the picture.’

‘In what way?’

‘Obviously, I said I rather hoped he would report the picture to be genuine because I wanted to sell it. He said that he would do what he could. He was most helpful. After the committee voted against it, he wrote apologising for what he said was a piece of bureaucratic silliness and offered an attribution based on his own authority until it was all sorted out. With, of course, a fee of five per cent on the sale price. I gather that is a normal way of proceeding. I consulted Georges, who suggested I wait to see if the committee changed its mind. So I turned it down. It was tempting, but I wasn’t in that much of a rush to sell.’

Argyll felt his mouth sagging open in astonishment. He glanced at Flavia, but she seemed as calm and unconcerned as ever, so he bided his time.

‘Perhaps you might want to see this famous work?’ the old man went on. ‘It seems a pity to come all this way without looking at it.’

Both nodded with enthusiasm at the idea, and Benedetti slowly eased himself out of his seat, Flavia helping on one side and Argyll on the other. When he was set upright and balanced, he slowly led the way into what he called his cabinet, a small study where he kept his smaller pictures.

It made Argyll’s heart burn. What he would do for a room like this! Delicate plaster ceiling, marble fireplace with logs burning gently in it, dark, well-polished oak shelves supporting thousands of leather-bound books. Light, warmth, a feeling of well-packed comfort. And pictures, several dozen of them, of high quality, arranged in the old style, one above the other, with none of the modern sparse, spotlit fastidiousness.

‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Absolutely beautiful.’

Benedetti smiled appreciatively at him. ‘Thank you. Without any modesty at all, I must say you are quite right. It is my favourite place in the world. I am never happier than when I am sitting in here. I shall be sorry to leave it. Alas, I don’t expect heaven will have anywhere half as nice, even if I am lucky enough to get in. There it is, by the way.’

He pointed shakily to a picture hanging between the windows, sandwiched between a small seventeenth-century Flemish interior and what appeared to be an eighteenth-century French landscape.

It was a fairly innocuous scene. A man in a red and white striped outfit with a beaky nose was sitting at a table, on which there was a pile of food, wine and large flowers. He was surrounded by three other people, one dressed as a friar, and on the far wall was a carving of the crucified Christ. The subject’s hands were folded over his stomach. Angels, as they do sometimes, were flying around the room blowing trumpets. A perfectly normal scene of everyday life in the sixteenth century. It was painted in thick, heavy brushstrokes as though done in a hurry. Clearly a sketch for a finished painting.

‘Well, Jonathan, this is your area. What do you think?’

Argyll stared at the picture, ever more amazed. What on earth were these people playing at? He shook his head in confusion. ‘I don’t understand this at all,’ he said.

Both of his companions eyed him curiously. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘I can’t see that there is any doubt about it. It is so obviously a preliminary sketch for one of the panels in the Padua St Anthony series; I don’t understand why there was any doubt.’

‘Are you certain?’ Flavia asked, impressed by his confidence. ‘After all, you’re no Titian expert yourself.’

‘Yes. Firstly, Titian, it seems, painted a sketch of a scene for the series which was rejected by the friars. So he did another. This has the right proportions. The colouring is right, the style is right. St Anthony was a friar, as is this character here. In all three pictures the central character wears a red and white striped outfit. I’m sure this is the Miracle of the Meal. If your lives of the saints are a bit shaky, St Anthony was at a dinner where the host tried to poison one of the guests. St Anthony’s presence made the poison harmless, and everybody felt awfully guilty and repented of their sins. You know the routine.’

Benedetti nodded in agreement. ‘Very learned, young man,’ he said, unaware that Argyll had got it out of a cheap guide book bought the previous day. ‘However, there is one little snag. As Dr Masterson noticed, the whole point about the legend is the guest ate the poison happily, “praising God in his heart”. This man seems decidedly ill. Besides, there’s the little inscription at the bottom. The Book of Job, I believe. Homo igit consutu…“A man dies and he disappears.” Hardly appropriate for a miracle of salvation.’

They all advanced on the picture and stared at it closely. Undoubtedly the old man was correct; those around the central figure, as much as they could be distinguished, seemed more jubilant than awestruck. And the guest himself did not look at all like someone who had just been given an indisputable sign of Divine protection. In fact, he looked very poorly indeed, with a thin, pallid face accentuated by straight dark hair and a look of anguish that emphasised the somewhat sharp nose.

‘Hang on a second, there. Flavia. Isn’t that hooter familiar, somehow?’ Argyll whipped out his collection of photographs once more and laid them out on the rosewood desk. Pretty convincing.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Proof positive, or pretty nearly. The guest is the same person as the murdering husband in the other scene. And, incidentally, the same as the figure in the Marchesa’s portrait. That’s why Masterson couldn’t be bothered with documentary evidence. She didn’t need it. That’s why she went to Padua.

‘I don’t know what you will think of this,’ he went on with a sudden and unexpected burst of dynamism, ‘but I work as the Italian agent for Byrnes Galleries in London. If you want to sell this picture, I will take it. Flat commission charge or percentage, and I can guarantee it will get a very good price. And no fee for authentication. With all this, it scarcely needs it.’

Benedetti thought for a while, and then nodded. Old, but fast on his feet where money was concerned. Once a banker, always a banker. Must be the Lombard air. ‘That sounds an interesting proposition. You will have to take care of all the documentation and preparation and all that. I will send you a letter detailing my requirements, and you can send a provisional contract for my lawyer. No sale as a Titian, no fee. Is that right?’

Argyll nodded, wondering if he was going too far, and surprised that the man had turned out to be so decisive. At the very least he expected several weeks of protracted negotiations. But he had rarely felt so convinced of anything, certainly not a picture. ‘Agreed. And I shall be collecting my fee. Of that I am sure.’

Flavia coughed gently to indicate that she was still there. ‘I hate to interrupt, but we are here on a murder investigation, not a picture buying expedition. And I’m not too sure of the proprieties of buying and selling what might turn out to be evidence.’

Argyll grinned happily. ‘Sorry about that. But it takes so long to organise sales these days that I’m sure this case will be over before it goes ahead.’

‘Not too long, I hope, young man. Remember, I am old, and have descendants to worry about.’

‘Tell me about Georges Bralle. Where does he live?’ Flavia asked to get the discussion back on more appropriate lines.

‘In the South of France. He went to live in his little house there when he retired. He almost never leaves it. Why do you ask?’

Flavia shook her head. ‘Because he did leave it not very long ago. That letter of introduction for Masterson was written from a hotel in St Gall, Switzerland, on the day Masterson herself was there. For someone who has retired from the committee, he keeps in close contact. I thought it might be quite interesting to hear what he has to say. An informed outside view, so to speak. Do you have a phone number?’

Benedetti looked apologetic. ‘I’m afraid you will find him a difficult man to talk to. He has no telephone; always disliked them and now he’s retired he indulges all his little whims. He has never really approved of the twentieth century. A very good letter writer, but that might not be fast enough for you.’

He gave her the address while Flavia asked him if he would be prepared to make a formal statement about what he had told them. He said he would, of course, be delighted, and they left. Outside once more she hailed a taxi and told the driver to go to the nearest car rental company as quickly as he could manage.

‘I don’t like the sound of that. Where are we going?’

‘France,’ she said. ‘Or more particularly, Balazuc. A village in the Ardèche, I believe. About a nine-hour drive. We can be there by tomorrow, then fly back from Lyons to Venice. Very dramatic and a thorough pain in the neck, but no choice.’