The Titian Committee

12

By the time they arrived, horribly early, on Sunday morning, Bottando was back from Rome. He was not happy. This emotional state he manifested through a series of elliptical references to the need for discipline in policework and disapproving comments on people who went off on holidays with their boyfriends in the middle of a case. Flavia apologised humbly for having omitted to inform him of their little diversion via the South of France, and did point out that at least they had discovered another death. Besides, she added, Argyll was not her boyfriend.

‘But you’re not meant to be finding more,’ he said grumpily. ‘You’re meant to be dealing with the more than adequate supply we have already. Still,’ he continued reluctantly, ‘it was quite good work, I suppose. The trouble is, it has sent the men in suits in Rome into a renewed frenzy. They want results and the department is now being held responsible. We get the flak if we don’t come up with a solution, not Bovolo.’

‘Does that mean the Masterson business has been officially reopened?’

‘Oh, no. Nothing so simple,’ he said bitterly. ‘They merely want a clearing-up operation, reconciling all the pieces. I tried to point out that what we know cannot be reconciled with Bovolo’s conclusions, but that made very little impression. That, I think, is the point. Not sorting this out demonstrates our incompetence and strengthens the hand of the people who want to carve us up.’

Now Flavia understood his pique better. But there was nothing she could do or say to cheer him up, so she asked if he had spoken to Janet.

‘Oh, yes. That’s why I’m here. At least he’s reliable. More so than the local police in the Ardèche, I must say.’

‘Nothing of any help?’

‘Just that it was definitely murder.’

‘We know that.’

‘How come so sure?’

‘Because,’ she explained, ‘Jonathan here noticed that all the doors were locked and there were no keys on the inside.’

Argyll looked becomingly modest.

‘I see,’ Bottando said. ‘Ah, well, it’s good to have official confirmation too, I suppose. In case you hadn’t noticed this as well, it was suffocation. Pillow over the face. Bits of fluff up his nose, or something. I doubt they would have even given him a post-mortem in more normal circumstances, he was so old. Had a wonky heart anyway, it seems. But your insistence and a timely intervention from friend Janet made them a bit more conscientious, fortunately.

‘Apart from that, not much. No fingerprints, no witnesses, no nothing, as seems to be usual in this case. Nothing missing, nothing untoward at all. Killed on October 7th, give or take a day. Isn’t precision wonderful?’ he finished sarcastically.

‘St Anthony strikes again,’ she said, a little too cryptically for Bottando’s delicate state. He asked her what she meant.

‘In Bralle’s diary there is an entry for October 7th which said merely “St Anthony”. I suppose he was doing something about that picture then.’

‘Or the saint himself descended from heaven, suffocated him and rose to the skies once more. Divine intervention. A miracle. How about that?’ Argyll suggested helpfully.

‘Tempting, but it wouldn’t look good in an official police report,’ Bottando replied impatiently.

‘Well, at least we’ve made some progress,’ Flavia said hopefully.

‘I’m glad you think so. I’m not so sure. But you really shouldn’t break into houses on foreign territory, purloin evidence, or vanish without saying where you’re going. Just as well I’m here to remember what policework is really all about.’

‘So tell us what we should be doing.’

‘Emulate me. I have been methodically going over the evidence in accordance with established police procedure,’ he said pompously.

‘And getting nowhere as usual, I suppose?’

He looked offended. ‘Well, since you mention it, no. What have you done?’

‘What we, in our amateurish way, have discovered, is this,’ she said in a superior fashion. ‘Firstly, the picture in Milan is so genuine Jonathan here is going to buy it.’

‘Oh, God. It’ll be stolen within a week.’

‘Control yourself,’ she said primly. ‘Things aren’t as bad as that. Secondly, Masterson, Roberts, Kollmar and Bralle all knew it, but all except Masterson seemed concerned not to let on. Masterson met Bralle in St Gall just before she came to Venice. Next, his diary suggested he was involved with her work on the St Anthony cycle of pictures in Padua.’

Bottando was grudgingly impressed, but determined not to show it. ‘Is that all?’

‘Then there’s the case of the authentication,’ Flavia said, with a brief explanation of Roberts’ offer to Benedetti.

‘Ah, I do wish you’d make up your minds,’ Bottando said wearily, leaning back in his seat and stretching. ‘From having no motives at all, we now seem to be swimming in them. How very tiresome. Well, I suppose we will now have to do some more work. It seems this is a case of one murder leading to another. Find who killed Bralle and presumably you find who rubbed out all the rest of them. And everything else will fall into place. We’ll have to go round these infernal people once again. Goodness, but I’m getting sick of this case.’

‘Before you run off,’ Argyll put in, ‘is there, by any chance, any progress on my pictures, now that self-portrait may be worth having?’

‘No. Nothing at all. I know where they all are, of course, but that’s different.’

Argyll seemed astonished and hopeful all at the same time. ‘You know? Where are they?’

Bottando smirked. ‘In the obvious place. Come on,’ he said, standing up slowly. ‘To work.’

The strain of being involved in a murder investigation was beginning to tell on the various members of the committee who still survived. Initially, they had nearly all been somewhat supercilious about the questioning and, with the exception of Van Heteren, had seemed little moved by Masterson’s death. But now that Death the Reaper was going on a major recruiting drive, so to speak, with especial emphasis on art historians, their nervousness was increasing quite markedly.

The bulky Van Heteren came first, wedged into the tiny armchair in his grubby rooms and no more pleased with life than he had been earlier in the week. If anything, he looked worse. That was sad; he was the only one for whom Flavia felt any rapport at all and Bottando, now meeting all of these characters for the first time, saw why.

He had decided to do the interviewing himself, to see if a fresh perspective added anything to what they knew already. It was not that he did not trust Flavia; far from it. She would have to be there to help out with the languages when he saw Miller, but Kollmar and Van Heteren he could manage on his own while she went off to examine other angles.

‘I thought the investigations were all over,’ Van Heteren said after he had arrived. Both were portly men, and in the tiny apartment almost had to wedge themselves side by side to fit in. ‘So why are we being kept here? I have to vacate this place by Monday at the latest.’

‘Is your timetable so very important?’

He looked at him sharply, then grinned half-heartedly. ‘Selfish of me, right? I suppose it is. My apologies. Thinking about work in the circumstances is pitiful. But I’m coming to hate this place, and I have my doubts that you’ll ever find who killed Louise.’

‘There are things to be dealt with,’ he pointed out. ‘Bralle, for example.’ He explained about the man’s death. Van Heteren was thoroughly shocked by the news.

‘Surely you can’t think that one of us killed poor old Georges?’

‘Someone killed poor old Georges. So why not one of you? Where were you, by the way, when he was killed?’

Very reluctantly, he said he was on a walking tour in the Alps. A late holiday. Yes, on his own. No, he couldn’t prove he did not go to Balazuc. But no, he hadn’t.

‘I see. Pity. And on the night that Roberts died, and those paintings were stolen?’

He was in his room. On his own. He’d been too depressed and miserable after Louise had been killed to do anything or see anyone. No alibi, in other words.

‘Ah, ha,’ he said as neutrally as possible. ‘You seem to me to be a very worried man, doctor.’

‘Is that any surprise?’ he replied acidly. ‘My best friend and lover murdered, two colleagues dying and the obvious suspicion that you think one of us is responsible. Which, I imagine, we are. I don’t know how high up your list of suspects I am, but I can assure you that never, whatever she might have done, would I ever have harmed Louise. Do you believe me?’

Bottando shrugged noncommittally. ‘Be reasonable,’ he said. ‘You would hardly say anything else. But, if it makes you feel any better, I do not think you killed her. Satisfied?’

He nodded, scarcely reassured, so Bottando continued. ‘Did you know Masterson was interested in a picture owned by the Marchesa di Mulino?’

Vaguely, he said. He’d been talking to her at the party Lorenzo had thrown the year before. It was when they were most deeply involved, so he’d thought. She’d playfully pointed out a picture, a portrait, and asked him what he thought of it. He’d said that it seemed without any merit at all and she’d laughed.

‘And?’ Bottando prompted.

‘And nothing. That was all. We were a little drunk by then. It was a good party. Lorenzo knows how to throw them. Food, music, lots to drink, beautiful surroundings. She spent a long time looking at it and then gave the slightly swaying view that it was an interesting face, didn’t I think? Not a nice man, but an interesting one. I said that was a very scholarly assessment. Then she said it needed work.’

‘What did she mean?’

‘I assume that it needed a lot of cleaning and restoration. It was very dirty and unkempt. Anyway, then she giggled and suggested going back to her room to celebrate her powers of discernment. So we did. She was in a really good mood, probably the happiest I’d ever seen her,’ he said, remembering the event with obvious pain.

‘You mentioned to my assistant that Masterson was going to write a reference for Dr Miller?’

He nodded.

‘Did she mention this to anyone else, do you know?’

‘I’m sure she didn’t. I only knew because I saw a draft of it on her desk. In fact she told me specifically not to mention it; said she supposed she would have to write a good reference, but she was damned if she saw why anyone had to know about it. She didn’t want to take the blame for someone as boring as him getting tenure. I think she should have said what she thought, but she was much too soft to do that.’

Bottando nodded sagely. Had Masterson mentioned meeting Bralle in Switzerland? Discussed her trip to Milan? To Padua? The answers to all were that she had not. He had no idea she had travelled so much in her last few days. Not, perhaps, that it was surprising. She always was busy. That was the trouble.

James Miller was also quickly disposed of, although he also contributed little of obvious material use. His hair was wet and he rubbed it down with a towel as he explained that he had just got back from a swim. He swam every day, he said.

Bottando looked carefully around his room, making halting, Anglo-Italian conversation until Flavia turned up, looking pleased with herself. Miller’s Italian was remarkably bad for someone who had spent so many years working on things Italian. Clearly it was not he who had spoken to Pianta the day of Masterson’s murder.

He asked how long Miller was planning to stay in Venice and was told the American was desperate to get back home as quickly as possible. He was already late and the events of the past week would not do his forthcoming battle for tenure any good at all. He sounded almost half-crazed with anxiety, and failed very dismally in his attempts to seem light-hearted about it. Flavia brought up the question of his reference. She seemed interested in it. He replied gruffly that he could imagine what Masterson would have said.

‘How?’ she asked.

‘Well, we had a bit of a disagreement on Thursday. I suppose you ought to know that. I said I hoped she was going to go easy on poor old Kollmar. I was trying to give her the benefit of my experience. Antagonising people is not the best way of getting what you want.’

‘And she didn’t like it?’ She could imagine the scene; Miller slipping into condescension as he instructed her, Masterson bristling. She did not seem the sort of person who would take kindly to such advice.

‘Evidently not, considering how snappishly she turned down his offer of a drink the next day. In fact, she blew a fuse and said she was sick to death of everybody making mountains out of molehills and wished people wouldn’t be so goddamned hypersensitive. And in my case, I would be much better if I spent more time doing my own work and spent less time on academic arse-licking.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Tenure again. She reckoned that I hadn’t written enough.’

‘And have you?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t think the Encyclopaedia Britannica would be long enough to satisfy Louise. But, as I told her, I am about to produce a major article. I gave her a copy of it.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ he commented with a bitterness that was almost embarrassing in its self-centredness. ‘I joined this committee because I thought it would help my career. Now, at the crucial moment, all hell breaks loose. The committee is involved in scandal and I lose both of my referees. Louise was bad enough, although it’s difficult to imagine she would have been generous on my behalf. But Roberts dying as well is just too horrible. I can’t believe anyone else will be queueing up to offer their services now, can you? The mortality rate is too high.’

Then Bottando chipped in, to get the conversation on to more immediate concerns. Time was short. Miller produced his passport and aeroplane ticket to prove that he was in Greece when Georges Bralle died, and said he had not seen the old man for nearly three years. His alibis for the nights Masterson and Roberts died were equally consistent and still solid.

‘Well?’ asked Bottando as they headed back to the exit. ‘Any luck?’

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘The water from the leak stopped about there.’ She went on, pointing back down the corridor. ‘I spoke to the keeper of the building. Nothing wrong with the roof at all. More importantly, he pointed out what I should have remembered myself, that it rained for the first time in three weeks when I went boating with Jonathan a couple of days ago.’

Bottando smiled back. ‘Do you know,’ he said as they walked to the vaporetto stop, ‘I am just beginning to think that, with a bit of luck, we might keep our jobs after all.’

Dr Kollmar was equally displeased to see him, but Bottando was getting used to it by now. While the German had been ill at ease when he’d met Flavia, now he was vibrating visibly as he came in and sat down.

‘I suppose you think I killed her because of that picture,’ he said in a gloomy but ill-natured mood which scarcely helped to enlist Bottando’s sympathies.

‘The thought had occurred,’ he said. ‘Did you?’

‘Of course I didn’t,’ he replied with more spirit than usual. ‘What an absurd idea.’

‘I’ve read your report. Roberts thought the picture was genuine, there was evidence to prove it and you disregarded both. Why?’

He seemed genuinely astonished. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘You’re completely wrong on both counts. Professor Roberts never said anything of the sort, and the evidence I found in my searches through the archives produced nothing conclusive at all.’

‘And what about other people’s searches? Like Dr Bralle’s?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said stiffly. ‘Bralle was retired and if he had any views on that picture he never told me. I suggest you confine yourself to policework and stop trying to tell me how to do my –’

‘How much was your cut, doctor?’ Bottando asked drily.

He looked puzzled again. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your cut. You know.’

There was a long pause, then Kollmar said stiffly, ‘If you are suggesting what I think, then I must tell you that is outrageous and disgraceful. How dare you even think that –’

‘Yes, yes. Right. Sorry I mentioned it,’ he said. ‘But did you really believe that picture was a fake?’

He mangled his hands in minor anguish, then sighed. ‘There was considerable doubt…’

‘So why didn’t you say so?’

‘Because I thought it safer to follow Professor Roberts’ advice. In the absence of documentary evidence everything depends on stylistic assessment. That was his area, not mine.’

He was sitting, primly and upright, knees together in his chair and consumed by what passed for considerable anger. All signs of his early nervousness had vanished during the questioning. Bottando sighed, and tried to ease the man back into a more co-operative spirit. He didn’t do very well.

‘The Fenice,’ he began. Kollmar groaned wearily.

‘How often do I have to tell you people about that. I went to the opera. I sat with Roberts and my wife throughout.’

‘One part of your alibi is dead, the other is related. Not good, doctor.’ He kept a dignified silence.

‘OK, then. The night Roberts died. Where were you?’

‘I’ve told you several times already. I delivered an envelope to his house then went home. I fed the children and tried to get on with some work.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes, alone.’

‘I see. One last question. When you asked Masterson for a drink, was it on the island or on the boat leaving it?’

‘On the boat. You can ask Miller, he heard it all.’

‘Thank you, doctor. That will do for today.’

He had endured enough for one morning. His head hurt, and facts and theories were jumbled up inside it, almost meeting but not quite there. Bottando made his way out of the dismal house into the even more dismal street outside. It was raining hard now, as the old boatman had assured Flavia it would. He looked at the grey overcast sky, and wrapped himself up more firmly for protection against the bitter wind blowing in strongly from the lagoon, and hurried at a brisk trot towards the quayside. He was late and talking to Kollmar had cut into his lunch. He’d have to skip food entirely if he wanted to get to his meeting with Bovolo on time. Damnation. If there was one thing Bottando resented, it was missing lunch.

Argyll was equally busy all morning, invigorated by the prospect of recovering his pictures. He had rung up Byrnes in London to ask him to sniff around for Titians on the market in the last few years. How many were sold with shiny new certificates of attribution? he wanted to know, adding news of his own little venture into the same line of business. Byrnes, somewhat mollified by the prospect of Argyll at last earning his salary, agreed to make discreet enquiries and ring back.

Since then, he had left policework to the police, and dedicated himself to tracking down the author of the Marchesa’s painting. It might, after all, have a bearing on Masterson’s murder and besides, Bottando seemed confident he could lay his hands on it. As Argyll could well own it soon, he thought it might be interesting to know what he was buying.

Knowing what you are looking for, however, is not the same as finding it, and in this department he made little progress. He had, variously, purloined notes off Masterson, had picked up her photocopies from the library and temporarily confiscated her books from the shelves. Taken together, he hoped that something appropriately convincing would emerge, but was forced to admit that there was, as yet, not even the hint of an answer in sight. Giorgione, Titian, and the none too appealing Pietro Luzzi. Clearly the little trio fitted together somehow, and equally obviously Masterson knew how. He was coming to the conclusion that she was a good deal cleverer than he was.

‘So what do you know?’ Flavia asked when she joined him for the lunch Bottando was being forced to miss.

He sniffed moodily. ‘Well, not much, really. I know that the portrait is of a painter in his thirties and that Titian painted him into his series in Padua and that sketch in Milan. That’s about it.’

‘OK, then,’ Flavia said, trying to help. ‘Find out who all Titian’s mates are and you’re there. After all, painting friends into religious pictures was common enough. You mentioned that Titian stuck in his dead mistress, so why not others as well?’

Argyll looked at her. ‘Say that again,’ he said.

Flavia complied. ‘I said, you told me…’

‘I was speaking purely rhetorically,’ he said briskly, standing up and brushing the crumbs off his clothes. ‘Although it is good to hear it again. Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid.’

‘I hope you’re referring to yourself?’

‘Of course. It’s obvious. Mistress, ha! I am, perhaps, the most dimwitted person you have ever known.’

Flavia was often inclined to agree, but pretended on this occasion that she hadn’t heard. ‘What are you talking about?’

He was leaping up and down and positively bubbling with enthusiasm. ‘Picture of Violante di Modena being murdered by her lover because she was unfaithful. Who else was her lover, apart, perhaps, from Titian? And who, therefore, painted that portrait of the Marchesa’s? And why was Masterson so keen on it?’

‘Oh, my God,’ she said, realisation dawning. ‘Come back here. I want to talk about this.’

‘No time,’ he burbled happily. ‘Work to be done.’ He bent over and kissed her on the forehead and then, in case that was a bit familiar in public, patted her head to make up for it.

‘To work. You are a wonderful person, and perfectly wasted in the police. My thanks. See you later.’

Having provided inspiration for Argyll, Flavia finished her lunch and forced herself out into the ever-deteriorating weather and off in the direction of Lorenzo. The problem, as she saw it, was a fairly simple one. They knew what had happened. The difficult bit now was tying the whole process together to make sense of it. One murder after another, presumably following a logical pattern, once you understood it. It was, after all, a serious business, killing people. Not to be undertaken without a very good reason.

‘Oh, yes, I knew my aunt was going to sell some pictures,’ Lorenzo replied after she’d arrived at his apartment, had been let in, had dried herself off and sat down. ‘But I wasn’t too sure which ones. My only concern was that she didn’t sell a couple of Watteau drawings I have always been most fond of. She said these were not the ones, and so I took very little extra interest in it and gave my permission.’

‘And they’re not valuable, you’re sure of that?’

‘Oh, no. Very minor stuff. No danger of a Michelangelo slipping unnoticed out of the country, rest assured of that.’

He looked perfectly at ease and she decided not to make him dissatisfied about his decision. ‘How do you get on with your aunt?’

‘Not very well. We tolerate each other, as aunt and nephew have to do. I rather like the old bat, I must admit. She, alas, doesn’t like me much.’

‘Why not?’

‘I really don’t know. She doesn’t like having to consult me over financial matters, of course. It dents her self-image as head of the family and she was furious when she found out how my uncle had set up his will in my favour. I think I’m absolutely charming, and I always try hard to please, but she seems to think I’m too frivolous. A playboy. She’s fond of out-dated slang. Lord only knows what she thinks I get up to. I’m fairly certain my life is not half as scandalous as hers was.’

If there was any great animosity, he did it well and appeared to be affectionately tolerant of the old lady, rather than resenting her. ‘And how about Signora Pianta?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Echt. The dragon lady. I’ve known her ever since she moved in on my aunt some quarter century ago. She came to stay for a week, and is still there. But she’s a poor thing, literally and figuratively, and I’m always as civil as I can be to her.’

‘And where were you on the night that Roberts died and your aunt’s pictures were stolen?’ Worth a chance; he might always contradict himself.

He smiled happily. ‘Not going to get me there,’ he said. ‘I was at a meeting at the Accademia. At the time in question I was delivering a short, but if I may say so, tolerably amusing, speech to about a hundred and fifty people.’ He added, ‘I’ll give you the museum’s number. When they open up tomorrow morning they can give you the names of several dozen people able to confirm where I was until midnight.’

He said it with such confidence that Flavia knew his alibi would be unshakeable. Evidently, he had not rubbed out Roberts. Just time to heist the Marchesa’s goodies, though, if he was quick about it, or got someone else to do it for him. What else? One last question. ‘The party at your aunt’s last year. What was it for?’

He shrugged with an expression of some surprise at the question, whose point he evidently missed. ‘It was partly a welcome for Louise as the new member of the committee, and partly a joyous celebration of the opening of the state’s coffers. The happy taxpayer was paying. And, of course, partly to establish myself in the eyes of my colleagues as the head of the committee.’

‘Which, if I understand things correctly, did not go down at all well with Professor Roberts.’

Lorenzo smiled amiably once more. ‘Dreadful thing to talk ill of the dead,’ he said, ‘but you’re right, of course. I don’t mind saying that poor old Roberts was losing his touch. As for the party, it was a great success. So much so, I was going to give another last Saturday, complete with flowers from the Giardinetti greenhouses. Louise chose them. Particularly wanted lilies, I don’t know why. She said it had something to do with her work.’

‘Why do you think she was so convinced Kollmar was wrong about that Milan picture?’ she went on, vaguely conscious of a series of half-forged connections waiting for a missing link.

‘Still plugging away at that, are you? I don’t know. What did she think it was?’

‘A sketch for the third, abandoned panel of the St Anthony series in Padua,’ Flavia said.

‘Ah. Most interesting. I confess I haven’t looked all that carefully. I skipped the meeting; I had to be in Rome that day, and missing a report by Kollmar is never a great loss. A thorough and dedicated man, but not what you might call one of the most lively of scholars. As for Masterson, I assume she must have found evidence in the picture indicating the presence of St Anthony, something in the story-line, whatever it was, to pin it down to an episode in the saint’s life –’

‘It could be,’ she said, telling him about the relevant miracle.

‘Not good enough,’ he said. ‘Saving people from poisoning or murder crops up time and again in the lives of the saints. What else was in the picture?’

Flavia thought hard, and wished she had a photograph on her to refresh her memory. Argyll always had better visual recall than she did. But she did her best. ‘Man eating at a table, surrounded by people. Angels buzzing about. Cross on the wall. Flowers on the table.’

‘Lilies?’

Flavia glanced up and stared. A penny was on the brink of dropping. Clearly her unconscious was better at her job than she was. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Symbol of St Anthony,’ he replied simply. ‘Lilies and a crucifix. Bodily purity and love of God. Generally accompanied by the inscription, “homo igit consutu atque nudat queso ubi est”. Job. “A man dies and he disappears, man comes to his end and where is he?”’ He paused. ‘You seem surprised. But I’m sure I’m right. I can check, if you like.’

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘No, that’s quite all right. You are right. Thank you. That is most helpful.’