The Titian Committee

4

The next morning, Argyll was sitting in Flavia’s bedroom armchair reading the newspaper. Knowing full well that her brusqueness of the night before would have vanished after eight hours of unconsciousness, he came round for breakfast to remind her to ask about his picture. He’d spent some time thinking about it and was still a little worried.

He was in no great hurry to go about his own business. At the moment he didn’t really have any. Instead, he was going to play a waiting game, he explained with what he hoped was the sly air of the seasoned professional. If they could be silly with him, the very least he could do was reply in kind.

‘I want those pictures, but they’re becoming complicated. My dearly beloved employer would never forgive me if I embroiled him in another little scandal,’ he said thoughtfully as he poured the last of the coffee.

In that he was undoubtedly correct. Sir Edward Byrnes was an easy-going man in many ways, but placed great store by his impeccable reputation as an honest prince of the international art business. Argyll’s small but significant role in causing him to sell a fake Raphael to Italy’s national museum nearly wrecked his career. Not that it was Argyll’s fault – and he had sorted the mess out later, after a fashion – but it was a close run thing and a repetition would not go down at all well.

‘How did you hear about these pictures, anyway? Another example of your art historical detective work?’

This was said with a light touch of sarcasm. Argyll’s endeavours in this department had been painfully erratic in the past. He treated the comment with the disdain it deserved.

‘Not exactly. The old lady wrote to Byrnes about six months ago. I think she reckoned the pictures were more valuable than they are. I was sent up to disabuse her of her notions and arrange the deal. Not my fault, you see.’

He sighed at the troubles of life and drained his cup. ‘Want to spend some time looking at a few churches today? Or are you going off to be dutiful?’ he asked as she pushed back her chair. She nodded.

‘’Fraid so. Committee member number one. Might as well get a move on. It’s going to be a long day.’

She looked, so the Englishman thought fondly, particularly gorgeous this morning. Loose hair, shining in the morning sunlight streaming through the window, open face, striking blue eyes. Hmph. He repressed his admiration, which he felt would not be appreciated at this time of the day. Alas, it seemed not to be appreciated at any time of day.

‘And who’s the lucky man?’

‘Tony Roberts. I’m meeting him on the island. I thought I’d knock off the Anglo-Saxons first. Do you know anything about him?’

‘Enough to know that he is not the sort of person to be called Tony. Anthony, please. Much too dignified for diminutives. Like referring to Leonardo da Vinci as Lenny.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Depends on who you listen to. On the one hand there’s the fan club. Great man, major contribution to scholarship. Gentleman and connoisseur. You know the sort of thing. Perfect manners and absolute professional integrity. A latter-day saint. On the other hand there is the view that, however charming, he is really a pompous old goat. That, admittedly, is an opinion mainly held by those who have not benefited from his vast patronage network.’

‘But is he any good?’

Argyll shrugged again. ‘Again, opinions vary. His book on Venetian art competitions is generally accepted as a revolution in methodology. The less enthusiastic add that he’s done damn all since. And twenty years is a long time to live on your reputation. As for me, I don’t know. I’ve never met him. He is an avid collector of pictures and as far as I know he pays his bills. What more could anybody want?’

The fondazione Cini is another name for the old monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, a sixteenth-century masterpiece by Palladio taken over by the state and converted into an upmarket conference centre. It is the sort of place where you hold international summits, or conferences for people who need to be impressed. Nothing, it seemed, was too good for the historians of Venice’s most successful painter and every year a well-appointed conference room, a suite of convenient bedrooms, telephones, fax machines, photocopiers, as well as a bevy of cooks and housemaids, were set aside for the Titian committee’s exclusive use.

If anything should have focused their minds on the task at hand, quarters on the island should have done the trick. Facing San Marco, with the Salute on the left, the stone, terracotta and brick of the buildings positively glowed in the fading and ever rarer autumn sunlight, ample proof on its own that Venice was one of the great wonders of the world.

Flavia stood on the vaporetto and watched, entranced, as the island drew nearer. Her face was lightly tanned from the summer, her long, fair hair streamed backwards in the breeze. Had Argyll seen her standing like that, legs slightly apart to keep her balance, hands thrust into the pockets of her jeans, a slight frown on her forehead from the sun, he would have been even more lost in admiration than at breakfast. But he would never have found any way of telling her, and Flavia was incapable of divining what he was thinking.

‘Too late,’ said the guardian brusquely as she approached, gesturing at the timetable that announced the building was closed to tourists from noon. It was now only ten. She fished out her identification card and announced herself as a member of the police. He examined it carefully, back and front, glancing up at her suspiciously as he read.

‘From Rome, eh?’ he said, suggesting strongly that she should be ashamed of herself.

‘The Titian committee,’ she said severely. ‘Where do I find its meeting rooms?’

‘Oh,’ he said knowingly. ‘That lady that got herself killed, is it?’ He said it in a way which implied that it had been the American’s own fault. Everybody seemed to do that.

‘That’s right. Did you know her?’

‘A bit. Not much. Some people take the time to stop and talk, even know my name. Not her. She did chat to my wife, though. She says she was pleasant, not that they had much to talk about. My wife,’ he added, heading off at an apparently unrelated tangent, ‘cleans the rooms here, you know.’

‘Really?’ said Flavia, taking the hint about conversation. ‘How long has she been doing that for?’

‘Oh, years, now. The year of the flood she started.’ Flavia tried to remember. 1966? October? Something like that. Not that it mattered. ‘Eight hours a day. And she helps wash up in the evenings. And do you know how much she’s paid?’

Probably very little, but she had no time to listen to complaints, however well justified. ‘Doesn’t seem very busy now, though. There are only the historians here at the moment, aren’t there?’

He grudgingly admitted that it was pretty slack. ‘Doesn’t mean this place is easy to keep clean,’ he countered.

‘No?’

‘No. Shoddy, that’s what it is. Looks nice, I grant you. But shoddy. Can’t do anything properly round here these days.’

She was on the verge of asking if by chance he was related to an old gondolier she knew. ‘Workmanship. Hah. International conference centre, so-called. Can’t even stop the roof leaking. That’s because all the contracts – you know.’ He glanced at her slyly and put his finger to his nose to imply dirty dealings in high places. She knew what he meant. He was probably right.

‘Do you know, last week, there was water coming in? Would you credit it? Puddles of it in the corridors. Which my wife had to clean up even after her shift had ended. Faulty roofing. Lets in the rain. Lucky none of it got into the bedrooms, or this lot would have complained. They always do, you know. Never satisfied, some people.’

‘There must be some interesting people who come here,’ she ventured desperately, hoping to get him off the subject so she could find out where the meeting room was.

‘Interesting? Don’t know about that. Odd, certainly. Some funny people we’ve had here. Don’t know that I approve. They call themselves respectable, you know.’

‘Are they not?’

‘Some of them. Some I wouldn’t let into my house. Of course, I don’t want to judge them. Live and let live, I suppose, and people always do get a bit frisky in Venice, if you know what I mean.’

She had some idea.

‘Take that lady that got herself killed,’ he continued.

The twinkle in his eye told Flavia he knew quite well he was playing with her.

‘She didn’t get herself killed. Someone murdered her.’

‘That’s what I said,’ he replied, clearly thinking she was being pedantic.

Flavia sighed. ‘Take her how?’ she asked.

‘Is that for me to say? All I know was, that she was a bit of a night-owl, that one.’

‘You mean she worked late?’

The guardian snickered, and rubbed his red, drinker’s nose with the back of his hand. ‘Work, it might have been.’ He leered at her in a peculiarly repulsive fashion.

‘Perhaps she had friends in?’

This he found a great joke and looked at Flavia as though he’d found a soul-mate at long last. ‘Oh, yes,’ he gurgled. ‘Friends, eh?’ He cackled away merrily.

Flavia sighed once more. It was always hard to deal with gossips. On the one hand, they had an incurable urge to tell you what they knew, on the other there was the long-standing unwillingness to say anything to the police at all. The result was often such a series of elliptical hints, designed to satisfy both imperatives.

‘Tell me about the others,’ she began, and promptly abandoned the question when she saw the distrustful expression taking over again. ‘I assume your wife was in the kitchen with Dr Miller on Friday evening?’

This he could answer. No harm in exonerating people. ‘Yes. He came to the kitchen from the laundry-room to ask for some water at about half ten. We had a little chat. Very considerate, charming man.’

‘And he didn’t leave the island at any time?’

‘Oh, no. He was here, all right. No public transport and if he’d taken a taxi I would have seen it. And before you ask,’ he said conclusively, ‘there are no private boats here at the moment he could have taken.’

‘You have to open the door to let people in after hours?’

‘No. People are given their own keys. But, as I say, I was on duty from six to midnight and would have seen anybody coming or going. No one did.’

That seemed pretty conclusive. After a brief pause to note the conversation down, she made her way through to the second cloister in search of the committee’s rooms. Yet again, her sense of direction abandoned her and she ended up at what seemed to be a service entrance somewhere at the far end of the building. With a curse, she turned round and began again, this time finding herself in the kitchens.

Third time lucky, she hit the right floor and made her way along a corridor, with doors that were clearly the rooms of those members of the committee who wanted the free accommodation. Only Miller and Masterson did, it seemed. The rest preferred to make their own arrangements.

Whatever the quality of the workmanship in the roofs, the meeting rooms seemed more than adequate for their purpose. Lashings of oak panelling, a handsome ceiling painting of a suitably religious nature, even though the large number of naked bodies swirling around seemed scarcely designed to keep the old monks’ minds on their devotions, along with all the normal equipment of modern conference centres – comfortable armchairs, settecento tables, Venetian glassware, Flemish tapestries, that sort of thing.

And, in the middle, sitting upright at the end of the long wooden table evidently used for meetings, was Professor Roberts. She was sure it was him, although there were three people in the room; whereas the oldest man very much looked the part of the Great Man of his profession, complete with silver hair, tweed jacket, aquiline nose and aristocratic bearing, the others could never pass as great anythings.

Professor Roberts would, on balance, have approved of Argyll’s brief summary of him as being largely accurate. He was a man who had learned early in life that you cannot arrange matters so that everybody loves you simultaneously. That being the case, the best you can do is to ensure that those who dislike you can do you no harm.

This golden rule he had followed since he had formulated it about a quarter of a century previously, but it should not be taken as the mark of an unpleasant man. Far from it. Roberts had a great reputation for his civility, his hospitality and his grace. An entire generation of young scholars referred to him in awed tones because of his immense knowledge and his kindness to students. As Argyll had said, he valued his reputation for integrity, and worked hard to preserve it.

Flavia’s identification was, of course, correct. Roberts introduced himself in the way of someone conferring a favour, and brusquely introduced the other men – who seemed very much less at ease – as his colleagues on the committee, Dr Miller and Dr Kollmar. From there on he made it clear that he was the one who was going to do all the talking, not that the others showed the slightest sign of wanting to intervene.

Flavia went through all the standard preliminaries, paying attention more to the way he answered rather than to what he actually said. The facts she knew already: he’d been on the committee since it was founded, held a chair in England, had published this, that and the next thing. All standard and uninteresting. She also sneaked a look in her notes to remind herself about the other two. Kollmar a German and on the committee since it was founded. Miller another American, more junior, job at a college in Massachusetts, where he was due to come up for tenure next year.

‘Coffee?’ Roberts asked, gesturing at an eighteenth-century silver pot in the corner.

While he was pouring, she examined the pile of notes on the desk. There was nothing else to do; the others didn’t seem to want to take up the conversational slack. There was one book, and she picked it up.

‘This is Masterson’s, isn’t it?’ she said, reading the cover.

Roberts gave her a penetrating look from behind the coffee-pot, and then relaxed. ‘That’s right. I borrowed it from her on Wednesday. I needed to refer to some parts for an article I am writing. There are some excellent passages in it.’

A bit of a back-handed compliment, she thought. It looked deadly dull stuff to her. Still, part of her job as an artistic expert. She’d get Argyll to have a flip through; it would do him good to read something serious for once. She asked if she could take it, as it should be with Masterson’s other possessions for return to her next of kin.

Roberts was disapproving. ‘I would much rather you didn’t,’ he began. ‘I still need it.’

Flavia suggested that she thought Masterson’s murder might be slightly more urgent a matter and he took the hint, reluctantly but with grace.

‘But of course. Extraordinarily selfish of me. I confess I still can’t believe she is dead. But do take it. I can survive without, I’m sure.’

There was a scuffle from Kollmar, the first real sign of life the man had shown. He was perhaps ten years younger than Roberts, but seemed half a decade older. He looked as though life had not been hugely kind in its dealings with him. Short and wiry, with a pinched face lined by years of preoccupation and worry. He was scruffily but passably dressed and Flavia instantly put him down as one of life’s victims. Not, of course, she reminded herself with an upsurge of professionalism, that this implied innocence. Or even that he was pleasant.

‘I was wondering –’ he began.

‘Oh, indeed. Indeed,’ Roberts interrupted as he came over with Flavia’s coffee-cup. ‘Thoughtless of me. Please do go. I’m sure that will be all right. Perhaps you can get the results round to me this evening? I really need that information quickly.’

He turned his attention to Flavia. ‘Dr Kollmar is in a great hurry to get to the library to do some work. That won’t cause you any problems, I’m sure.’

It clearly wouldn’t make any difference if it did, she thought as the German picked up his briefcase and scurried off. In fact, she was a touch irritated, both because she would now have to go and see the man separately, and because Roberts had so effortlessly taken charge and organised matters for his own benefit. She felt sure that all Kollmar was going to do before he was interrupted and sent off was to ask for a cup of coffee himself. Still, interesting. There was no doubt who was the head of this little band of brothers.

That little task accomplished, Roberts handed over her coffee and sat down once more, arranging himself into the same pose of authoritative elegance she had noticed when she first walked in.

‘It occurred to me to wonder,’ he murmured quietly, ‘which one of us you suspect. Am I, for example, on your list?’

He said it in a way clearly designed to indicate that he considered the idea ludicrous, but Flavia thought she could just detect a flicker of concern, deep below the surface. Far more obvious was the anxiety that Miller demonstrated at a remark that was probably designed only to catch Flavia off-balance. Miller was very much upset. In fact, he looked as though he was about to be sick.

‘What makes you think that we suspect any member of the committee? Surely Commissario Bovolo has told you –’

‘About his Sicilian. Yes, and of course that’s comforting, even if it is nonsense.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Louise was an American. She’d lived for years in New York and knew very well how to take care of herself. She was a very determined and confident woman. Not the sort of person who’d be caught like that.’

‘Does this mean you would like to implicate one of your colleagues?’ she asked.

‘Good heavens, no,’ he said, evidently shocked at the very thought of doing something quite so vulgar. ‘I have not the slightest idea who killed her. But it occurred to me that you might wonder if the killer may have had a better reason than theft.’

‘Which you did not.’

Roberts inclined his head. ‘Which I did not. Nor, I must add, did anyone else I know. In my case it was quite the opposite, in fact. I rather saw her as my own protégée.’ He smiled as he spoke. ‘Although, of course, Louise was much too proud and independent ever to accept such a subservient role with anyone. Which was why we had our differences of opinion that, alas, were not resolved before her death.’

‘What was she like?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘As a historian, a person, a colleague. Liked? Admired? What?’

‘That, of course, depends on who you ask,’ Roberts said, unknowingly echoing Argyll’s own words about him. ‘As far as her work went, she showed very great promise indeed.’

Again, a touch of condescension towards a woman in her late thirties. ‘Personally,’ he went on, ‘I never had any cause to regret recommending her for membership. She was briefly a pupil of my great friend Georges Bralle, and that was more than good enough for me.’

Miller gave a faint snort, and Flavia looked at him enquiringly. Roberts, she noted, also gazed at him, although with a more disapproving air.

‘Well,’ Miller began reluctantly, evidently uncertain whether he was about to step out of line and still not entirely recovered from the nasty shock that Roberts had given him with his opening remarks, ‘that’s not exactly true. She was at Columbia with me and took off for a year to live in Paris. She had enough family money to do that sort of thing. She joined Bralle’s classes, and came back a year later with a reference from him. On the strength of that she got her job and never looked back.’

Flavia noted the comment, which didn’t exactly brim over with affection and regret, but decided to ignore it for the time being. She turned her attention back to Roberts. ‘She joined about eighteen months ago, is that right?’

He nodded again. ‘Yes. Because Dr Bralle retired. Do you know the story of the committee, by the way?’

She shook her head.

‘It was formed as a sort of private venture twelve years ago. By Bralle, with myself and Kollmar. We were both the great man’s pupils. Van Heteren joined a few years after, Miller here about five years ago. We burrowed away as best we could and then we were, so to speak, nationalised.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Taken over by the state. We were working on our own, on a shoestring and basically couldn’t afford it any more. Then the Italian Arts Ministry decided it wanted to fund a prestige project and offered us vast subsidies and official status. I negotiated the arrangement, which came into operation a few years ago.’

‘Very nice for you.’

He didn’t seem so grateful.

‘The money was very useful. But a lot of bureaucracy comes with it, of course. Bralle didn’t like the idea much and decided to retire. Naturally, an Italian had to be appointed to the committee – Dr Lorenzo, who joined us two years back. As we had more money and the pointed desire of the Arts Ministry for something to show for it, we had to step up the workpace and settled on Dr Masterson to help.’

There was something in his tone which suggested that the changeover wasn’t quite the smooth and amicable operation that was laid out. ‘And Masterson didn’t turn out as well as you thought?’

Roberts paused to weigh his words. Flavia sensed that he was trying to finetune his message – maliciousness with the appearance of objectivity. She found herself not liking him as much. ‘I had no complaints,’ he said with careful emphasis.

‘But…?’

‘Let us say that she was fairly young and inexperienced. She would, of course, have settled in and become indispensable once she’d got the hang of how we proceeded. Some of my colleagues, I think, had less faith than I did.’ It was extraordinary the way he talked as if Miller wasn’t even in the room.

‘You don’t think you made a mistake in recommending her, in other words.’

Roberts was not the sort of man who ever admitted to making a mistake. Either that, or he believed in loyalty. ‘Goodness, no. She brought conscientiousness and enthusiasm, but she did need a bit more practice in the technique of committee work. And, of course, she didn’t always express herself as tactfully as she might have.’

All these little hints. Why on earth could people not be direct? Discretion was one thing, but it could be carried too far.

‘What exactly do you mean, Professor?’

‘Well. To take one example. I might as well mention it as you are bound to hear the tale eventually. Do you, by any chance, know how we go about our task here?’

Flavia shook her head. She’d had to master a considerable amount of detail in the past twenty-four hours; the minutiae of art historical collaboration was not amongst the information given high priority. It was, unfortunately, an excuse for a major diversion.

As Roberts explained it, their method was very simple. Each member of the committee was allotted a picture to study, either alone or in collaboration, and wrote a report. This was discussed at their annual meetings and the committee then voted to assign the work a rank. ‘A’ meant a genuine Titian, ‘B’ was uncertain and ‘C’ meant definitely not genuine. Those deemed ‘A’ were then subjected to further scientific tests to check for mistakes. The individual reports and assessments were then slowly accumulated and produced in a series of expensive, glossily illustrated volumes.

Flavia became increasingly surprised as he explained. ‘Do you really mean to say that most of you vote on whether a picture is genuine or not without even seeing it?’

‘Yes. In most cases it is quite unnecessary. Titians are spread all over the globe and we can’t all go running around looking at each and every one. Besides, since we accepted state money we have been put under steady pressure to produce what the ministry likes to call value for money. It’s this new and competitive age we live in, as Dr Lorenzo keeps on telling us. An appalling state of affairs.’

‘So how long do you spend on each picture?’

‘Examining it, you mean? Oh, that depends. Often a couple of hours is enough.’

‘That’s ridiculous. It seems very rushed to me. This is meant to be a definitive study, isn’t it?’

Roberts shrugged. ‘I assure you it is more thorough than most such projects. We have several hundred pictures to study and we are all getting older. The point I was getting at is that at Louise’s first meeting Dr Kollmar recommended that a picture in a Milanese collection be rated “C”. It was a picture I had examined, with Dr Kollmar doing the archival research. I had no definite opinion one way or the other, but Dr Kollmar concluded the documentary evidence was inadequate. Everybody agreed to accept his judgement, except Louise. She had also agreed initially, then turned round the next day and caused a fuss.’

‘Why?’

‘I think it was mainly her enthusiasm. But it was taken too far and people were beginning to get very ill-humoured. That always strikes me as regrettable. What is the point of this project if it turns into personal battles for power? I did my very best to persuade her to leave off, for everybody’s sake.’

‘And did you succeed?’

‘Partly. I did at least persuade her to keep quiet about it. It was all very tiresome. Louise was reluctant to agree and was somewhat sharp with me, as I mentioned. I have a high regard for Kollmar’s work and am prepared to accept what he recommends. The picture is just an oil sketch for a religious painting. Subject uncertain. Stylistic evidence dates it to the early sixteenth century. Louise implied that the work was not done correctly.’

‘That doesn’t seem unreasonable. After all, you don’t want any mistakes,’ Flavia ventured, drawing a frown from Roberts.

‘Of course not. I didn’t mind myself, but Dr Kollmar was upset. He thought it a little improper of her to start querying people’s work at her first meeting. However, you will have to ask him. It would be most inappropriate for me to describe his reactions for him.’

‘And what were Masterson’s conclusions?’

‘I don’t know. She was due to deliver her paper yesterday. I suppose it was in her case that was stolen.’

‘Is it possible to reach an incontestable conclusion over something like this?’

It was an invitation to discourse that he was not likely to turn down. Roberts leant back in the chair, crossed his legs and put the tips of his fingers together, for all the world as though he was instructing one of his more backward students. ‘Well, now,’ he began. ‘You must remember that Titian was undoubtedly one of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance. So in theory it should be possible to isolate the spark of brilliance that must be in all his works. However, even geniuses of his stature do not spring forth, so to speak, ready formed…’

Flavia was regretting the request already. The man spoke as though every word began with a capital letter, and a certain glitter in his eye suggested someone settling down for a long haul. She could not even begin to see how an exposition on Titian’s niftiness with the paintbrush was relevant. But she had asked for it, so she relaxed with as much good grace as possible and tried to appear both patient and interested.

Roberts was rabbiting on about the young Titian – how he started in the studio of Bellini, then came under the influence of Giorgione. ‘They painted the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice together, as I’m sure you know.’

Flavia nodded with slight irritation. She knew it very well, and rather resented being treated like a total ignoramus.

‘They were great friends for a while, but the friendship ended when Titian stole his teacher’s mistress and stumped off to work in Padua in 1510. Giorgione died the same year, of a broken heart and the mistress died of plague. End of story. The point is that Titian went through a lot of influences – he painted in the style of Bellini, then of Giorgione – and only gradually developed his own distinctive mannerisms.’

‘I know that. But so what?’ she said shortly, hoping that a degree of brusqueness might get the man back to the more immediate, if less tasteful, present.

‘The significance of my little lecture is that the style of his paintings in this early period alters as Titian experimented, and learnt and matured. This puts a question mark over possible pictures unless there is documentary evidence proving authorship. And Kollmar decided – he is the expert in this department – that this doesn’t exist. I suppose Louise reckoned she could prove Titian’s authorship in other ways.’

‘And do you have any further information about what might have happened on Friday evening?’ she said, grateful that he had finally stopped and hoping to steer him into more orthodox and productive areas of police enquiry.

‘None whatsoever. The first I heard that anything was wrong was when I got to the island on Saturday morning and found Lorenzo in a panic and police all over the place. On the day in question I can think of nothing of interest. We met in the morning, I had lunch with Dr Miller to discuss tactics for his forthcoming tenure dispute at his college in America – I’m one of his referees – and we had another session in the afternoon until about three. Then I went to get the tickets, rest and change for the opera. All perfectly normal.’

‘Did you talk to her much?’

He shook his head. ‘Only over routine matters of business, and then not a great deal. She missed the first day’s meeting, which caused some bad feeling; went sight-seeing in Padua, so Miller here told me. She seemed in one of her more determined moods, but said nothing noteworthy at all. Unusually quiet for her, in fact.’

There seemed little else that was worth pursuing at the moment. She was beginning to find Miller quite interesting, but it was clear that she was not going to get a clear run at him as long as Roberts was within half a mile or so. Not that this was necessarily suspicious; all it meant was that Roberts liked to dominate proceedings so much it was difficult for anyone else to get a word in. She wondered what committee meetings were like with him around.

So she stood up to go, and was gratified to see that the movement broke up the little tête-à-tête as well. Miller announced that he was going to go over to the swimming pool for a dip.

‘Splendid,’ commented Roberts a little waspishly. ‘I always think that the United States is the last outpost of the Renaissance man. Mens sana, eh, Miller?’

Miller smiled dutifully, if half-heartedly, at a little joke he had probably heard several times already, and muttered that he found swimming very helpful in times of stress. This, he added, was a time of stress.

‘Indeed. But I hope it won’t distract you from other matters. Go and see Dr Kollmar and remind him that I need that archive material by this evening. It’s most important if I am to get this lecture of mine finished in time.’

An order is an order. Evidently both Miller and Kollmar were used to carrying them out. She lurked in the corridor outside Miller’s room until he emerged, clasping flippers, towels and the other impedimenta of the swimmer. He was clearly an enthusiast; little stickers on the bag he carried commemorated a whole series of swimming meets that, presumably, he had attended over the years. Physical fitness is a wonderful thing, no doubt, but Flavia, who spent the first hour of her day smoking furiously and drinking the strongest coffee she could make, and whose idea of swimming equipment was a deck-chair and suntan lotion, did not entirely approve.

‘I suppose you want to give me a good grilling without Professor Roberts answering all the questions for me?’ he said flatly as they walked together down the staircase and headed for the jetty.

‘Not quite the way I’d put it, but close enough,’ she replied. They had switched to English. With Roberts they had spoken only Italian and Miller’s only interjection had been a little fractured.

‘How did Masterson get on the committee?’ she asked, thinking that Miller’s account might vary a little from what his colleague had said.

Miller shrugged as he clacked down the stone steps. Flavia looked down. Although dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Miller had, through some strange and very un-Italian quirk of fashion consciousness, put on black dress shoes. Strange people, these Americans.

‘Don’t think I’m down on her, or anything,’ he said. ‘She was very accomplished and highly motivated. But she was not an obvious choice.’

‘It wouldn’t be because her work was good?’ Flavia again noticed her wish to defend the poor dead woman from the doubts and criticisms of her male colleagues. She was beginning to identify with this corpse far too much.

For the first time since she’d met him, Miller was genuinely amused. ‘Heaven forbid,’ he said. ‘That is rarely enough on its own. She was not, after all, a specialist on Titian; her research was on Renaissance iconography generally.’

‘So Masterson wrote, and did her job at the museum and worked with the committee as well?’

‘No one ever accused her of being a slouch. She was always conscientious. Perhaps she published too much? I don’t know. A bit thin, some of her stuff. And not nearly as original as she liked to make out, I know that. No, I’m fairly certain she was appointed simply because she was a woman.’

‘Meaning?’ she said, bristling at the remark. If there was one thing she hated…

‘Obvious, isn’t it? All these projects have to have a woman on them these days, to show they’re open-minded and progressive. Lorenzo is very keen on that, which is why he allowed the appointment. He couldn’t think of anyone else. She was very lucky, considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘Considering that Lorenzo and Roberts don’t exactly see eye to eye over anything. Poor Roberts. He thought he was doing everybody a favour by organising the state grant. We certainly needed the money. Then Bralle retires and Roberts gets lumbered with Lorenzo, who immediately tries to take over. If Louise hadn’t been a woman there would have been no chance of her being appointed.’

‘What was she like?’ asked Flavia, launching once more into her favourite area of enquiry and feeling that any more of these needling remarks would make her boil over. They had arrived at the jetty and she saw the vaporetto approaching. A brief pause followed as she ran to the kiosk to get a ticket.

‘I liked her well enough,’ he said with a somewhat excessive attempt to be fair when she finally returned with the requisite piece of paper. ‘A good enough colleague. Not easy to get to know; sharp tongue. Didn’t suffer fools gladly.’

‘You weren’t lovers?’ she asked. Nothing like the direct approach. The question was followed by a long pause.

‘Good God, no,’ he said eventually with a faintly ironic smile. ‘Louise was a human iceberg. She did have a thing with Van Heteren, I gather. He was very smitten indeed. The mind boggles, frankly. But he got in the way of her work so was given his marching orders. He was not happy about it. His own fault. I did warn him, not that he listened to me.’

‘What’s the point of this committee? Personally, I mean. What do you all get out of it?’

He thought for a second. ‘Different people, different reasons. I like to think that everybody is mainly motivated by the love of scholarship, but sometimes, when I see the wrangling and bitching that goes on, my faith wanes a little. Roberts and Lorenzo both like controlling things, in their very diverse ways. Kollmar is genuinely, almost naïvely, scholarly. He wouldn’t know a political gambit if one came and stood on his foot. Van Heteren just likes having a good time at other people’s expense. Louise, I think, was motivated mainly by ambition.’

Not a great testimonial to any of them, really, she thought as the boat chugged its way across the five-hundred-yard opening of the Grand Canal on the way to the Piazza San Marco. You could see quite clearly, she thought absently, the gardens where Masterson had been stabbed. ‘And you?’ she said, bringing herself back to the matter at hand.

He smiled at her. ‘I suppose you think I’m being hard. So I am. But I don’t let myself off lightly. In my case I’m motivated above all by the need for security. For me, it’s something that will help when I come up for tenure, which is why I feel so jumpy at the moment.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nervous. After a few years universities in the US have to decide whether to chuck you out or keep you for good. No laughing matter, with the job market being what it is. If I don’t keep this post, I’ll never get another. Joining this committee was almost providential. It gained me the support of Roberts as a referee and gave me a lot of prestige. Then Louise is murdered and being associated with the committee becomes less reputable. Especially if the finger of suspicion starts pointing in our direction. Who’d want to give tenure for life to a possible murderer?’

She saw why he was tense.

‘Is Roberts right? Do you really suspect one of us?’

Flavia felt sudden sympathy for him. ‘No,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘No reason to. Your alibis are all impeccable. All I’m doing is sorting out loose ends.’

‘And the chances of finding the person responsible?’

‘Not good, if it was just a random attack. But we should dredge up enough to convince everybody that none of you was responsible. I hope so at least. I wouldn’t want this to damage anybody else.’

The boat lurched to a halt at San Marco and they queued and shuffled their way off, just managing it before the swarm of people trying to get on board began pushing forward and blocking the gangway. Flavia straightened her clothes after the effort.

‘Nice to have met you,’ he said as she prepared to leave. ‘And thanks for the reassurance. I appreciate it.’

‘Enjoy your swim.’

Miller was uncertain whether she was also making fun of him. ‘I find it very relaxing,’ he said defensively. ‘Louise, in the same circumstances, would have spent the time in a library reading the latest publications. Maybe that’s why she was always more successful than me.’

Flavia shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s why she’s dead,’ she added. It was merely a good exit line, without any conscious meaning, but it threw Miller into confusion. As she marched off, she glanced at her watch. Time for lunch, to stoke up on the calories before starting on the next candidate.