Читать книгу The Titian Committee - Iain Pears, Iain Pears - Страница 8

Jonathan Argyll sat in a restaurant in the Piazza Manin, trying with mixed success to disguise both his upset at the message and his distaste for the messenger. It was not easy. He felt out of his depth, as usual, and was beginning to have a sneaking feeling that nature had not really designed him to be an art dealer, try as he might to earn an honest crust at the trade. He knew very well what he was meant to do. Ear to the ground to hear gossip in the trade, research in libraries to spot opportunities, careful approach to owners with an offer that, in theory, they leapt to accept. Easy. And he could do all of it pretty well, except for the last bit. Somehow the owners of pictures never seemed quite as ready to part with their possessions as the theory suggested they should be. Perhaps he just needed more practice, as his employer suggested. On good days, this is what he liked to think. On bad days, and this was one of them, he was more inclined to think it was not for him.

‘But Signora Pianta, why?’ he asked in an Italian flawed only by the distinct tone of weary desperation. ‘If the terms weren’t satisfactory, why on earth didn’t she say so last month?’

The vulture-faced, mean-minded, vicious-looking old misery smiled in a tight and very unsympathetic fashion. She had a nose of quite alarming dimensions which curved round and down almost like a sabre, and he found himself increasingly fixated on the monstrous protuberance as the meal progressed and the quality of the conversation deteriorated. He had not especially noticed her singularly unappealing appearance before she demanded more money from him, but the shock had stimulated his senses. On the other hand, he had never liked dealing with her, and found the act of enforced gallantry increasingly difficult to sustain.

Very irritating. Especially as Argyll and the old Marchesa had hit it off well. She was a feisty, cunning woman with eyes still bright in her old and lined face, a bizarre sense of humour and a very satisfactory desire to unload some pictures. All was going nicely, more or less. Then she’d fallen ill, and it evidently made her cranky. Since her side-kick – companion, she liked to call herself – had taken over, the negotiations had lurched and sputtered. Now it appeared they were going to grind to a final halt.

‘And I’ve already told you it is quite unnecessary. We are very experienced at this sort of thing.’

Tiresome woman. She had spent the evening elliptically dropping bizarre hints, and eventually he had asked outright what on earth she wanted, apart from switching the deal to a percentage of the sale price rather than a lump sum. That he could deal with, although it would have been nice had she thought of it earlier.

It was the other little detail that upset him. Smuggle the pictures out, she said. Don’t bother with export permits, official regulations and all that nonsense. Stick them in the back of the car, drive to Switzerland and sell them. Get on with it.

It was, of course, not that unusual. Thousands of pictures leave like that from Italy every year, and some of his less respectable colleagues in Rome made a tidy living as couriers. But, as he said firmly, Byrnes Galleries did not work like that. They went by the book, and were good at hurrying officialdom along. Besides, the pictures were relatively unimportant – family pictures, second-rate landscapes, anonymous portraits and the like – and there was no likelihood of any hitches. The price he had offered was not great, admittedly, but as much as they were worth. By the time they were paid for, transported to England, cleaned, prepared and sold, he and his employer would show a respectable profit. Worked out as a rate per hour for the amount of time he’d put in, he could probably earn more selling hamburgers in a fast food chain.

She was upset by his adamant refusal. In that case, she said, he must agree to pay all export taxes and registration fees. Whether she was serious or whether this was all a ploy to get him to agree to her request he did not know, but here he put his foot down.

‘I’ve been through all the figures. We couldn’t possibly sell the pictures, pay all the expenses and make a profit on this percentage. It’s tantamount to calling the entire deal off.’

Signora Pianta smiled and drank the coffee that Argyll, it seemed, was paying for. A meal designed to conclude an amicable deal was becoming an expensive waste of time. Initially, he had felt a certain sympathy for the woman, who had an unenviable position as companion to the sharp-tongued Marchesa. It was now evaporating fast.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said, not meaning it at all. ‘But those were my instructions. And as we have now had more interest in the pictures…’

Argyll was bewildered by this last comment. Who on earth could be interested? Was he about to become involved in a bidding war for these things? If so, it certainly wasn’t worth it. If he wasn’t required occasionally to provide Edward Byrnes in London with some pictures as an exchange for his salary, he would pull out now and go back to Rome.

‘Oh, very well, then,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I’ll think about it and call you tomorrow.’

Cool and professional, he thought. Don’t allow yourself to be stampeded. Keep them guessing. Probably useless, mind you.

From there until the end of the meal he did his best to remain calmly polite. He did all the right things; paid the bill with much silent gnashing of teeth, helped her on with her coat, escorted her out of the restaurant and was kissing her hand – this always seemed to go down well, even when it wasn’t deserved – when he heard a slight cough from someone standing just behind him in the Campo.

He turned round, his bad mood dissipating as he recognised the woman standing there, resting with her weight on her left leg, arms crossed and a look of amused disdain on her face.

‘What are you doing in Venice?’

‘Not having as much fun as you, it seems,’ Flavia replied.

Argyll, thrown into confusion as he was so easily by almost anything unexpected, performed a flustered and not very competent set of introductions. ‘Flavia di Stefano of the Polizia Art Squad in Rome,’ he concluded.

Pianta was not impressed. Indeed, she nodded coldly in the way of someone who did not consider the police respectable members of society, looked disapprovingly at her somewhat scruffy clothes – with particular emphasis on the unpolished brown boots – and then ignored her entirely. She thanked Argyll for the meal in a chilly sort of fashion, which bore no relation to how much it had cost, and walked off.

‘Now there’s a real charmer,’ Flavia remarked calmly as she went.

Argyll rubbed his nose in irritation and frustration. ‘Didn’t seem to like you, did she? Don’t take it personally. It may be because she’s just been asking me to break the law. Besides, she doesn’t like me either, and I’ve just paid for her dinner.’

There was a long silence as he regarded her with a look of affection, which she always interpreted as one of discomfort. It was. He never really quite knew what to do with someone who was both emotionally turbo-charged and also so calm and detached. Somehow the bits never seemed to fit together, or, to put it another way, they obviously did but he couldn’t quite figure out where the joins were.

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ he asked eventually. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you. A friendly face, you know.’

‘Thank you,’ she said formally, deciding that he had not been changed by his period of living in Rome. If he didn’t understand her, at least it was mutual. His distant, if obvious, affection tended to confuse her. To her mind, he should either forget her or fling his arms round her. Either would do; but to manage neither seemed merely indecisive. ‘I’m here for a couple of days on a case. Of sorts. Not so interesting.’

‘Oh.’

‘What about you?’

‘Wasting my time, it seems.’

‘Oh.’

Another silence intervened. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she said finally. ‘You look as though you need to ventilate a bit.’

He glanced sideways at her gratefully. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’d like that. You’re starving, I imagine?’

She nodded fervently. ‘Yes. How do you know?’

‘Lucky guess. Come on. I’ll sit with you and have a coffee. I love to watch a professional at work.’

They walked into the restaurant again and sat down at the same table he’d occupied before. ‘Same place, better company,’ he said with an attempt at a charming smile that was slightly more successful than the last.

While Flavia ploughed her methodical and diligent way through much of the menu, Argyll gave a potted history of his trials and tribulations. There was not much she could say. The deal, it seemed to her, was off and the only sensible thing to do was to go back to Rome. But she tried to be optimistic. He should, she counselled, hang around for a few days yet. You never knew, after all. He could always go in for a bit of smuggling.

Argyll was properly shocked. ‘And you in the police as well. I’m ashamed of you.’

‘Just an idea.’

‘No thanks. I will persevere for a few days by legal means, then give up. What I’ll do,’ he said with renewed enthusiasm, ‘is try to get hold of the Marchesa direct tomorrow. Go to the top. That might work.’

He yawned, leant back in his chair and stretched. ‘Enough of that. I’m sick of hearing about the damn things. Distract me. How’s life in Rome these days?’

It was a pointed reminder that, though they lived in the same city, they hadn’t seen much of each other recently. Argyll considered this distressing and Flavia also missed his company. But, as she explained, he’d been away, and she’d been busy. Times were tough, and the pressure was on while Bottando battled to save his department.

‘In fact,’ she concluded, ‘the only reason I’m here is that everyone in Rome is all excited and Bottando is plotting.’

‘As usual, eh?’

They had different opinions on this; for the Englishman, Bottando’s constant manoeuvrings revealed him as a consummate manipulator. Although he had enormous regard for the amiable Italian, he vaguely thought his time might more properly be spent catching criminals. Flavia, on the other hand, was of Bottando’s view that efficiency was no use at all if the entire department was politicked into oblivion. She just wished he didn’t involve her quite so often.

‘It’s serious this time,’ she said with a frown. ‘We’ve got a fight on our hands. I just hope he can get us out of trouble.’

‘I’m sure he will. He’s extraordinarily well practised, after all. I suppose you’re here on the Masterson affair that I’ve been reading about in the papers?’

Flavia nodded absently.

‘Who done her in, then?’

‘How should I know? The local police think she was mugged. Maybe she was. Not my business, anyway. I’m here simply to lend respectability, follow up anything arty and secure some tactical credit for the department at a difficult moment. You don’t, by any chance, know anything about the’ – she paused to get out the letter and check the name – ‘the Agenzia Fotografica Rossi, do you?’ she asked, switching the subject to something less distressing.

‘Eminently respectable, small business in Bologna that keeps files of photographs. Often used by art historians gathering illustrations for books. Why?’

‘No reason. Just that a letter from them for Masterson arrived this morning. I thought I’d be diligent and check it out. Something to put in the report,’ she said as Argyll plucked it from her hand and read it.

It is not often that you can definitely say that you have seen someone rock backwards in surprise, especially when they are sitting in a chair. Nor do most people have the opportunity of actually seeing someone change colour. Argyll, therefore, gave Flavia two new experiences in a matter of seconds. She thought for a moment he was about to fall off his seat. His pink complexion turned pale, and then a mottled shade of green, as he read the letter. Or, to be more accurate, as he goggled at it.

‘What,’ he began in a tone which suggested he was about to have hysterics. ‘What on earth are you doing with this?’ He had evidently seen something she had not, so she craned round to examine it again.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Perfectly nice letter. A model, no doubt. It’s good to know the epistolary mode is still with us in these days of mobile phones and electronics.’

‘Jonathan,’ she said with a warning tone in her voice. He had a distressing tendency to head off into conversational cul-de-sacs when distracted or upset.

‘She is asking for a photograph of a painting.’

‘Which they say they don’t have. I know that.’

‘A portrait,’ he went on methodically, ‘belonging to the Marchesa di Mulino. Of no interest to anyone at all for nearly half a century. Except to me, and I have spent the last few months wasting my time trying to buy it. And just as I think all is going well, that Pianta horror says someone else is interested in buying. And now it appears that this other person is a woman who has been neatly knifed.’

Flavia thought about that. She could see his concern, but didn’t think it had much foundation. ‘It cuts down the competition,’ she said brightly.

He gave her a severe look. ‘A bit too literally, though.’

‘Who is this picture by?’ she asked.

‘No one.’

‘Someone must have done it.’

‘No doubt. But neither I nor anybody else knows who. Just Venetian school, circa 1500, or thereabouts. Very mediocre.’

‘Who is it a portrait of, then?’

‘I don’t know that, either,’ he said. ‘But it’s probably a self-portrait.’

‘Not by Titian, I suppose?’

‘Not a chance in ten billion. Titian could paint.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Straightforward. Man with a big nose in robes, mirror, easel and palette in the background. Nothing exciting, really.’

Flavia frowned mightily. ‘It does seem a bit of a coincidence, I must say,’ she said with the clear reluctance of someone who sees her life being complicated unnecessarily.

‘That struck me as well,’ he said moodily, reading the letter again just to make sure he’d understood it properly. He had. ‘Very odd, in fact. It makes me fret.’ He leant back in his chair, crossed his arms defensively and frowned at her.

‘Maybe you should ask some of her colleagues,’ he went on after a while. ‘Find out what she was up to. Maybe they could help. Has anyone talked to them?’

‘Of course. The carabinieri here aren’t total idiots. Not quite, anyway. But they mainly checked out alibis. Six members of the committee, one dead, five reasonable alibis.’

‘Hmph. Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but I think a chat with all of these people is called for. For my sake, at least.’

‘I’m going to. Not for your sake, though. And I don’t have much time and I do have to be fairly discreet. After all, I was sent here specifically to be decorative, not to do anything.’

‘You are always decorative,’ said Argyll gauchely. ‘But I can’t imagine you ever not doing anything. I couldn’t come with you, could I, by any chance, perhaps?’ He did his best to look winsome and the sort of person who could sit in an interview room without being noticed.

‘You could not. Most improper. Relations with Bovolo are strained already and he’d blow his top. Besides, it’s none of your business.’

It was getting late, Flavia was tired and becoming irritable. She had a feeling she was going to need more time than she would be allowed on this case and, somewhat irrationally, she was beginning to resent Argyll for complicating matters with his infernal picture. Not that it was his fault, and it was unfair to snap at him. But she needed a good sleep urgently. So she called for the bill, paid and ushered him out into the chilly night air as fast as possible.

She stood outside the restaurant, hands in pockets, admiring the view and wondering which of the many little alleys would take her back to her hotel. She had a good sense of direction and was always distressed when it let her down. It always collapsed in a heap in Venice. Argyll stood opposite her, shifting his balance, as he usually did when considering matters.

‘Right then,’ he ventured at last. ‘I’d better be off to my hotel. Unless you want me to guide you to yours…’

She sighed and smiled back at him. ‘I’d never get there,’ she said, missing the point. ‘It’s quite all right, I’ll manage. Come round tomorrow sometime and I’ll fill you in.’ And she marched off, leaving a slightly aggrieved Argyll to wander around in circles until chance brought him to his own hotel.