The Titian Committee
Iain Pears

To Dick

Author’s note

Some of the buildings and paintings in this book exist, others do not, and all the characters are imaginary. There is an Italian art squad in a building in central Rome. However, I have arbitrarily shifted its affiliation from the carabinieri to the polizia, to underline that my account bears no relation to the original.

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Author’s note

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

Keep Reading

The Titian Committee

Also by Iain Pears

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

The initial discovery was made by the gardener of the Giardinetti Reali, an old and stooped figure whose labours generally pass unnoticed by the millions of tourists who come to Venice every year, even by those who eat their sandwiches amidst his creation as they get their breath back from overdosing on architectural splendour.

For all that he was underappreciated, the old man was obsessed with his job. In this he was rare. Venice is not noted for its enthusiasm for nature; indeed, its entire history has been dominated by the need to keep the elements from interfering in its business. A flowerpot hanging out of a window is generally the closest the inhabitants come to the joys of the wild. Most cannot even see an open space without imagining it neatly covered with stone flaggings. If you want to grow things, go to the mainland; real Venetians don’t dig holes.

So the gardener felt himself to belong to a small and somewhat persecuted minority. A couple of acres of garden wedged between the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal. Flowerbeds to dig, grass to cut, trees to prune and tend, sea water to keep at bay. All with little help and less money. But today, Saturday, was a big day. The City had especially asked him to provide flowers for a banquet to be held on the Isola San Giorgio that evening. He would give them his best, three dozen lilies he had been cultivating for months in one of his little greenhouses. They would be admired, and he would be praised. A great day.

There was a lot to be done. Cut the flowers, trim them, prepare them, wrap each one carefully and individually, then send them off to take their part in the wonderful arrangements which, he was sure, would be the talk of the evening. So he got up early, just after six, downed a coffee and a glass of acqua vita to get the blood going, and set off in the chilly, damp weather of late autumn to start work. Although cold and still not fully awake, he felt a small surge of anticipatory pleasure as he neared the greenhouse, looming up out of the early morning sea mist that invariably hangs over the lagoon at this time of day and at this time of year.

Until, that is, he opened the door and saw the crushed, mangled and twisted remains of the upright and beautiful flowers that he had so carefully tended. The exquisite creatures he had left the night before were no more. He could not believe his eyes. And then he saw the curled up form of the drunken, late-night reveller in the middle of the flowerbed who was evidently responsible.

He tried to restrain himself, but could not, and let out his venom by trying to wake up the wretch with a well-aimed kick. A woman. When he was young, women knew how to behave properly, he thought bitterly. Nowadays…

‘Damn you, move. Wake up. Look what you’ve done,’ he shouted angrily.

No reply. He put the toe of his shoe underneath the unconscious figure and turned it over, so he could insult the destructive, malicious creature more effectively.

‘Mother of God,’ he said instead. And ran for help.

‘Murder,’ said General Taddeo Bottando, with a ghoulish smile on his face as he sat in his sunlit office in central Rome. ‘Murder,’ he repeated, evidently enjoying the word and the reaction that showed up on the face of the assistant sitting opposite him. ‘Bloody and violent,’ he added, folding his arms over his protuberant stomach, just to make sure there was no mistake in the matter.

It was Sunday, the day after the Venetian gardener had discovered the devastation in his flowerbeds. Since he had run, shocked and alarmed, to find a telephone and call the police, Italian officialdom had been thrown, if not quite into a frenzy of activity, at least into a state of decorous movement. As a result, General Bottando had reluctantly come into his office on his day of rest, and had summoned his assistant from her bed to help.

It is, after all, very thoughtless of anyone to go and die in a foreign land. Indeed, if travellers realised how much trouble it caused, most would undoubtedly delay their departure from this world until they got back home. Firstly, the local police have to be informed, and doctors, ambulances, pathologists and so on brought in to deal with the corpse. Then a message has to be passed to the consulate, which contacts the embassy, which contacts the authorities back home, who contact the local police, who have to inform next of kin. And that is only the start. When you add on the business of writing assorted reports in any number of languages, and organising the transportation of the body with the customs and immigration authorities, it is little wonder many officials wish that foreigners, if they must die, would do so elsewhere.

It is even more tiresome when the foreigner gets himself – or herself, as in this case – murdered. And when that foreigner is a member of an art historical committee funded by the Italian Arts Ministry – and the subject of the committee’s work is Tiziano Vecelli (1486–1576), a Venetian, at a time when the Interior Minister is also a Venetian – telephones ring, telexes are sent, demands are made, bucks are passed. Everybody wants instant action, taken by someone else.

And hence, to return to the point, General Taddeo Bottando’s complacent smile as he mentioned the circumstances of Dr Louise M. Masterson’s untimely end to Flavia di Stefano, his best, brightest assistant in the Italian National Art Theft Squad.

‘Oh good,’ replied this assistant, with relief. ‘You had me worried for a moment. So why am I here and not in bed reading the paper?’

It should not be thought for a moment that either of them was cruel or unfeeling in this matter. Had they thought about it, they would have been properly upset that a thirty-eight-year-old woman, in her prime and with much to offer in her chosen field of Renaissance iconography, had been prematurely sent to the grave by an unknown assailant. But it is one of the constants of policework that there is rarely enough leisure to think too much about matters that are none of your business.

And this death, tragic though it might have been, fell very clearly and obviously into that category. Their little department, small and underfunded, had been set up several years back to battle valiantly but hopelessly against the tide of thefts sweeping Italy’s works of art out of the country. Its members dealt with theft and fraud concerning pictures, prints, drawings, statues, ceramics and even, on one occasion, an entire building that was stolen en bloc for transportation to South Korea. They were proud of having recovered one staircase, a room and part of the library. Alas, the walls and foundations were never seen again. It was, as Bottando explained to the distressed owner as he stared at the heap of rubble and woodwork in the back of the lorry, only a partial success.

The point was, that while crimes against art were in their purview, crimes against art historians were not. Such deeds were liable to be taken out of their hands, even if the entire contents of the National Museum had disappeared at the same time. Quite a lot, admittedly, depended on bureaucratic wrangling between the various parts of the assorted police forces, but a past master like Bottando would have had no trouble avoiding a case involving a murder if he didn’t want it.

And surely he didn’t, Flavia thought, trying to work out why she was not still in bed. It does you no good, no good at all, in the Italian polizia, to rush around volunteering for things. People stop taking you seriously. The thing to do is wait to be asked by some senior figure like a minister, then screw up your eyes in anguish, worry about how many other things you (or your department) have on your plate at the moment, then reluctantly agree that, as no one else is capable of dealing with such an urgent matter, your specialised skills might be made available. Solely because you hold the minister in such high personal esteem and, while on the subject, perhaps the minister might see his way to helping you with…

Something like this had been going on, Flavia was sure. The only question remaining to be resolved was what it had to do with her. She had a sneaking idea. The Italian state habitually overspends, running vast budget deficits that have everybody outside the government running around and wringing their hands in despair. Periodically, a new administration decides to tackle the problem. Such efforts never last very long, but for six months or so programmes are axed, departments cut back and savings made. Then everybody gets tired of it, matters return to normal and the deficit resumes its usual upward spiral.

The trouble was that they were in one of their periodic bursts of austerity and the rival police force was floating a money-saving idea to break up Bottando’s department by setting up members of the carabinieri in local forces to deal with artistic thefts. It would be less effective and, in the end, save no money at all, but Bottando knew well that that was not really the point. The carabinieri had never really accepted that his department had been set up under polizia control. Normally he would have no trouble in seeing them off, but at the moment he was a worried man. His enemies were winning a hearing. The annual budget submissions were due in eight days, and the show-down was perilously close.

‘Has this, perchance, got something to do with the budgets?’ Flavia asked, and groaned as he nodded.

‘Oh, no. Please. Not me. I’ve so much work to do already,’ she said desperately, looking at him with all the mournful appeal her large, blue, north Italian eyes could summon at such short notice.

But he was a hard man. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I’m sure we can redistribute your load.’

‘You couldn’t when I asked you for a day off on Friday.’

Bottando was not, however, a man to be put off by little details. ‘That was Friday,’ he pointed out with accuracy, waving the matter aside with a chubby hand. ‘Have you ever heard of the Titian committee?’

Flavia had worked with him long enough to know defeat when it stared her in the face. ‘Of course. Some vast, government funded enterprise to produce a complete catalogue of everything Titian ever did, down to authenticating his laundry bills? Quite a status project, isn’t it?’

‘Something like that,’ her boss replied. ‘The Dutch set up something similar, and the Arts Minister decided that if anyone was to have the prestige of a hugely overfunded international mega-project it should be an Italian painter, not some Dutch hack like Rembrandt. So they set up an even more pricey affair for Titian. Half a dozen experts, soaking up enough money in a year to keep us in luxury for a decade. A team effort. Don’t know why but evidently in this bureaucratic age they think that six personal opinions are better than one. Makes it seem more accurate. Not so sure I’m convinced. They work away like fury, producing catalogues of paintings, drawings and so on. You know the sort of thing.’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. ‘So?’

Bottando regarded her a bit doubtfully. ‘So,’ he said, labouring the word to show he’d noticed her lack of enthusiasm, ‘so, now there’s only five of them. To put it another way, a sixth of this high-powered, international committee has gone and got murdered, that’s so. And it’s causing a bit of a stir in certain circles. That is to say, for various reasons the Arts Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the Tourism Ministry and the Interior Ministry are all up in arms about it. And that’s not counting the local authorities in the Veneto and in Venice itself. Fuss, fuss, fuss.’

‘I understand that. But it’s a job for the local carabinieri, isn’t it? After all, they must be used to it by now. Foreigners die in Venice all the time. People write books on it.’

‘Indeed. But it’s not all that often that they’re murdered. Anyway, the point is, it has been decided that the forces of Italian law and order have to do their best to sort this out. Experts flying in, national effort, and so on. And you, my dear, are the instrument chosen to demonstrate how seriously the government is taking this challenge to Venice’s ability to draw in tourist income.’

‘Me?’ said Flavia with mixed astonishment and annoyance. ‘Why on earth send me? I’m not even in the police.’ Which was true, although she only remembered this fact when it was convenient. Technically she was only a researcher and had strenuously resisted the temptation to sign up on a more regular basis. Uniforms didn’t suit her. Nor, for that matter, did the odd spurt of military discipline the polizia occasionally indulged in to remind its forces they were technically members of the army.

‘Exactly,’ Bottando replied happily, pleased that she was so quick on the uptake at such an early hour. ‘It’s all appearances, you see. Politics, in a word. The powers that be down here want to show they’re trying. But they don’t want to put the noses of the locals out of joint. So we are going to send, firstly, someone from the art squad to help out with our expertise and, secondly, someone junior who will not make the Venice carabinieri think they’re being criticised. And that all adds up to you.’

‘Thanks for the show of confidence,’ said Flavia with some pique. Which was a little irrational of her. She’d come into Bottando’s office hoping she wasn’t going to be given an investigation, and now found herself offended that she hadn’t. It was, nonetheless, galling to think her main qualification for the job was being entirely innocuous. ‘I still think it’s a complete waste of my time.’

Bottando shrugged. ‘That depends on whether you want a job next month,’ he said reasonably.

A good argument. ‘Oh, all right. If I must.’

‘You mustn’t think of it like that,’ Bottando told her reassuringly. ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity. You have to do nothing at all, and will gain the thanks of three of the most powerful ministers in the government for not doing it. As will the department, of course, which is more important at the moment. Could be crucial in fact, if we get the timing right. Consider it as more of a paid holiday. You can trot up tomorrow, spend a day and be back home by Tuesday evening. Besides, Venice, I remember, is particularly beautiful at this time of year.’

‘That’s not the point,’ she protested. Really, the man’s willingness to ignore facts to suit himself was extraordinary. He knew very well she’d been planning to go to Sicily. Venice, however adorable, was not at all what she had in mind. But he paid no attention.

‘You will have to put in an appearance with the police up there, but you can make it clear that you have no intention of interfering at all with their investigation,’ he went on, becoming all business-like now he knew he’d won. He normally did, but Flavia was sometimes wayward over the matter of obeying orders.

‘All you have to do is hang around, work on your expense account, then knock out a perfectly harmless report in which you sound brilliant and penetrating but exonerate everyone for not arresting the murderer while also making it clear that you have established that it is not a matter for our department. Standard sort of thing. That should do the trick nicely.’

She sighed more openly so he would realise the sacrifice she was making for the public good. A nice man, an amiable soul, but a bit of a bulldozer in many ways. She knew him well enough to know a fight was pointless. She was going to Venice, and that was settled.

‘You think they won’t find whoever it was?’

‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment. I’m a bit hazy on the details but first reports make it sound like a mugging that got out of hand. I’ve no doubt you’ll find out when you get there.’

2

By the time the internal Alitalia flight began its circling descent to Venice’s Marco Polo airport bright and early on Monday morning, Flavia had forced herself back into a moderately good humour, despite having risen from her bed at an ungodly hour, yet again, to catch the plane.

Were it not for the circumstances, she would ordinarily have been overjoyed at the prospect of getting out of her underventilated, over-inhabited office in central Rome. Venice, after all, was not such a bad place to spend a day or two. As it was going to be a brief trip, she travelled as light as was compatible with being prepared for all eventualities. Trousers, dresses, skirts, shirts, sweaters, a dozen or so books. Maps of Venice and the surrounding area, railway and airport timetables, overcoat for the cold, raincoat for the rain. Boots for walking, good shoes just in case, pads of paper and notebooks, a few files of police business, towels, dressing-gown, gloves, a torch for emergencies. She would, probably, wear nothing except jeans and sweaters, as usual, but there was no harm in being prepared.

As the plane swept in, she occupied herself with tidying her hair and setting her clothes to rights. She wanted to look good as she got off at the airport. Such vanities she normally dispensed with; she was fortunate that she could afford to do so without it making much difference. Besides, no matter how much she combed, her hair would be a mess once the wind that always blew around Marco Polo had finished with it. But Venice is a place that demands that you make yourself presentable. It is an old and dignified city and insists on respect from visitors; even tourists occasionally try to make themselves look less unsightly than usual once they fall under its spell.

She started as she meant to go on. Bottando had insisted it was important she spend as much money as possible, and she intended to follow his instructions. The value of her presence would be calculated in direct proportion to the size of her expense account, he had said, not by what she got done. This, among the more cynical of her colleagues in the department, was known as the Bottando Ratio. If the government was to convince itself that the department had played a crucial role in trying to resolve this unfortunate affair, then the bill would have to be a hefty one.

So she shunned the public water bus into the city and settled herself into the back of one of the long, varnished motor taxis that ply their trade between the airport and the main island. No airport in the world has a more beautiful approach to the city it serves. Instead of a bus crawling along crowded motorways or a train through industrialised desolation, you rush through the lagoon, past crumbling islands until Venice itself peeps up over the horizon. Apart from the fact that the ride made her feel a little queasy, it was a glorious experience, especially in weather which was perfect, despite the presence of some not very encouraging clouds.

The driver, suitably sea-worthy in black T-shirt, cap and red neck-scarf, piloted with skill and speed along a route marked out by ancient lumps of wood sticking up above the surface of the glistening water. He paid her little attention, beyond the obligatory wink and flashing smile as he helped her in and stowed her luggage. The other occupant was much more inclined to pass the time of day. Had Fellini ever decided to film ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, this was the man for the title role. His face was a piece of old driftwood, and his age, if uncertain, was definitely over seventy. He was short, grizzled beyond imagining, had an appallingly-fitted set of dentures which clicked alarmingly when he smiled, and still seemed as though he could tear blocks of concrete in two with his bare hands.

He settled himself down beside her in the stern, beamed and clicked at her for several minutes, then embarked on his morning entertainment. Was she on holiday? Staying long? Meeting someone? – this with a sly glance – visited Venice before? She answered patiently. Old men like to talk, like the company of the young, and besides, his curiosity was so intense that it could not possibly be objectionable. He was, he told her proudly, the father of the driver and had himself been a gondolier in Venice all his life. Now he was too old to work but liked occasionally to accompany his son.

‘I bet you didn’t have boats like this when you were his age,’ Flavia said, more to vary her conversational diet from a stream of yesses and noes.

‘This?’ the old man said, wrinkling up his face so that his nose almost disappeared beneath the surface. ‘This? Call this a boat? Pah!’

‘It seems very nice,’ she observed vaguely, aware that this wasn’t exactly the most nautical way of phrasing it.

‘All flash and noise,’ he said. ‘About as well made as an orange box. They can’t make boats any more. Can’t do anything properly in the lagoon any more.’

Flavia looked over the flickering, shining water to the island of Burano on her left, saw the seagulls whirling overhead in the wind and spotted an oil tanker peacefully chugging its way out to sea in the distance. The boat cut a creamy wave through the dark green water of the lagoon as it headed towards the city. ‘It all appears in proper order to me,’ she said.

‘Appears, yes. But it’s not appearances that count. They’ve forgotten about the flow.’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Flow, young lady, flow. This lagoon is full of channels. Very complex, each one serves nature’s purpose. They used not to disturb that. Now they chop huge paths through the lagoon to let things like that in.’ He gestured dismissively at the tanker.

‘With the wind and the tide in the right direction, everything goes haywire. Just like that. Can happen in minutes. Water flows in the wrong direction, washes everything to the surface, floods and leaves it. Smells disgusting. Comes of trying to be too clever. The city’s choking in its own muck because of their stupidity.’

He was getting into his stride about the iniquities of the modern age when his son, glancing over his shoulder and evidently fearing for his tip, ambled back. Flavia wished he had stayed where he was. It was no doubt perfectly safe to leave an unguided boat hurtling through the water at high speed, but she would have felt more confident had someone been there just to make sure. A demonic driver on the roads, she was nervously cautious when it came to water. The result, no doubt, of growing up in the foothills of the Alps.

A few sharp words and the old man was dispatched forward to wrap some ropes, or whatever you do on boats, and she was left alone to study the scenery. Flavia watched with delight as the first signs of Venice itself rose above the horizon. The campanile, then the tower of San Giorgio, the crumbling brick of the Frari. More boats, buses, gondolas and the heavy working barges that ferried goods from place to place, appeared on the water. Then the crumbling brick and peeling stucco of the buildings on the main island itself, as the taxi swung around its northern end and headed for the Piazza San Marco.

The driver propelled his boat along at what seemed like an impossibly reckless speed, weaving in and out of the traffic, and aimed it at the side of the canal. He slammed the engine into reverse at the last moment, swung round and then, with a little flourish, brought it to a dainty, perfect halt at exactly the right place. The result of years of practice. Flavia paid, handed over a healthy tip and walked up the steps on to Riva Schiavoni, with the driver bringing up the rear with her bags.

Checking in at the Danieli Hotel took only a few moments. Again, she was obeying Bottando’s instructions to the letter. It was not often she was virtually ordered to stay in the most famous and expensive hotel in the north-east of Italy, and she was determined not to let the opportunity slip. Ordinarily, the Danieli was crammed with the richer sort of German and American tourists, and even the monumental gothic lobby sometimes bore a striking resemblance to a bus station, with crowds of frantic tourists milling around afraid of being left behind and piles of luggage stacked in corners. But the season was ending and, while tourists were still very much in evidence, they had been culled to more manageable proportions. The staff were consequently less harried than usual and, for Venetians, almost polite.

The room was delightful, the weather still sunny and the bed remarkably comfortable. The only other thing anyone might reasonably ask for was food, and she resolved to take care of that immediately. The trip in had taken a good hour and it was well into Flavia’s lunch break, so she changed into more suitably professional-looking clothes and headed back down the stairs. If Bottando had taught her one thing, it was that really good and reliable policework could not be done on an empty stomach. At the desk in the lobby she asked for directions to the central questura, bought a newspaper in the shop so she could see how the local press were reporting the murder, and headed off for a hefty, if solitary, meal.

She was content and only slightly indigested as she walked slowly up the steps of the questura at around three that afternoon. The building was a very Venetian affair. Evidently it had once been the palace of a nobleman of substantial wealth, but it fell so far from its original glory that it was co-opted by the state and colonised. Rooms that were once enormous and well-proportioned had been divided, then subdivided, into dingy little cubicles connected by even darker, more unkempt and depressing corridors. Whatever the budget of the local police, very little of it went on keeping their headquarters well decorated. All very economical and proper, no doubt, but a pity. Her own department in Rome occupied much smaller premises, but Bottando’s ability to delay handing back stolen works of art that were recovered (he always quoted paperwork in order to hang on for a few months to pieces he particularly liked) meant it was much more appealing to the eye. Very important for department morale, even if the best works tended to be stored for security reasons in his own office.

Her holiday mood was evaporating rapidly by the time she had wandered up and down for ten minutes hunting for her destination. It waned still further when she was shown into the office of Commissario Alessandro Bovolo and saw the small, ill-humoured man behind the desk, ostentatiously reading papers and pretending not to have noticed her arrival. But she had decided in advance to be the perfect colleague and was determined to give the man a chance. So she waited patiently, composing her face into cheery nonchalance. Silence fell, apart from the odd snuffle from Bovolo, the rustle of paper and the faint, but quite amazingly irritating, sound of Flavia humming quietly to herself. Eventually, Bovolo could stand her limited musical talents no more. He dropped the sheaf of seemingly absorbing documentation, smoothed down his lank, mousy hair and looked up with the air of an important man reluctant to be distracted.

By no stretch of the imagination could he be considered handsome, even in the best of circumstances. Late forties, he had a thin face, slightly pointy nose, blotchy skin and small colourless eyes. Apart from that, there was not much to be said for him. If one of the fishermen in the lagoon accidentally dredged up a large herring, dressed it in a crumpled grey suit and arranged it in a chair with a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles over its nose, the resemblance would have been extraordinary.

‘Signorina di Stefano,’ he said eventually, with too much emphasis on the ‘signorina’ for Flavia’s taste. ‘The elegantly-dressed young expert from Rome come to show us how to catch murderers.’ The slightly watery smile that accompanied this made her suspect he was not wildly enthused about making her acquaintance. She was quick that way.

‘From Rome, yes. Expert, no,’ she replied, deploying her sweetest and most disarming smile for the occasion. ‘Whatever the accomplishments of my department, catching murderers is scarcely one of them.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘Solely to help if you decide you want it. We do know a lot about the art world, after all. General Bottando was very much of the opinion that my assistance wouldn’t be needed. But as the minister insisted, here I am. You know how ministers are.’

‘And I suppose you’ll go away in a few days and write a report about us,’ he stated with a suggestion of suspicious sarcasm in his voice. ‘No doubt trying to save your own skin.’

Aha. The carabinieri grapevine was working with its usual efficiency. Bovolo had evidently heard Bottando’s back was against the wall, and it didn’t sound as though he was going to do much to help. She’d been afraid of that, but had prepared as best she could.

‘I was hoping to ask you for a favour there,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘As you will be the man on top of the job, knowing exactly what was going on, I wondered – I know of course how busy you must be at the moment – if perhaps you might prepare it for me. Then we could avoid unnecessary errors…’

She smiled cutely once more and could see he’d taken the point. She was giving him the chance of virtually dictating what the report contained – or did not contain. A handsome offer, to her way of thinking. If that didn’t cut the hostility level, nothing would. And, of course, she could always add on appendices and footnotes in Rome.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I approve of my department doing your job for you, but maybe it would be the best way of making sure all those interfering bureaucrats get an accurate account.’

He nodded and brightened as he considered the choice words of praise for himself he could insert at strategic places.

‘Yes,’ he said, very much happier. ‘Probably quite wise. But I don’t want you hanging around here and getting in our way, you know. We’re busy, understaffed and have got better things to worry about than the murder of a foreigner who didn’t have enough sense to look after herself.’

Evidently not a man who could accept a gift with grace.

‘I’ve no doubt,’ said Flavia, slightly perturbed, but pleased nonetheless that she appeared to be making some progress. ‘And I’d be more than happy to help in any way you suggest.’

‘Well, now,’ he said dubiously, clearly trying to think of something suitably unimportant, ‘I gather you’re the educated type. Languages.’ He had a tone which implied this was a somewhat indecent attainment.

It was becoming a bit of an effort to keep up the vacuous smile. She hoped his manner would improve before her limited reserves of tolerance ran out entirely.

‘Maybe you could talk to some of her colleagues?’ he went on, paying no attention to the increasingly strained appearance of her facial muscles. ‘There’s no point, of course, as we’re after our man already. But it shows we’ve covered all angles. You could have a quick word with them, read over the documents, and go back to Rome tomorrow. You are going tomorrow, aren’t you?’ he added, half-suspecting a nasty complication.

‘Yes. Or the day after. And I’d be happy to talk to them. But haven’t you done that already?’ she asked with some surprise.

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Of course we have. Indeed. Detailed interviews. But it would do no harm to talk to them again, I’m sure. Keep you busy and out of our way.’

‘Well, in that case,’ she said briskly, dropping the smile on the grounds that it was doing little to advance her cause, ‘perhaps you could tell me what it’s all about? The details down in Rome were very vague. Nobody there knows what happened or how. It would be a help to know. If, that is, you can spare the time.’

Bovolo swivelled his fishy little eyes in her direction, not sure whether she was being polite or sarcastic. ‘Hmph,’ he snorted, gracious as ever. ‘Oh, well, why not? Might even help to hear the views of an outsider.’ He clearly thought nothing of the sort, but it was at least an attempt to be civil. Flavia tried to appear flattered.

‘The victim’s name,’ he began after a lengthy shuffle through the piles of papers on his desk, ‘was Louise Mary Masterson. She was thirty-eight, single, American citizen. She lived in New York and was keeper of Western Art at a museum there. One metre fifty-one high, good health. She joined the Titian committee eighteen months ago. This was to be her second session. They meet every year in Venice, at the taxpayers’ expense. She arrived last Monday, and the meeting began on Thursday afternoon. She missed the first session but was there on Friday. Her death took place at, as far as the doctors can say, around 9.30 p.m. the same evening.’

He spoke at a machine-gun pace, making it clear he had not the slightest interest in briefing her properly. Rather, he was making a valiant effort to spew out the maximum number of facts in the minimum time so he could get rid of the tiresome interloper as fast as possible. Flavia let him rattle away: so far, his recitation produced no details she felt like pursuing.

‘The body was discovered in the Giardinetti Reali. That, by the way, is between the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal. She worked late in the Marciana library nearby and evidently went for a walk. All public transport was on a lightning strike and she may have been waiting for a taxi to come free. She was found in a greenhouse, stabbed seven times with a knife about ten centimetres long. Penknife. Swiss Army, maybe. That sort. Once in the throat, four times in the chest, once in the shoulder and once in the arm. None was fatal if she’d got help in time, but she was clearly dragged into the greenhouse to make sure she died.’

‘So essentially she bled to death?’

‘That’s about it. Nasty way to go, I must admit. Quiet part of the world. Anywhere else, someone would have come across her in time. But that, unfortunately, is about it. None of her colleagues knows why she was there, and we’ve found no one who saw her in the garden. There weren’t many people around because of that damnable strike. Murder, obviously. But by whom and why we don’t know.’

‘Suspicions?’

‘Oh, well, now. Suspicions, of course we have. More than that. It was certainly a simple robbery that got out of hand. There was no sign of rape, and her briefcase was missing. Not a Venetian crime obviously. A Sicilian, or some other sort of foreigner, no doubt.’

Flavia decided to pass over this outrageous statement in silence. She, at least, did not consider her southern compatriots as foreigners, nor did she necessarily assume that Venetians were incapable of murder. But there was no need to ruffle feathers unnecessarily.

‘No other hints or indications of what might have taken place?’ she asked.

Bovolo shrugged in the manner of someone who has said his piece and is beginning to think further discussion unnecessary. Still, they had an understanding – she would not criticise, and he would humour her. He pushed some papers across the desk for her to examine while he continued talking.

‘Those include as much as we know of her movements before her death. There is nothing at all out of the ordinary. She didn’t know anyone in Venice apart from her colleagues; when not in the library she spent nearly all her time on the Isola San Giorgio, either in her room, eating or having meetings with the other members of the committee. These,’ he continued, just as Flavia was about to say that the details seemed very thin, ‘are photographs of the victim.’

She looked intently, more out of a wish to seem professional than because she wanted to study them. Merely glancing at them seemed almost an invasion of the woman’s privacy.

Even dead, she could see that Masterson had been a fairly striking woman. A well-formed face, make-up smudged. The clothes, dishevelled and bloodstained, were evidently of high quality and, to her eyes, a little conservative and severe. A close-up photograph of her hand showed that it was curled round a bunch of flowers, obviously grabbed hold of as she died. There was something else Flavia couldn’t make out.

‘What’s this?’

‘A lily,’ Bovolo said.

‘Not the flower. This.’ She pointed to it.

‘Crucifix,’ Bovolo said. ‘Gold. With a silver chain.’

‘That must be fairly valuable,’ she said. ‘I would have thought any robber would have taken it.’

Bovolo shrugged noncommittally. ‘Maybe, maybe not. She probably fought for it, that prompted him to kill her, he panicked and ran away. Or perhaps he really only wanted cash. It’s safer, after all.’

‘What was in her case?’

‘Professional papers, wallet, passport, that sort of thing, as far as we can work out.’ He handed over another list and a few xeroxes.

Flavia thought for a few seconds. She was very keen on instant impressions, mercurial guesses which always made Bottando adopt his long-suffering expression. He liked routine, and had tried over the years to convince her of its merits. Fair enough; he was a policeman and such procedure part of his job. She wasn’t, and preferred imagination – which was as often right as Bottando’s reliance on drudgery. Still, might as well show her devotion to method.

‘No footprints, nothing like that?’

‘It is a public garden,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Tourists tramp through all the time, treat the place like a dustbin. The shoreline was absolutely disgusting. Do you know how many empty cans and half eaten sandwiches my men had to collect?’

The last thing she wanted was to hear a long lecture on the nasty habits of tourists. Apart from the fact that Bovolo would probably want to ban all foreigners from the city, she lived in Rome and knew about the problem already.

‘I just thought that if she’d been dragged into a greenhouse there would have been some prints nearby.’

‘Well, there weren’t. Not recent ones anyway. Very dry summer, hard ground. Hasn’t rained for weeks. With a bit of luck it may any day now; we certainly need it. Of course, you can use up your time looking for yourself, if you think you can do a better job than our technical experts who have spent years examining this sort of thing…’

Flavia nodded in a way that hinted she might just do that. Not that she would, but it clearly irritated Bovolo, so was worth it.

There wasn’t much to wrap her imagination around, it had to be said. But the photos of the woman interested her strangely. How much can you tell from photographs? Not much, admittedly, but Masterson looked as though she might have been a bit complicated. She dressed in a hard, no-nonsense style that Americans often prefer; there was none of the femininity that an Italian in her position might have manifested. Her face, also, had a determined edge to it. But there was an ambiguity there. Underneath was something softer, especially around the eyes, which contradicted the firm set of the mouth. Masterson gave the impression of someone trying to be more ruthless than was natural. She might have been quite pleasant had you managed to get through to her.

Flavia smiled, thinking how Bottando would have sniffed at this exposition, built as it was on nothing whatsoever. One glance at Bovolo was enough to convince her that he was a member of the same school of policework.

‘You’ve worked out the whereabouts of all her colleagues, I imagine?’ she asked.

Bovolo again reacted as though he didn’t know whether she was being sweet or sarcastic, but suspected the worst. ‘Of course,’ he said primly, producing yet another sheaf of papers. He put his spectacles on the end of his nose and looked at the documents carefully, just in case they’d changed in the past five minutes.

‘All perfectly reasonable accounts of themselves. And before you ask, we have also checked the clothes in their rooms and not found a single stain, bloody dagger or diary containing a full confession. Professor Roberts and Dr Kollmar cancel each other out, as they were at the opera together. Dr Van Heteren was at dinner with friends near the railway station. Dr Lorenzo was at home, with servants and friends to testify to it. All of those four are staying on the main island, not at the foundation. That leaves Dr Miller.’

‘Tell me about him, then. I take it he had no witnesses?’

Bovolo nodded. ‘Yes. For a moment we also had high hopes there. However, he was on the island with no way of getting off it, because of the strike. He went into the kitchen just after ten to ask for some mineral water to wash down a sleeping pill, drank it down while talking to some of the staff, and went straight off to bed.’

‘But he is still the only one who has no one else to vouch for him at the time of the murder?’

‘True. But the gate keeper is prepared to swear no one left or arrived after about six o’clock. If he was on the island at ten, he was on it at nine. And in that case, he didn’t kill this woman. Besides, all of them are most distinguished people with no possible motive. It was a very harmonious and scholarly operation, not a branch of the Mafia.’

Flavia nodded thoughtfully. ‘So, having eliminated all her colleagues, you decide on a lone marauder.’

Bovolo nodded. ‘And we’ll stick with it, unless you have something else to suggest,’ he said with a don’t-you-dare expression on his face.

‘And what’s that?’ she asked, gesturing briefly at another envelope.

‘This? Just her mail. Delivered to her room this morning and we picked it up. We thought it might have been important, but it isn’t. Take it if you like and check it out. All art stuff.’

She read through them briefly. Circulars, notes from her museum, a letter from a photographic agency and a couple of bills. Uninspiring. She put them all down in the pile.

‘Still,’ said Flavia, not really feeling comfortable, ‘it seems odd to go to all that trouble to tear a gold crucifix off her neck and then leave it behind. Was she a Catholic, by the way?’

Bovolo shook his head. ‘Don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘You know what these Americans are like. All religious fanatics, by the sound of them.’

Another nation to cross off your list. Not a man with a broad appreciation of the varieties of human culture.

‘Take copies of these if you want,’ he said, gesturing at the police files on the case with a sudden spurt of co-operative generosity. ‘Not the photographs, obviously, but anything else. As long as you give them back and don’t show them to anyone. They are confidential, you know.’

Why did she want all that miscellaneous debris? she wondered after she’d shaken the inspector by his clammy little hand and was walking slowly back to the Danieli. Clearly Bovolo thought them useless, or he wouldn’t have allowed her to have them. She felt a slight glimmering of interest in this murder, despite Bottando’s orders that she was not to get involved in any way. It was, perhaps, the woman’s face. There was no fright on it. It was not the face of someone who’d died in the middle of a robbery. If there was any expression at all, it was determination. And indignation. That did not fit in at all with Bovolo’s notion of a mugging somehow.

3

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.

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.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.