Iain Pears - Giotto's Hand

“No, I won’t do that. But I will point out a problem with your basic premise. Why would I risk an investigation on my own doorstep, when doing nothing would mean that police attention would never head in my direction? What sort of sense does that make?”

“It makes perfect sense, although the implications are upsetting.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your cousin gets wind of something fishy. She doesn’t know what to do, so she asks Forster, who has assisted the family in the past. He looks hard, and eventually produces proof that your money is more than a little dodgy. Nails it down just after you’d stolen the Vélasquez.

“She confronts you with it. And dies. I don’t think she killed herself, nor do I think Forster killed her. You murder her because she has found out about you. You slip her the extra pills and leave her.

“Forster’s mistake is to try to blackmail you, rather than going straight to the police. You decide to murder him as well at the appropriate moment.

“But before you do that, you have to make sure that you can get your hands on whatever evidence he might have accumulated. So, instead of that nonsense about Fancelli telling the police against your wishes, you actually tell her to go to the police, to stir Forster up.

“It works very nicely. The moment I talk to him, he makes an appointment to see me and goes out to get his evidence. Winterton tells you the bait has been taken, you go down, kill him and take it all away.

“And George Barton’s confession? You heard it, after all.”

“George Barton didn’t say anything about killing him. The whole conversation could just as easily have been about how he’d seen you coming out of Forster’s house that evening. Because he likes you, and didn’t like Forster, he was telling you he wouldn’t say anything.”

“And hasn’t.”

“No. And probably won’t. This is an extraordinary tight-lipped place. Anyway, Forster’s dead, you’ve destroyed the evidence, and you think you’re in the clear. Until you realize that we are looking for more evidence. So you do the next best thing: you bum his papers, in the hope we’ll stick with Forster, and as a fall-back you keep on dropping hints here and there about your crazy cousin. Not knowing how she kept the place going with so little money. Going on fugues. Interested in art. Dr. Johnson said she stole things, but he also said that you told him that.

“And all along, right in front of our noses, there is the reason: the Vélasquez stolen from Milan a couple of years back; waiting, I assume, to be collected.”

Mary Verney gave a heavy sigh, and looked at him sadly. “I am sorry, Jonathan,” she said eventually after debating how to approach the issue and then deciding that there was little point in being anything but straightforward. “You must be feeling quite dreadfully abused.”

This was the trouble. Not only was she a thief and a murderer, he had just proven it. Morally, at least. But she was still charming and he still liked her. Damn the woman.

“That is putting it mildly.”

“I suppose you don’t think too highly of me.”

“Two murders, God knows how many thefts, framing Forster and your cousin, manipulating Jessica Forster, lying through your teeth to me and Flavia and the police. I’ve come across people who are better socially adapted. I mean, why? You’re really nice. You have intelligence, and presence…”

“And I could have been an honest woman. Married to someone I didn’t care for, doing a job that bored me, growing old and frightened about not having enough money to retire on, living in a poky little flat somewhere, which was all I had to look forward to after this family of mine had done their worst. Yes. I could have done that. But why the hell should I have done?”

“And instead you chose to steal other people’s property.”

She sniffed. “If you like. So I’m a thief. But I never destroyed anything or took from people who couldn’t afford it. Most of them didn’t even know the value of the paintings I took. They only made a fuss later. I have stolen thirty-one paintings. The nineteen we told you about will soon be back in the hands of their original owners. Of the remainder, one by one they will drift back into the public gaze. In essence, they are borrowed, as all paintings are, really. You cannot own a painting; you are merely its custodian for greater or shorter periods. They all still exist, after all, and many are better looked after than they were before.”

“But property, and legitimate ownership…”

“Oh, Jonathan, really. Stop puffing up like that. Even though I only met you a few days ago, I know you better.”

“Do you indeed?”

“Well enough to know that such statements don’t mean much to you. The Calleone Vélasquez. Do you know where the money came to buy that? Centuries of screwing the peasants, and massacring the natives in South America. The Dunkeld Pollaiuolo, owned by an English aristocrat who’d squeezed Ireland dry for two hundred years. What I do is wrong, I suppose. But at least I don’t pretend I’m a public benefactor.”

“If that’s all there was to it, I would be half inclined to agree with you. But there’s more than that, isn’t there? You killed two people. Don’t you feel guilty about that? Just a little.”

“I’m not happy about it,” she said slightly indignantly. “I’m not a psychopath, you know. But I’ve already told you there’s no point in feeling guilty. Do it, or don’t do it. Simple as that. In their case, I was merely defending myself. They were blackmailers and leeches, who didn’t even have the courage of their own greed. Both of them were content to profit from what I did, but had the gall to sneer, and criticize me for actually doing it. Veronica, the model of noblesse oblige. She ignored me and was vilely rude to me for years. She persuaded Uncle Godfrey not to help my mother when she was dying. She would have nothing to do with me until she heard I had money. Then she was all over me, wanting me to put it into restoring Weller to its former glory.

“She never earned a penny in her life, and didn’t care one jot where I got mine as long as she got her hands on it. I agreed, and kept her afloat. In fact, it was a wonderful way of storing away illicit money. But I did it only on condition that I got this place in return, so that eventually I’d get the money back. My mother liked the place, and so did I. She should have inherited it; I was damned sure I would. I’d already paid for it a couple of times over by the time Veronica died.

“Veronica had no choice, and agreed. But, once she’d got a large infusion of cash, she began to try and get out of it and wanted to give Weller—which would have been sold long since without me—to some cousin. Anything to make sure I didn’t get it.”

“This is when Forster came in?”

“That’s right. The old cow started trying to find some pretext to weasel out of the deal and still keep my money. So she brought in Forster. I suppose she must have realized there was something odd, as I had so much money which seemed to come from nowhere, but she couldn’t pin it down. She explored my past life, people I’d known, and came across Forster, who told her that I’d been up to something in Florence. So she told him to find out more. He did, with the Pollaiuolo. And Veronica summoned me, at the end of the last year, produced his evidence and told me that I’d seen the last of my money. And could forget about Weller, which would go into a trust where I couldn’t touch it.

“She was dying anyway, that’s why she was in a hurry. I thought about it for a bit, then hurried the natural process along a little. That was all. What else could I have done? I was damned if she was going to steal my money before she went.”