Iain Pears - Giotto's Hand

Argyll sighed. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“So?”

“In different circumstances, I would have happily sought your advice. I had a high opinion of your good sense.”

“Thank you. I can lay out the options, if you like. I’ll be biased, of course, but you can tell how accurate I am.”

“Go on.”

“The upright good citizen approach,” she said briskly. “You go straight off to Manstead. Please sir. Mrs. Verney is a thief. With the Vélasquez and the leads you provide he would certainly get enough to convict me and Winterton. I doubt I would be even charged with the murder of either Forster or Veronica, though. Absolutely no evidence. Zilch; George would never say anything.

“Still, justice gets done: I atone for a misspent life. Splendid. But, for the satisfaction of locking me up for a few years and getting one extra picture, there will be costs. Mainly borne by Flavia who will have to give a very good account for having deceived her own boss, told lies to the English police and, in effect, conspired to pervert the course of justice in a major way. All of which she did on your recommendation, if I remember. She is, I gather, already unhappy about it. You wait till she hears this one.”

Argyll rubbed his eyes and groaned quietly.

“From what you tell me, her boss won’t come out of it too well either, as he’s just told a pack of lies to his superiors,” she went on. “Saying he didn’t know what was going on won’t exactly impress them, and I imagine the man he has just humiliated will be more than ready to take his revenge.”

Argyll looked at her stonily. “Go on.”

“The other option is to take the advice you are so willing to give others. Forget all about me and Forster and Veronica and Winterton and Vélasquez. You have made a mess. You now have the choice of making it worse, or…”

“Or?”

“Or not. Don’t do anything. Forget it.”

He slumped back in the armchair and stared at the ceiling as he thought about this.

“Here,” she said. “Maybe it’s not appropriate any more. But I was going to give you this as a parting present.”

She handed him a box. He unwrapped it, and pulled off the cardboard lid. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, lay a drawing of a hand.

A Leonardo da Vinci. Just what he’d always wanted.

“I suppose we can take the profuse thanks as read on this occasion,” Mary said drily. “But you seemed to like it and it means nothing to me. A token of affection. Not a precious one, I’m afraid, but I hoped it would indicate my pleasure in your company over the last few days. Which was real enough, although I can’t expect you to believe that any more. I’m very sorry it’s gone sour, but I hope you’ll take it anyway. As an apology.”

Argyll looked at her and it sadly. Oh, sod. Of all the times for someone to give him a bloody Leonardo, this was about the worst. This is a nightmare, he thought.

In the old days, this morning, he would instantly have told Mary Verney exactly what it was. They would have celebrated his cleverness and her good fortune, and sealed a friendship on it. He would never have taken it and kept quiet, even if it was what a real art dealer, a Winterton, would do. But now? Honesty on his part seemed hardly appropriate, given the circumstances.

He looked at it again, in its dusty frame with the cracked glass. Selling it would set him up as a dealer with enough finance to succeed. Good God, he wouldn’t have to succeed any more. He could retire. That’s how you get ahead in this business, he thought. Spotting the opportunity and grabbing it with both hands. Look at Winterton. That’s how he began.

“And if I prefer to go to the police?”

“Then you preserve your purity and self-esteem but would have to live with the knowledge that the costs of your particular brand of principled indecision are being borne by everyone else. Particularly your fiancée.

“Do that if you want: no one can stop you. Not even me any more. But if you do, I’d advise you to start looking for another girlfriend; she’ll find it difficult to forgive you. I know I would. You told her it was her duty to recast the truth for Bottando, and she listened and did just that. Are you not prepared to do the same for her?

“But,” she said firmly, giving him a long, hard look, “whatever you do, make up your mind more quickly this time: indecisiveness and irrelevant feelings of guilt really are your biggest faults. But whatever you do, take that drawing.”

“I don’t want it.”

She picked it up and took out a cigarette lighter, which she held underneath it. “Nor do I. Either you have it or nobody does.”

“I’ll take it. I’ll take it,” he said hurriedly.

“Good. I don’t know why it’s important to me. But it is.”

She shrugged, slightly bemused by herself, then picked up the glasses and bottle and loaded them on the tray, leaving Argyll moodily staring at the fireplace. For the last ten days, it seemed, everybody he’d met had been telling him to make up his mind. He’d never really thought of himself as being so feeble, but majority opinion seemed against him. A bit much for a murderer to give him lectures, but certainly no one could say she was overburdened by doubt and uncertainty.

And she was quite right in one thing. This time he had to make a choice quickly. He looked at the drawing. So very beautiful, and certainly more than he’d ever dreamt of. The Moresby Museum would be happy to give him a fortune for it. But, however lovely it was, it now represented all the silly mistakes he’d made in the past day or so. He stared glumly at the drawing; odd how he was thinking about that, not about Forster. Think, he told himself. Was she right? He envisioned the scene. Flavia would believe him. The police would come back. There would be no Vélasquez. Nobody in the village would say a peep. There wasn’t much chance of making much progress.

And the disadvantages? They’d have to call in the English police, who would be bound to make a formal protest. Flavia would certainly not come out of it well. And as for Bottando… No. She was right there, too.

And the Leonardo. Was he really prepared to see something so pretty destroyed simply because he was upset at being beaten? Wouldn’t that make things worse?

Yes. But, if he took it, he’d be compromised. That was the point of the gift, of course.

“Well?” she said. “What’s it to be?”

“Tell me one thing. You say you stole thirty-one pictures?”

“Thirty-two including the Fra Angelico. I don’t count that.”

“And the nineteen that Winterton told Flavia about?”

“Were the ones whose new owners could not identify us. The others will have to stay in hiding in case someone speaks out of turn. I’m sure Flavia realized that when she was talking to him.”

Put like that, there wasn’t a great deal to be said about it. She was right. There was nothing he could do anyway. So, feigning a certainty he was far from feeling, Argyll stood and picked up the drawing. The move was his answer to all the questions, and Mary saw that instantly.

“Good,” she said seriously. “I hope you don’t take it amiss if I say you are taking the right decision. And having leapt that hurdle, why don’t you follow up by marrying her as well?”

Argyll smiled sadly and walked silently to the door.

“Jonathan.”

He turned round and looked at her.

“I really am sorry, you know.”

He nodded, and left.

A few minutes later, Weller House was disappearing in his rear view mirror and he was driving along the road which led to the motorway, London and the airport. He pulled out into the middle of the road to avoid George Barton walking home to his cottage. He at least came out of this well. He waved, then came up to the patch of road he had pranced up and down on a few days previously to attract the attention of PC Hanson. He was deeply miserable, and could not get out of his head what had happened. Every time he tried, all that happened was that he thought of the beautiful, hateful drawing on the passenger seat. His greatest triumph, and look what had to happen before he could achieve it.