Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

‘Never,’ she said firmly. ‘Not in the eight years I’ve worked for him. I don’t think he knew anyone there.’

‘But still. Someone knew him.’

With evident reluctance, she agreed to this, then led her out of the sitting-room into a small room, a cubicle almost, just big enough for a desk, a chair and a filing cabinet. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘It’s not locked.’

With this Madame Rouvet remembered herself and went off to make some coffee. Flavia initially refused it, but then she reflected how long it had been since she last slept. She felt OK at the moment, but you never knew. Besides, it got the woman out of the room.

She started at the front of the filing cabinet and worked her way through to the back. Tax forms, gas bills, phone bills — no calls to Rome over the past year — electricity bills. Letters to landlords — he rented the apartment rather than owned it. All the stuff of a decent, middle-class, professional life, with not the slightest hint of impropriety.

The sheaf of bank statements was also of no major interest. Meticulously balanced every month; Ellman was a man who lived within his income, and judging by the figures, that income was as modest as his tax forms suggested.

Which made the one piece of paper at the back even more strange. It was an annual summary of a bank statement, in Ellman’s name. Dating to the previous year. Every month there was a credit of five thousand Swiss francs. Transferred from something called Services Financieres, not that the name meant anything either. Flavia, never brilliant at arithmetic, screwed up her eyes to help her perform the calculations. Sixty thousand Swiss francs a year was, she reckoned, no small amount. None of it declared for tax. She carried on rummaging and came up with a cheque-book, again in Ellman’s name. Several of the stubs referred to sums made out to Bruno Ellman. Quite a lot of money, in all. The son, presumably.

Madame Rouvet returned.

‘Bruno Ellman? That’s the son?’

She nodded, lips pursed to indicate disapproval. ‘Yes.’

‘He’s flying in to Basle tomorrow? Zurich?’

‘Oh, no. To Paris. He flew from Paris three weeks ago, and comes back to Paris as well.’

Another good reason for going there, she thought. She had a fit of the yawns all the way down the stairs, waves of exhaustion coming across her. She was still yawning half an hour later as she paid for a sleeping-compartment on the 12:05 train to Paris, and only stopped when she fell fast asleep at 12:06.

By the time Flavia’s dormant body was passing horizontally through Mulhouse, Argyll was coming to the end of a tumultuous evening. Not that anything notably dramatic had happened, but he had ended up in a somewhat shaky and uncertain state.

After he’d finished with Delorme, he had the problem of not having anything in particular to do. What, after all, can you do in Paris? If, that is, you’re not exactly in the right mood for relaxing. Somehow an evening all alone in a restaurant, however good, or watching a movie, however fascinating, did not appeal. And it was still raining, so long walks were out as well.

That left doing something about the picture under his bed. But what, exactly? There were two obvious lines of enquiry; one being to go and have a little conversation with this man Besson, who had caused all the trouble in the first place. Not that he was assuming that Besson had stolen the thing, but he was inclined to think that, at the very least, he had some explaining to do.

On the other hand, Besson was a bit of a danger. Somebody, after all, had informed this omnipresent man with the scar that the picture was to be found at Delorme’s. And who might that have been? He didn’t really want to have a chat with Besson and then find unpleasant characters with antisocial tendencies turning up on the doorstep an hour later. For Besson, he thought, he needed a bit more support. Like half a dozen burly French policemen on either side. Better still, leave it to them entirely.

That, of course, was another problem. The police had already arrested the man, hadn’t they? Or maybe not. Janet hadn’t mentioned it, and he should have, really, when Bottando made his enquiries. And he’d forgotten to ask Delorme how he knew all this anyway. Altogether, it was most curious.

Anyway, he reckoned that Besson had better go in the pending tray for a while. And that left the owner of the picture. Eighteen months ago in a private collection. Now under his bed, and had moved around a lot in the meantime.

That exhibition catalogue had only said the painting was in a private collection. A usual device, to indicate that the picture was not in a museum, without giving the name of the owner and telling thieves where to look. Another point to be noted, he thought to himself. The thief, whoever it was, hadn’t needed any help.

What good fortune, he thought as he left the hotel and hailed a taxi, that I am such a well-trained and conscientious researcher. In the library in Rome, he’d written down the name of the man who had organized the exhibition and now he remembered that he worked at the Petit Palais. It was cutting it fine: the chances of this Pierre Guynemer being there were slight and he should have telephoned. But he had just enough time, had nothing else to do, and felt like at least putting on a display of action.

For once, luck was on his side. While the woman on the admissions desk of the museum was far from happy about seeing him, it being nearly closing-time, and openly dismissive of his suggestion that perchance Monsieur Guynemer might be in the building, she did agree to make enquiries. Then he was sent off through the vast echoing exhibition rooms of the museum, into the back corridors where the staff offices were located and where he was accosted by a man who again asked what he wanted. This obstacle overcome, he went wandering down more corridors, peering at names on doors as he went, until he came to the right one. He knocked, a voice told him to come in, and that was that. Simple beyond belief.

So simple, in fact, that he hadn’t actually prepared himself for the possibility that he might find the man, and consequently didn’t know what he should say. Still, when in doubt, lie through your teeth. That was always the best policy.

So he concocted and simultaneously delivered a bizarre and none-too-convincing tale to explain what he was doing in this man’s office at nearly five o’clock on a Saturday evening. It was a logical tale in its way, but not very well expressed; Argyll believed that its style rather than its substance was the main reason for Guynemer’s slightly raised eyebrows and sceptical look.

Also, the trouble was that the curator was one of those people you take a liking to the moment you meet them, so Argyll felt bad about being duplicitous. He was a broad fellow, just the right side of overweight, comfortably ensconced in his desk chair, with an open face and cheerful expression. About Argyll’s age, give or take a year or so. Which meant that he was either very bright or very well connected. Or both, of course. Unlike most museum curators, unlike most people, in fact, he seemed perfectly unsurprised at the unexpected arrival and quite willing to countenance being disturbed. Generally, if a total stranger turns up on your doorstep spinning a yarn, you chuck them out, or at least mutter about being too busy. Not this one; he sat Argyll down and heard him out.

Argyll’s tale was something along the lines of his doing research into pre-Revolutionary neoclassicism, of his being on a brief and unexpected stopover in Paris until Monday afternoon, and wanting to take the opportunity to do something about these pictures by Jean Floret so that they could be included in a forthcoming monograph.