Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

‘What?’ he said hazily after a while.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Oh. Yes. Gosh. Super.’

‘What would you like?’ she continued patiently. It may well be that she was used to this sort of thing.

By the time that Argyll’s pastis had been ordered, he had totally lost control of the proceedings. While he had complacently anticipated an evening of gentle probing, careful pumping and subtle interrogation on his part, instead he was the one who was probed, pumped and interrogated. And loved every minute of it.

Unusually for someone who much preferred to listen to others, he told her about life in Rome, and the difficulties of selling pictures, and his recent tangle with this painting.

‘Let me see the picture,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’

‘Ah. Didn’t have time to go and get it,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

She looked displeased with that, and being who she was, Argyll would have crawled on his hands and knees all the way to the hotel and back if it would have made her forgive him. A small, very small part of him was still conscious enough to be profoundly grateful that Flavia was several hundred miles away. He could almost visualize the look of lofty disdain on her face.

‘Could you describe it, then?’

He obliged.

‘That’s the one. It disappeared about three weeks ago.’

‘Why didn’t Monsieur Rouxel report it to the police?’

‘He did, initially. But then decided not to pursue the matter. It wasn’t insured, there was no hope of getting it back and there seemed little point in wasting everybody’s time. He decided to treat it as the cost of not locking his house up properly and forgot about it.’

‘Still—’

‘And now you’ve not only recovered it, you’ve found out whose it is and you’ve brought it back. Monsieur Rouxel will be so grateful...’

She smiled at him in the sort of fashion that melts pig-iron. He looked down his nose modestly, and felt a bit like St George after he has successfully sliced up a dragon or two.

‘That is, if you’re willing to let him have it back.’

‘Of course. Why not?’

‘You might insist on some form of remuneration for your time and effort.’

Well, he might. But in the interests of chivalry he was prepared to waive the matter.

‘So,’ she went on as he adopted the pose of someone with so much money that any reward would be a trivial matter, ‘tell me how you got hold of this painting.’

In great detail, he did. About Besson and Delorme and men with scars and train stations and Muller and Ellman and the police and libraries and museum curators. Nothing left out. She was fascinated, staring at him with wide-eyed attention all through the discourse.

‘So. Who did it? Who was responsible?’ she asked when he finished. ‘Who is on top of the police list at the moment?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ he answered. ‘I’m hardly privy to their innermost thoughts. But from what I can gather no one is, really. There’s this man with the scar, of course. But as no one has a clue who he is, it seems unlikely they will catch him. Unless they’ve made progress in my absence, they don’t even know why Muller wanted the picture so badly. I mean, it belonged to his father, but so did many other things. And that’s no reason to steal it anyway. Do you have any idea?’

‘None,’ she said, shaking her head to give the word extra emphasis. ‘I mean, I remember the picture quite well now. It’s not exactly world-class, is it?’

‘No. But how long has Monsieur Rouxel had it?’

‘He got it when he was young. He said so, once. But where it came from I don’t know.’

They refilled their drinks and dropped the subject; there seemed little else to say on the matter really. Instead she turned her attention to Argyll. He retold all his little stories about the art business, his complete run of whimsy, jokes and scandal, and she looked properly shocked, impressed and amused in all the right places. Such eyes she had. Occasionally she would laugh outright, resting her hand on his arm in appreciation at well-delivered anecdotes. He told her about life in Rome, about clients, about selling pictures and buying them, about fakes and forgeries and smuggling.

The only thing about his life he didn’t mention all evening was Flavia.

‘And what about you?’ he said, returning to the really important question. ‘How long have you worked for Monsieur Rouxel?’

‘Several years. He’s my grandfather, you know.’

‘Oh, I see,’ he said.

‘I organize his life for him, and help with the running of some of the small companies he still owns.’

‘I thought he was a big-business type. Or a lawyer. Or a politician. Or something.’

‘All of the above. So he was. But since he retired he took on a couple of smaller operations. Stock-broking, mainly. More to keep himself active than anything else. That was going to be my speciality as well.’

‘Was?’

‘I began. Then Grandfather asked me to help him sort out his papers. You can imagine how many someone like him has accumulated over the years. Judicial papers, and business papers and political ones. And he didn’t want a stranger going through them. It was just meant to be for a short while, when he was ill and overburdened, but I’m still there. I finished organizing his archives years ago but he can’t do without me. I used to suggest he got someone more permanent, but he says always that nobody could ever be as efficient as me. Or as used to his ways.’

‘Do you like that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said quickly. ‘Of course. He’s such a wonderful man. And he needs me. I’m his only family. His wife died young. Such a tragedy; it had been a brilliant match, and he’d loved her for years before they married. And my own mother died having me. So there’s no one else. And someone has to stop him over-extending himself. He can never say no. They keep on asking him to serve on committees and he always says yes. Except when I can intercept the mail and say no first.’

‘You do that?’

‘Privileges of a secretary,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘Yes. I open all his mail, after all. But sometimes they get through. There’s this international financial committee he’s on at the moment. Constant journeys and meetings. It exhausts him, and serves no purpose. But will he give it up and stop wasting his time? Oh no. He’s so kind and so helpful he’d never have a minute to himself if I didn’t stop people wasting his time.’

For the first time that evening, Argyll had a rival. It wasn’t just that Jeanne liked or respected her grandfather, she seemed to come close to hero-worship. Perhaps Rouxel deserved it. For her he was not only a perfect employer, he was also one of the greatest men alive. Overdoing it a bit, though, wasn’t she? Trying so hard to convince him. And what did she get in return? he wondered.

‘He was given the Croix de Guerre,’ Argyll said.

She smiled and shot him a little glance. ‘You’ve been doing your homework, I see. Yes. He was. For his work in the Resistance. He never talks about it, but I gather he was very nearly killed several times, and he dealt with all the internal squabbling. Somehow or other he emerged with his general faith in human nature intact. I don’t know how he did it really.’

‘You have a great admiration for him,’ he commented. ‘What happened to his political career?’

‘Some people’s failures are greater than their achievements. He was honest. Too honest. He wanted to clear out some of the time-servers and incompetents in the ministry. Not surprisingly, they fought back. He played clean, they played dirty, he lost. Simple as that. He learnt his lesson.’

‘Do you like him as well as admire him?’