Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘Just old-fashioned. That’s all. He’s an old man.’

‘But still.’

‘And he never refers to it, and never really holds anything against me. And is generally the kindest and most loving of grandfathers.’

‘Fine,’ Argyll said. ‘Whatever you say.’

‘I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression.’

‘No.’

And they smiled distantly at each other, and she let him out of the gate.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said intently from the other side of the table, by way of continuing his charm offensive.

There really was no accounting for people, Flavia reflected. She could spend ages getting herself up in her finery and he would not notice — or at least not pass any comment. And now, dressed as she was in crumpled shirt and battered jeans, he was going on as though she was the Venus de Milo. It made a pleasant change; but she would still like to know what had brought it on. Something very fishy going on here.

‘Thank you,’ she said, even more surprised by his sudden devoted attentiveness. ‘And I appreciate the comment. But if you stare into my eyes much longer you’re going to get soup down your jacket.’

They were in a restaurant in the Rue du Faubourg St-Denis, called Chez Julien, one of Argyll’s favorites. Covered in art nouveau plasterwork and mirrors and hatstands. You could eat and be cultivated simultaneously, he pointed out. It saved a great deal of time if you were in a hurry. Food wasn’t bad either, although technically it was breakfast. Without even trying, Flavia had slept straight through until seven in the evening; then she had woken and complained loudly about being hungry. Argyll’s credit card had generously offered to take both of them out to dinner.

Argyll summarized first, talking about Rouxel and Rouxel’s granddaughter. He downplayed her charms, and instead concentrated on the factual material he’d garnered.

‘It was odd,’ he said musingly. ‘She was so insistent that I should understand that Rouxel was really such a doting grandfather. I wouldn’t have bothered. I mean, it was no business of mine.’

‘Family pride,’ Flavia said, as she gazed enraptured at the plate of escalope de foie gras that the unusually amiable waiter delivered. ‘No one likes those little cracks in the edifice to be shown to the public. You try to cover them over. Common enough, isn’t it? Think how embarrassed you get when we have a fight in a restaurant.’

‘That’s different.’

‘Not really. Are you sure we can afford this?’

‘The meal?’ he asked, dragging his mind off Jeanne Armand. ‘Of course we can’t. I’m relying on your expense account to race to the rescue at the last moment. Do you want to tell me what you’ve been doing as well?’

‘Naturally,’ she said after a long pause to allow a slice of foie gras to dissolve like butter on her tongue.

‘Who knows? If we glue our two stories together we might come up with some obvious conclusion. Wouldn’t that be nice? Then we could go home.’

The statement stemmed from his eternal optimism that good times were just around the corner. Even he, when Flavia had finished, was forced to concede that by joining the two together, all they now had was more information which still didn’t make much sense.

‘What do you reckon, then?’

‘I reckon, firstly, that I have to go and do the decent thing tomorrow. That is, go and see Janet. I really should not have gone out to Roissy to talk to Ellman without telling Janet first. Bad manners. He won’t mind, but I’m sure he’ll be a little upset if I don’t go and pay my compliments. Next, we should do a little work on Besson; he might know why Muller wanted that picture, or at least how he came to the conclusion that the picture was the one he wanted.’

‘Splendid. What about me?’

‘You can dig around with this picture. Find out how it got into Rouxel’s hands. And why Muller had it stolen.’

‘That’s easy. Wrong picture.’

‘So, you find the right one.’

‘Not so easy.’

‘No, but it will give your brain cells a bit of exercise. Is there any chance?’

‘Maybe. There was an old dealer’s label on the back of the frame. Rosier, in the Rue de Rivoli. There’s not much likelihood he’s still there, but I’ll see.’

‘Good. And I’ll talk to Bottando to see if any dribbles of information have come in from the Swiss or from Fabriano. I also want him to check out this Schmidt/Ellman a bit more closely. And finally—’

‘Whoa. I think that’s quite enough,’ Argyll said. ‘Your food will get cold. Eat up. Then we should have an early night.’

‘I slept all afternoon. I don’t feel in the slightest bit tired.’

‘Oh, good.’

No doubt about it. He was acting most peculiar these days.

However distinguished a purveyor of art the Rue de Rivoli might have been seventy years ago, it was so no longer. Apart from the excessively expensive galeries slipped in where once there had been one of the finest hotels in Europe, the nearest thing to a decent antique you can buy there nowadays is a luminous model of the Eiffel Tower. The broad Imperial thoroughfare has gone down in the world a little in the past century. Rosier Frères had vanished as well. Even on a sunny morning, the tawdry lines of foreign-exchange booths, postcard stands and souvenir shops are less than appealing. Thinking over what to do next, Argyll sipped his coffee — disgusting weak stuff they sold in France compared to the real Italian brew. Flavia had vanished on her errands, he had decided to start on the great picture hunt.

How do you do that? Eliminate the impossible, so the great man had said. Or, to translate that into more acceptable terms, start with the easy bits. Which, in this case, suggested finding out as much as possible about this picture.

There wasn’t much to go on here. Really famous pictures have pedigrees that can be traced back through the generations; with many, you can tell where they were at any moment during the past five hundred years. Frequently you can even say a picture was hanging on this wall, in this room, in this house, on this day, in this year. But that is the élite minority. Most pictures bumble about the world hopping from owner to owner and it is impossible to find out where they’ve been unless you are really lucky.

In the case of Socrates , all he had was the faded label on the back of the frame. The more he thought about it, the more he was certain it was his only real chance. It was impossible to say with any accuracy how old it was, but from the typeface he placed it somewhere in the inter-war period.

Phone book? he thought. A long shot, certainly, but think how pleasant if it worked. So he borrowed an old, dog-eared copy of the phone book and started hunting. And there it was. Family businesses are wonderful things. Rosier Frères still existed. Perhaps not at the same address, but a gallery of that name had an address in the Faubourg St-Honoré, with a little logo saying ‘Established 1882.’ Bingo. He looked at his map, decided it was an easy walk and set off.

A very long street, the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, about five kilometres long, with galleries stretched out all along it. He should have taken a cab, and he was hot and tired by the time he finally stood outside Rosier Frères, having previously nipped round the corner, straightened his tie, run his fingers through his hair and tried to adopt the air of a successful dealer calling on a colleague in the trade.

He rang the bell, heard the click of the electric lock opening and went in. There were no customers. Really up-market galleries don’t encourage them.

‘Good morning,’ he said to the woman who came forward to greet him with a formal, chilly smile. He handed her his card — he rarely got the chance to do that and generally when someone wanted one he’d left them at home — and asked if the owner was in. He wished to consult him about a picture he’d bought which once passed through their hands.