Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

He gestured over to a desk piled high with files, filecards, used coffee cups and stacks of paper. ‘See that? I’ve been working like a demon all day.’

‘All day?’ she asked quietly.

‘Yup. Non-stop. Quite possessed I was. I’ve got it down to about twenty possibles. Assuming, that is, that it exists at all. But if I didn’t assume that, I’d lose heart. With a bit of luck I’ll be off your list of potential jail fodder within a week or so.’

‘All day?’ she repeated. ‘What about when I came round at seven?’

He paused. ‘Oh. I’d forgotten all about that. That’s what comes of concentrating. You were meant to come round, weren’t you?’

She nodded. ‘And I did. At seven. And you weren’t here.’

‘Yes I was. I’d just forgotten all about it. I had my Walkman on, so I suppose I didn’t hear the bell.’

‘Was anyone else here? Can anyone give you an alibi?’

Argyll looked flustered. ‘An alibi? For heaven’s sake! Of course not. I was here all on my own. I know it was careless of me. I’m sorry. But is it really such a big thing?’

‘Yes,’ she said. And explained why. The colour drained from his cheeks as she spoke.

‘So you think I slipped out, knifed him, came home and pretended I’d been here all the time, not hearing you because of the music?’

‘Fits the facts, doesn’t it?’

‘Rather well,’ he agreed unhappily. ‘Except, of course, that it’s not at all what I was doing. I was here.’

He rummaged around in Beckett’s drinks cupboard, pulled out a bottle of grappa and poured a healthy glassful. ‘I don’t suppose he’d object in the circumstances.’ He took a heavy suck on the glass, coughed slightly, then offered her a drink herself. She declined.

‘I suppose,’ he restarted with some hesitation, ferociously scratching the top of his head in a way that indicated profound misgivings inside, ‘I suppose that what I was planning to do next will make things worse.’

He stopped, and she gazed at him enquiringly. ‘I was about to tell you,’ he went on, ‘that to finish the search for this picture I would have to go to look at some things in London. I was thinking of going tomorrow.’

He looked at her hopefully. ‘Remarkable timing,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Especially considering that Byrnes headed off for England this evening as well.’

It was not the reassurance that Argyll had been looking for. Indeed, it made him even less comfortable. The drink rested on the floor, completely forgotten.

‘So it would look better if I stayed here?’

‘It would look better. But practically speaking, I suppose, it might be better if you went. As long as I go with you and you tell me exactly where you’ll be at every moment of the day. One more slip and I’ll pull you in. And I mean that. Depending on what turns up, I might do it anyway. Agreed?’

He nodded. ‘I suppose so. I’m grateful for your trust in me.’

‘Don’t be sarcastic. And I don’t trust you. Except, of course, that I find it difficult to believe that anyone could have forged a picture like that and act as dimwittedly as you have. At the moment the only thing you’ve got going for you is stupidity. You’re very lucky not to be in a cell already.’

So, sometimes you say the wrong thing. Flavia could, at times, be a little harsh in her conversational gambits, and the characteristic tended to show itself when she was tired or frustrated. This evening she was both of these, and worried as well. The combination eroded the natural kindness which generally masked her occasional tinge of verbal brutality.

Argyll, however, disregarded these extenuating circumstances and exploded.

‘I think we ought to get one thing clear here,’ he began coldly. ‘I never said that picture was a Raphael, I simply came out to Rome to check. I went by the rulebook, not making claims I couldn’t substantiate or prove. Whatever happened thereafter was nothing to do with me. So remember that. Secondly, it was me, not you, who first suggested it might be a fake. If it wasn’t for my research, which you sneer at so much, you’d be running around wringing your hands at the loss of a masterpiece. Thirdly, you don’t have any evidence against me at all. If you had, you’d have locked me up already. So don’t imply you’re doing me any favours.

‘And finally, at the moment, you need my help more than I need yours. If you think you can find that picture on your own, go ahead. But you can’t. I can, maybe. And I’m not going to help you if I’m going to be subjected to sneering little taunts from you all the time. Is that clear?’

On the whole, it was not a bad speech at all. Later on, lying in bed, thinking about it and making little improvements for the benefit of posterity, he was struck by his simple eloquence. Forceful, no-nonsense stuff, in fact. He was quite pleased with himself. Opportunities for righteous indignation come up only very infrequently, and he normally never thought of the appropriately devastating response until, on average, about forty-five minutes afterwards.

More satisfying still, it stopped the voluble Italian woman dead in her tracks. He was ordinarily very mild-mannered; his expressions of rage were most visibly expressed in a faint look of distress or a mumbled sentence of mild disapproval. Oratory was quite out of character and the suddenness of the speech, combined with the real feeling that apparently went into it, momentarily caught Flavia unawares. She stared at him in surprise, dismissed the temptation to fire back a full broadside, then apologised.

‘I’m sorry. It’s been a bad day. Truce? No more comments until you’re cleared?’

He stumped around the room, closed the curtains, shut a cupboard door or two while he worked off his indignation, then nodded. ‘Or arrested, I suppose,’ he added. ‘OK. A deal. When do we leave?’

‘There’s a plane at seven-thirty. I shall pick you up here at six-thirty.’

‘That early? How horrible.’

‘Get used to it,’ she said as she got ready to leave. ‘In Italian prisons they wake you up at five...Sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘Shouldn’t have said that.’

Not to be outworked by his assistant, Bottando was sitting down at his desk, the inevitable coffee before him, around the same time that Flavia and Argyll were boarding the plane for London. In the cold light of dawn, he was less than convinced that letting either of them go was a good idea.

But he’d allowed himself to be persuaded by her arguments. Which were, essentially, that as things stood they had no real evidence of anything at all; that if Argyll was guilty he had to be allowed to make some mistake, and if he was innocent he had to find that picture, or prove that it didn’t exist and the one in the museum had been genuine. Besides which, as she somewhat tactlessly pointed out, they’d made so many mistakes so far in this business, one more would hardly make any great difference.

The comment accented the still ferocious assaults in the newspapers that lay before him. They had discovered about Manzoni, and were painting lurid pictures about what they had now dubbed the ‘museum of murder’. Tommaso had been no friendlier when he’d told him of the latest developments. He’d been clearly upset about the restorer’s demise, no doubt concluding that, if this whole thing was a plot against him, then he might be next in line for a knife in the back.

Bottando had misjudged that man, it was clear. In the immediate aftermath of the party, the director had presented a humble, subdued, almost likeable side, though this was evidently an uncharacteristic reaction brought on by shock, because it wasn’t lasting. Tommaso was now getting very nervous, tense and short-tempered; not that such a condition stopped the politician in him operating at full power. He was manoeuvring with all the grace of a synchronised swimmer, rapidly and successfully shifting all blame on to the committee, Spello, and Bottando’s department. Already stories hinting something along those lines had appeared in one of the papers.