Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

Or later: ‘Another bit. Clomorton told the Duchess of Albemarle he was in love with a “dark-haired beauty”. That was a mistake, poor sod. He must have known she was the worst tattle-tale in London. Perceval says she wrote to Lady Arabella directly. That must be what she was talking about in that letter I read you in London. Think of the reception the poor man would have got. Luckily for him he dropped dead first.’

‘What are you reading this for? Does it have anything to do with Siena?’

‘No. I was just looking to see if there was any mention of Sam Paris, Raphael or whatever. A very arty man, Perceval, and a great observer of the London scene. Nothing happened without him noticing it and jotting it down in his diary. A Raphael on the market, or a scandal about one, would be in here somewhere. There isn’t, which makes me more convinced I’m right.’

‘Are you going to tell me? Or am I to be treated like the General?’

He took her hand and kissed it absent-mindedly, letting go when he realised what he’d done. ‘Silly. Of course not. After dinner you will hear all.’

They had ended up digesting their evening meal by walking blissfully around the city. Flavia pointed out to Argyll her favourite buildings and spots; they had wandered around the old ghetto, looking affectionately at the run-down buildings, Imperial fragments and tranquil, beautiful piazzas that suddenly appear as you turn unpromising-looking corners. Argyll gave an impromptu disquisition on the beauties of the Farnese Palace. Flavia wasn’t entirely persuaded, but liked his sense of conviction. She had responded by dredging through the memories of her university days and identifying all the large medallions on the Palazzo Spada a little down the road.

‘I can do that too,’ Argyll said. ‘Come with me.’ He grabbed her hand and led her to the other side of the Piazza Farnese, down the via Giulia and then left down a side street. He pointed to an emblem above one of the large wooden gates that shut prying eyes from the courtyard beyond. ‘There. Two pelicans intertwined, surmounted by a crown and the symbol of a castle. Whose is it?’

Flavia chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Don’t know. Whose?’

‘That’s the di Parma symbol. This was their Roman palace.’

She grinned. ‘So this is where it all started. I knew the palace was around here somewhere, but I never got around to looking. What’s in there now?’

‘Just apartments, I imagine. It looks very tatty. The point is, however, that Mantini lived there, which explains why he was brought in for this job in the first place.’ Argyll pointed to a door a few yards up on the other side of the street.

‘As for the picture,’ he went on, ‘the di Parmas didn’t have it, nor the Clomortons, nor the dealer Sam Paris. Mantini was the only man involved who was left. Lots of motive as he was always hard up. Or maybe love of the painting was more important and he didn’t want it to leave Italy and be bought by a clod like Clomorton. So he paints over the Raphael, makes a copy of the same picture which he gives to the dealer, and keeps the real thing himself.

‘He couldn’t uncover it either, because he lived almost next door to the di Parmas, who might have got upset. But there’d be no rush if he wanted the picture for itself, not the money it could bring. So it could sit there and wait until he retired back to his home town, or something.

‘But he never made it to retirement. He has a seizure and dies in 1727, at the age of fifty-two. Perfect health, just drops dead one afternoon in the street. No time, you see, for deathbed confessions or secret instructions about his picture. His daughter inherits his small fortune and remaining pictures. She returns to her father’s native paese , where she marries a silversmith.’

‘Siena.’

‘Quite right. And he, because silversmiths were highly thought of, gets on the town council and dies, wealthy and greatly respected, in 1782. And he leaves to the city a couple of pictures. One portrait of himself, naturally, and the other a memento of that great Sienese painter, his own father-in-law, the superlative Carlo Mantini.’

‘Very good. But how do you know it’s the right one?’

‘Because it must be. Process of elimination. It’s a ruin, which fits in with the evidence available, and it’s the only picture which could possibly have concealed the Raphael.’

This was the weak spot in an otherwise convincing argument, the area his supervisor would have pounced on, had he been there to listen. But he wasn’t, and Flavia said nothing, so he hurried on. ‘I did about a month’s work in a day and a half. Quite a lot of shortcuts, I admit. But if no one else has it, and they appear not to, it’s the only other possibility. I hope you’re proud of me.’

Flavia patted him on the back. ‘Well done. Now all we have to do is go there and see if you’re right. Come on. Let’s go home.’

Flavia and Argyll set out for Siena at eight sharp the next morning, Argyll in the passenger seat, Flavia driving her old but well-maintained Alfa Spider like a banshee. In a brief moment of feminine submissiveness she had suggested that Argyll might drive. In a long-standing tradition of English cowardice, he had declined. Nothing, he declared as they forced their way onto the main northern artery, would ever get him to drive in Rome. Not after the last time.

It was a wise decision. Flavia drove with knowledge, skill and determination; Argyll would have driven with his eyes shut. The maniacal early morning traffic died away to something more human fairly quickly, and they made rapid progress north.

It’s a long, five-hour voyage to Siena, even if you drive — as Flavia did — far too fast on the motorway. It’s also a very beautiful trip. The autostrada, one of the best in the country and one of the longest in Europe, starts outside Reggio di Calabria at the very tip of the south-western peninsula. It curls through the parched hills of the south to Naples, then turns up through the poor countryside of Calabria and Latium to Rome. Then it heads for Florence and swings east, through a series of giant tunnels and dizzying climbs, over the Apennines to Bologna. Here it splits, one arm reaching out to Venice, the other travelling on to Milan.

Even on the relatively small segment between Rome and Siena, it takes the traveller within easy reach of some of the most wonderful places in the world: Orvieto, Montefiascone, Pienza and Montepulciano; the Umbrian hill-towns of Assisi, Perugia, Todi, Gubbio. The stepped hills of vines and lowland pastures of goats and sheep mix perfectly with the rivers, the steep drops, and the dozens of often largely ignored medieval fortress-towns, perched on top of their protective hills as if the Medicis still reigned supreme.

It was wonderful. Argyll had travelled around Italy for years, had seen nearly all the major sights several times over, but never tired of seeing them all again. For a brief interlude, he forgot his woes, enjoyed the scenery and tried to pay no attention to his companion’s driving.

Five hours almost to the minute later, they swung off the motorway, paid the fee at the toll and headed down the hilly road through Rapolano to Siena, having spent their journey in a mood of cheerful contentment and buoyant optimism. Contentment on Argyll’s part, optimism on Flavia’s. Then Argyll said: ‘How are we going to go about this little expedition? After all, we can hardly wander into the palazzo, take the picture off the wall and attack it with a knife. Curators don’t like that. It upsets them.’

‘Don’t worry. I thought about it last night. We’ll just go and make sure it’s still there, then make an official visit tomorrow.’