Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

Argyll positively squirmed, as much as any man can when sandwiched between a lavatory seat and a semi-official member of the Italian police. He shouldn’t have said it. His burst of wounded indignation had been very impressively delivered, and now he’d gone and spoiled the effect.

‘Besides which,’ he went on reluctantly, ‘I’m not entirely convinced I’ve got the right picture. I think I have,’ he hurried on before she could say anything, ‘but I did say I had to cut a few corners.’

‘God preserve me,’ Flavia said quietly, to no one in particular. ‘We’re up here, possibly on a fool’s errand. Bottando is fast asleep in Rome and knows nothing about it. You appear to have successfully lured a murderer here without bothering to get any protection at all either for us or the picture. Well done. A fine achievement.’

‘I’ll protect you,’ Argyll said gallantly, hoping to make some form of amends.

‘Gee. Thanks, mister. That makes me feel a lot better.’ She would have continued in this vein, but felt it hardly worth wasting her breath.

Argyll had lapsed into a sullen, morose silence and ate his way steadily through the contents of Flavia’s handbag. She had stocked it with enough food to withstand a siege. He desperately craved a cigarette.

Flavia had also lost her conversational flair. Clearly little could be done to repair their once promising relationship until that picture had been looked at. Then, perhaps, all would be forgotten and forgiven. He still thought it was a good plan, and was a little hurt that she’d reacted so badly. Maybe she was jealous of him for thinking it up?

When she finally decided that it was safe and time to go, it took about ten minutes to restore life to his leg. When he stood up for the first time, it collapsed under him and he fell, knocking over a large bucket with a toilet brush in it. It rattled over the floor, and the noise echoed around the room. They watched as it rolled slowly to a halt in the corner. ‘Be quiet, for God’s sake,’ Flavia yelled in fright.

‘You’re making as much noise as I am. At least I’m not shouting my head off,’ he hissed back.

‘I don’t want us to get caught now. It would be very embarrassing.’

He smiled in a half-way attempt to be conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not used to this sort of escapade. It’s not included in the introductory course for art history graduates.’

She glared at him, still not ready to forgive. ‘Just keep quiet, all right? Now, let’s get going.’

She poked her head into the corridor, then disappeared through the door, gesturing for him to follow. They walked down to the main saloon again, and tiptoed, quietly and cautiously, over to the door that led to the staircase. It opened. No alarms. That at least was one worrying part over.

Once on the top floor, she flicked on a small torch, another purchase from the shop. ‘Now tell me I don’t think of everything,’ she murmured to him as they walked. She went lightly and without a sound. Argyll, wearing his usual heavy, metal-tipped brogues, clattered after, despite all attempts to keep quiet. Had she mentioned she was proposing amateur cat burglary, he would have dressed appropriately.

The room was as he had left it six hours earlier. Flavia went over, quietly closed the heavy wooden shutters over the windows, and flipped the metal fastener to keep them secure. Then she closed the door, and pushed down the light switch.

‘There. I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to see what we’re doing for a bit. No one will be along here for at least an hour. How long will this take you?’

‘Not long at all,’ he replied as they gently took the picture off the hook that kept it on the wall and blew off the thin coat of dust all over it. ‘I’ll have to be careful, but no more than five minutes, I reckon.’

He had taken a book on the restoration and cleaning of pictures out of the library and had read the subject up on the plane flight. In principle it was simple. You just needed some form of solvent and a cloth. Then you brushed away until the right amount of dirt or paint was removed.

He pulled the tools he had bought in the art supply shop in London out of his pocket. A very small but very sharp knife, a large bundle of cotton wool and a small aerosol. ‘Combination of acid and alcohol. The man in the shop said it’s the best thing you can buy.’ He grinned at her. ‘I think of everything, you see.’ No response.

As is often the case, practice turned out to be more complex than principle suggested. Argyll wanted to be careful not to do too much damage to the painting; after all, he was no restorer and had only the vaguest idea of what he was doing. So he concentrated on a very small amount of canvas in the bottom-left corner. But this meant he could only spray a small squirt from the aerosol at any time, in case it spread out too far.

So he settled down to squirt and rub, squirt and rub, only removing a tiny amount of dirt, varnish and paint at a time. It was hard work that required a lot of concentration. Every time he swabbed the cotton wool over the canvas, he hoped to see the tell-tale signs that indicated a masterpiece underneath.

‘How’s it going? You’ve been at it for nearly twenty minutes now.’ She spoke quietly but urgently, leaning against a table a few feet away to give him light. She rubbed her arms. ‘It’s freezing in here.’

He rubbed for another five minutes, the pile of dirty cotton-wool balls getting ever bigger. Then, as he gently slid a new ball across the paintwork, he stopped, and stared intently, scarcely believing his eyes.

‘What is it? Have you found it?’ She spoke excitedly, leaning forward for a better view.

‘Paint,’ he said. ‘Green paint underneath...Flavia, put that light back on. What are you doing?’

Flavia didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. The room was plunged into darkness. If both of them hadn’t been concentrating so hard on the picture, they might have noticed the movement of the door opening. But they didn’t, and the first time Flavia realised something was wrong was when she was hit on the side of the head with a thick length of wood. She fell on the floor, silent, with blood flowing swiftly from a broad cut in her scalp.

Argyll looked up at the sound, saw her collapse, and saw a shadowy figure advancing towards him. ‘Oh my God...’ he began, but had no time to finish the remark. He had never been kicked in the stomach before, certainly not that hard, and had never imagined that anything could hurt so much.

Badly winded, he doubled up in agony, clutching at his stomach as though that might lessen the torment. He was pushed away from the picture and fell heavily on the floor. He liked, later, to think that he was moaning softly. In truth, his groans were probably a good deal louder. He didn’t notice; his stomach fully occupied his consciousness, but he did reach out and touch Flavia, afraid of what he might discover.

‘Don’t you dare die on me. Keep going or I’ll kill you,’ he whispered in her ear. He felt for her pulse, and couldn’t find it. But he’d never been able to find his own either. He reached for her head and brushed her hair lightly, and felt the soft breath coming from her mouth and nose. She was still alive. But she wouldn’t be for long unless he got his act together here. Nor would he, for that matter. ‘Looks like neither of us thought of everything,’ he said to her sadly.

Try as he might, he couldn’t move. The pain was too intense. All he could do was watch as the dark outline of the man who had given him such misery took a small, and evidently very sharp, knife and cut the painting, swiftly and without fuss, out of the back of the frame. At least, he assumed that was what was going on; all he could see was the occasional glint of metal. He didn’t like the look of that knife, which was evidently a versatile instrument which could be put to many uses. He wheezed on the floor as the man rolled up the canvas, put it in a cardboard tube, and sealed it. Very methodical, in no rush at all.