Iain Pears - The Raphael Affair

‘And we could have protected you, if you hadn’t pulled that silly stunt of hiding in the toilets. Novel, but ridiculous. We were convinced you’d come out of the museum and we’d lost you. General panic. We scattered our forces and scoured the streets. And all the restaurants, of course. Nothing. I was convinced you were lying with your throats cut in some dark alley. The worry nearly set off my ulcer again.

‘We found you, but only when Ferraro dropped off the tower. He landed a few feet away from a policeman we had watching the Campo for suspicious behaviour — he thought this qualified, and called me.

‘No one had noticed him knock on the back door where the night porter hangs out, cosh the poor man and go in. That was because we were so busy wondering where you were. So that’s the tale. Ferraro happily out of the way for ever, Tommaso under lock and key.’

‘What happens now?’ asked Argyll. ‘What’s he been charged with?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t work like that at all. Preventative incarceration first. That’s to stop him hot-footing it to Argentina like all the other mobsters. He’ll be locked up for, oh, about eighteen months while the prosecutor assembles the case. Then he’ll be given a fair trial and found guilty. Lord only knows why it takes that long. It’ll be a lovely trial.’

Argyll stuck his hand up, tentatively, like a schoolboy wanting to go to the toilet, but had no chance to speak. Flavia got there first.

‘I still don’t really see why he bothered. After all, he was well off, had a wonderful job, highly envied and admired. Why throw a stunt like this?’

‘Ah, well, that was what put me on to him in the first place. For the last six months or so everyone has been telling me how rich the man was. But it occurred to me, when I actually thought about it, that I’d never heard of this legendary wealth before. And I didn’t think Tommaso was the sort of person to keep a fact like that to himself.

‘So I spent some time looking through the dossiers and my old cases. A very useful exercise. And discovered that, as is often the case, he was christened with his mother’s maiden name: Marco. The family was involved in a financial scandal I helped crack in my youth; it went bankrupt as a result. The young Tommaso was plunged suddenly from great wealth into abject poverty, which may have created a sense of greed and desire for revenge. He had no money at all. Not, at least, until he got his hands on the proceeds of this operation. Only then did tales of his wealth begin to circulate.’

Byrnes stirred himself in his armchair by the fireplace, and spoke for the first time. ‘There is also my role in the affair,’ he began. ‘I imagine he would have gone ahead anyway, but luring me into the net made the triumph complete. He knew I would be the prime suspect.

‘I told you of the Correggio affair. I took the painting back, which I gather made me more suspect. But I took it back when I needn’t have because I was convinced it was genuine. I did research, proved it, and eventually sold it for more than Tommaso had paid. He resigned from Treviso for no reason at all aside from the criticism and doubts of a few connoisseurs.

‘That rankled, and I can’t say I blame him. He also resented me because I’d proved him wrong twice. When this opportunity came up, he took it. This time, he wanted to ridicule all those colleagues who had scorned him. The longer the fraud went on, the more articles and books would be written, and the more scholars would commit themselves. And eventually, possibly in his will so he wouldn’t have to give any money back, he would reveal all and make a laughing stock of them.

‘But this new evidence turns up, largely because Argyll sowed his first seeds of doubt, Morneau dies unexpectedly, and Ferraro takes the matter out of his hands. The whole thing stopped being an ingenious and well-conceived joke and turned nasty. A great pity. In some ways I rather wish he had got away with it. On the other hand, we do at least now have a real Raphael.’

Argyll shook his head. ‘Ah, well, now then. I’m afraid not. I’ve been trying to tell you ever since we got here. I think I goofed again...’

There was a pause, followed by a quiet groan from the others in the room as it dawned on them what he had said. Only Flavia, who’d been waiting for this all afternoon, looked relieved that he’d finally got around to it.

‘Again?’ Bottando raised his eyebrows. ‘A second time? Another mistake? But Flavia said you’d found it. You told her there was a painting underneath.’

Argyll smiled a little shamefacedly. ‘“Painting”, not “a painting”. There was. Green. Light-green paint. That’s what I told her. But I was just about to explain when she was bopped on the head that it was a bad sign, not a good one. All painters use a dead colour to prepare the canvas in some way. Generally it’s a sort of off-white. But Mantini used light green. That’s what I was trying to say. It was a genuine Mantini from top to bottom. There was nothing underneath at all. I got the wrong picture.’

There was a brief moment while everyone in the room looked at him sadly. Argyll felt like an insect.

‘This really is very careless of you,’ Bottando said heavily. ‘I went in to Tommaso because I thought we had clear and absolute proof at last that the first painting was a fake. Think what would have happened if he had sat there and denied it all. We couldn’t have touched him. You have now misidentified two Raphaels in the space of a year. Probably a record.’

‘I know,’ Argyll said sadly. ‘And I’m dreadfully sorry about it. All I can say is that it should have been the right one, they both should, in fact. I really can’t understand it. I must have missed something. Third time lucky, d’you think?’

‘No. Absolutely not. Forget it. Even if you found the right one no one would believe you any more. You just concentrate on Mantini, that can’t cause any turmoil. And do be a bit more reticent about this sort of thing in future.’

In the months afterwards, Argyll followed the General’s advice and made steady progress in the task of restoring Carlo Mantini to his proper place in the artistic pantheon. His sudden and extraordinary dedication was not entirely due to a sense of scholarship, however. Byrnes had forgiven Argyll for entertaining the idea that he was a murderer, but he was quietly putting on the pressure for something to show for the fellowship. He also made a vague offer of a job in his Rome gallery once the dissertation was finished.

With the possibility of permanent residence in Italy to motivate him, Argyll slaved away at the Hertziana, the German art library at the top of the Spanish Steps. Surrounded by the books he needed, and with a major incentive to work, he had little excuse not to. Flavia also bullied him mercilessly, while always reminding him that it was for his own good. By and large he agreed, and it caused no rupture in the close and companionable friendship that was slowly growing up between them, despite their differences in character.

His work was not especially exciting, but it was none too demanding either. He would put in a few hours in the morning, have a leisurely lunch at the Press Club, then return home to sit, hammering away at his typewriter. It all came out slowly and painfully, and he spent many an hour staring at the wall, searching for inspiration or, failing that, at least the will-power to get on with it. He fixed a photograph of the fake Raphael opposite where he sat: no matter what its origins, he still thought it a wonderful picture. Next to it he pinned the old copy Morneau had used as a base. Beauty and the beast. It reminded him of the whole business. Looking back, it all seemed like quite a good time.

Slowly, he made progress, but got bogged down in the central chapter — which dealt with the fraud — as he tried to find something new to say. And he’d agreed to give a paper at an art history conference in January — that would slow things down as well, especially as he could think of nothing to talk about. It would also require a trip to England at the worst possible time of year, but there was no way he could get out of it now.