by Iain Pears
‘Nothing. I was just prattling. What were you thinking about?’
‘Janet, mainly. I’m very upset. He was Bottando’s closest colleague. Still, it’s not my fault. What were you up to?’
‘Me?’ he said lightly. ‘Just making a major advance in this business, that’s all. Just catching Rouxel in an enormous lie. Nothing serious really, I suppose …’
She gave him the sort of look his complacency merited.
‘I read through old newspapers, back in 1945 and 1946. It took hours.’
‘About Hartung?’
‘Yup. His return, arrest, and suicide. It caused quite a stink, the whole business, even if it’s mainly forgotten now. Fascinating stuff; I was quite engrossed when I finally latched on to it. But the main thing is that it made clear something we already knew.’
‘And that is?’ she asked patiently.
‘And that is Rouxel worked for some war-crimes commission early in his career.’
‘I know. He told you that.’
‘Not only that, he had the job of assembling evidence against people.’
‘Including Hartung?’
‘Above all Hartung. He was the last person to see the man alive. The papers said so. He interviewed him in his cell one evening and Hartung then hanged himself during the night. And it had slipped his memory. “I knew of the case,” he said. Seems to me he knew a damn sight more than that.’
‘Maybe he just doesn’t like talking about it.’
‘Why not?’ he went on insistently. ‘He didn’t do anything wrong. On the right side all the time. What could he have to hide?’
She pushed away her plate, suddenly feeling exhausted. There’d been too much crammed into too short a time. Now that they were on their way to what they hoped was safety, or at least a respite, the effects were sweeping over her. She shook her head once more when Argyll asked if she wanted coffee, and said she’d prefer to go back to their seats and sleep.
‘No point asking me. I want a few hours not thinking about this,’ she said as they made their way back. ‘Perhaps we’ll find the answer in Gloucestershire.’
15
She slept like a lamb all the way, content to half-rouse herself when Argyll nudged her at Calais, and to follow in his wake as he steered her around the station to get on the boat, then off it on the other side. The customs and immigration people at both ends were admirably lax, staring blank-eyed and uninterestedly as the troop of weary travellers filed past them, scarcely even bothering to look at their passports, let alone examine them with any care. Either the people chasing them in Paris weren’t police, or they hadn’t worked out where they might be going, or official liaison channels were silted up again.
‘Sleep well?’ he asked gently at six o’clock the next morning as he prodded her awake.
She prised open one eye and cautiously looked around her, trying to remember where she was.
‘Well, yes. But not for long enough. What’s the time?’
‘Far too early. But we’ll be at Victoria in twenty minutes, or thereabouts. We have to decide what to do next.’
‘This is your country. What do you recommend?’
‘We need transport and we need money. At the moment I also need a friendly face and a bit of reassurance.’
Flavia looked disapproving. ‘You don’t want to go and visit your mum, do you?’
‘Eh? No. I thought we might drop in on Byrnes. He might be good for a loan. I’m not having you wandering about London acting like something out of Oliver Twist until we have enough.’
‘Very well. I hardly think he’ll be in his gallery waiting for customers at six o’clock in the morning, but we can go and see if you like.’
‘I doubt if he’ll be in the gallery at all. He’s not a shopkeeper, you know. I think we should blow our final cash on a taxi and go to his house. If I can remember where it is.’
Changing their remaining crumpled notes into sterling was a bit of a difficulty, of course: Victoria Station only has some thirty thousand foreigners passing through every day and sees no reason why it should fuss unduly about helping them to get money. Still, the task was done after a while and Argyll led the way to the taxi stand.
Fortunately, considering the time of day, they did not get one of those cheerful cabbies that guidebooks talk about so much. A rather taciturn man, in fact, who said not a word to them all the way along Park Lane, down the Bayswater Road, past Notting Hill and into the white-stuccoed elegance of Holland Park.
‘Art dealing seems to be a more lucrative business in London than it is in Rome,’ Flavia observed as they got out at what Argyll vaguely remembered as Byrnes’s house. ‘His garden shed is bigger than our apartment.’
‘All the more reason to get a new apartment.’
‘Not now, Jonathan.’
‘I know. I’ve often wondered how he does it. Maybe he’s better at art dealing than I am.’
‘Perish the thought.’
One of the advantages of being a highly successful, well-established dealer approaching those sunset years when most of the serious work can be safely left to subordinates is that you no longer have to rise at dawn to get on with the business of making money. As other people are downing rapid cups of coffee, you are still safely dozing in bed. As they are rushing off to the tube station, you are sitting down at the kitchen table for a leisurely breakfast. As they are frenziedly getting into their work, you are contemplating the letters page of the newspaper.
And when bedraggled fugitives ring your doorbell at 6:45 in the morning you are, normally, sound asleep and not at all happy when you are awakened.
Nor, for that matter, is your wife, who gave the new arrivals a very frosty reception when, after Flavia had leant on the doorbell for several minutes, she finally opened up. First impressions were of vagabonds or worse: while both Argyll and Flavia thought of themselves as being moderately presentable with honest, open faces, the sort you trust instantly, Lady Byrnes saw two very scruffy, haggard people in need of a damned good wash. What was more, there was a distinctly furtive look about both of them; and the woman, who might have been attractive had she combed her hair and changed her clothes, had that unfocused, hazy look that Lady Byrnes, like all right-thinking folk who lament declining social standards, instantly associated with drugs or worse. Whoever they were, they looked the sort who were going to ask for money. Here, of course, she was quite correct.
‘Hello,’ Argyll said in a tone which suggested he was expected for tea. ‘You must be Lady Byrnes.’
Drawing her dressing-gown more closely around her for protection against sudden attack, she cautiously admitted this was the case.
‘We’ve never met,’ said Argyll, stating the obvious. ‘I used to work for your husband until about a year ago.’
‘Really?’ she said coolly. As far as she was concerned, even had he been her husband’s fairy godmother that was no excuse for turning up at such an hour.
‘Is he in?’
‘Of course he’s in. Where do you expect him to be at this time of day?’
‘It is a bit early, I know,’ Argyll persisted. ‘And I know he likes his sleep, but we would like to see him. This, by the way, is Flavia di Stefano of the Rome art police. She nearly arrested your husband once.’
Why he thought this piece of information would convert a frosty reception into a warm embrace was unclear, but having delivered the partial anecdote, he stood back like someone waiting to be welcomed into the bosom of the Byrnes household. And Elizabeth Byrnes, well-brought-up lady that she was, who had always done what was expected, stood back and said:
‘You’d better wait inside while I wake Edward, then.’
All was serenity. They had been ushered into a small sitting room with velvet curtains, chintz sofas and loudly ticking clocks. The weak morning sun shone through the French windows, the paintings on the walls and the statues on their plinths looked well established and secure. The air was full of the scent of flowers and pot-pourri. It all
seemed awfully safe, an entire universe away from the past couple of days.
‘Dear God. Just look at you two,’ came a quiet, cultivated but somewhat sardonic voice from the door. Sir Edward Byrnes, swathed in his silk dressing-gown, yawned mightily, blinked several times and looked puzzled.
‘Hello,’ Argyll replied, more cheerfully than he felt. ‘I bet you didn’t expect to see us here.’
‘Indeed not. But I’m sure you have an entertaining explanation. Could you drink some coffee?’
That was the good thing about Byrnes. Imperturbable. In the years Argyll had known him, he’d never seen him bat an eyelid at anything. Not even a vague tremor round the eyebrows. They followed as he slid into the kitchen then watched him fuss away. Here his weak spot emerged: whatever his eminence and however sophisticated his connoisseurship, culinary matters were not his strong point. After he had puzzled for a few moments about how to switch on the coffee-pot, fretted about where his wife might keep the milk – Argyll suggested the fridge – and asked whether icing sugar would do, Flavia took control. She hated such incompetence and ordinarily would have left him to get on with it, but she was feeling desperate. She liked sleep, and became a touch short-tempered when deprived of a reasonable supply. The sight of a tubby art dealer, whether or not swathed in silk, displaying his inadequacies for all to see could well have made her brusque. And considering that they wanted to touch him for some money, that would not have been such a good idea.
‘Oh, splendid,’ said Byrnes, lost in admiration over the way she poured the coffee into the machine.
‘Just a question of practice,’ she said sharply.
‘We, ah, have a favour to ask you,’ Argyll put in rapidly. ‘We seem to be in a bit of a pickle. You know how it is.’
Byrnes didn’t. In his entire life he had never been engaged in anything remotely exciting, except for that brief moment when Flavia had thought of arresting him. That, of course, had been Argyll’s fault as well. On the other hand, he loved listening to other people’s stories of the adventurous life, once he was awake.
‘Do tell me.’
It was Argyll’s language, so he summarized the state of play to date, leaving out little details like Flavia’s picking people’s pockets. You can never tell when people are going to go all moralistic on you.
‘How dreadfully complicated,’ Byrnes said when the tale was finished. ‘Someone seems awfully keen to head you off at the pass, so to speak. I wonder why? Are you sure it has something to do with this picture?’
Argyll shrugged. ‘I suppose it does. I mean, until I came into contact with it, my life was very routine and straightforward. Nothing untoward at all, except the usual business of paying the bills.’
‘Business bad, is it?’
‘Very.’
‘Do you want a job?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We can talk about it later, if you like. One thing at a time. Tell me, what would happen if you went back home and forgot all about this?’
‘Nothing at all. But Flavia here is in one of her stubborn moods.’
‘I’ve heard of Rouxel,’ Byrnes said meditatively. ‘Wasn’t he awarded –’
‘Yes,’ said Flavia wearily. ‘That’s him.’
‘And you’ve established that he wasn’t telling the entire truth.’
‘Yes. Of course, there’s no reason why he should. He wasn’t under oath.’
‘And if possession of this picture leads to a nasty demise, there’s every reason why he might think that a small falsehood would be excusable,’ Byrnes went on. ‘After all, if my wife took Argyll here for a miscreant, isn’t it likely that Rouxel might think the same? If I had a painting stolen, and all of a sudden some total stranger turned up asking if I wanted it back, my first reaction would be to wonder whether he’d stolen it himself. And if he then came out with some story about murders, I might wonder whether he was delivering some oblique threat.’
Argyll was not impressed by this. ‘And if I’d wanted to kill him, I could have done it then and there.’
‘So he doesn’t know what you’re after. He’s confused, and perhaps a little alarmed. Somebody is behaving threateningly, it seems to be something to do with him and his picture, so the best course is to deny it. After that –’
‘After that any sane and sensible person calls the police,’ Flavia said. ‘Which he didn’t do.’
‘But you do get a visit from this man with the scar, and you tell me he may be a policeman after all. Or is it a murderer he’s meant to be? I assume he can’t be both.’
‘We don’t know,’ said Argyll miserably. ‘But there was this man Besson, you see, who was arrested, and a couple of days later this man turns up at Delorme’s gallery in the Rue Bonaparte. That sort of indicates –’
‘That he was a policeman after all,’ Flavia said reluctantly. ‘But.’
‘But what?’
‘But he was in Italy without asking permission; Janet denied all knowledge of him …’
‘Different branch?’ Byrnes suggested.
‘When he approached Argyll at the Gare de Lyon he didn’t try to arrest him, which would have been the obvious thing to do. If he is a policeman, he’s acting in a very odd way.’
‘No need to get heated with me,’ Byrnes said. ‘It was only a suggestion.’
‘Yes. I’ll bear it in mind. Meanwhile …’
‘Meanwhile you’d better tell me to what I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit. Nice as it is to discuss such exciting matters with you.’
‘I was hoping to ask you a favour,’ Argyll said.
‘Obviously.’
‘We’re a bit short of money. A loan, you understand, to be replaced when Flavia can fill in an expenses form.’
Byrnes nodded.
‘And a car. I was going to rent one, but neither of us brought our driving licences.’ He smiled wanly.
‘Oh, very well. But on one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a clean car. Before you get into it, you have a bath, go and buy some fresh clothes. Then you eat and rest. Otherwise, you can’t have it.’
They agreed to this. Byrnes bustled off in search of keys and cash, and the pair of them sat and finished off their coffee.
‘What an obliging man,’ she remarked, after Byrnes had returned and also agreed to phone Bottando and tell him where they were.
‘Isn’t he. He may look like a complacent, pompous old connoisseur, but he’s got a heart of gold really.’
He also, unfortunately, had a Bentley, a vast, shiny thing which he showed them as they went out with some of the Byrnes fortune clutched in their hands to buy some clean clothes. It made Argyll decidedly nervous. A scratched door would probably cost more to repair than his annual earnings. How about a Mini? A Fiat Uno? A Volkswagen? he suggested. Something a bit less ostentatious? More in keeping with Argyll’s modest position in the social hierarchy?
‘It’s all there is, I’m afraid,’ Byrnes said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll grow into it. It’s an awfully useful runabout.’
Some people, Argyll thought as he backed nervously out into the street a few hours later, just don’t live in the real world.
‘What is this place we’re going to, anyway?’ Flavia asked once Argyll was calm enough to resume conversation.
‘Upper Slaughter? Just a cute little Cotswold village.’
He translated into Italian. ‘How appropriate,’ she said. ‘Is it big?’
‘Tiny. I just hope there’ll be a pub or restaurant near by. Maybe in the next village. We can stop there first. Get the lie of the land.’
‘What’s the next village?’
‘Lower Slaughter, of course.’
‘Silly me. How far is it?’
‘About eighty miles. A hundred and twenty kilometres. About five days, at the rate we’re going.’
But eventually the jam eased a little, and Argyll’s conversational powers ebbed. It was a long time since he’
d driven in his own country, and it frightened the life out of him. The expense of making a mistake with Byrnes’s car made him even more nervous. The fact of being on what he now regarded as the wrong side of the road, combined with a wildly different national style of driving, caused him to grip the steering-wheel with white-knuckled hands, grit his teeth and exert all his mental faculties to resist a Roman-style flourish in his conduct that would undoubtedly have caused a major pile-up. By the time they left the motorway at Oxford he was sweating less obviously and as they drove along the road west – still in heavy traffic, but at a more genteel pace – he almost began to enjoy himself. Not at all like Italy, he thought, but with a rolling charm all of its own. Tranquil and safe. Apart from these damned cars all over the place.
But even these last remaining commuters were left behind eventually as they turned off to head north, Flavia navigating as best she could, Argyll beginning to remember bits and pieces of scenery from his youth.
‘Six miles and we’re there. All we have to do is find a pub.’
Even that proved surprisingly easy. There is nothing like a little money – especially someone else’s – to bring out the best in a quiet part of the English countryside; the next village along had a good but enormously expensive hotel; the sort of thing that Argyll’s own income would not have managed. But as Flavia had a penchant for comfort and they were both tired, it did quite nicely. It even had a restaurant where the food was edible and a bar which Flavia, a sucker for local colour, immediately visited while Argyll fretted about parking Byrnes’s car.
As it was the sort of thing she thought she ought to do in English pubs, she perched herself on a stool by the counter, surveyed the scene with approval, ordered a pint in her best English, and beamed at the taciturn man who served her.
‘On ’oliday, are yer, miss?’ he asked, for want of anything better to do rather than because he felt like conversation. The tourist season was nearly over. Rotten year this year, anyway.
That was correct, she said. They were driving around, just visiting places. Yes, she thought it was very beautiful.
Thus satisfied, the barman became positively loquacious.
