by Iain Pears
‘Cavaliere Marco di Tommaso, I have here a warrant to arrest you on charges of conspiracy to defraud the state, conspiracy to commit forgery, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and non-declaration of income to the appropriate fiscal authorities.’
15
They sat in Bottando’s office, drinking coffee. Byrnes and Spello had occupied the only comfortable chairs, Flavia and Argyll perched on two tubular-metal affairs brought in for the occasion. Bottando sat at his desk, a look of radiant self-satisfaction about him, Byrnes and Spello had a neutral look on their faces, while Argyll and Flavia brought up the rear with an air of scarcely dissipated anxiety, slowly mingling with a degree of relief.
‘Well, well. What a business. The look on the director’s face when I read out that warrant was worth a small fortune. I never thought anybody could have spluttered so much,’ Bottando said with a happy smile on his face. ‘Couldn’t have been better. I was particularly proud of getting him on his income tax. I shall greatly enjoy reading the papers tomorrow. One month before the budget submissions have to go in for next year. I think I’ll take the opportunity to add on twenty per cent extra for wages and claim another five assistants. Probably get them now.’
‘I found it all rather alarming,’ commented Argyll. ‘I suppose you were bluffing. But what would you have done if he hadn’t started confessing to everything? You would have been in a right mess then.’
‘Good heavens, young man, what do you take me for? Just because I’m a shade overweight and can’t go running around Europe like a runaway train doesn’t mean I’m completely senile, you know. Of course I wasn’t bluffing: I would have been much more circumspect if you hadn’t so brilliantly found that painting. Without that we wouldn’t have been able to prove anything.’
He smiled at the Englishman’s look of blushing modesty.
‘It was obvious that it was him. But you were so concerned to slam poor Sir Edward behind bars you ignored the evidence. While I, sitting quietly in my office with calm detachment, could see it all.’
‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re really objectionable when you’re smug?’ Argyll asked.
‘I know. But it’s not often I have such a good day. Please forgive me.’
‘You were about to say why it was obvious.’
‘Yes. Firstly there was the problem of who knew about the picture in advance of Argyll’s intemperate outburst here after his arrest. And you said you had informed only your supervisor, and that anyway he had been away on sabbatical in Tuscany. Right? And he wrote you a letter telling you he had been reading your paper and had written recommending that you be kept on at your university. He was staying with a friend east of Montepulciano. Interesting, eh?’
Flavia and Argyll leaned back in their chairs, folded their arms simultaneously, and looked exasperated.
‘Well. And you remember I told you – I told Flavia anyway – that Tommaso had surprised me by saying he was going to retire next year to Tuscany. A villa outside Pienza, in fact. Ever been there? No? You really should. Very pretty town. A little jewel, in fact. It’s very easy to get to: go to Montepulciano and keep on going a few miles east and you’re there.
‘And it seemed unlikely,’ Bottando continued, staring at the ceiling, ‘that two such eminent artistic types should be within spitting distance of each other without meeting. A brief phone call confirmed it. Your supervisor had been staying with Tommaso while he read the paper.
‘So that’s piece number one. Tommaso had the chance, at least, of knowing about that picture long enough in advance to get a forgery made. I couldn’t find any way that Sir Edward might have known. Tommaso investigates, and discovers you’re wrong. But he also goes through the evidence and realises that, although there is nothing under there, there should be. You said the same yourself. If someone uncovered the painting and found what looked like a Raphael, they would be predisposed to believe it was genuine.
‘But he’s no fool. You can’t produce any old rubbish and expect to have it accepted. He needed an expert. And who does he think of? Why, good old Professor Morneau, the man who taught him all about painting when he was an art student in Lyons. He found the right man: Morneau was really good. He bought that old painting and used the others for practice. Then he cleaned off the central portion and painted a Raphael, along the lines you’ve described. Put the fake Mantini on top, dirtied and aged it, switched the pictures when no one was looking. Exit Morneau.
‘Of course, I was just a little suspicious of Tommaso anyway, but I couldn’t see my way past the fact that Byrnes was the most likely beneficiary, and that the director had a cast-iron alibi on every occasion. Flavia’s view that Byrnes had probably been his own employer seemed most likely.
‘Things really started crystallising when Byrnes rang me up, a little hot under the collar after Argyll had effectively told him that we knew the picture was a fraud, and that he was going to have to refund all the money.’ He paused and turned to the Englishman, ‘Why did you do that, by the way?’
Flavia looked at Argyll disapprovingly, and he looked sheepish again. ‘As I told Flavia, it seemed a good idea at the time. The idea was that Sir Edward would rush out to Siena, try to destroy the picture, and would get himself arrested. I suppose I owe you an apology,’ he said to Byrnes, who acknowledged it graciously.
‘Very good idea,’ said Bottando with approval, surprising both Flavia and Argyll almost equally. ‘Wrong man, of course, but sound in principle. As you know, it was the same sort of plan as the one I adopted.
‘In fact,’ he continued, resuming his monologue, ‘it was just as well you did go and see him. It was he who pointed out to me that Tommaso had been Morneau’s pupil. Until that point, the only person I could see burning the picture and killing Manzoni was Argyll, which implicated Byrnes as I didn’t think Argyll was able to think of the fake.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Argyll.
‘No offence. I was merely referring to your lack of experience. But you could kill someone; I couldn’t see any of these slightly overweight – my apologies, gentlemen – aesthetes taking on Manzoni in a fight. So I reached a stalemate.’
Bottando twisted off the cap of a bottle of fizzy mineral water and poured a glass for himself, then offered it round to his audience. ‘So. Byrnes is commissioned, buys the picture and takes it home, and the fraud is all set. Tommaso had also prepared his end by getting the minister to agree in advance that, should such an opportunity arise, they should leap in and save the Italian heritage.
‘The museum buys the picture and Tommaso has the opportunity of directing his tests to the area he knew would pass. He calls Byrnes and gives directions that only the left-hand side of the picture is to be examined. Unfortunately, his secretary overheard the conversation, and told me about it yesterday morning when I was waiting outside his office to see him. It’s the penalty for not seeing visitors promptly.
‘Then Flavia goes to England and Argyll mentions his bit of evidence. I tell the director what Argyll suspects, and he explodes. But he doesn’t do anything. It was only when I tried to get out of going to that party by telling Ferraro I was off to Switzerland in search of some icons, that the picture got wrecked. At this point matters get taken out of Tommaso’s hands.
‘That was another curiosity that fitted into place when you began to see Tommaso as a possible instigator. All of a sudden he names Ferraro as his successor and says he’s going to retire. Odd, that, to do such a favour for someone you clearly and obviously disliked. I suspect that Ferraro found out what was going on when he ran the museum during Tommaso’s and Spello’s absence. The director said this was when Ferraro effectively clinched the job. I thought it was because he’d done so well, but it was more likely that it was because he’d then got his hold on Tommaso.
‘Ferraro goes along and says he knows that I am about to prove the picture was a fake. He names his terms for dealing with the situation and not telling the police. Tommaso has no choice. He agrees
and Ferraro, a very much more ruthless person, goes into action.
‘Ferraro was in a difficult position. If the forgery survived and was unmasked, Tommaso’s reputation and his own chances of becoming director would be damaged. But if it was destroyed and no one proved it was a fake, then Tommaso would again be damaged by the failure to protect a masterpiece.
‘Unless of course, the blame could be shifted. Clearly a man who thought ahead. Hence, the rapid appearance of stories in the newspapers about the lapses of the security committee. It pushed Spello into the limelight as a suspect and made me a potential scapegoat. Once I stopped seeing it as a piece of bureaucratic politics and began to look at it as an aspect of the case, then the mist began to clear a bit.
‘There were two final weak spots in their defence. Firstly, someone would see how the forgery was done. Manzoni works it out. He tells Ferraro, hoping to secure his position in the museum. Ferraro slips out of the office, murders him, and slips back to work afterwards, leaving late in the evening and making sure the doorman sees him go. The final detail was destroying the original picture, and this, fortunately, is where he slipped up.
‘Now we all know what happened, of course, it is easy to see where we went wrong. We had the tendency to assume that the burning of the picture and the knifing of Manzoni were all done by the same person as was behind the fraud. And as Tommaso had a perfect alibi for the murder and for the burning, I couldn’t see how he could be responsible.’
Flavia objected here. ‘But Ferraro also had an alibi for when the picture was burnt. You told me so yourself.’
‘True. Tommaso provided the alibi and the Americans provided an alibi for Tommaso. What we didn’t have was an American alibi for Ferraro. Until yesterday, when I rang them again and they said he’d left the director’s office halfway through their meeting about the donation. I should have thought of that, as well, because I saw him at the party ten minutes before Tommaso reappeared.’
He paused for a few moments to pick up his monologue where he’d left it. ‘But that was only two days ago. I’m a bit slow. After Byrnes had called and everything began to fall into place, I had a dreadful day. I knew, but had no proof. So I had to take an anguished decision. You were going to Siena. Now, did I tell Ferraro? If I didn’t, we’d have proof of the fake, but not of the instigator or the murderer.
‘But if I did, Ferraro would inevitably turn up there, and try and destroy all the evidence once and for all. As that could well include you two as well as the picture, I was decidedly nervous.
‘Very anguishing indeed. But Sir Edward persuaded me that if we saturated Siena with enough plainclothes men we could protect you. So, essentially, I adopted the same plan as Argyll, only with a different target. I came up by helicopter to supervise, set up my headquarters in a hotel – not nearly as good as the luxurious effort you two chose, but I’m only a humble policeman – and off we went.
‘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 absolut
e 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.
