The Titian Committee

by Iain Pears

  ‘Indeed. But I hope it won’t distract you from other matters. Go and see Dr Kollmar and remind him that I need that archive material by this evening. It’s most important if I am to get this lecture of mine finished in time.’

  An order is an order. Evidently both Miller and Kollmar were used to carrying them out. She lurked in the corridor outside Miller’s room until he emerged, clasping flippers, towels and the other impedimenta of the swimmer. He was clearly an enthusiast; little stickers on the bag he carried commemorated a whole series of swimming meets that, presumably, he had attended over the years. Physical fitness is a wonderful thing, no doubt, but Flavia, who spent the first hour of her day smoking furiously and drinking the strongest coffee she could make, and whose idea of swimming equipment was a deck-chair and suntan lotion, did not entirely approve.

  ‘I suppose you want to give me a good grilling without Professor Roberts answering all the questions for me?’ he said flatly as they walked together down the staircase and headed for the jetty.

  ‘Not quite the way I’d put it, but close enough,’ she replied. They had switched to English. With Roberts they had spoken only Italian and Miller’s only interjection had been a little fractured.

  ‘How did Masterson get on the committee?’ she asked, thinking that Miller’s account might vary a little from what his colleague had said.

  Miller shrugged as he clacked down the stone steps. Flavia looked down. Although dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Miller had, through some strange and very un-Italian quirk of fashion consciousness, put on black dress shoes. Strange people, these Americans.

  ‘Don’t think I’m down on her, or anything,’ he said. ‘She was very accomplished and highly motivated. But she was not an obvious choice.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be because her work was good?’ Flavia again noticed her wish to defend the poor dead woman from the doubts and criticisms of her male colleagues. She was beginning to identify with this corpse far too much.

  For the first time since she’d met him, Miller was genuinely amused. ‘Heaven forbid,’ he said. ‘That is rarely enough on its own. She was not, after all, a specialist on Titian; her research was on Renaissance iconography generally.’

  ‘So Masterson wrote, and did her job at the museum and worked with the committee as well?’

  ‘No one ever accused her of being a slouch. She was always conscientious. Perhaps she published too much? I don’t know. A bit thin, some of her stuff. And not nearly as original as she liked to make out, I know that. No, I’m fairly certain she was appointed simply because she was a woman.’

  ‘Meaning?’ she said, bristling at the remark. If there was one thing she hated…

  ‘Obvious, isn’t it? All these projects have to have a woman on them these days, to show they’re open-minded and progressive. Lorenzo is very keen on that, which is why he allowed the appointment. He couldn’t think of anyone else. She was very lucky, considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’

  ‘Considering that Lorenzo and Roberts don’t exactly see eye to eye over anything. Poor Roberts. He thought he was doing everybody a favour by organising the state grant. We certainly needed the money. Then Bralle retires and Roberts gets lumbered with Lorenzo, who immediately tries to take over. If Louise hadn’t been a woman there would have been no chance of her being appointed.’

  ‘What was she like?’ asked Flavia, launching once more into her favourite area of enquiry and feeling that any more of these needling remarks would make her boil over. They had arrived at the jetty and she saw the vaporetto approaching. A brief pause followed as she ran to the kiosk to get a ticket.

  ‘I liked her well enough,’ he said with a somewhat excessive attempt to be fair when she finally returned with the requisite piece of paper. ‘A good enough colleague. Not easy to get to know; sharp tongue. Didn’t suffer fools gladly.’

  ‘You weren’t lovers?’ she asked. Nothing like the direct approach. The question was followed by a long pause.

  ‘Good God, no,’ he said eventually with a faintly ironic smile. ‘Louise was a human iceberg. She did have a thing with Van Heteren, I gather. He was very smitten indeed. The mind boggles, frankly. But he got in the way of her work so was given his marching orders. He was not happy about it. His own fault. I did warn him, not that he listened to me.’

  ‘What’s the point of this committee? Personally, I mean. What do you all get out of it?’

  He thought for a second. ‘Different people, different reasons. I like to think that everybody is mainly motivated by the love of scholarship, but sometimes, when I see the wrangling and bitching that goes on, my faith wanes a little. Roberts and Lorenzo both like controlling things, in their very diverse ways. Kollmar is genuinely, almost naïvely, scholarly. He wouldn’t know a political gambit if one came and stood on his foot. Van Heteren just likes having a good time at other people’s expense. Louise, I think, was motivated mainly by ambition.’

  Not a great testimonial to any of them, really, she thought as the boat chugged its way across the five-hundred-yard opening of the Grand Canal on the way to the Piazza San Marco. You could see quite clearly, she thought absently, the gardens where Masterson had been stabbed. ‘And you?’ she said, bringing herself back to the matter at hand.

  He smiled at her. ‘I suppose you think I’m being hard. So I am. But I don’t let myself off lightly. In my case I’m motivated above all by the need for security. For me, it’s something that will help when I come up for tenure, which is why I feel so jumpy at the moment.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Nervous. After a few years universities in the US have to decide whether to chuck you out or keep you for good. No laughing matter, with the job market being what it is. If I don’t keep this post, I’ll never get another. Joining this committee was almost providential. It gained me the support of Roberts as a referee and gave me a lot of prestige. Then Louise is murdered and being associated with the committee becomes less reputable. Especially if the finger of suspicion starts pointing in our direction. Who’d want to give tenure for life to a possible murderer?’

  She saw why he was tense.

  ‘Is Roberts right? Do you really suspect one of us?’

  Flavia felt sudden sympathy for him. ‘No,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘No reason to. Your alibis are all impeccable. All I’m doing is sorting out loose ends.’

  ‘And the chances of finding the person responsible?’

  ‘Not good, if it was just a random attack. But we should dredge up enough to convince everybody that none of you was responsible. I hope so at least. I wouldn’t want this to damage anybody else.’

  The boat lurched to a halt at San Marco and they queued and shuffled their way off, just managing it before the swarm of people trying to get on board began pushing forward and blocking the gangway. Flavia straightened her clothes after the effort.

  ‘Nice to have met you,’ he said as she prepared to leave. ‘And thanks for the reassurance. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Enjoy your swim.’

  Miller was uncertain whether she was also making fun of him. ‘I find it very relaxing,’ he said defensively. ‘Louise, in the same circumstances, would have spent the time in a library reading the latest publications. Maybe that’s why she was always more successful than me.’

  Flavia shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s why she’s dead,’ she added. It was merely a good exit line, without any conscious meaning, but it threw Miller into confusion. As she marched off, she glanced at her watch. Time for lunch, to stoke up on the calories before starting on the next candidate.

  5

  Flavia was developing a picture of Louise Masterson as the very epitome of the American professional woman. Tough, business-like, efficient. Tenacious and thorough. A hard worker, as well; witness the fact that she was in the library until closing time the night of her murder. She had then walked out of the exit into the piazzetta, gone along the quayside and into the Giardinetti Reali. There she had evidently encou
ntered her murderer. But so far, no personality. There must have been more to her than the driven, hard-working automaton that Roberts and Miller had described, and she rather hoped that the next interview would help flesh out the picture. That is, if she was right in assuming that the visitor so salaciously alluded to by the porter at the foundation was indeed Hendrick Van Heteren.

  Van Heteren, as his name suggested, was Dutch. She had prepared herself for a nervy little man who could twitch and fidget in six languages simultaneously. The impression, half-formed though it was, was about as inaccurate as it was possible to imagine.

  He was enormous. Not fat, just enormous. About the same size as the isle of Elba, give or take an acre. Lots of hair which stuck out as though he had recently been electrocuted and a beard that was trimmed every three days with a hedge cutter. A crippling handshake, a wide, pockmarked face which was quite remarkably ugly although oddly friendly at the same time. An open, technicoloured shirt that was in striking contrast to the dullness of his eyes, the muted way he greeted her and the distracted way he talked. She tried the silent observation treatment to soften him up and found that he stared morosely back, so she abandoned it hurriedly for more conventional interrogatory methods.

  The tiny apartment he occupied – it belonged to a friend and its main advantage was that he did not have to spend his time in Venice surrounded by art historians, he confessed gloomily – was so small it was a minor miracle he ever managed to get in. To call it a mess would be an understatement. Unmade bed, socks all over the floor, several dozen books scattered around, every cup and mug and plate and pan in the place dirty and overflowing from an aromatic sink. She liked it. This was her sort of domesticity. But she wondered how such a person got on with the fastidious Roberts, the upright Miller and the evidently pedantic Kollmar.

  So she asked him, that seeming the most direct way of satisfying her curiosity.

  He smiled half-heartedly, acknowledging the validity of the question. She was struck by his very obvious sadness. It was interesting because it was so rare. Van Heteren was the only person so far who seemed genuinely upset about Masterson’s death. She warmed to him for that, demonstrating again the partiality that made her feel inadequate in dealing with this case.

  ‘You don’t think we’re all birds of a feather, right?’ He said in English. He spoke good, but not perfect Italian, and Flavia’s Dutch was notable for its non-existence. So they compromised on English, which the Italian spoke well and Van Heteren spoke vividly, if waywardly.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he continued. ‘Bralle – I imagine you’ve heard of him by now – is a very charming, very accomplished man. But a manipulator. You might say he taught Roberts everything he knew,’ he concluded archly.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, now. What do I mean? It’s difficult to describe the old man really. He is a truly great historian, but he believes in keeping people off-balance. Little pinpricks, just to make you feel insecure. He plays favourites, so that everybody always feels someone else is better. He makes snippy comments behind people’s backs; you know the sort of thing. He has little nicknames for people, often funny, in a cruel sort of way. He always called me Pigpen, why I don’t know. Kollmar he referred to as the Invisible Man. And so on. You see what he was getting at, or at least you will when you meet Kollmar, but it wasn’t always very nice. I think he chose us deliberately so we wouldn’t get on all that well. So that only he could keep the operation going.’

  ‘But he’s gone, and the committee survives.’

  ‘For the time being, true. But that’s another story. Roberts pulled off his conjuring act of getting a grant from the Italian state. There’s nothing quite like money for making people put up with each other, even though Bralle didn’t like the idea at all. Although how long they’ll manage to keep it up is uncertain. Sooner or later someone is going to be knifed in the back.’

  His face fell still further as he realised that his choice of metaphor was not, perhaps, entirely ideal. Flavia slipped this comment alongside all the others she’d heard that day. Certainly, this committee did not seem to be a harmonious bunch at all. Roberts and Lorenzo didn’t get on, Miller didn’t think much of Van Heteren, Masterson was after Kollmar. Dear me. Not a good advert for the contemplative life. Even Bottando would have his work cut out dealing with this lot.

  She noted it all down in her little book, and got down to the routine, guiding Van Heteren through the details of his statement. All checked. He’d been with friends until past midnight, come straight back home and gone to bed. He was covered for the time of Masterson’s death, as were they all. More’s the pity. She still didn’t like the Sicilian option.

  ‘Was she religious, do you know?’

  He looked puzzled at the question. ‘Not really. She wore a little gold crucifix. Never took it off. But it was a present from her grandmother; it had no religious significance. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Simply that she was found clutching it, in a bed of lilies. She’d been dragged into a greenhouse full of them after she was attacked.’

  He was staring at her as though she was a bit cracked, and was clearly devastated to hear such details, so she abandoned this line of discussion and got back to more concrete matters.

  ‘Tell me about her, then. You were lovers, I gather?’

  He had started off the interview calmly, if morosely, and had degenerated from the moment she had butted in. About four minutes into the questioning and he was showing every imaginable symptom of distress. He glanced down and mangled his huge hands together for a while before muttering that, yes they were. Or had been, rather. He didn’t know.

  ‘Surely you know something like that?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we were. We were very much in love, but going through a hard patch, if you see what I mean. She was a wonderful woman.’ The statement, being so completely at variance with the universal opinion of all the others, was quite unexpected.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Oh, I know what the others think – hard, ruthless, ambitious. Not at all. That was just her presentation. She was very sensitive, you know. Very good-hearted; not the sort of person who would ever do something mean to anyone.’

  Now, there’s a man in love, she thought.

  ‘Mind you, she was slightly nervous and harried in the last few days. She was working furiously hard and it swamped everything. She was always a bit obsessed with work. It was her only doubtful quality.’

  ‘She didn’t have time for you?’

  ‘That’s about it. She said it was only temporary, that she was working on something of immense importance and had to get it done. I did try to understand, but we only saw each other once a year and I was upset that she seemed to prefer the library to me. And I admit I was worried. She’d dropped people before. I wondered whether…Well, I was a bit jealous and resentful and began to wonder whether Miller had been right about her.’

  He smiled apologetically as though ashamed of the thought, and the movement transformed his bizarre face in an astonishing way. From being appallingly ugly he suddenly became quite remarkably appealing, and the sudden change caught Flavia, for a moment, quite by surprise. But it was a fleeting change; the expression lasted only an instant before the sadness and worry returned. But she saw, briefly, the attraction.

  ‘She was a strange woman, in many ways. Forbidding, but really something very special. It annoyed me the way some of my colleagues treated her as if she wasn’t there. It upset her too. I told her just to ignore them, like I did. She reckoned it wasn’t that simple.

  ‘Anyway, she worked harder, produced more, was more professional in every sense. Generous and conscientious. A small example: she was asked to write a reference for Miller’s tenure, and she was going to give him a rave review. She didn’t like him, didn’t owe him anything, didn’t like his work, but felt it would be grossly unfair if he got chucked out. Quite a lot of people would have written the man a stinker. He’s really boring. And, on
top of that, she loved the job. Really loved it. She hated the bickering and simply didn’t notice it most of the time.’

  ‘You make her sound like Dr Kollmar.’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘Yes. Maybe that was the trouble. For some reason they didn’t like each other. That painting was merely an excuse for a fight. Kollmar treated her like an amateur whose opinion he didn’t respect. Which was very bad manners. He’s a bit anti-American. Louise bristled and I gather said some most unfortunate things about him in return. Very unlike her.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear them, but Roberts was very upset. I think he was rather hoping to set a loftier tone when Bralle retired. More harmony – with him in control, of course. He’s constantly going on about the dignity of the profession. Bit pompous, a touch self-important, but perhaps he means it.’

  He waved his hand as if to wipe away the memory of something he considered to be distasteful. ‘It was all pretty silly stuff,’ he went on apologetically, ‘but, despite Roberts’ efforts, fairly typical of the sort of adolescent squabble that blows up every now and then. I’m sure it would have blown over eventually. For the time being, however, Kollmar got the idea she was conspiring against him and took offence. He was quite vicious about her, which was something of a shock. He’s not someone you can imagine ever having strong feelings about anything except archives. About those he gets rather passionate.’

  ‘What did she do in the days after she arrived here?’

  ‘We both arrived in Venice on Monday. For most of the time she was in the library. Thursday evening we spent together, about the first time we were alone, apart from the night we got here when I went over to her room. At the start all went well. Then she settled down to do lots of work and I didn’t see much of her. She did say she would come round here on Friday night about eleven and make up to me for her distraction, but I had arranged to go out to some friends so we decided to make it another evening. Then I heard she was dead.’