by Iain Pears
Worst off was Bottando, who suffered most dreadfully from corns and who, as a result, wore soft leather Italian slip-on shoes which appeared to have soles made of cardboard. He kept the information about the corns to himself, generally believing that it was not an appropriate ailment for a man in his position, and had to put up with the occasional clever remark about his vanity as a result. As the shoes turned into mush on the way to the Isola San Giorgio and the fondazione Cini, he complained with some feeling about the state of the Italian shoe industry. It was not merely his feet making him uncomfortable, however. The whole business made him feel distressed.
The meeting had been called in some haste, but it seemed as though everyone had agreed to turn up. Bottando didn’t like such scenes normally, but Flavia was right that speed was of the essence if he was to get back to Rome with the results before bureaucratic knives were plunged into his back on Monday morning.
‘You should come better prepared,’ she told him as they sloshed along, implicitly congratulating herself on her foresight.
‘You should buy better shoes to start off with,’ added Argyll, equally complacent about his own.
Bottando resisted the not very great temptation to reply to either of them and maintained a disgruntled silence as they got into the taxi-boat and made their way, slowly and with a great deal of turbulence, across the mouth of the Grand Canal.
‘I just hope everybody gets there,’ he said pessimistically, glaring at the sky as though a sign of his displeasure might persuade it to mend its ways.
‘They will,’ Flavia said. ‘After all, they have a certain interest in all this.’
Silence again, as Bottando wiggled his toes around in what remained of his shoes – the fake gold-plated buckles were now the only bit of them still intact – and felt the salt water squishing around inside. He vowed never to come back to this awful place, and repeated the oath as they got out of the boat on the island. Not even planks here, he noticed as they waded their way across the jetty to the monastery entrance.
Inside, they briefly went their separate ways to find towels and dry themselves out as much as possible, then congregated in the room where the committee held its meetings. On the far side – no friendly conversation, Bottando noted – sat the Marchesa and Signora Pianta. The Marchesa watched them enter with amused interest and seemed blithely unconcerned about anything. She sat as though she owned the place.
Argyll looked keenly at the various people as they drifted in; he had not yet met any of them, and had built up images of them from Flavia’s descriptions. She had done a good job, he reckoned, as he picked out the enormous Van Heteren with his air of depression and anxiety; the slightly pudgy, dapper Miller whose hunted expression suggested he was thinking of his job; the grey and dowdy Kollmar; the suavely elegant Lorenzo, who made a point of greeting his aunt with over-elaborate courtesy and was rewarded with a disdainful nod of acknowledgement and a nervous twitch from Pianta.
But no Bovolo. Where was the man? Bottando wondered as he cast his eyes around. He didn’t want to start without him. He felt the steam beginning to rise from him in the stuffy, overheated room as he made his way to one of the seats left empty. Flavia sat down beside him and Argyll, fittingly doing his best to melt into the background, plonked himself down in a far corner.
‘My thanks to you all for turning out on such an abominable night,’ Bottando began when he noticed everyone was sitting down and ready. They would have to do without Bovolo for a bit and hope he would turn up later. Initially he wanted Flavia to do the talking, as it was all her idea, but she had insisted that it would carry more weight coming from him. A little joke on her part. It showed she was feeling better. So she had explained the situation. Not in great detail, but enough to do the job quickly and get off to catch the last plane to Rome.
‘I apologise for organising this set-piece discussion of the events of the last week or so, but I felt it would be for the good of everyone. All of you have come under suspicion, or have felt you have, in the course of this investigation. Clearly, in many cases this was erroneous. I am aware of the nature of academic life, and realise that the damage to your reputations through intemperate gossip could be considerable if the police do not give a clear account of proceedings so that the innocent are demonstrably cleared of all suggestion of, um, misbehaviour.’
Murmurings of gratitude for this official consideration, still tempered by a marked apprehension about what was to come. ‘All of you, for various reasons, deserve to know what has been going on, and it saves a great deal of our time to tell you all at once. We have already spent far too long on this case and have ended up investigating deaths which are not, and have never been, the responsibility of our department.’ A nod here in the direction of the magistrate, who looked mollified but still suspicious.
‘You are not of course interested in our work schedule. As you are aware, this whole business began as an investigation into the murder of Louise Masterson, stabbed to death in the public garden by the Piazza San Marco last Friday night, and found in a greenhouse the following morning. Four days later her colleague on this committee, Professor Roberts, also died in mysterious circumstances, and the same evening a collection of paintings, belonging to the Marchesa di Mulino, disappeared. As we later discovered, the committee’s founder, Georges Bralle, had been suffocated in his house in France some days before.
‘Now, any idiot could see that this string of mortality and malfeasance was connected in some way with the committee’s work.’ Perhaps it was just as well Bovolo was not there, although the magistrate was displeased once more. ‘The problem that had to be solved was which aspect of it.’
Bottando was beginning to enjoy himself. He paused and looked around at the expressions of the people about him; ranging from acute pain on Van Heteren’s and Miller’s faces to the amused interest shown by the Marchesa.
‘Far from being an agreeable collaboration of like-minded scholars, we discovered that the Titian committee was something of a hotbed of dislike and distrust. Georges Bralle had created the model of divide and rule, and eventually fell victim to it when Professor Roberts eased him out by arranging for a state grant he knew Bralle would find unacceptable. What Bralle began continued after his departure. For example, Masterson was widely expected to deliver a paper highly critical of Dr Kollmar, and Dr Lorenzo was tipped to use this as an excuse to replace him.
‘When Louise Masterson arrived last year, she was seemingly anxious to create a good impression. That did not last long. On the second day she objected to Dr Kollmar’s paper on a picture in Milan and said she wanted to re-examine it herself. She started to do just that. She wrote to Georges Bralle, making enquiries, and he said he didn’t think Kollmar had made a mistake. Why did he say that, when he knew, from evidence he had himself provided, that Kollmar was wrong?
‘This year, Masterson flies to Zurich, and takes a train to St Gall where Bralle is seeing someone who sold a Titian Madonna four years ago. She goes to Milan to see this picture she is working on, then skips a committee meeting to go to Padua. Here she delivers a letter to a man who also sold a Titian two years ago. Finally, preoccupied and excited, she begins to rewrite her paper about her discoveries, and is murdered before she can deliver it.
‘She uncovered an unofficial element of the committee’s work that had developed in recent years. In all three cases, Roberts, the stylistic expert, made the visual assessment and Kollmar, the archive man, dealt with the documentary evidence and wrote the reports. Two of the pictures were sold and Roberts tried to make money out of all of the operations.
‘The first two were simple. The speed of operation of the Titian committee was not great under the old regime. Kollmar’s beavering away in the archives and checking of facts could take up to eighteen months. Very frustrating for an owner who wants to sell and needs a reputable authentication to get the maximum price.
‘In the first case it appears that it wasn’t even Roberts’ idea. It was the owner in
St Gall who suggested that Roberts receive a five per cent cut of the sale price in exchange for his personal authentication. The deal works very nicely, and Roberts gets a fat cheque for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars – none of which, incidentally, gets passed on to Dr Kollmar. The second time round he takes the initiative and suggests the arrangement himself.
‘Why not? The pictures are probably genuine and Roberts knows he will be able to pressure Kollmar into the appropriate recommendation if there is any trouble. On the other hand, it is not entirely ethical, and if it became public that the great Anthony Roberts was enriching himself by selling his services in such a way it would probably compromise the Titian committee’s integrity beyond easy repair.
‘Also, of course, it would damage Roberts’ reputation and it was the need to defend his honour that led to this unfortunate chain of events. Exposure as a man whose willingness to recognise Titians depended on how much money he got in return would be devastating. Even someone like Dr Kollmar might turn against him and he would then be easy meat for Lorenzo.
‘Everything goes very nicely indeed until the Milan picture comes up for investigation. Benedetti wants to sell and Roberts is tempted to repeat the operation even though he doesn’t need the money and the profit will be fairly small. But, under Dr Lorenzo’s new regime, the work pace has speeded up and Kollmar is having to produce his reports more rapidly. The time span between seeing the picture and a final decision is now too short, especially as a lot of the necessary evidence in this case has already been unearthed by Georges Bralle.
‘So Roberts, quite simply, suppresses Bralle’s evidence and hints to Kollmar that the picture is not worth much. Kollmar recommends rejection. Roberts then offers a personal authentication on the usual terms, intending to produce the suppressed evidence after the sale has gone ahead and get the committee to reverse its decision.
‘Very simple, but a mistake. Roberts goes beyond the bounds of even the most liberal notion of ethics and gets found out. The crucial fact was that Benedetti consulted Bralle, who works out what is going on and is outraged. That is why he says Kollmar hasn’t made a mistake. He thinks that Kollmar is part of the scheme. He starts searching to see whether this has happened before.’
A loud protest here from Kollmar, puce in the face because of what he had heard. ‘That is outrageous. The idea that someone of Roberts’ position would act so shamelessly –’
Bottando was about to interrupt, but the job was taken out of his hands. ‘Oh shut up, you pompous old fool,’ Kollmar’s wife said. She spoke in German, but the general import was tolerably clear. ‘There’s no need to prove you’re a simpleton, is there?’
Bottando smiled at her. ‘Thank you, madam,’ he said. ‘You see, the point to note is that Roberts told Signorina di Stefano that he had no opinion about the painting’s merits, but told Kollmar he thought it was worthless. Why contradict himself? There can be no reason at all unless he wanted to distance himself from that opinion, and place all the responsibility for the decision on Dr Kollmar.’
Having patiently explained to the German that his defence of his erstwhile colleague was perhaps unwise, Bottando decided that it was time to get back to his argument before he forgot what it was.
‘Now, Roberts is worried when Masterson decides to examine the picture herself and wonders what she is up to. Efforts to deflect her come to nothing and he gets worried. As he never really took her abilities seriously, he naturally suspects she has also seen Bralle’s evidence and may use it against him. He has to know what is going on, and so visits Bralle to find out.
‘We know this because Bralle’s diary says so. As Van Heteren told us, Bralle was much given to slightly malicious nicknames. Dr Van Heteren, what did he call Roberts?’
Van Heteren stirred himself out of the moody reverie that suggested strongly he was only half listening to what was going on, and blinked at Bottando.
‘Well,’ he said hesitantly, ‘because of his pious demeanour and stately appearance, he always used to refer to him as St Anthony.’
Bottando smiled happily at him. ‘And in Bralle’s diary, it says that St Anthony was going to visit on the day of the murder.
‘On top of that, he said Masterson was to write a reference for Miller. Of the people in Venice, only Masterson and Van Heteren knew this. Masterson did not want it spread around. So how did Roberts know? Simply that a copy of Bralle’s letter recommending her was on his desk in Balazuc. Where Roberts had seen it.
‘What transpired at the meeting in Balazuc is impossible to know, of course. But it seems likely that Bralle accused Roberts of unprofessional behaviour and threatened to expose him in order to save his committee. He was murdered in a way which made it look as though old age had caught up with him. It was the only possible way of keeping him quiet. Roberts no doubt reckoned the old man would die soon anyway.’
A great communal sigh followed this announcement. So it was Roberts. As the blame for everything was swung carefully on to a dead man, the atmosphere in the room lightened noticeably. Only Van Heteren still seemed aware of the tragic dimensions of the past few days’ events.
‘When Roberts got back to Venice, he was probably fairly confident that all would be well,’ Bottando continued. ‘Bralle was out of the picture and there was no evidence Masterson had been in contact with him. But then he borrowed her book and found a ticket to St Gall. He knew she was working on the Milan picture, and then he hears she has gone to Padua. Finally, Van Heteren says she is rewriting her paper and reckons it will be a sensation. He knows what sort of sensation, and that it will have nothing to do with an analysis of brushstrokes in the early work of Titian.
‘Of course, Roberts had an impeccable alibi for Masterson’s murder. He made sure of that, by buying opera tickets at the last minute. And he could not have stolen the Marchesa’s pictures.’
There was a scuffle at the back of the room, as Bovolo and another policeman sidled in, the former with quiet triumph on his face. Bottando noticed and grew alarmed. A man like that didn’t look happy without a good reason.
‘It is often said that one murder leads to another,’ he resumed, hoping that things were not about to go badly wrong. ‘This is not the case here, as Roberts was much too careful to chance his luck a second time around.’
It was a statement which caused some upset. Having narrowed the field down in a satisfactory way for those present, he was now opening it up again.
‘There have been a lot of pictures in this case, Titians in Milan and Padua, other works stolen from the Marchesa. Odd parallels kept on surfacing. One Titian is of a woman being stabbed in a garden; Masterson was stabbed in a garden. The murderer in the picture was a jealous husband and Masterson’s lover, Van Heteren, by his own admission, was jealous. It was almost as if history was repeating itself and pointing at the culprit.
‘But all this was mere diversion, as we eventually realised. Van Heteren’s jealousy was aroused by mischievous comments by Dr Miller, the only other person who urgently wanted Masterson out of the way. Is that not true, doctor?’
He didn’t want to comment, it seemed. He took over from Van Heteren in the study of the floor, white-faced and silent. All he managed was a shake of the head.
‘Let me say what happened, then. At lunch on Friday, Miller and Roberts ate together. It is clear how Roberts laid out his case. He dropped his bombshell that Masterson was writing Miller’s reference, and added for good measure that she would probably go all out to get him thrown out of his job. Miller could well believe it, considering the remarks she had made the day before. On top of that, Roberts told him that the paper she would deliver on the following Monday would seal his fate. Although it was a tissue of lies, it would temporarily at least damage the status of the committee and wreck Roberts’ reputation and ability to act on Miller’s behalf.’
Bottando noticed that Flavia was looking slightly unhappy here, and became worried he was running off the tracks. So he paused to take a sip of water
and leant over to her. ‘Am I going wrong?’ he whispered urgently.
She waggled her hand from side to side. ‘Go ahead. I’ll tell you later.’
He put the glass down and tried to remember where he was. ‘As was obvious to Signorina di Stefano, Miller had a deep resentment of Masterson. She had better contacts, produced books, had a better job. Now she was going to destroy him. Is it surprising that, when Roberts said she had to be stopped, he agreed fervently?
‘But Miller had a perfect alibi. He was on the island at ten, when he was seen in the kitchen, and no boats landed at the island throughout the evening. Consequently, he must have been there earlier and could not have killed Masterson in the Giardinetti Reali.
‘Except for the fact that he had no need of a boat. He overheard Kollmar offer Masterson a drink. That offer took place on the boat leaving the island. So he did leave; that is clear. How did he get back if no boats were running? He must have managed it somehow.
‘This is what happened. Earlier in the day, Roberts had taken a message for Masterson and so he knew where to find her. This information he mentioned to Miller over lunch. Miller then takes the boat over and wanders around, working himself up into an even greater rage. He goes to the garden to find her and argue with her. He accuses her of wanting to destroy him, of viciousness and malice. Roberts says this, Roberts tells me that. She probably tells him, as she had the day before, that he is being ridiculous and making a mountain out of a molehill. He snaps. He stabs her with a penknife and leaves her for dead.
