The Titian Committee Read online

  The Titian Committee

  Iain Pears

  HarperCollins Publishers (2014)

  * * *

  Witty Italian art-history crime series featuring English dealer Jonathan Argyll, from the author of the best-selling literary masterpiece, 'An Instance of the Fingerpost'.

  Membership of the prestigious Titian Committee is normally considered a high honour. Normally, that is, until two of its members end up dead and someone seems to be taking the idea of backstabbing a little too far.

  Flavia de Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is sent to find out why. She calls upon the help of dealer Jonathan Argyll, in Venice to buy a picture from the Marchesa di Mulino. But the sudden theft of the Marchesa's collection sets Flavia and Jonathan on a tortuous trail to uncover the truth.

  A further death threatens the very survival of the Committee itself, as well as offering the tantalizing possibility of an undiscovered Titian -- a mysterious composition that may have been suppressed for 'moral' reasons....

  The Titian Committee

  Iain Pears

  To Dick

  Author’s note

  Some of the buildings and paintings in this book exist, others do not, and all the characters are imaginary. There is an Italian art squad in a building in central Rome. However, I have arbitrarily shifted its affiliation from the carabinieri to the polizia, to underline that my account bears no relation to the original.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s note

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Keep Reading

  The Titian Committee

  Also by Iain Pears

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The initial discovery was made by the gardener of the Giardinetti Reali, an old and stooped figure whose labours generally pass unnoticed by the millions of tourists who come to Venice every year, even by those who eat their sandwiches amidst his creation as they get their breath back from overdosing on architectural splendour.

  For all that he was underappreciated, the old man was obsessed with his job. In this he was rare. Venice is not noted for its enthusiasm for nature; indeed, its entire history has been dominated by the need to keep the elements from interfering in its business. A flowerpot hanging out of a window is generally the closest the inhabitants come to the joys of the wild. Most cannot even see an open space without imagining it neatly covered with stone flaggings. If you want to grow things, go to the mainland; real Venetians don’t dig holes.

  So the gardener felt himself to belong to a small and somewhat persecuted minority. A couple of acres of garden wedged between the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal. Flowerbeds to dig, grass to cut, trees to prune and tend, sea water to keep at bay. All with little help and less money. But today, Saturday, was a big day. The City had especially asked him to provide flowers for a banquet to be held on the Isola San Giorgio that evening. He would give them his best, three dozen lilies he had been cultivating for months in one of his little greenhouses. They would be admired, and he would be praised. A great day.

  There was a lot to be done. Cut the flowers, trim them, prepare them, wrap each one carefully and individually, then send them off to take their part in the wonderful arrangements which, he was sure, would be the talk of the evening. So he got up early, just after six, downed a coffee and a glass of acqua vita to get the blood going, and set off in the chilly, damp weather of late autumn to start work. Although cold and still not fully awake, he felt a small surge of anticipatory pleasure as he neared the greenhouse, looming up out of the early morning sea mist that invariably hangs over the lagoon at this time of day and at this time of year.

  Until, that is, he opened the door and saw the crushed, mangled and twisted remains of the upright and beautiful flowers that he had so carefully tended. The exquisite creatures he had left the night before were no more. He could not believe his eyes. And then he saw the curled up form of the drunken, late-night reveller in the middle of the flowerbed who was evidently responsible.

  He tried to restrain himself, but could not, and let out his venom by trying to wake up the wretch with a well-aimed kick. A woman. When he was young, women knew how to behave properly, he thought bitterly. Nowadays…

  ‘Damn you, move. Wake up. Look what you’ve done,’ he shouted angrily.

  No reply. He put the toe of his shoe underneath the unconscious figure and turned it over, so he could insult the destructive, malicious creature more effectively.

  ‘Mother of God,’ he said instead. And ran for help.

  ‘Murder,’ said General Taddeo Bottando, with a ghoulish smile on his face as he sat in his sunlit office in central Rome. ‘Murder,’ he repeated, evidently enjoying the word and the reaction that showed up on the face of the assistant sitting opposite him. ‘Bloody and violent,’ he added, folding his arms over his protuberant stomach, just to make sure there was no mistake in the matter.

  It was Sunday, the day after the Venetian gardener had discovered the devastation in his flowerbeds. Since he had run, shocked and alarmed, to find a telephone and call the police, Italian officialdom had been thrown, if not quite into a frenzy of activity, at least into a state of decorous movement. As a result, General Bottando had reluctantly come into his office on his day of rest, and had summoned his assistant from her bed to help.

  It is, after all, very thoughtless of anyone to go and die in a foreign land. Indeed, if travellers realised how much trouble it caused, most would undoubtedly delay their departure from this world until they got back home. Firstly, the local police have to be informed, and doctors, ambulances, pathologists and so on brought in to deal with the corpse. Then a message has to be passed to the consulate, which contacts the embassy, which contacts the authorities back home, who contact the local police, who have to inform next of kin. And that is only the start. When you add on the business of writing assorted reports in any number of languages, and organising the transportation of the body with the customs and immigration authorities, it is little wonder many officials wish that foreigners, if they must die, would do so elsewhere.

  It is even more tiresome when the foreigner gets himself – or herself, as in this case – murdered. And when that foreigner is a member of an art historical committee funded by the Italian Arts Ministry – and the subject of the committee’s work is Tiziano Vecelli (1486–1576), a Venetian, at a time when the Interior Minister is also a Venetian – telephones ring, telexes are sent, demands are made, bucks are passed. Everybody wants instant action, taken by someone else.

  And hence, to return to the point, General Taddeo Bottando’s complacent smile as he mentioned the circumstances of Dr Louise M. Masterson’s untimely end to Flavia di Stefano, his best, brightest assistant in the Italian National Art Theft Squad.

  ‘Oh good,’ replied this assistant, with relief. ‘You had me worried for a moment. So why am I here and not in bed reading the paper?’

  It should not be thought for a moment that either of them was cruel or unfeeling in this matter. Had they thought about it, they would have been properly upset that a thirty-eight-year-old woman, in her prime and with much to offer in her chosen field of Renaissance iconography, had been prematurely sent to the grave by an unknown assailant. But it is one of the constants of policework that there is rarely enough leisure to think too much about matters that are none of your business.

  And this death, tragic though it might have been
, fell very clearly and obviously into that category. Their little department, small and underfunded, had been set up several years back to battle valiantly but hopelessly against the tide of thefts sweeping Italy’s works of art out of the country. Its members dealt with theft and fraud concerning pictures, prints, drawings, statues, ceramics and even, on one occasion, an entire building that was stolen en bloc for transportation to South Korea. They were proud of having recovered one staircase, a room and part of the library. Alas, the walls and foundations were never seen again. It was, as Bottando explained to the distressed owner as he stared at the heap of rubble and woodwork in the back of the lorry, only a partial success.

  The point was, that while crimes against art were in their purview, crimes against art historians were not. Such deeds were liable to be taken out of their hands, even if the entire contents of the National Museum had disappeared at the same time. Quite a lot, admittedly, depended on bureaucratic wrangling between the various parts of the assorted police forces, but a past master like Bottando would have had no trouble avoiding a case involving a murder if he didn’t want it.

  And surely he didn’t, Flavia thought, trying to work out why she was not still in bed. It does you no good, no good at all, in the Italian polizia, to rush around volunteering for things. People stop taking you seriously. The thing to do is wait to be asked by some senior figure like a minister, then screw up your eyes in anguish, worry about how many other things you (or your department) have on your plate at the moment, then reluctantly agree that, as no one else is capable of dealing with such an urgent matter, your specialised skills might be made available. Solely because you hold the minister in such high personal esteem and, while on the subject, perhaps the minister might see his way to helping you with…

  Something like this had been going on, Flavia was sure. The only question remaining to be resolved was what it had to do with her. She had a sneaking idea. The Italian state habitually overspends, running vast budget deficits that have everybody outside the government running around and wringing their hands in despair. Periodically, a new administration decides to tackle the problem. Such efforts never last very long, but for six months or so programmes are axed, departments cut back and savings made. Then everybody gets tired of it, matters return to normal and the deficit resumes its usual upward spiral.

  The trouble was that they were in one of their periodic bursts of austerity and the rival police force was floating a money-saving idea to break up Bottando’s department by setting up members of the carabinieri in local forces to deal with artistic thefts. It would be less effective and, in the end, save no money at all, but Bottando knew well that that was not really the point. The carabinieri had never really accepted that his department had been set up under polizia control. Normally he would have no trouble in seeing them off, but at the moment he was a worried man. His enemies were winning a hearing. The annual budget submissions were due in eight days, and the show-down was perilously close.

  ‘Has this, perchance, got something to do with the budgets?’ Flavia asked, and groaned as he nodded.

  ‘Oh, no. Please. Not me. I’ve so much work to do already,’ she said desperately, looking at him with all the mournful appeal her large, blue, north Italian eyes could summon at such short notice.

  But he was a hard man. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I’m sure we can redistribute your load.’

  ‘You couldn’t when I asked you for a day off on Friday.’

  Bottando was not, however, a man to be put off by little details. ‘That was Friday,’ he pointed out with accuracy, waving the matter aside with a chubby hand. ‘Have you ever heard of the Titian committee?’

  Flavia had worked with him long enough to know defeat when it stared her in the face. ‘Of course. Some vast, government funded enterprise to produce a complete catalogue of everything Titian ever did, down to authenticating his laundry bills? Quite a status project, isn’t it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ her boss replied. ‘The Dutch set up something similar, and the Arts Minister decided that if anyone was to have the prestige of a hugely overfunded international mega-project it should be an Italian painter, not some Dutch hack like Rembrandt. So they set up an even more pricey affair for Titian. Half a dozen experts, soaking up enough money in a year to keep us in luxury for a decade. A team effort. Don’t know why but evidently in this bureaucratic age they think that six personal opinions are better than one. Makes it seem more accurate. Not so sure I’m convinced. They work away like fury, producing catalogues of paintings, drawings and so on. You know the sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. ‘So?’

  Bottando regarded her a bit doubtfully. ‘So,’ he said, labouring the word to show he’d noticed her lack of enthusiasm, ‘so, now there’s only five of them. To put it another way, a sixth of this high-powered, international committee has gone and got murdered, that’s so. And it’s causing a bit of a stir in certain circles. That is to say, for various reasons the Arts Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the Tourism Ministry and the Interior Ministry are all up in arms about it. And that’s not counting the local authorities in the Veneto and in Venice itself. Fuss, fuss, fuss.’

  ‘I understand that. But it’s a job for the local carabinieri, isn’t it? After all, they must be used to it by now. Foreigners die in Venice all the time. People write books on it.’

  ‘Indeed. But it’s not all that often that they’re murdered. Anyway, the point is, it has been decided that the forces of Italian law and order have to do their best to sort this out. Experts flying in, national effort, and so on. And you, my dear, are the instrument chosen to demonstrate how seriously the government is taking this challenge to Venice’s ability to draw in tourist income.’

  ‘Me?’ said Flavia with mixed astonishment and annoyance. ‘Why on earth send me? I’m not even in the police.’ Which was true, although she only remembered this fact when it was convenient. Technically she was only a researcher and had strenuously resisted the temptation to sign up on a more regular basis. Uniforms didn’t suit her. Nor, for that matter, did the odd spurt of military discipline the polizia occasionally indulged in to remind its forces they were technically members of the army.

  ‘Exactly,’ Bottando replied happily, pleased that she was so quick on the uptake at such an early hour. ‘It’s all appearances, you see. Politics, in a word. The powers that be down here want to show they’re trying. But they don’t want to put the noses of the locals out of joint. So we are going to send, firstly, someone from the art squad to help out with our expertise and, secondly, someone junior who will not make the Venice carabinieri think they’re being criticised. And that all adds up to you.’

  ‘Thanks for the show of confidence,’ said Flavia with some pique. Which was a little irrational of her. She’d come into Bottando’s office hoping she wasn’t going to be given an investigation, and now found herself offended that she hadn’t. It was, nonetheless, galling to think her main qualification for the job was being entirely innocuous. ‘I still think it’s a complete waste of my time.’

  Bottando shrugged. ‘That depends on whether you want a job next month,’ he said reasonably.

  A good argument. ‘Oh, all right. If I must.’

  ‘You mustn’t think of it like that,’ Bottando told her reassuringly. ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity. You have to do nothing at all, and will gain the thanks of three of the most powerful ministers in the government for not doing it. As will the department, of course, which is more important at the moment. Could be crucial in fact, if we get the timing right. Consider it as more of a paid holiday. You can trot up tomorrow, spend a day and be back home by Tuesday evening. Besides, Venice, I remember, is particularly beautiful at this time of year.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she protested. Really, the man’s willingness to ignore facts to suit himself was extraordinary. He knew very well she’d been planning to go to Sicily. Venice, however adorable, was not at all what she had in mind. Bu
t he paid no attention.

  ‘You will have to put in an appearance with the police up there, but you can make it clear that you have no intention of interfering at all with their investigation,’ he went on, becoming all business-like now he knew he’d won. He normally did, but Flavia was sometimes wayward over the matter of obeying orders.

  ‘All you have to do is hang around, work on your expense account, then knock out a perfectly harmless report in which you sound brilliant and penetrating but exonerate everyone for not arresting the murderer while also making it clear that you have established that it is not a matter for our department. Standard sort of thing. That should do the trick nicely.’

  She sighed more openly so he would realise the sacrifice she was making for the public good. A nice man, an amiable soul, but a bit of a bulldozer in many ways. She knew him well enough to know a fight was pointless. She was going to Venice, and that was settled.

  ‘You think they won’t find whoever it was?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment. I’m a bit hazy on the details but first reports make it sound like a mugging that got out of hand. I’ve no doubt you’ll find out when you get there.’

  2

  By the time the internal Alitalia flight began its circling descent to Venice’s Marco Polo airport bright and early on Monday morning, Flavia had forced herself back into a moderately good humour, despite having risen from her bed at an ungodly hour, yet again, to catch the plane.

  Were it not for the circumstances, she would ordinarily have been overjoyed at the prospect of getting out of her underventilated, over-inhabited office in central Rome. Venice, after all, was not such a bad place to spend a day or two. As it was going to be a brief trip, she travelled as light as was compatible with being prepared for all eventualities. Trousers, dresses, skirts, shirts, sweaters, a dozen or so books. Maps of Venice and the surrounding area, railway and airport timetables, overcoat for the cold, raincoat for the rain. Boots for walking, good shoes just in case, pads of paper and notebooks, a few files of police business, towels, dressing-gown, gloves, a torch for emergencies. She would, probably, wear nothing except jeans and sweaters, as usual, but there was no harm in being prepared.