The Bernini Bust Page 16

  'I'm very glad to see you. We have so much to discuss '

  If Langton was wary about what was coming next, he didn't show it. Instead he just leant back on the chair with a look of complete indifference and waited for her to continue.

  'About the mysterious people who sold you the Bernini.'

  Langton looked benignly at her and raised an eyebrow. 'What about them?' he asked calmly.

  'They don't exist. The bust was stolen from Alberghi's house at Bracciano, and transported across the Atlantic'

  'I admit the family didn't exist,' he said with surprising readiness and an even more alarming smile. 'More than that I couldn't say.'

  'You knew it was stolen.'

  'On the contrary. I knew nothing of the sort.'

  'How did you hear about it?'

  'Simple enough. I was looking at some of di Souza's other stuff and found it shrouded in a bedsheet. I made him an offer, there and then.'

  'Without checking what it was, without even getting permission from the museum?'

  'Of course I checked what it was afterwards. But I knew in my bones without really having to. And I asked Moresby if he wanted it.'

  'Not the museum.'

  'No.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because Moresby took all the real decisions. Just wanted to save time.'

  'And he wanted it?'

  'Obviously. He leapt at the chance.'

  'You knew he'd already bought it once. In 1951 ?'

  'Yes.'

  'From di Souza?'

  'That I didn't know at the time,' he said blandly. 'All I knew was that for years Moresby had disliked art dealers. And as an example of their perfidiousness he used to say that he had once - only once -been cheated out of a Bernini by someone who had sold it to him, taken some money and then never delivered. Moresby felt he'd been made a fool of, and he didn't like that. It was obvious he'd leap at the chance to get it.'

  'So you then got di Souza to ship it over. Why?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Why were you both prepared to use the same man who had cheated Moresby all those years ago?'

  'He had the bust. Moresby wanted the bust in California, and there was no way we could have got export permission. Somebody not connected with the museum had to smuggle it. We made up a story about another owner to cover him, so he wouldn't get into trouble. That's why he was leaping around and looking so concerned and complaining about his good name. All an act.'

  'And you paid him?'

  Langton smiled. 'I'm sure that Detective Morelli has discovered that already. Yes. Two million dollars.'

  'Moresby told Thanet four million.'

  'Two.'

  'And this was when?'

  'When what?'

  'When was he paid?'

  'On delivery. Moresby wasn't taking any chances this time.'

  'And when did you see this bust and make him an offer?'

  'A few weeks back.'

  'When?'

  'Oh, lord, I don't know. First week in May, perhaps. The whole deal was done very quickly. I assure you that I had not the slightest doubt about the fact that di Souza was the legitimate owner of that bust. If you can prove otherwise, I'm sure the museum will insist on sending it back to the rightful owners. And bear any other costs.

  'I'm sure it will be found,' he went on. 'Large busts like that don't go missing for long.'

  'This one has already been missing for forty years.'

  Langton shrugged and repeated that it would turn up.

  Flavia thought it time to try another line of approach. Langton had nettled her badly back in Rome, and she was convinced that everything concerning this bust was crooked, and that he knew it. His calm confidence that they would never pin anything on him was spoiling her afternoon. Especially because, as far as she was concerned, he was probably right.

  'You disliked Thanet for taking your job and were hell-bent on sabotaging him and getting him out of the museum.'

  She was proud of that. Hell-bent, that is. It was a word she'd picked up from a movie she'd watched on television while wide awake from jetlag at three o'clock in the morning. She'd tackled Argyll about its meaning later on. Langton, not impressed by her linguistic skill, at least seemed prepared to concede the general thrust of the statement.

  'Sabotaging is going too far. And it wasn't personal. I just think he's a dangerous person to have in a museum. You know.'

  'I don't. From everything I've heard he sounds fairly meek and mild.'

  'In that case you don't understand anything about museums. The Moresby was a nice museum, once. Small and friendly, despite Moresby's awful presence hanging over it. He loathed arty types; he was always saying how they were thieves and swindlers. Then he brought in Thanet and these ideas for the big museum began to surface.'

  'So?'

  'A big museum isn't just a big building and collection. The first thing you do is develop a big bureaucracy worthy of it. Steering committees, hanging committees, budget committees. Hierarchy, interference and plans. Thanet is making the museum about as much fun to work for as General Motors.'

  'And you weren't happy.'

  'No. And it wasn't working either. To start off, the collection was quirky, individual and interesting. Now it's just like every other museum; a boring plod through the Great Schools of art, from Raphael to Renoir. The trouble is all the good pictures are already in museums. All Thanet can do is get the leftovers. The place is becoming an international joke.'

  'So why don't you leave if you dislike it so much?'

  'Firstly, because the pay is OK. Secondly, because I like being the lone voice of sanity in the wilderness. Thirdly, because I like to think that at least I buy stuff worth having, most of the time. I haven't given up hope yet.'

  'You may have to, if Mrs. Moresby goes ahead and shuts the place down,' she said.

  Langton's eyes narrowed as he listened. 'When did she say this?'

  Flavia told him.

  'Long time before we get to that point,' he said. 'A lot can change by the time lawyers have finished with it all.'

  'Is it true Anne Moresby was having an affair?' she asked, this being, to her mind, one of the crucial questions.

  Langton almost seemed to have been expecting the question, and he smiled slowly, a bit like a teacher when a particularly stupid pupil gets something right for once. Streeter seemed properly shocked and appalled by the very idea; he sucked in his breath in a most disapproving fashion.

  'Probably,' Langton said. 'I would, if I was married to someone as repulsive as Moresby. They virtually lived apart anyway, you know. But she would have to be discreet. The consequences would have been horrendous if old Moresby ever even suspected.'

  'He may well have done more than suspect.'

  'In that case she's a very lucky woman. She's a multi-billionaire, and she's fortunate she's not a penniless divorcee.' He paused and considered awhile before making his next comment. 'So lucky, in fact, that it makes you wonder.'

  'That fact,' she said, 'had occurred to us as well.'

  'But,' he went on, half talking to himself, 'she had an alibi. Which means she needed an accomplice. So, the big question is, who's the lucky man?'

  She shrugged. 'Work it out for yourself, if you don't know.'

  Argyll looked up for a moment, temporarily distracted from his by now manic hunt. Then the itching gave another twinge and he resumed the assault, bashing the plaster, sticking little twigs and cocktail stirrers down the top until Streeter was looking at him with appalled fascination.

  'What are you doing?'

  'Preserving my sanity,' he replied. 'What you might call an itch hunt.' He looked up for applause, but nobody seemed to be in the mood for little jokes. 'You don't have any knitting needles do you?' he asked helplessly. Streeter said there was not a single one in the house. Argyll looked pained until he offered to search the kitchen for something suitable. Half crazed with desire, Argyll hopped after him.

  'Do the police know about A
nne Moresby's lover?' Streeter asked once they were out of earshot inside the house.

  'Seems so. Lots of extended shopping trips, weekends away. And Moresby knew, which provides a very good motive for murder. It's the awkward business of proving it that seems to be slowing them all down. Very unlike Italy, you know. There the police could have simply arrested everyone and sat on them until they confessed. Pity about your camera,' he said casually to Streeter as they searched. 'It would have made life so much easier if it had been a bit more difficult to get at.'

  Streeter seemed suddenly gloomy. 'Tell me about it,' he said.

  'I suppose it makes your job a bit less secure, doesn't it?'

  Streeter looked at him mournfully.

  'Just as well we can call on that microphone in Thanet's office.'

  'What?'

  'A bug in Thanet's office.'

  'Listen, I've already told . . .'

  'I know. But you've such a reputation for being a hi-tech snoop, who will believe that?'

  'Bugging offices is an offence, you know. The very idea . . .'

  'So if a murderer was suddenly told that a tape existed, I mean, they'd believe it. It might make them nervous. Just as they thought the coast was clear, all of a sudden a piece of evidence turns up. Not that any one has heard what's on it. Destroy that tape, and you're safe, he might tell himself. Desperate circumstances make for desperate actions. Which might lead to a mistake. And you'd get full marks and thanks for co-operating with the police.'

  At last the penny dropped. Argyll didn't have a very high opinion of Streeter. A bit slow, he thought.

  'I see,' he said.

  'My leg feels so much better now. I suppose we ought to go back outside. Flavia and I are meant to be having dinner with Detective Morelli and it's time we were off. I'll tell him about our little chat, if that's all right by you.'

  'Oh, yes,' said Streeter. 'Sure.'

  'Did Mr. Streeter have all that much to say for himself?' Flavia asked after they had extracted themselves, she'd levered Argyll into the car - she had rented a small but practical machine which was not designed for people with plaster casts - and they'd begun the lengthy process of crossing much of the city in search of Morelli's house.

  'Oh, yes,' he replied smugly. 'He was a bit slow on the uptake. I had to drop so many heavy hints I thought he'd sink under the weight. But he got the idea eventually.'

  'And?'

  'We can go ahead and tell people that he was tapping Thanet's office. Isn't that nice? It's a pity he wasn't, but I suppose you can't have everything.'

  Flavia had assumed that the meatballs Detective Morelli had invited them to eat would be prepared by his wife. She was wrong. Morelli was proud of his meatballs. They found him in the kitchen with a pinny around his middle, though the air of domesticity would have been enhanced had he taken his gun off. A large bottle of Californian Chianti was on the kitchen table, the pasta was ready to go into the water, and the tomato sauce was approaching that pitch of absolute perfection which only true Italians can recognise.

  'What you think?' he said, caressing his creations with a wooden spoon as though they were made of finest gold. Argyll poked his nose into the pot, gave a long sniff and nodded appreciatively. Morelli grunted and poured the wine. They settled down; the wine, the smell of cooking, the noise of the children, and the informality all combined to produce an atmosphere of easy relaxation. The only difficulty - for Argyll, if not Flavia - was in eating the vast portions that Morelli poured on to the plates. But after two years in Italy he was getting better at that, and knew how to prepare himself mentally before settling down to a long haul.

  'So what did you two do while I was plugging through my paperwork? Find your bust?'

  Flavia provided a succinct summary of Langton's remarks, which brought a frown from Morelli.

  'He's changed. He never said anything about di Souza supplying that bust before. Why not?'

  'He's shedding his defences. The first line was that everything was legal and any impropriety was due to this anonymous seller. That was obviously nonsense, so now he's blaming di Souza - who can't answer back. The trouble is, it's much more difficult to disprove. Might even be true, for all I know. But I'm not inclined to trust him all that much. Jonathan here thinks he's putting a cloth in our eye.'

  'What?'

  'That's it, isn't it?' she asked, slightly hurt and turning to Argyll for reassurance.

  'Close, but not quite. Pulling the wool over our eyes.'

  'Ah,' she said, repeating it a couple of times to lodge it in her memory. 'Right. Anyway, that's what he thinks.'

  'So what about this bust?'

  'It exists, was owned by di Souza in the 1950s, was sold to Moresby, was confiscated before it reached him, and then was stolen from Alberghi's house a few weeks back.'

  'And turned up here?'

  She nodded. 'A pretty convincing provenance, if you think about it, if a little unorthodox. The more we look, the more genuine it gets.'

  Morelli chased the last trace of tomato sauce round the plate with a piece of bread, popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  'Have you asked the customs people at the airport if they examined the thing?' Argyll asked.

  "Course we have. And no they didn't. No reason to. The Moresby is perfectly respectable; the case was sealed so tight that it would have taken ages to unpack. It was built like a tank; weighed in at around a hundredweight and it was all they could do to move it, let alone unpack and examine it. They reckon they're overworked and understaffed. All they did was check the paperwork.'

  'So, the story seems to be that di Souza goes over to the office with Moresby. They inspect the bust, and for some reason or other the Spaniard leaves with it, and prepares to go straight back to Italy. Not a theft, obviously, as it must have been done with Moresby's approval, as he wasn't dead then. Why could that have happened? No matter. Barclay goes over after di Souza leaves. Argument with Moresby, pop. He comes out, raises the alarm.'

  They refilled the glasses and thought about that for awhile, realising this was a seriously flawed explanation. So Morelli turned to his wife, Giulia, sitting placidly by his side, saying nothing but looking a little contemptuous of their mental meanderings. He always turned to her when there was a problem. She was so much better at them than he was.

  'It's obvious,' she said calmly as she gathered the plates and took them over to the sink. 'Your Spaniard didn't take it. The bust had already been stolen. If it was so heavy and there was no time to take it out after Moresby and di Souza went over to look at it, it must have been taken before.'

  Well, of course. Silly of them not to have thought of it themselves. Unfortunately, there Giulia Morelli's inspiration dried up. As she pointed out, she hardly knew all the details; so they were once more thrown back on their own, inferior, intellectual resources.

  'Can't you swear her in as a deputy, or something?' Argyll asked. 'You do that here, don't you?'

  'Nah,' he said. 'That went out with Jesse James. Besides, the police committee would start an inquiry if I gave my own wife a job. We're on our own.'

  'Pity. We'll have to do some work ourselves. This pate sandwich. When was it stuck over the lens of the security camera?'

  'The camera picture stopped at about 8:30.'

  'Can we assume that was when the bust was stolen?' Flavia persisted.

  'We can assume it. But we can't prove it.'

  'What about the gun used to kill him? No fingerprints?'

  'As you'd expect, wiped clean. No hint of anything on it at all. But bought and registered to Anne Moresby.'

  'And still no witnesses to anything at all?'

  'No. Not that anyone is saying, anyway. But the way that all of them are manoeuvring and playing little games with each other, they may be just too busy to tell us everything they know.'

  With all the sense of achievement of someone reaching the top of Everest, Argyll stuffed the last fragment of meatball in, swallowed and considered the sta
te of his stomach awhile.

  'There is, of course, the problem of the date,' he said, uncertain whether this little detail was going to win an appreciative audience.

  'What date?'

  'The date Mrs. Moresby said she heard her husband and Langton talking about the bust. A couple of months back, she said.'

  'So?'