The Bernini Bust Read online

  'So I say: "Well, I'm nattered. Thank you. I must say I was pleased as well. Though I say it myself."

  '"What do you mean?"

  '"What do you think I mean? I sculpted that bust. Me. In my workshop. It's not Bernini at all."

  'Now, that rattled him good and proper. But he wasn't having it. "You?" he says with a nasty sneer in his voice. "A common labourer? You expect me to believe a cock-and-bull story like that."

  '"Common labourer I may be," I say, proper mad now. "But an uncommon sculptor, if I might say so. Good enough, it seems, to make a fool out of a man who's spent his life studying The Master, as you put it."

  'You see, signorina, I'd all but forgotten Hector by now. I didn't like being called a common labourer. Originally I just wanted to get him to leave Hector alone. But now, I was determined to humiliate him. He still didn't believe me, so I whip out my drawings, and show them to him. Then I bring out my little pieces. A nose, an ear, a chin. You know. Practice pieces, I say. To get it just right on the finished marble.

  'You could see him getting uncertain, all his arrogance draining away. He looked at the drawings - I'm a good draughtsman - then at the lumps of stone I'd carved, and you could see him worrying. Maybe, he was thinking. Just maybe. You must remember what turmoil the art world was in. It wasn't long since the Van Meegeren business in Holland, where the greatest experts had authenticated the most awful fakes. And everyone had a good laugh at their expense. This Alberghi man was not the sort to take a joke.

  'So I ploughed on with my story. I did my very best to convince him that I'd made the bust for Hector to sell to a foolish collector in Switzerland, who thought it was a great bargain. There was nothing illegal in it; you didn't need a permit to export modern works. And then the Borghese comes in and authenticates it. Thank you very much, says I. Greatly increased in value now, I tell him. Hector will be pleased.

  'This was where I went too far, wanting to rub his nose in it. He snaps his head up and says, "What?"

  'And I say, "Well, in the letter you wrote to Hector you say it's genuine. So, a bust with an authentication by you ..."

  '"You will not use that letter . . ." he says, furiously.

  'And I smirk at him. "Try and stop us," I say. "I will," he replies.

  'So he calls a guard from the museum, and they go into the next room. Where the Bernini was. The first time I'd seen it, and it really was beautiful. Everything Alberghi and Hector said was true. Obviously the real thing. I could tell, just by looking. A lovely, lovely piece . . .'

  He stopped again for a while before restarting, clearly hating every word that he uttered.

  'Anyway, Alberghi gestures at the bust, and tells the guard to pick it up. He does, even though it's heavy, and Alberghi leads the way out. They go all the way through the museum, out to the back, to a little courtyard where some builders are doing work, and the guard puts it on the ground. I followed after them, you see. And Alberghi goes up to a workman, and takes a heavy sledgehammer from him. It was before I could do anything to stop him, you see . . .'

  'What happened?'

  'What do you think? He hit it just once, with enormous force. Right on the head. The blow spread straight through the marble, and the entire bust broke into pieces. A dozen, maybe more, and hundreds of shards. Irreparable damage. I just looked at what he'd done, and Alberghi threw the sledgehammer down and came up to me.

  '"Well, sculptor," he says, all the nastiness back in his voice. "So much for that. That's what you get if you try to pull a fast one on me. Now take your work and go."

  'And he dusted off his hands and walked off. If I hadn't goaded him, it might never have occurred to him to destroy it. I don't know why I did it. I collected a few fragments, the least damaged bits, but there was nothing to be done with them.'

  There was a long pause, during which Borunna didn't feel like talking and Flavia could think of nothing to say.

  'How very unfortunate,' Argyll put in rather lamely. Borunna glanced at him.

  'Unfortunate? Yes. But the trouble is . . .'

  'Yes?'

  'I don't know how to tell you. You'll think I'm a monster . . .'

  'Just try us.'

  'I felt happy.'

  'Happy?'

  'Yes. When that sledgehammer came down and that beautiful work was smashed into pieces, I was exultant. Triumphant. I can't explain it. I've felt guilty about it ever since.'

  He looked at her as though she could confer some form of absolution for his feeling. Which she felt unable to offer.

  'And Hector wasn't prosecuted?'

  'Oh, no. There were no charges. Alberghi thought that any defence would have involved saying the bust was a copy and that could have made him a laughing-stock. Hector still had the letter. So all Hector heard was that the bust had been confiscated. And that was it.'

  'And you never told him?'

  'How could I? It would have broken his heart. I was destroyed by it. And Maria said it was best forgotten. So I forgot it all, until you turned up. I should have told you everything then. But as I knew that the bust in America couldn't be genuine, I assumed Hector had been forging again. But if I had said something, at least he would still be alive.'

  'Is that what worries you most?'

  He nodded.

  'Well, you can set your mind at rest there,' she said gently. 'By the time I saw you he was already dead.'

  'I think he did know,' Argyll added. 'It was why he wanted to examine the bust. And that was why he was killed, in fact. If he hadn't known, he would never have insisted on talking to Moresby alone, and wouldn't have been in the way. He was going to come back to Italy to get you to corroborate what had happened.'

  'But how could he possibly have known . . .'

  Flavia glanced up, beyond Borunna, and saw his wife, framed in the doorway. She remembered everything she'd heard. Di Souza's reputation as a bit of a womaniser. The younger woman alone with him while her older husband was off working. How he had got to know di Souza through his wife, how the sculptor often came home and found them together, how they were so close, how she was so keen that Hector be helped out of trouble. And she understood perfectly why Borunna had felt so happy when he had seen Hector's head smashed into bits by that sledgehammer. Perfectly natural.

  And she also saw the look of fright on the old lady's face that she might bring it all up, and remembered the look of sadness and devotion when she'd said how worried she was about her Alceo's fit of depression.

  'He must have found out through contacts in the Borghese,' she said hastily. 'I don't know when, but as far as I can see he dealt with the blow well enough. He certainly didn't seem to bear you any grudge.'

  'So you don't think my not telling you made any difference?'

  'None at all,' said Flavia robustly. 'If that's all that's worrying you then you can put your mind at rest. Even the little you told me was crucial and the full story wouldn't have made the slightest difference. I confess it's a shock to find out about the bust, but it was a long time ago. What happened to the bits?'

  Borunna was reluctantly and slowly coming out of his gloom, encouraged along by her reassuring comments. Full rehabilitation would take some time, and the ministrations of a doting wife. Still, he at least began the process of coming back to normality. The bits of the bust, he said, were in a box down in his workshop by the cathedral. If they wanted to see them, he'd show them. But only after they had selected and taken a piece of his carving.

  'From both of us,' his wife added. 'With our thanks.'

  As Argyll had already made up his mind, and Flavia was more than happy with the choice, that bit was easy. So, clutching the madonna wrapped in a piece of old newspaper, and with the old couple holding hands like a pair of adolescents, they walked slowly through the narrow streets to the workyard.

  The box was covered in drawings and tools and a thick layer of dust, the lid was formidably heavy, and the contents were covered by old sheets. But underneath them all was the source of their recent
problems. One by one, Borunna pulled them out and laid them on a bench, organising them to show how the bust had looked.

  Most of the face was there, but he was certainly correct in saying that the piece was irreparable. About half had vanished, and much of the rest was badly chipped.

  All four of them looked at it in silence for some time.

  'What a pity,' Flavia said, a statement so self-evident that it needed little comment from the others.

  'The trouble is I've never known what to do with it. It would be criminal just to throw the pieces away, but I don't know what else to do.'

  They stared a while longer, and Argyll got the glimmerings of an idea. Properly set in an upright piece of marble, the face would look almost unblemished. If restored by an expert. A nice bit of lettering . . .

  'Do you still want to make some apology to Hector?' he asked.

  Borunna shrugged. A bit late now, he said, but yes. How?

  Argyll held the face up until it glinted in the autumn light.

  'Don't you think this could be turned into a wonderful gravestone?'