The Titian Committee Read online

  Flavia sympathised greatly, but knew quite well that the last thing she should do was show it. She was here to get information, not reassure and console. So, against all her natural instincts, she switched the topic of conversation, hoping to get him on to something less distressing where he would be able to give her the hints she needed.

  ‘What was she working on?’

  ‘No idea. I assumed it was to do with that infernal picture that she and Kollmar disagreed about, but her argument and conclusions she was keeping to herself. Apparently her paper needed last-minute rewriting. All she said was it was awfully exciting and she would much rather spend her time researching – she suggested a book on someone like Giorgione – than arguing on interminable committees where no one wanted her. The idea of quitting and flouncing off to sulk in her tent makes her sound a bit self-pitying, but she was oddly cheerful.’

  ‘Were you surprised by this?’

  ‘Of course. Giorgione was her favourite painter, but there are dozens of books on him already. On the other hand,’ he continued, looking wistfully out of the window, ‘Louise was always a bit of a romantic,’ – another novel viewpoint, she thought – ‘and Giorgione was the sort of painter who would have appealed to her. You know, the greatest painter the world has ever seen, dying heartbroken with Titian at his bedside.’

  ‘I thought they’d fallen out?’ she said, remembering Roberts’ conversation and wanting to appear on top of things.

  ‘Oh, no. Not according to Louise, anyway. Titian and his mistress were just good friends, she reckoned. The man who stole her from Giorgione was another painter called Pietro Luzzi.’

  ‘And what about her leaving the committee?’ she interrupted hurriedly.

  ‘Oh, that. I didn’t take it seriously. Everybody is always running around threatening to resign, especially when they’ve just lost one of our perennial little battles. I hadn’t heard her talk like that before, but I was rather encouraged. So was Roberts, in fact. He had been rather concerned about her absence. He laughed and said he was glad to hear she was beginning to settle in. You know, starting to moan and complain like all the rest of us.’

  6

  By the time Flavia got back to the hotel, Argyll, who had spent most of the day doing nothing constructive at all apart from wandering around churches looking at pictures, was waiting in her room. He seemed willing enough to hang about, as long as he had free use of her phone while she was in the bath. It was the moment of truth. He had finally screwed up sufficient courage to ring the Marchesa.

  So she scrubbed and he dialled, and by the time Flavia had finished, pink, shiny and feeling very much more at peace with the world, both of them were in a better mood.

  Argyll had revised his opinion about his ability as an art dealer. Maybe he was pretty good at it after all. Decisive, direct, fair. A good bargainer. Steely, like a poker player, he concluded.

  ‘Bingo,’ he announced complacently when Flavia emerged in a haze of steam. ‘Got her. Cut out the middleman, that’s what I always say. I refused to smuggle it out once more and she said Pianta was a silly ninny – her words – for even suggesting the idea. Of course the deal was going ahead, financial details all sorted out. Victory is Mine,’ he said with full capital letters to show how pleased he was with himself.

  ‘My price is perfectly acceptable and she wants me to sign the contract tomorrow. So I can start arranging export permits.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Flavia said, genuinely pleased not only that he had at last had some success but that she wouldn’t have to listen to his complaints all evening. ‘We can celebrate and work on my expense account at the same time. It’s been alarmingly modest all day. Then I can amuse you with all the details of my interviews this afternoon. You said you wanted to hear them.’

  She had to confess – to herself, if not to Argyll, whose faith in her memory she did not want to shake – that she had entirely forgotten to ask probing questions about his picture. Not, it seemed, that Masterson was ever very communicative with her colleagues anyway.

  Argyll stared happily at the view of the lagoon while she disappeared back into the bathroom and dressed, then he followed as she led him to an unusually expensive restaurant, ordered a hefty aperitif and got him to down most of it before she gave him a succinct and accurate account of her day’s activities.

  ‘So there you are,’ she concluded. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Most interesting,’ Argyll said. ‘Nothing like examining the dynamics of a small group. You don’t seem to have taken to Roberts all that much, I note.’

  Flavia sniffed. ‘Pompous pedant. All that “We Connoisseurs” tosh.’

  ‘Oh,’ Argyll said knowingly. ‘I see. Leave the Fine Arts to us and you women stick to your knitting. That’s why you’ve gone off him.’

  ‘Partly. Damn it all, someone has been murdered, and apart from Van Heteren, the people I’ve spoken to so far don’t seem very upset about it. Miller says she was ambitious and is worried mainly about the effect on his career. Roberts oozes charm all over me while saying that she might have become useful. Kollmar, it seems, thinks of her as vicious.’

  ‘She does seem very adept at antagonising people,’ Argyll ventured cautiously, vaguely aware that it might not be quite the right thing to say.

  ‘You see,’ Flavia said indignantly, exploding with annoyance, ‘you’re exactly the same. She gets characterised as pushy, aggressive and ambitious. Apart from Van Heteren, the best they can say of her is that she was conscientious. Conscientious! Ha! If it was Roberts, they would say how dynamic, productive and innovative he was. She produces books, articles, works like fury and Miller says she was only a token. She criticises Kollmar for shoddiness and he says she’s vicious. The poor woman gets murdered and you say she antagonised people. You’ll say she had it coming next. All her fault. Justifiable homicide.’

  Argyll looked at her in a pained fashion. There was a long silence after her outburst as she glared furiously at him.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not over-identifying a little here?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I am. Why not? Can you imagine what it is like to work with older men who all treat you like some glorified typist? Roberts lectures me like a first year undergraduate, I’m dispatched here by Bottando on the grounds that I’m entirely innocuous, Bovolo makes slimy comments about the way I dress and only allows me to see these people because he’s sure I won’t accomplish anything. How would you like it?’

  There was a long pause as Flavia fumed silently and Argyll felt increasingly uncomfortable. This was an aspect of her he’d not noticed before. Previously he’d always assumed that she bounced along, completely impervious to the outside world. Evidently he’d not been paying attention.

  ‘You’re quite right, of course. Sorry,’ he said eventually. There was another extensive lull in the conversation as Flavia depressurised and Argyll hoped his comment hadn’t wrecked a perfectly good friendship. But he was again amazed how Flavia could go thermonuclear so effectively and then cool off at such speed.

  ‘I didn’t know Bottando annoyed you so much,’ he added when he judged the radiation level had reached safety.

  Flavia looked puzzled. ‘Bottando? He doesn’t annoy me. He does as best he can. Besides, I’m used to him now. It’s everybody else. All I was saying was that you shouldn’t take these accounts of Masterson at face value. Especially as one of them, possibly, is a pack of lies concocted by a murderer.’

  ‘But as far as I can see, you’ve made out a good case for Masterson stabbing one of these people, but have no idea why someone might have killed her,’ he pointed out.

  ‘True enough.’

  ‘Back to the Sicilian marauder, then? Nice and easy, solves all the problems.’

  Flavia regarded him with distaste. The horrible thought that Bovolo might be right after all had crossed her mind as she came home from Van Heteren. But she dismissed the notion as being solely the result of exhaustion. She did not want the little seed of doubt
cultivated by people like Argyll.

  But she had no alternative theory, so they dropped the subject entirely, finished dinner and walked back to the hotel where Argyll began a lengthy speech wishing her a safe trip back to Rome. She was in two minds. On the one hand she wanted to wash her hands of this affair. It seemed like a non-starter that would lead nowhere at all and cause her a great deal of trouble en route. On the other, she did dislike having to leave things undone, and she knew Bovolo was going to make a total hash of it. Besides, going back to Rome to watch the possible dismemberment of the department did not fill her with enthusiasm. If she was able to come up with the real murderer, now…

  ‘Oh, there’s a message for you, Signorina,’ said the concierge as she collected her key. It was from Bovolo. Undoubtedly unimportant and could wait until morning. But adding a possibly lengthy conversation with him on to the need to see Lorenzo and Kollmar before a plane at noon made a ferociously busy morning, and she hated missing planes. Equally, it was now past ten and she felt like impressing the dour policeman with her enthusiasm. With a bit of luck she might even wake him up.

  She dialled, and to her surprise was put through immediately. There followed a long series of ‘ums’, and ‘ahs’, and ‘ahas’ and then silence as she listened. She turned round to summon Argyll, who was shuffling his way to the door. She gestured at him to stay put.

  Eventually she mouthed her last ‘uh-um’ and put down the phone. She turned to Argyll with a ‘haven’t-I-got-something-to-tell-you’ expression on her face.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Bovolo’s assistant,’ she said, ‘with the latest instalment. I think my departure from Venice may have to be delayed.’

  She went back to the desk to extend her tenure of the room.

  ‘It appears,’ she went on, once her bed had been secured, ‘that Professor Roberts has just been fished out of the canal, dead as they come. Come and hold my hand. I hate stiffs.’

  It was the usual sight, made unusual by the surroundings; a thin street with two tiny walkways on either side of a narrow and gloomy canal. A fine perspective view of hump-backed bridges could just be made out, presenting a picture that would, in better light and more normal circumstances, make a perfect postcard view of tourist Venice.

  A few hundred yards down the canal, which runs south from the Ca’ Rezzonico on the Grand Canal, is a tiny square, whose main claim to fame is that it contains the small but austerely handsome church of San Barnaba. It was almost completely dark, save for a small island of brilliance provided by the powerful police floodlights brought in on a patrol launch. They focused on a shapeless bundle lying on the quayside covered by a large white sheet.

  When at last they managed to find the square, Flavia, discreetly followed by Argyll, hurried to join a small group of perhaps half a dozen people standing in the pool of light. It had taken some time to get there, the topography of Venice being especially confusing at night. But at least it wasn’t raining. During the day it had turned very chilly and windy for the time of year and the downpour would undoubtedly begin soon. But not yet.

  Flavia huddled inside her fur coat. She didn’t particularly like it, but it was a cast-off from her mother who was under the impression that fur makes a woman more marriageable. She was constantly handing over such useful aids to matrimony, with a conscious attempt to seem less distressed about the dreadful fate of having a thirty-year-old unmarried daughter. But, whatever the potentially magical effect on eligible bachelors, the coat did not seem to stimulate the affections of Commissario Bovolo, who looked her over with great disapproval.

  ‘We were waiting,’ he said flatly to Flavia, with the hidden implication that she would be better at her job if she spent less time dressing up.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Drowned. Don’t ask me how. No way of telling. Probably slipped.’

  ‘No signs of violence?’

  ‘Not of deliberate violence, if that’s what you mean.’ He knew very well that it was.

  ‘How long’s he been dead?’

  Bovolo shrugged again. ‘Can’t say really. Not long. He was found about an hour and a half ago by the refuse collectors. They dropped a sack overboard, fished for it and found him instead. Spent twenty minutes in their boat while they waited for us. He pongs a bit, I’m afraid,’ he concluded.

  An unnecessary detail, but more than accurate. They wandered over to the side of the canal where a small group of miscellaneous officials was gathered. At the focal point of their gaze was one of the world’s greatest experts on Renaissance painting, not that the casual passer-by would have realised.

  Professor Roberts’ appearance was not improved by his hand-spun Harris tweed jacket being covered liberally with potato peelings and his scholarly authority was diminished by the very strong odour that now emanated from him. The once elegantly coiffed mane of grey-white hair was wet and grimy and tangled up with lumps of…

  Flavia screwed up her face in disgust and switched quickly to thinking about something other than the inadequate state of the Venetian sewage system. She hadn’t taken to the man enormously, but was inclined to think he deserved a more seemly end than this.

  ‘Is that all you can say? He was found at about nine-thirty?’ Bovolo nodded. ‘When did he drop in, though?’

  ‘As far as we can guess at the moment, probably seven, or thereabouts. We might know more when the doctors have poked him about a bit.’

  He called over one of his subordinates who was throwing pieces of wood into the water and watching them intensely. Flavia had assumed he was underemployed, but was soon disabused of this notion. ‘Well?’ he asked as the man came over.

  The pimply youth stood to attention and spoke in the strange accent of the born and bred Venetian. ‘About two hundred metres an hour, as far as I can see, sir. The current brings the water down from the Grand Canal.’

  Bovolo turned smugly to Flavia. ‘Venetian lore. That’s why we aren’t too keen on strangers butting in,’ he said, a little unreasonably considering that his own accent marked him clearly as a Milanese. ‘What it means is that this’ – he gestured at Roberts’ mortal remains – ‘must have fallen in between about four and six hundred metres upstream, depending on when he entered the water.’

  The young policeman began to talk again, but Bovolo shut him up impatiently. He was enjoying himself. He pointed towards the Grand Canal. ‘Probably went in at the Ca’ Rezzonico vaporetto stop. Must have walked there from his house further down this little canal here. We’ll have to go and check for signs of a slip. Interview all the inhabitants, that sort of thing. Nasty accident. Very nasty.’

  ‘You think this was an accident?’ Argyll said incredulously, speaking for the first time. Bovolo glared at him coldly and Flavia trod heavily on his foot. He shut up while Flavia negotiated to get copies of the post-mortem and investigations out of the local man. Bovolo, glancing suspiciously at Argyll from time to time, eventually agreed.

  ‘Don’t get any fancy ideas, mind,’ he said by way of a farewell. ‘Remember your role here. And please don’t think this little incident need delay your departure. I’m sure you’re needed more in Rome than you are here.’

  His voice faded as Flavia strode off out of the square, with Argyll in hot pursuit.

  ‘No need to run,’ he called as she rounded the corner out of sight of the watching Bovolo. ‘You’re not in a race.’

  She slowed down when they were out of earshot, and carefully chose a quiet and secluded little alleyway. She went down it, screamed loudly for a few seconds to let out forty-eight hours’ worth of pent up frustration, and kicked the wall with her boots.

  Argyll, hands in pockets, waited patiently for her to finish. She was prone to high-decibel ventilation every now and then. Her language was diabolical.

  ‘Better?’ he asked calmly when she quietened down a bit.

  ‘Damn that stupid, moronic, complacent little…person,’ she screeched with b
itterness as she tried to digest both Bovolo’s remarks and conclusions.

  ‘You think he might be wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’ Argyll winced as a light in a nearby house clicked on and an enquiring head poked out to discover what all the noise was about. ‘Ha. How can anyone be that dimwitted? Nasty accident. Paf!’

  ‘Well, I thought it was hasty of him,’ Argyll said, trying to get her to express herself a little more quietly. ‘So why did you stand on my foot then? You’re always doing that. It hurts, you know.’

  He persuaded her to leave the alleyway, and they crossed a narrow bridge with Flavia calmer but still percolating nicely. Twice in an evening. Quite a lot of energy used up, even for her. She picked up a stone lying on the concrete parapet and hurled it into the canal below to vent a bit more of her supply and was rewarded with a bellow of outrage from the owner of the barge just passing underneath.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she yelled back. ‘I didn’t hit you. And you can shut up as well,’ she said furiously, swinging round to Argyll who was convulsed with laughter.

  Argyll gurgled away and tried to control his voice so that he could speak coherently. ‘I am sorry,’ he began, before being interrupted by another burst of laughter. Quite unconsciously and not thinking as he giggled again, he put his arm round her and gave her a comradely hug.

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said tartly, so full of irritation that the left-overs spilled on to her companion as well. Argyll stopped laughing and withdrew his arm.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said soberly. ‘It’s serious, I know.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said stiffly but beginning to realise she was overreacting. ‘God, but I feel tired all of a sudden.’

  ‘Want a walk? Clear the brain? You sound as though a brisk canter through the streets would do you good.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. The evening’s been going from bad to worse. The longer it lasts the worse it will get. I want to go back to the hotel and go straight to bed. I’m exhausted.’