The Immaculate Deception

‘Lucky you. What is it?’

‘I’ve no idea. Nothing special in itself, I think.’

‘Where does it come from?’

Another shrug.

‘May I…?’ Argyll said, taking it off the wall before Bottando could say, no, I’d rather you didn’t…

He’d looked more closely and saw that the damage and wear and tear were more obvious. Flaking in one part, scratches in another, but not bad nevertheless. Then he’d turned it over. No useful scribbles, just a little piece of paper stuck on, with a little stamp that looked like a house, and a number – 382 – written in faded ink. Not one that Argyll knew. He’d shrugged, and put it back, and later jotted down the mark in a little notebook he kept for these things; it was one of his rare shows of organization. Useful things, owners’ marks; the only decent dictionary of them had been published three-quarters of a century previously and was so out of date and incomplete it was only occasionally helpful. Argyll had the vague notion that one day he might publish a supplement, and ensure his ever-lasting fame. ‘Is it in Argyll?’ People would ask in decades to come. Or they would, if he ever got around to doing it.

And now, nine months later, the picture and the mark came back to him. That could be his present. He could track it down. Figure out what it was, where it had come from, who had owned it. Make all the details up into a little report. A gesture, nothing more than that, but a nice thing to have, he thought. Personal. Individual. Better than the little print or watercolour the office whip-round would probably produce.

The iconographies were of little help, but a start. Virgins with airborne babies were generally taken to be an early representation of the Immaculate Conception, long before the doctrine took over the hearts and minds of the religiously-inclined. The two figures kneeling before her probably had the faces of the donors, but might well also represent Mary’s parents. And if it was an Immaculate Conception, then it had probably been painted for the Franciscans, who were early enthusiasts for the idea of Mary being born without sin. But he had no artist or even school to start with; just a guess at date and region. All he had was his note of the little stamp on the back. Great oaks from little acorns grow. Argyll phoned his old employer, Edward Byrnes, who said he’d ask around. He always said this, and rarely did anything about it.

This time it was different: within an hour Byrnes sent him a fax about an offer from a colleague for one of the pictures in his sale, saying that in his opinion the price was good and should be accepted, and added at the bottom of his note that he had tracked down the little house mark.

‘According to those people old enough to remember, it certainly refers to Robert Stonehouse, who formed a collection of some worth between the wars. This was broken up in the 1960s; I have looked through the catalogue of the sale for you, but the obvious match won’t take you much further. It is given as “Florentine school, late fifteenth century”, although considering how wayward these people can be sometimes on attributions it could be by Picasso. It sold for ninety-five pounds so we can assume that no one in London at the time rated it. Stonehouse’s villa in Tuscany went to some American university; they might know more.’

Another hour with the reference books, books of memoirs and other impedimenta of the trade brought some more details about the collection – enough at least to indicate that Byrnes’s description of the collection as being ‘of some worth’ was a trifle cool. It had, in fact, been a very good collection indeed. A standard story, such as he knew it; Grandad Stonehouse had made the money in jute or some such, son Stonehouse came over all artistic and retired to a magnificent villa in Italy, from which vantage point he not only bought his pictures but also kept a canny eye on the stock market, being one of the few to do very handsomely out of the great crash of 1929 – a calamity that caused art prices the world over to collapse, much to the delight of those collectors who’d hung on to their money.

The great and traditional cycle was completed in the third generation with the last Robert Stonehouse, who had his father’s expensive tastes but lacked his grandfather’s attention to financial detail. The result was the break-up of the collection, the dispersal of all those works of art to museums around the world, and the sale of the villa to the American university which established some form of summer camp in the building which had once echoed to the voices of the leading literary and artistic figures of Europe.

So far, so ordinary, and there was nothing in the tale which might help. The point that tickled Argyll’s interest was that the second Stonehouse, by repute, had seen himself as an artist-collector, whose accumulations were not merely an assorted lumping together of high quality bric-a-brac, but an artistic ensemble in their own right, every painting and tapestry and bronze and sculpture and majolica and print and drawing carefully acquired to form a perfect and complete harmony. An obscure achievement, certainly, one that virtually no one could ever appreciate, but a remarkable accomplishment none the less. A tragedy, in its way, that the whole thing was dispersed, but that was the point. In its way, Argyll thought loftily as he poured himself another drink and put his feet up on the sofa to contemplate his inspiration, collecting was the original performance art, transitory, fleeting and evanescent. Called into existence for one brief moment, then blown away on the winds of change as economics had their corrosive effect.

And theft. Seen in that way, theft could be presented as an aesthetic act, part of the never-ending process of breaking up and re-forming groups of pictures. Good heavens, he thought, I might even write my paper on this. Bottando’s little gift and the conference taken care of in one fell swoop. Kill two birds with one Stonehouse, so to speak. Windy, no doubt, insubstantial and vague, perhaps, but just the sort of thing that goes down well at conferences. Besides, time was running short. He really had to get on with it soon, and he had no other ideas at all.

His labours didn’t fill in any details about the little Virgin, however, although it gave him hope. If it had caught the eye of Stonehouse, there might be something to it; merely mentioning its provenance should add a fair amount to its value if Bottando ever wanted to sell it. Provenance hunting is a compulsive hobby in its own right, and once started it is difficult to stop. There is always the temptation to see if you can push the picture just a little bit further back into the past. Argyll had got back firmly only to 1966 and had pinned down only one previous owner. He still knew very little and in any case the idea for the paper had tickled his fancy. And Flavia was so preoccupied and grumpy that he would hardly be missed. Better to keep out of the way for a few days.

He thought about it, then got the number of the American university from directory inquiries, and rang them up. Charming people. Of course they had papers about Stonehouse; of course he could see them; of course they would be happy to put him up for a night if needed. Would that it was always so simple. Half an hour later he was packing his bag to be ready for an early train to Florence the next morning.

5 (#ulink_989260ca-1e4f-5fb5-a8e5-6125eeaeed01)

Corrado the trainee had done an exemplary job. Not only had he unearthed almost everyone in Italy ever involved in art theft, correlated them with those people known to have a penchant for art, then constructed another list of those connected with organized crime, and broken it down by region (on the reasonable ground that most criminals are remarkably lazy and don’t like commuting), but he had also typed it all up in two dozen typefaces, illustrated it with handsome (if largely meaningless) tables and bound it into a properly professional-looking report some forty-five pages long, complete with references to the case files. Flavia tried not to look impressed.

‘Very pretty,’ she said as drily as she could manage, tossing it on to her desk. ‘Now, if you would summarize your findings?’

‘None,’ he said with commendable directness.

‘None at all?’

‘No one in the files has the profile you need. That is, I was looking for people who work singly and have stolen something similar. I even separated that and assumed that the person who stole the painting might be acting for someone else, but still no one fits very well. I didn’t manage to check everything, of course, but … ’

Good, she thought. So he was fallible after all. A chance to be censorious. ‘Why not? Thoroughness is essential in these matters, you know. Without it …’

‘Not all the files were there,’ he interrupted, cutting the ground away from her just as she was getting into her stride. ‘A few were missing.’

Flavia ground her teeth. The sloppiness of some people was one of the few things that really made her annoyed, largely because she had once been the department’s worst offender in this regard. As a sign of her Damascene conversion, her ascent to the realm of responsibility, so to speak, her first act on moving into Bottando’s office had been to issue a severe memorandum to everyone about signing files out, putting them back afterwards and not resting coffee cups on them. The second had been to clear out all the old files from her office and send them back to the stacks herself.

The edict had as much effect as Bottando’s similarly worded commands had had on her. Great gaps continued to appear, files were placed in the wrong year or the wrong category even on the rare occasion they were put back at all, and every now and then a bellow of rage would echo through the building’s corridors as someone found a blank space where the answer to all their problems should have rested.

‘That’s your afternoon’s entertainment sorted out, then,’ she said. ‘You’d better find them. They must be somewhere in the building.’

‘Maybe. One isn’t, though.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The librarian said it’s down at the EUR. General Bottando borrowed it.’

‘Do without it, then, but find the rest.’ She had ruined his day, she knew that. The poor, crestfallen lad had hoped the splendid job he had done would have won her permission to get back to accompanying Paolo on his rounds.

‘The faster you find them, the faster you get out again,’ she added as he sloped out of the office. Then she leant back in her seat. Really she must get something for the nausea. The only reason she didn’t was her certainty that the doctor would find something wrong. The word ulcer hovered in the back of her mind; the sine qua non of all good bureaucrats. She couldn’t stand the idea. Then the phone rang. The ransom demand had shown up. And about time too.

It was classic stuff; so traditional that it caused a mental eyebrow to waggle up and down in suspicion. A telephone call to the museum – although it seemed that the poor robber had had a hard time getting anyone to listen to him initially – then a codeword to demonstrate his authenticity. Chocolates, the man had said. Fair enough; only someone who knew about the theft knew about the chocolates. Then the demand: three million dollars’ worth of mixed European currencies – how much simpler the Euro will make life for everybody in the ransom business – and a statement that the handover would be communicated tomorrow.

‘I think you should come down here, by the way,’ Macchioli said after he had relayed this information.

‘Why? There’s nothing else is there?’

‘Only this package.’

‘What package?’

‘The one a delivery man has just deposited in my office. I had to sign for it on your behalf.’

Flavia shook her head. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘It arrived five minutes ago. A courier. Don’t know where it comes from. It’s addressed to you, care of the museum.’

‘Why would anyone send me a package there?’

A silence from the other end.

‘Very well, I’ll come and collect it. While I’m on the way, could you see if you can remember anything else about the phone conversation. And get the tapes for me to listen to.’

‘What tapes?’

‘We sent someone round, remember? Just in case you had a phone call. Connected tape recorders to the phone system? Didn’t they?’

‘Oh. That.’ Macchioli sounded doubtful. A small bead of apprehensive sweat put in an appearance at the top of Flavia’s skull.

And rightly, too. For the technicians who fitted the equipment had done their job perfectly in all respects, except for trusting the switchboard operator of the museum to switch it on every morning. She had put it on for the first few days, the vastly obese woman explained, more angrily than was warranted in the circumstances, but the tape kept running out. What was she supposed to do? Didn’t people realize how tiring and stressful it was, answering phone calls all day and every day, without having to worry about changing tapes as well? It wasn’t as if she was paid very much, after all. How often, she asked rhetorically, how often had she told her supervisor that they needed at least two people a day on the switchboard? But did anyone ever listen to her …

Flavia found she wasn’t listening either, and she smiled politely at the indignant, quivering mass of blubber in front of her, and went back to Macchioli’s office.

‘No tape?’ he asked.

‘No.’