The Bernini Bust (12 page)

Flavia picked up her coat, walked out into the sunlit piazza, and grabbed another taxi.

“Borghese Museum, please,” she said.

The Borghese, one of the nicest museums in the world, not so grand it causes indigestion but every piece in it a marvel, is based on the collection of the Borghese family, one of whom, Scipione, was the first and most enthusiastic patron of Bernini. So keen was he, indeed, that the museum has Berninis coming out of its ears. It’s a bit of a shock to discover that the cutlery in the tea room wasn’t hand-sculpted by the man as well.

Like all museums, the Borghese houses its employees in a less stately fashion than it does its pieces. Lumps of marble get the full stucco and gilt and painted-ceiling treatment, staff occupy grubby little shoeboxes formerly inhabited by lesser domestic servants. In this respect, at least, museum priorities are pretty much the same the world over. Flavia ended up in a tiny, grim and dark little office, asking her questions.

As might have been expected, the resident Bernini man was on sabbatical in Hamburg for the year, although no one was entirely certain what he was doing there. His deputy was at a seminar in Milan, and the third under-deputy had disappeared at eleven and not come back. In fact, the nearest they had to a resident expert at the moment was a young foreign intern called Collins, working his passage for a year before using the experience (and patronage) as leverage to get a job which actually had a salary attached.

And he confessed after the introductions were performed that he was more of a seventeenth-century Dutch man himself and didn’t really know much about sculpture. He was just filling in while everyone else was on holiday. Sorry, on sabbatical. But he was willing to do what he could, as long as it wasn’t too complicated.

“Bernini,” Flavia said, resigning herself.

“Oh,” he replied.

“I think a bust of Pius V may have been smuggled out the country. I want to know as much about it as possible. Owners. Where it’s been. A photograph would be nice, as well.”

“Pius V?” he said, suddenly interested. “Has this got something to do with the Moresby murder that’s all over the papers?”

She nodded. Of course it had.

This information galvanised Collins into action. He got up from his seat and headed out the door. He was going into battle with the filing system and would be back as soon as possible.

“This could take time,” he said as he disappeared. “There’s so many Berninis around. And those files… well, let’s just say they could be organised a little better. The man who set them up preferred to keep everything in his head. And he died last year without passing his system on to anyone.”

So Flavia sat and admired the view, after deciding that yet another cup of coffee might not be such a good idea. She had a tolerant stomach, but it could be pushed too far.

Collins came back remarkably quickly, triumphantly waving a thin brown file. “Stroke of luck. Got something for you,” he said. “More than I expected, in fact. It’s a bit out of date, but all there is.”

Flavia was twitching with anticipation. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Anything will do. Let’s have a look.”

He opened the file, and Flavia saw it contained only a couple of pieces of paper, musty with age and covered in tiny crabbed handwriting that was almost indecipherable. “Here you are. It’s all rather curious, in fact. It seems to have passed through the museum very briefly in 1951. This sheet is an assessment of a bust, said to be of your Pope Pius by Bernini. Brought in by the customs police for examination.”

He glanced up at Flavia, who was staring at him blankly. “Dated September 3, 1951,” he went on. “Great enthusiasm, detailed description. Conclusion, that this work was undoubtedly by the Man Himself, and a work of national importance. OK?”

Flavia virtually snatched the document from his hands and studied it with the intensity of someone who scarcely credited it.

“Now, as you will see, there is this strange note at the end.”

Collins turned the paper over and pointed out a line, written in the same crabbed hand. Flavia read it.

““Discharged from the museum by E. Alberghi. September 9, 1951.” And signed. What does that mean?”

“Just what it says. In essence, the museum decided it didn’t want it and Alberghi authorised it leaving the museum.”

“But Alberghi?”

“Enrico Alberghi - keeper of sculpture here for years. The man who set up the files. He was a very great authority. A nasty man by reputation, but the best. Never made a mistake and used to terrify everybody. One of the old breed; a collector as well as a connoisseur. Nowadays we’re all too poor, but…’

“Hold it. What did he collect?”

The young man shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Before my time. But he was an expert on baroque sculpture.”

“Tell me about this report, then. What does it mean?”

He shrugged. “Not a clue. This really is outside my area of expertise. All I can tell you is the obvious: Alberghi concluded it was genuine, and the museum didn’t keep it.”

“Could they have done?”

He groaned slightly. “I’m really not the right person to ask,” he repeated. “But as far as I understand Italian law, yes. If it’s caught being smuggled out, then it can be confiscated. Museums can then try and acquire it, or it gets sold off.”

“Wouldn’t this museum have wanted another Bernini?”

He shrugged. “I would have thought so. But evidently not. This document is a little vague. Alberghi might have bought it for himself for all I know. But at least it wasn’t returned to the owner.”

“What owner?”

He picked up the file and handed her the other piece of paper. It was a carbon copy of a typewritten letter, dated October 1951, saying that in the circumstances, of which the owner was only too aware, the bust would not be returned and there would be no further communication on the subject.

The letter was addressed to Hector di Souza.

“Well, how very interesting,” Bottando said, as he scratched his stomach and considered what Flavia had just told him. “So you reckon this Alberghi character liked the bust so much he stuck it in his briefcase and took it home, where it stayed until it was pinched a month or so ago?”

“I don’t know, but there’s a remarkable connection there,” she said. “All I know is that di Souza owned a Bernini in 1951 and it was confiscated. What happened after that I’ve no idea. He may even have got it back eventually and been waiting for another chance.”

“Hardly seems likely, though, does it? I mean, a character like di Souza. A real Bernini is a goldmine, and he wasn’t so rich. I can’t see him sitting on a potential pile of money like that for forty years or so.”

“Unless he was afraid to attract attention by selling it,” she said. “That would explain it. He might have been waiting for Alberghi to die.”

“True, but you don’t think that’s what happened, do you?”

“Not really. Morelli reckons di Souza was surprised when he heard the director’s announcement. It seems more likely that this awfully confidential family was a blind and the bust came from Bracciano. The point to be cleared up, of course, is who pinched it.”

“Chronology? Does it all fit?”

She picked up her notes and proffered them. Bottando waved them aside. He was prepared to take her word for it.

“Very well, I think,” she said. “As far as I can work out the burglary took place a few weeks before the case left the country. Perfect timing.”

“If di Souza either owned it or stole it, it’s hardly likely he would be surprised about its appearance in the Moresby Museum.”

“He might have been simply alarmed at it being announced publicly, with Argyll there to hear. After all, the first thing he did was ring me up to tell me about it.”

Bottando thought about this for a while, looking out of his window at the big clock on the church of San Ignazio opposite. “And if your Argyll wasn’t there, we might never have been put on to it. There’s a coincidence for you. The trouble is,” he added, “Alberghi’s heir can’t confirm what was stolen. We’ll have to wait until the Americans recover it before there’s any chance of identifying it.”

Flavia nodded. “What this doesn’t clear up, of course, is why it got stolen a second time. That doesn’t make any sort of sense. Now, if it had been a fake…’

“Do we know it wasn’t?” Bottando asked idly, still watching the clock. “I mean, the only real indication we have is a report written forty years ago by someone who died - very conveniently if you ask me - last year. Didn’t you say di Souza had a long-standing connection with a sculptor?”

“Man called Borunna, in Gubbio. That’s right. It’s what the file says, anyway.”

“Go and see him. It’ll be worth examining all the angles. Meantime, I’ll put someone on to checking auction catalogues and dealers.

See if anything stolen from Alberghi has surfaced. Waste of time, I think, but you never know.”

Flavia got up to go. “If you don’t mind, I’ll go up tomorrow. I’m a bit whacked at the moment.”

He peered at her, then nodded. “Fine. No great rush. You might go and give di Souza’s apartment a going over, though, if you feel like it. Don’t want you getting bored.”

“Is there anything else going on in America?”

Bottando shook his head. “Not really, no. I had another word with Morelli, but he didn’t have much to add. Your Argyll is coming along nicely. The accident wasn’t his fault, apparently. The brake cable of his car dropped off, simple enough. Do you, by any chance, have a passport?”

“Of course I do. You know that. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. It’s just that I’ve booked you on to a plane for Los Angeles tomorrow. You’ll have time to go to Gubbio first. But I thought you ought to pop off and recover this bust yourself. Get you out of the office for a bit.”

She gave him a suspicious look, and he smiled sweetly and innocently back at her.

Flavia directed her third taxi of the day to an apartment block in a street off the via Veneto. No missing art dealers were in residence, and the apartment was as well defended as the American Embassy down the street.

But the caretaker had a set of keys, and it didn’t take long to persuade him to hand them over, even though he was not at all impressed by the warrant Flavia had written out for herself in the back of the taxi. She also relieved him of the mail, to give herself something interesting to read in the elevator.

Di Souza’s letters were not enlightening. Flavia learnt only that he was in danger of having his electricity cut off for non-payment, was being asked to tear his American Express card in two and send both halves back to the organisation, and had unaccountably failed to settle an outstanding bill with a tailor.

When she finally got through the formidable array of locks and metal plating on the door, she began to search. Initially not knowing where to start, she employed the impressionistic method, flitting about and inspecting whatever took her fancy, particularly satisfying her curiosity about what lay under the bed. Not even fluff. A tidy man, she decided. The cavity under her own bed resembled a fullblown dust storm.

Then she settled down to a more methodical approach, beginning at the inlaid Empire writing desk, moving on to the filing cabinet before the more whimsical business of investigating down the sides of gilt Venetian sofas or peering behind baroque history pieces on the walls.

Neither fancy nor professionalism produced much to justify her diligence. The only thing Flavia was sure of at the end was that Hector di Souza was no businessman. His accounting procedure was more than a little quaint. Notes of purchases were written on the back of cigarette packets which were then crushed and filed. Most of his assets - except for those which were used for sitting on or hung on walls - seemed to be in a moderately sized bundle of bank notes stuffed in a drawer. His bank statement revealed wild and inexplicable fluctuations, but nothing so grand as to suggest that several million dollars had recently come his way. That, indeed, tallied with the checks Bottando had instituted with assorted banks. He had found no trace of surreptitious Swiss accounts and the bank manager in Rome, asked if di Souza had recently made an enormous deposit, guffawed heartily. Any deposit at all, he indicated, would have been a bit of a novelty. Apart from that, there was a small file labelled ‘Stock’ but it contained no note of a Bernini. Not even an Algardi.

So, what did the apartment tell her? Di Souza was not in the big league of dealers. The apartment was fairly small and the furniture not of the highest quality. You can tell an art dealer by the chairs he sits on. Argyll’s, she remembered, had the stuffing coming out of them. Di Souza made a reasonable income, assuming that most of it was hidden and never appeared in his account books. No one could live off the tiny sums entered officially for taxation purposes. A purveyor of middle-ranking stuff to middle-ranking collectors. In all, not the sort of man you’d expect to find selling major works of art to places like the Moresby. No more than Argyll was, really.

But there they both were, selling stuff to the place. Was this relevant? Probably not, or at least, not yet. But it was a coincidence, as Bottando had noted. She put the thought to the back of her mind, in case it came in handy later on.

Chapter Seven

Jonathan Argyll woke up with a splitting headache and spent some fifteen minutes staring at the ceiling and wondering where he was. It took a long time to retrieve his thoughts, put them all in the correct order and reach a satisfactory conclusion to explain why he wasn’t tucked up in bed in his apartment in Rome.

He proceeded by association. First he remembered his Titian, then the imminent return to England that it implied. The search for the cause of this brought back the memory of the Moresby, which led straight on to di Souza, the theft and the murder.

His head punished him for the gruelling early morning exercise with a sudden stab of pain, and he groaned quietly.

“You OK?” asked a voice, out of his field of vision, somewhere to the right. He thought about it for a while, trying to place it. No, he decided, he didn’t recognise it.

So he grunted, vaguely, in response.