The Bernini Bust (18 page)

“Now we know that Anne Moresby herself could not have killed him, if your Alfredo is telling the truth and she was in her car heading home at the time. But she must have talked it over with Barclay and given him her gun. The opportunity came when Moresby summoned Barclay to see him in Thanet’s office. He went over and was told that a) he was fired and b) Anne Moresby was out as well. Barclay was within a heartbeat of getting his hands on billions — he only had to wait for Moresby to drop dead, then he could marry the grieving widow, and it’s party time. What does he do? You could never talk a man like Moresby round when his mind was made up, so it was now or never. So Barclay shoots the old man, and runs back to say that when he got there he discovered the murder. No trust - and Barclay must have been one of the very few to know that the papers had not in fact been signed - so Anne Moresby inherits the lot. Success.”

There was a pause as Argyll finished off the oysters and Flavia looked uncomfortable.

“What’s the matter?” Morelli asked.

“Quite a lot of things,” she said reluctantly.

“Such as?”

“The camera, for one thing. That was knocked out sometime before. Before anybody could possibly have known Moresby might go to Thanet’s office. So your notion of a sudden decision on Barclay’s part doesn’t hold up.”

“If I remember correctly,” Argyll added uncertainly, “people at the party reckoned there was only about five minutes between Barclay getting his phone call and rushing back.”

“That’s very approximate. It was actually eight minutes.”

“Well. The point is,” Argyll said, taking over for once, “that it was a busy few minutes, in your account. To walk over, have an argument, shoot Moresby, plan to do something about di Souza -why? for heaven’s sake - steal the bust - why again? - run back and raise the alarm. I mean, is that really possible? I suppose it could be done, but only if it was rehearsed. Quite apart from the fact that Langton was outside the museum most of the time and should have seen all this coming and going, and I don’t see how either Anne Moresby or Barclay slipped off to shoot Hector and dump his body. And on top of that…’

“Yeah, OK. I got the point.” Morelli shifted uneasily in his seat as he mentally visualised a defence lawyer in court saying the same thing, with the jury nodding sagely in agreement.

“And there’s something else,” Flavia went on, disregarding the American’s baleful look in her effort to refocus attention on the matter which concerned her. “If the theft of the bust was planned in advance, it would have to have been by someone who knew where it was. At the time the camera was knocked out only Thanet and Langton knew that.”

“And Streeter, of course,” Argyll chipped in. “As security man. Didn’t you say he was out of sight when the murder took place?”

“Can’t we keep this goddamned bust out of it for a while?” Morelli asked a little plaintively. Much of what they had said had passed through his own mind in the past hour or so, but he’d decided that the only way of proceeding was to tackle the two elements of the events separately.

“It’s a very big thing to forget. I think I’d leave Anne Moresby alone for a bit, if I were you.”

“Hmm. That’s going to go down well with my superiors. They’ll crucify me.”

“You’ll be saving them from a nasty mistake.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Can’t you tell them you’re on the verge of getting hundred per cent proof evidence?”

“We’re not.”

“No, but we could try a little harder. I think we should go and visit Mr. Streeter.”

To say that Robert Streeter lived in a small, whitewashed house in a quiet, palm-lined street would say nothing about his accommodation. There was scarcely a single house in the whole area which wasn’t whitewashed and almost no streets that weren’t quiet and lined with palm trees. Not in the respectable bits, anyway. The expert would have noticed a few details that might have indicated something about his way of life. The absence of a basketball hoop on the garage indicated that he had no adolescent children in the house; the lack of a manicured patch of lawn out front suggested he was no gardener and that his more fastidious neighbours, who snipped - or had someone snip - each blade of grass as it poked its well-watered head above two-eighths of an inch, might have regarded this as a sign of rampant bohemianism. But apart from that there was almost nothing to indicate the character of the occupant, and neither Flavia nor Argyll would have picked up the signs even had they been present.

Streeter took a long time to answer the doorbell, and appeared in a bad mood when he finally opened the door. This, they assumed, was because he’d been having an afternoon siesta, but in that they were wrong as well. Despite living in a Mediterranean climate custom-built for afternoon siestas, Californians don’t waste their time in this fashion. Besides, he was much too engrossed in an earnest, not to say frantic, discussion with Langton when the doorbell went to have much peace of mind left over for such frivolities.

Indeed, he and Langton had just got around to the central issue. Streeter, who was thoroughly upset about the performance of his camera system and feeling that, as a security expert, he ought to do a little amateur investigation of his own, had just popped the question. In fact, as Morelli’s tireless investigators had realised, he had been trotting around interrogating just about everybody in the museum with varying degrees of subtlety. As had everybody else. Neither he, nor anybody else had much to show for the effort, but it made them all feel a lot better. Besides, nobody was much in the mood for real work.

Streeter’s own investigation had left him feeling a little vulnerable. Having laboured so tirelessly to secure his position, he had this impression that recent events threatened to undermine it all. He had been thinking and plotting furiously and the general aim was now clear; that is, to make sure he was on the right side of whoever it was that emerged triumphant at the end. In order to achieve this, he had to know who was responsible. And strong suspicions were forming rapidly. In the course of several sleepless nights in the past week, he had constructed innumerable nightmarish scenarios, all of which ended in unemployment - and some where the outcome was much worse.

So, with a good deal more directness than was his custom, he set about Langton when the latter flew back from Rome. Had it occurred to the Englishman, he asked, who stood to benefit from the death of Arthur Moresby? And who were the only people who could have killed him?

Not perhaps the most sophisticated way of approaching a potential witness who had demonstrated, in Rome at least, his complete unwillingness to answer questions. Langton, a man who had spent much of his time travelling the world and negotiating the purchase of pictures, was much too self-possessed to be caught out answering questions gratuitously.

He reacted with a lightly amused smile. Yes, he replied indulgently. As far as he could see, only Anne Moresby benefited. And only three people could have killed him, that is, di Souza, who was with Moresby before the murder, David Barclay, summoned over at about the time it took place, and himself, sitting outside the museum and in a fine position to nip over and do the deed. But, he went on, unless someone connected Mrs. Moresby’s motive with everybody else’s opportunity, there was not much chance of any progress. He did not presume to speak for the rest - although Hector di Souza’s own murder seemed to indicate a possible degree of innocence there, but he saw no connection with David Barclay. As for himself, Streeter’s own cameras picked him up sitting placidly outside the museum. Whatever else he might have done, he had not murdered Arthur Moresby. Or anyone else either, he added as an afterthought. Just in case someone might start worrying about loopholes.

It didn’t get him much further, Streeter thought as he walked to the door to answer the sudden peal of the bell. But if the more obvious suspects were knocked out, the police would start looking at alternatives. He was very aware — having checked himself— that he had, quite fortuitously, been in the toilet at about the time of the murder. For reasons of human dignity, there were no cameras in the toilets. A grave mistake, that. His movements were thus unaccounted for. Which left his final defence; it was just a pity it was such a dangerous weapon.

“Sorry if we’ve come at a bad time,” Flavia said brightly as the door swung open and she introduced herself.

If Langton was never caught on the hop, Streeter was. He mumbled something that sounded like not at all, do come in, and was indicating the way to the little plot of concrete out the back before it had properly dawned on him that he should have told both of them to go away because they had no authority to ask anybody questions.

“Well, what a surprise,” Flavia said as she saw Langton and started drawing exactly the sort of conclusions that Streeter so much feared. “I thought you were in Rome. You do get around, don’t you?”

Both she and Argyll sat themselves down and accepted the offer of a beer. It was a hot afternoon, and this knocked Argyll out of most of the conversation. While Flavia began round two of her battle with Langton, he concentrated on trying to get at a profoundly annoying itch five inches down from the top of his plaster cast.

Langton explained that, with such a crisis in full blossom, he naturally thought that his place was right here, in case he could be of any assistance.

“So you come all this way to visit your old friend Mr. Streeter to spend a quiet Saturday sitting in the garden,” she observed. Langton nodded and said that was about it.

“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.”