The Raphael Affair (12 page)

Bottando spent another three hours there, dealing with the more stratospheric consequences of the evening’s events. Phoning his colleagues in other departments, informing the arts minister, mustering his forces. He occupied the desk, while Tommaso fretted around, summoning assistants and public relations officials to draft a release to give to the press. Despite Bottando’s strictures, they had already sensed something had happened, and they would have to be told sooner or later.

It was some time before the policeman and the director had time to talk. Tommaso was sitting listlessly on the ornate nineteenth-century sofa, staring at a Flemish painting on the opposite wall as though he’d suddenly discovered it was a personal enemy.

‘Do you have any idea why the fire alarm didn’t work?’ the policeman asked him.

‘The usual reasons, I imagine,’ Tommaso replied with a barely concealed groan. ‘The electrical system in this place is a menace. Hasn’t been changed since the 1940s. We’re lucky the entire museum hasn’t burnt down. That’s why I submitted the proposal to have the place rewired to the security committee. It’s a pity Spello vetoed it.’

‘Hmm,’ replied Bottando non-committally. He picked up the double implication clearly. Spello had made this attack possible by stopping the proposal. Secondly, it wouldn’t take much manoeuvring to divert any blame for the destruction from the director to the committee.

That would have to be dealt with later. He concentrated instead on the matter at hand. ‘How often does the thing shut down?’

‘Constantly. Well, about once a week. The last time was in the evening a couple of days ago. Ferraro was still here, fortunately. He had to pull all the fuses out to stop the entire building burning down. The guards had gone off to the bar, as usual. It really is like trying to run a madhouse in here, at times,’ he added with some considerable despair. Bottando sympathised. He could imagine.

‘Anyway,’ the director continued, ‘that, indirectly,
was the point of this party. I persuaded those Americans to hand over a donation that was going to rewire the entire building. Thus overcoming Spello’s prejudices about modernisation.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Shutting the stable after the horse has bolted, if you like. I imagine they’ll cancel the cheque.’

‘Was this problem generally known?’

‘Oh yes. The bell going off at random all the time is not the sort of thing you can keep secret. Oh. I see what you mean. This indicates it was done by someone inside the museum, you think?’

Bottando shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. But I think we should go and have a look at that fuse box. Could you show me where it is?’

A few minutes and several flights of stairs later, they were standing in the basement. ‘There you are,’ said Tommaso. He opened the gigantic, rusty box on the wall. Inside was line upon line of heavy ceramic fuses. He searched around, pulled one out, looked at it, and handed it to Bottando. ‘Thought so. Blown again,’ he commented.

Bottando held it up to the light and looked, a favourite theory evaporating as he did so. No one had removed the fuse, no one had cut any wires. It had just burnt through of its own accord. Only in Italy, he thought to himself, would things be done in such a ramshackle fashion. He found himself beginning to have more sympathy with Tommaso’s reformist efforts. Tactful, he wasn’t. But no one could say there wasn’t a job to be done here.

In such a conciliatory spirit, once back in the director’s office, the General tentatively began to raise the
subject that had brought him to the party in the first place.

‘There are one or two aspects of all this I thought it would be best to discuss with you alone. It might take some of the sting out of this appalling evening.’

The director placed the tips of his fingers together, and peered at him enquiringly. He didn’t appear to believe anything could do that.

‘I don’t think your loss today was as grievous as it seems,’ Bottando continued.

The director grimaced and shook his head. ‘I assure you, the painting is beyond repair. Or perhaps you don’t find the loss of one of the greatest triumphs of Italian art grievous?’

A bit pompous, thought Bottando uncharitably. Still, he has had a bad day. ‘A triumph, certainly. But not of Italian art. I think it was a forgery.’

Tommaso snorted. ‘Oh, General, not this obsession of yours again. I’ve already told you it’s impossible. You know as well as I do the tests that picture went through. It passed them all with flying colours. And every scholar in the field pronounced it to be a Raphael.’

‘Experts can be wrong. Every scholar in the world in the 1930s said the
Supper at Emmaus
was by Vermeer. They only discovered it was painted by Van Meegeren when he confessed to avoid being hanged for collaboration with the Nazis.’

‘The fake Vermeers were detected easily when they were examined scientifically,’ Tommaso objected. ‘And techniques have improved immeasurably since the 1940s.’

‘So, no doubt, have the forgers’. But this is neither
here nor there. The evidence we have is circumstantial, but worrying enough.’

‘And what, pray, is your evidence?’

Bottando reminded him about the letter found by Argyll in the country-house muniments room. The director interrupted. ‘But this is no less feeble now than before. You surely don’t expect the entire academic community to change its mind on the basis of that?’

‘Indeed not. As you say, on its own the letter amounts to very little. However, earlier today, my assistant found something a bit more convincing, hence my telephone call from Zurich to that infuriatingly obstructive secretary of yours.’

He briefly told the director about the hunt for Morneau, the safe deposit box and their discovery.

That clearly rattled Tommaso. He walked across to a shelf of leather-bound books, swung it open and took out a bottle. He poured some golden liquid into two glasses and handed one to Bottando. He swilled it around and rubbed his face with his free hand. All his pomposity had evaporated again.

‘If I understand you correctly, your argument hinges only on those date stamps in that passport? Someone else could have put those drawings in the safe deposit
after
the painting was splashed over every magazine and newspaper in the country?’

Bottando dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘Yes. I told you it was circumstantial. But we now have two fragments pointing at the same thing.’

‘I really don’t believe this,’ the director said eventually. ‘And if it was true, why would anyone bother to
destroy the painting? I mean,’ he said defiantly, ‘it’s obvious why this happened, isn’t it?’

Bottando gazed at him enquiringly.

‘This was an attack on me, clearly. Only today I said I was retiring, and that Ferraro would succeed. Destroying the picture was a retaliation, to make me look a fool. It only makes sense if the picture was genuine. I know I’m not popular here.’

He paused. Bottando wondered whether he was expected to demur and reassure the director on that score. But he decided even Tommaso wasn’t that vain, so he kept quiet.

‘Everybody has always resented what I’ve tried to do, tried to stop every improvement I’ve introduced. Ferraro is the only one here who’s given me any support at all. The only one who doesn’t live somewhere back in the 1920s.’

‘Hence the preference for him over Spello?’

‘Yes. I like Spello, and I don’t like Ferraro much. But the future of the museum is at stake, and I could see no room for personal preference.’ Again, just a shade of the old pomposity peeked through his suddenly energetic explanations.

‘Spello is a good deputy, but the director has to fight with the ministries, squeeze money out of donors. I decided that only Ferraro could do it. He’s not an easy man, I admit, but he’s the best possible choice I had. And there are a lot of people who’d be prepared to stop me and him. At any cost.’

It was a legitimate interpretation, Bottando conceded. ‘But,’ he objected, ‘I find it difficult to see how anyone
who’d worked in a museum all their life could ever bring themselves to such an act of vandalism.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ Tommaso snorted. ‘I said this was a madhouse and I meant it. But don’t you get the point of what I’m saying?’ he continued intensely, staring at the policeman and leaning forward on his chair in an effort to convince him. ‘If that picture was a fake, why destroy it? It would be much better to leave it and have the fraud discovered.’

Bottando smiled and shifted his conversational rudder a little to the right. ‘If that painting was a fake, everyone was fooled by it, not just you. If Italy hadn’t bought it, the Getty would have. Or someone else. The psychology of its appearance was just right, so no one thought to doubt it. All the evidence suggested there should be a picture under that Mantini. Byrnes produces it. It was like a fairy tale. Everyone wanted to believe it. Perhaps even the man who burnt it believed it was genuine.’

Tommaso smiled wanly. ‘But it was us who paid out the money. The fact that others would have done so, given the chance, is a relatively small compensation, compared to the damage to my reputation.’

There was little else Bottando wanted to discuss, so he got up and made his way to the door. He was tired as well. ‘Tell me,’ he said casually as he was leaving, ‘why did you decide to quit? I confess I was very surprised.’

‘So was everybody. I enjoyed seeing their faces when the announcement went out. Too much of the ambitious careerist, they thought. But I’ve had enough of this job and I don’t need the money. All administration and
backbiting. It needs a younger man.’ Tommaso smiled curiously.

‘Hence Ferraro?’

‘Yes. He’s very able, despite his unfortunate manner, and knows how to spot an opportunity. He ran the place for a few weeks a year ago. He made some good moves then. It was that which got him the job.

‘As for me,’ he continued in a melancholy voice, ‘I plan to go off to my villa outside Pienza and live quietly with my library and my collection. Who knows? I may take up painting myself again. I haven’t done any for years. It’ll be a pleasant change – especially now. You must admit my timing is impeccable. Or someone else’s is.’

He opened the door and shook Bottando’s hand.

‘I know we’ve never been easy colleagues, General,’ he said. ‘But I’d like you to know that I appreciate your efforts to find the man who did this. All I ask is that you suppress this rumour of a fake. If you come up with real proof, that’s another matter. But I will not stand for my reputation being dragged through the mud because of a bizarre hunch.’

Bottando nodded. ‘That’s reasonable. And we have our own reasons for keeping quiet. Don’t worry. Good night, director.’

While Bottando was being grudgingly impressed by Tommaso’s reaction to the evening’s catastrophe, Flavia, on his orders, was wading her way through the drudge work that is inevitably associated with crime.

It was too late to do formal interviews of all eighty-seven people at the reception. She merely took their
names and addresses, and asked them, politely but with authority, to remain within easy reach. She then passed the list on to immigration on the off-chance that someone would try to cross the border. It didn’t seem likely. The only ones she missed were the group of Americans, who had already left by a late flight from the airport. However, they seemed the least likely suspects.

And suspects, she thought, they had enough of already; and some of them were clearly smart enough to realise where they stood. Argyll, for instance, who came in almost last.

‘I’d rather hoped I would only ever see you socially in future. I never thought you’d be interrogating me again,’ he said wistfully.

‘I’m not interrogating. Just getting your address,’ she replied in her stern manner.

He waved his hand. ‘A mere detail. You will be. After all, I must be your top suspect.’

‘You flatter yourself.’

‘Not really. Oh, all right. Maybe not number one. But in the top five, certainly. I can’t say I like it much.’

Flavia leaned back in her seat and put her feet on the desk. She was tired, and it was difficult to remain entirely hard and professional with someone you knew and liked. Besides, she wasn’t in the police, so didn’t have to. Sometimes that gave her an advantage.

‘If you’re so sure, perhaps you should give me your reasoning?’

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment to arrange his thoughts. ‘You think that picture was a fake, correct?’ he began.

‘What makes you think that?’

He shrugged. ‘Must be. Either that or you’re looking for a maniac.’

Flavia said nothing.

‘If it was, of course,’ Argyll continued, ‘Byrnes received umpteen million for a dud. Which I, incidentally, first discovered. An accomplishment I am now beginning to regret. And I am now associated with Byrnes through his fellowship.’

He paused, so she prompted, ‘So why fry the thing?’

‘Because when it’s discovered and proven to be a fake, Byrnes would have to take it back and refund the money. I’m sure something like that is in the sale contract. If it’s destroyed, no one can ever prove anything. So Byrnes is home free. As am I, as his accomplice.’

Flavia nodded slowly. ‘Very convincing,’ she commented. ‘But why were you the first person to suggest it was a fake?’

He paused over that one, and rubbed his chin. ‘Ah. I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.’ He looked at her hopefully.

Flavia rubbed her eyes, ran her hands through her hair and yawned. ‘Ah, well. Enough for one night. Tell me the rest later. You’d be great as your own prosecutor. A pity the system doesn’t allow for it. But you’re right. You are a leading suspect.’ She stood up to let him out.

‘And I can only think of one way for you to get off our list of potential Raphael roasters,’ she said as he went through the door.

‘How’s that?’ he asked.

‘Find us another one.’

9

At seven the next morning, Flavia walked into Bottando’s office to see what was going on, and to arrange for the speedy interviewing of their suspects. As usual, she forgot to knock, and the General looked up at her angrily as she came in. Very unlike him.