uncertain where his uncle's mind might have been located. 'Never got around to writing it down. Pity, but there it was. Would have done.' He lowered his voice as though revealing a family scandal. 'A bit - you know - in his last years,' he said confidingly.
'What?'
'Ga-ga. The old brain box. Not what it was. You know.' He tapped his head again, a bit mournfully this time. Then he cheered up a little. 'Still,' he went on. 'Eighty-nine. A good run. Can't complain. Hope I last so long, eh? eh?'
Flavia agreed, although privately thinking that the sooner the old fool dropped dead the better, then wondered if there were any insurance documents that might provide a bit of help.
Colonel Alberghi shook his head again. 'None,' he said. 'I know that, because I went through his papers when he died and looked again after that fella came.'
'What fella?'
'Chap turned up, wondering if I wanted to sell anything. Damned impertinence. Sent him away with a flea in his ear, I can tell you.'
'Hold on a second. You didn't mention this to the carabinieri.'
'Didn't ask.'
'What man was this?'
'I told you. He turned up and knocked on the door. I sent him away.'
'Did he look around the house?'
'Damned silly maid let him in here to wait for me.'
'And what did he look like?'
'Didn't see him. Maid phoned me, and I told her to chuck him out. Didn't give up, though.'
'What do you mean?'
'He rang a couple of days later. I told him I hadn't the faintest idea what my uncle had owned, but I did know I didn't want to - didn't need to - sell any of it.'
'I suppose it's too much to hope that you got his name?'
'Sorry.'
Flavia had thought so, somehow. 'And what was stolen from here?'
'Ah, now. Let me see.'
'A painting,' she hinted, pointing at the patch on the woodwork that had evidently been covered by something.
'Yes, yes. Perhaps. A portrait? Great grandfather? Or may be his father. Perhaps it was my great grandmother? Do you know, I never paid much attention to it.'
Evidently. 'And what about that empty pedestal there?'
'Ah, yes. A bust. Big damn ugly thing, it was. I was going to grow a pot plant over it.'
'Too much to hope for a description, I suppose?'
'Just given you one,' he said. 'I'd recognise it if I saw it.'
Not much chance of that, she thought. 'I'll put out a search request for a big, damn ugly bust, sex indeterminate, then,' she said sarcastically. 'Can I see this maid of yours?'
'Why?'
'It's quite usual for thieves to case a place before they burgle. Posing as an art dealer is a good way of going about it.'
'You mean he was looking the place over? The cheek of it!' Alberghi said, puffing up with righteous indignation. 'I shall call that maid immediately. Who knows? She may well have been part of the gang.'
Flavia did her best to turn him away from the idea of international conspiracies of burglars that was clearly forming in his mind, and pointed out that the robbery – a simple brick through the window when the house was empty - hardly required an inside hand to succeed.
Nor was the maid, a woman of at least eighty years and almost bent double with arthritis, the archetypal gangster's moll. The moment she saw the old biddy, Flavia had the feeling she was going to be as blind as a bat. It was one of those days.
A youngish man, the maid said, which was a start, but then she pointed at the colonel, a man in his late fifties, and said that maybe he was the same age as the master. Tactically acute though; Alberghi was quite pleased.
After much patient questioning, Flavia established that the purported art dealer was between thirty and sixty, medium height, and had no distinguishing features she could remember.
'Hair?' she asked.
That's right, she said. He had some.
'I mean, what colour?'
She shook her head. No idea.
Marvellous. Flavia snapped her notebook shut, stuffed it back in her bag and said she was going to go.
'Frankly, Colonel, I think you can wave goodbye to your pieces. We pick stuff up every now and then, and when we do, we'll give you a call. Apart from that, the only thing I can recommend is that you keep your eye on auction sale catalogues, in case you see something you recognise. If you do, let us know.'
Alberghi, with a sudden spurt of regimental courtesy, swept ahead to open the door for her as she left. The gesture was spoilt by a noisy yapping sound and a heartfelt, military style stream of cursing as a tiny dog ran in and almost swept him off his feet. This was evidently the ferocious animal advertised on the gate.
'Get that beast out of here,' he instructed the maid. 'Which one is it, anyway?'
The old woman, with remarkable agility, pounced on the animal, swept it into her bosom and cradled it gently. 'There, there,' she said, and patted it on its head. 'This one is Brunelleschi, sir. The one with a white spot and the clouding eyes.'
'Horrid little things,' he said, eyeing it like someone wondering how it would do as a pot roast.
'It seems quite sweet,' Flavia said, noting that the old lady's hearing and eyesight weren't so bad after all. 'Odd name, though.'
'My uncle's,' he said mournfully. 'Otherwise I'd get rid of them. Arty type, as you know, so gave his dogs stupid names. Other one's called Bernini.'
'Oh, good,' said Bottando as Flavia arrived back in the office at slightly after nine. She was planning to dump her notes on the desk for typing up the next morning, then go home for a long bath and an evening's self-indulgent misery in front of the television. There was never anything worth watching, which made it an even more appropriate way of wasting time. 'I was hoping you'd come back. Got something for you.'
She looked at him with cautious disapproval. He had on his air of amiable benevolence, which generally meant having to do something she'd rather avoid.
'What is it now?'
'Well, I thought of you, you see,' he said. 'Because of your friend Argyll. Just the person, I thought.'
There was, at the moment, no surer way of irritating Flavia than to think of her because of Jonathan Argyll, so she sniffed loudly, got on with rearranging papers on her desk and tried to ignore him.
'This murder, and theft. The one in Los Angeles. It's causing quite a stir, you know. Even made the evening news. Did you see it?'
Flavia pointed out that she'd spent the last few hours wasting time talking to military idiots in the countryside, not idling away in her office with her feet up. Bottando brushed the comment aside.
'Quite. The point is that the police there have been on the phone. A man called Morelli. Speaks Italian, surprisingly. Just as well, otherwise I'd have had enormous difficulties understanding him . . .'
'Well?'
'They want us to pick up their prime suspect. A man called di Souza, do you know him?'
As patiently as possible, Flavia said she didn't.
'I'm surprised. He's been around for years. Awful old fraud. Anyway, it seems he and Moresby were having a row about a Bernini that di Souza smuggled out of the country. Moresby dead, Bernini gone and di Souza, so they reckon, on the next plane back to Italy. It gets into Rome in about an hour, and they want us to grab him and bung him back.'
'Not our department,' she said shortly. 'Why not try the carabinieri?'
