chocolate. She didn't put any effort into it at all, as far as he could see. There's no justice in life.
'What are you talking about, then?' he asked as the conversation petered out into mutual smiles.
'I've been winning his confidence,' she said. 'He has orders from Mrs. Moresby not to let anyone into the house and, because I am such a particularly nice person, he is going to make an exception on our part. He's from Nicaragua, and doesn't have any work permit, and the Moresby's pay him virtually nothing and threaten to have him deported if he complains. He has to clean the house, do the shopping and the cooking, act as a chauffeur and doesn't like working here at all. The only compensation is that they have lots of houses and aren't here very often. On the other hand, the awful son uses the place occasionally when they are away and he has to clean up his empty bottles. He is certain that Mrs. Moresby is having an affair, he doesn't know who with and, very regrettably, he is her alibi for the time of the murder. He wishes he wasn't.'
'And how is his family doing back in Nicaragua? Or didn't you have time to get to that stage?'
'Wasn't necessary. Let's go in.'
They advanced into the house before Alfredo could change his mind, as he was clearly beginning to do. The inside was disappointing, as Moresby had filled it, most incongruously, with eighteenth-century French furniture, which looked as out of place as a tubular steel sofa would in the Palazzo Farnese. Not only that, there was an awful lot of it, and the dozens of chairs, sofas, pictures, prints, busts, and miscellaneous knick-knacks seemed to have been chosen more or less at random. Occasionally the junk-shop approach to home decorating works and produces a pleasing confusion, but not here. Arthur Moresby's beach house, designed for clean, uncluttered, fresh-air modernism, looked as though it had been furnished by an unusually acquisitive magpie.
But despite that, the decor was effective in conveying the impression that the owners were not short of ready money. Even the ashtrays were of baccarat crystal. Argyll suspected the toilet rolls would turn out to be of the finest water-pressed Venetian paper. All the commodes, bureaux, Louis Seize sofas, Chippendale tables had been restored, revarnished, reupholstered and regilded. It looked like the lobby of an international hotel.
Argyll was only halfway through a mental inventory and estimation of the furniture and fittings - an occupational hazard of art dealing that Flavia found profoundly irritating - when Anne Moresby came in. If she was grief-stricken she disguised it well. Nor had trauma softened her vocabulary.
'Bullshit,' she said after Argyll had performed the introductions, explained why his leg was in plaster, and Flavia got things rolling by muttering something about condolences.
'I beg your pardon?' Flavia replied a little taken aback. Seeing through one's little ploy was one thing; mentioning it quite another.
On the other hand, vocabulary was vocabulary, and Mrs. Moresby looked like proving a rich vein.
'You're snooping. You have no authority, so I don't have to tell you anything. In fact I could just throw you out. Right?'
'On the nail,' said Argyll cheerfully. 'No fooling you. But we would still be grateful for a brief talk. After all, you were upset about that bust, and so are we. If the museum has been indulging in any illegal activities, we want to know. Then Flavia here can take appropriate action. Against those responsible, if you see what I mean.'
What this speech did, quite neatly to Flavia's way of thinking as she considered it afterwards, was offer a little alliance. You want to put the knife into the museum - so Argyll implied - why not let us help you? Rather acute, for him.
Mrs. Moresby was no fool. Her eyes narrowed as she thought of it, weighed the pros and cons. Then she gave him a quick and surprisingly charming half-smile and said: 'Oh, all right. Makes a change from the police. Come and have a drink; then we can talk this over.'
She walked over to the fireplace - what possible function it served in this climate Flavia could not imagine - opened a delicate ivory box and took out a packet of cigarettes; then lit one. Took a deep breath and the pair of them saw a look of extraordinary satisfaction come over her face.
'It's an ill-wind,' she said. 'Do you realise I can now smoke in this house for the first time since I got married twelve years ago?'
'Your husband disapproved?'
'Disapproved? He threatened to divorce me. Even had it written into the marriage contract that any divorce settlement would be void if I was caught smoking in his presence.'
'Just a joke, though,' Argyll suggested.
She gave him a stern look. 'Arthur Moresby did not joke. Never. Any more than he forgave, forgot or oozed the milk of human kindness. When the good Lord made him there was a temporary shortage of humour; so he was sent forth with an extra dose of self-righteousness instead. Didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do anything except accumulate. Used to, of course, but when he stopped enjoying himself he wanted everybody else to do the same.' Here she waved her hand around the room to indicate what she had in mind. She may have had a point. 'Do you realise that for the last twelve years I've been married to the most boring man ever to walk the face of the earth?'
'Liked art, though.'
She snorted. 'You must be kidding. He bought it because he thought that's what multi-millionaires did.'
'You weren't keen on his museum project?'
'Damn right I wasn't. It was all right to start off with, when it was just a straight tax write-off. Then he got the immortality bug and Thanet got his hooks into him.'
'Tax write-off?' Flavia asked. Really, this woman was a walking dictionary of idiom.
'You know, the IRS.'
She shook her head blankly, and Anne Moresby gave her a stupid-foreigner look she rather resented.
'Internal Revenue Service,' she went on. 'A sort of Spanish Inquisition redesigned for the consumer society. Trying to put one over on it is a national sport rivalling baseball. Arthur regarded it as a civic duty to try and pay as little tax as possible.'
'What's the museum got to do with it?'
'Simple. Buy a picture and hang it in your house, and you get no tax relief. Hang it in a museum and you become a public benefactor, entitled to deduct a huge chunk of the price off your income tax.'
'So what changed?'
'The little creep had a heart attack.'
'Who?'
'Arthur. It started him thinking about the future, or lack of it. Arthur's great weakness was a desire to be remembered. It's a fault with a lot of egomaniacs, so I'm told. Once upon a time, people built almshouses or had monks say Mass for them. In the US they found museums. I'm not sure which is the more stupid. The more money, the bigger the ego, the larger the museum. Getty, Hammer, Mellon, you name it. Arthur caught the bug.
'He was getting old. Thanet and his crew were beginning to convince him that a small museum was nowhere near enough for a man of his stature. They were touting plans for a museum the size of a football stadium and Arthur was getting hooked.'
'And Thanet knew all about this tax relief scheme?'
'Of course; nothing wrong with it. Not as far as I've been able to find out, anyway, and believe me I've looked. And even if there was, that slimy ball of fat would do anything to keep on Arthur's right side.'
'When I met you briefly before the party you described your husband as a sweet old man,' Argyll reminded her. 'That doesn't fit too well with all this.'
'So, sometimes I exaggerate, for appearances' sake. He was a mean old bastard. Please don't get me wrong; I'm sorry he's dead. But I can't deny that life will be much more pleasant without him. And that goes for everyone who worked for him or was related to him. Not just me.'
'So what happens to the museum now? I mean, if I understand rightly, your husband died before transferring most of his money to the museum trust and you inherit the entire estate.'
She gave a stiff little smile. It seemed pretty obvious what was going to happen to the museum, if she had her way.
'I hope you don't mind me asking, but if the transfer had gone ahead, you wouldn't have been left penniless, would you? Not like your stepson.'
Anne Moresby seemed to think this a bizarre question, one which she had never considered before.
'No, not penniless,' she replied reflectively. 'No, not at all. I gather that I would have inherited the residue of the estate. About five hundred million.'
