The Bernini Bust

Langton's eyes narrowed as he listened. 'When did she say this?'

Flavia told him.

'Long time before we get to that point,' he said. 'A lot can change by the time lawyers have finished with it all.'

'Is it true Anne Moresby was having an affair?' she asked, this being, to her mind, one of the crucial questions.

Langton almost seemed to have been expecting the question, and he smiled slowly, a bit like a teacher when a particularly stupid pupil gets something right for once. Streeter seemed properly shocked and appalled by the very idea; he sucked in his breath in a most disapproving fashion.

'Probably,' Langton said. 'I would, if I was married to someone as repulsive as Moresby. They virtually lived apart anyway, you know. But she would have to be discreet. The consequences would have been horrendous if old Moresby ever even suspected.'

'He may well have done more than suspect.'

'In that case she's a very lucky woman. She's a multi-billionaire, and she's fortunate she's not a penniless divorcee.' He paused and considered awhile before making his next comment. 'So lucky, in fact, that it makes you wonder.'

'That fact,' she said, 'had occurred to us as well.'

'But,' he went on, half talking to himself, 'she had an alibi. Which means she needed an accomplice. So, the big question is, who's the lucky man?'

She shrugged. 'Work it out for yourself, if you don't know.'

Argyll looked up for a moment, temporarily distracted from his by now manic hunt. Then the itching gave another twinge and he resumed the assault, bashing the plaster, sticking little twigs and cocktail stirrers down the top until Streeter was looking at him with appalled fascination.

'What are you doing?'

'Preserving my sanity,' he replied. 'What you might call an itch hunt.' He looked up for applause, but nobody seemed to be in the mood for little jokes. 'You don't have any knitting needles do you?' he asked helplessly. Streeter said there was not a single one in the house. Argyll looked pained until he offered to search the kitchen for something suitable. Half crazed with desire, Argyll hopped after him.

'Do the police know about Anne Moresby's lover?' Streeter asked once they were out of earshot inside the house.

'Seems so. Lots of extended shopping trips, weekends away. And Moresby knew, which provides a very good motive for murder. It's the awkward business of proving it that seems to be slowing them all down. Very unlike Italy, you know. There the police could have simply arrested everyone and sat on them until they confessed. Pity about your camera,' he said casually to Streeter as they searched. 'It would have made life so much easier if it had been a bit more difficult to get at.'

Streeter seemed suddenly gloomy. 'Tell me about it,' he said.

'I suppose it makes your job a bit less secure, doesn't it?'

Streeter looked at him mournfully.

'Just as well we can call on that microphone in Thanet's office.'

'What?'

'A bug in Thanet's office.'

'Listen, I've already told . . .'

'I know. But you've such a reputation for being a hi-tech snoop, who will believe that?'

'Bugging offices is an offence, you know. The very idea . . .'

'So if a murderer was suddenly told that a tape existed, I mean, they'd believe it. It might make them nervous. Just as they thought the coast was clear, all of a sudden a piece of evidence turns up. Not that any one has heard what's on it. Destroy that tape, and you're safe, he might tell himself. Desperate circumstances make for desperate actions. Which might lead to a mistake. And you'd get full marks and thanks for co-operating with the police.'

At last the penny dropped. Argyll didn't have a very high opinion of Streeter. A bit slow, he thought.

'I see,' he said.

'My leg feels so much better now. I suppose we ought to go back outside. Flavia and I are meant to be having dinner with Detective Morelli and it's time we were off. I'll tell him about our little chat, if that's all right by you.'

'Oh, yes,' said Streeter. 'Sure.'

'Did Mr. Streeter have all that much to say for himself?' Flavia asked after they had extracted themselves, she'd levered Argyll into the car - she had rented a small but practical machine which was not designed for people with plaster casts - and they'd begun the lengthy process of crossing much of the city in search of Morelli's house.

'Oh, yes,' he replied smugly. 'He was a bit slow on the uptake. I had to drop so many heavy hints I thought he'd sink under the weight. But he got the idea eventually.'

'And?'

'We can go ahead and tell people that he was tapping Thanet's office. Isn't that nice? It's a pity he wasn't, but I suppose you can't have everything.'

Flavia had assumed that the meatballs Detective Morelli had invited them to eat would be prepared by his wife. She was wrong. Morelli was proud of his meatballs. They found him in the kitchen with a pinny around his middle, though the air of domesticity would have been enhanced had he taken his gun off. A large bottle of Californian Chianti was on the kitchen table, the pasta was ready to go into the water, and the tomato sauce was approaching that pitch of absolute perfection which only true Italians can recognise.

'What you think?' he said, caressing his creations with a wooden spoon as though they were made of finest gold. Argyll poked his nose into the pot, gave a long sniff and nodded appreciatively. Morelli grunted and poured the wine. They settled down; the wine, the smell of cooking, the noise of the children, and the informality all combined to produce an atmosphere of easy relaxation. The only difficulty - for Argyll, if not Flavia - was in eating the vast portions that Morelli poured on to the plates. But after two years in Italy he was getting better at that, and knew how to prepare himself mentally before settling down to a long haul.

'So what did you two do while I was plugging through my paperwork? Find your bust?'

Flavia provided a succinct summary of Langton's remarks, which brought a frown from Morelli.

'He's changed. He never said anything about di Souza supplying that bust before. Why not?'

'He's shedding his defences. The first line was that everything was legal and any impropriety was due to this anonymous seller. That was obviously nonsense, so now he's blaming di Souza - who can't answer back. The trouble is, it's much more difficult to disprove. Might even be true, for all I know. But I'm not inclined to trust him all that much. Jonathan here thinks he's putting a cloth in our eye.'

'What?'

'That's it, isn't it?' she asked, slightly hurt and turning to Argyll for reassurance.

'Close, but not quite. Pulling the wool over our eyes.'

'Ah,' she said, repeating it a couple of times to lodge it in her memory. 'Right. Anyway, that's what he thinks.'

'So what about this bust?'

'It exists, was owned by di Souza in the 1950s, was sold to Moresby, was confiscated before it reached him, and then was stolen from Alberghi's house a few weeks back.'

'And turned up here?'

She nodded. 'A pretty convincing provenance, if you think about it, if a little unorthodox. The more we look, the more genuine it gets.'

Morelli chased the last trace of tomato sauce round the plate with a piece of bread, popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

'Have you asked the customs people at the airport if they examined the thing?' Argyll asked.

'Course we have. And no they didn't. No reason to. The Moresby is perfectly respectable; the case was sealed so tight that it would have taken ages to unpack. It was built like a tank; weighed in at around a hundredweight and it was all they could do to move it, let alone unpack and examine it. They reckon they're