overworked and understaffed. All they did was check the paperwork.'
'So, the story seems to be that di Souza goes over to the office with Moresby. They inspect the bust, and for some reason or other the Spaniard leaves with it, and prepares to go straight back to Italy. Not a theft, obviously, as it must have been done with Moresby's approval, as he wasn't dead then. Why could that have happened? No matter. Barclay goes over after di Souza leaves. Argument with Moresby, pop. He comes out, raises the alarm.'
They refilled the glasses and thought about that for awhile, realising this was a seriously flawed explanation. So Morelli turned to his wife, Giulia, sitting placidly by his side, saying nothing but looking a little contemptuous of their mental meanderings. He always turned to her when there was a problem. She was so much better at them than he was.
'It's obvious,' she said calmly as she gathered the plates and took them over to the sink. 'Your Spaniard didn't take it. The bust had already been stolen. If it was so heavy and there was no time to take it out after Moresby and di Souza went over to look at it, it must have been taken before.'
Well, of course. Silly of them not to have thought of it themselves. Unfortunately, there Giulia Morelli's inspiration dried up. As she pointed out, she hardly knew all the details; so they were once more thrown back on their own, inferior, intellectual resources.
'Can't you swear her in as a deputy, or something?' Argyll asked. 'You do that here, don't you?'
'Nah,' he said. 'That went out with Jesse James. Besides, the police committee would start an inquiry if I gave my own wife a job. We're on our own.'
'Pity. We'll have to do some work ourselves. This pate sandwich. When was it stuck over the lens of the security camera?'
'The camera picture stopped at about 8:30.'
'Can we assume that was when the bust was stolen?' Flavia persisted.
'We can assume it. But we can't prove it.'
'What about the gun used to kill him? No fingerprints?'
'As you'd expect, wiped clean. No hint of anything on it at all. But bought and registered to Anne Moresby.'
'And still no witnesses to anything at all?'
'No. Not that anyone is saying, anyway. But the way that all of them are manoeuvring and playing little games with each other, they may be just too busy to tell us everything they know.'
With all the sense of achievement of someone reaching the top of Everest, Argyll stuffed the last fragment of meatball in, swallowed and considered the state of his stomach awhile.
'There is, of course, the problem of the date,' he said, uncertain whether this little detail was going to win an appreciative audience.
'What date?'
'The date Mrs. Moresby said she heard her husband and Langton talking about the bust. A couple of months back, she said.'
'So?'
'According to my calculations, if Langton saw it for the first time at di Souza's, as he said, that was a couple of days after the robbery at the Alberghi's.'
'So?'
'That's only about four weeks ago. I think someone's fibbing.'
Chapter Twelve
By Monday morning, Joe Morelli was more and more convinced that he had been wrong not to arrest David Barclay and Anne Moresby. After all, everything pointed in their direction. Motive there was aplenty; adultery, divorce and several billion dollars, was sufficient reason for anyone to lose control of themselves, as far as he was concerned. Opportunity again was there, and the whole operation became practical once his wife had pointed out that there was no reason why the bust should not have been stolen an hour or so before the murder. The alibi of everybody else seemed to be moderately adequate. And besides, everybody else needed Moresby alive; at least for another twenty-four hours in Thanet's case, and indefinitely in the son's case.
However, there were little problems still. Flavia, who dropped into headquarters to fax a report to her boss, wanted a better explanation for the murder of di Souza before all her reservations could be laid to rest. And she still wanted to know where the bust was.
He looked at her impatiently. 'Listen, I know you're sore about the Bernini. But this is pretty unshakeable. Moresby was alive just as Barclay was leaving to go and see him. He was dead less than five minutes later. Everything fits. What more do you want?'
'Completion, that's all. Just a feeling in my bones that everything is explained.'
'Nothing is ever completely explained,' he said. 'And in my experience it's rare we get this far. I'm surprised you're not satisfied with what we've achieved.'
And so she should be, Flavia told herself as she wandered off to the museum to find Argyll once more. He had vanished earlier on, to take care of business in the museum. By common consent -mainly due to the lack of anyone else willing to take on the grisly task - he had been appointed impromptu executor to Hector di Souza, in charge of taking the man's body back to Italy and, in a regrettable piece of meanness on the museum's part, also delegated to remove his three boxes of sculpture.
She tracked him down eventually in the storeroom under the building, rummaging around in the boxes.
'I've got a good mind to leave everything here,' he said. 'The cost of transporting it all is going to be enormous. I don't want to be mean about poor Hector, but taking care of him is going to use up a lot of my commission for selling that Titian. Which makes it even more difficult to stay on in Rome.'
'You could always have di Souza buried here.'
He groaned with dismay at the fastidiousness of his conscience. 'Don't think I haven't considered it. But Hector would haunt me for ever. Oh, well. Do you think I could commandeer this box?' he gestured at a particularly large crate. 'It's empty.'
She looked at it. 'You can't move corpses in packing cases,' she said, slightly shocked.
'It's not for Hector, it's for his carvings. The museum's decided they don't want them. Thanet said Langton should never have bought them. Junk, in his opinion.'
He held up a lump of arm and showed it to her. 'Frankly, he's right. Surprises me that they ever considered them.'
'Me, too. And your Titian.'
'Nothing wrong with that,' he said defensively.
'Except that it's the only piece of Venetian painting in the place. It doesn't fit with the collection at all.'
Argyll grumbled away for a few moments about what a good picture it was, then changed the subject. 'So, what do you think? About this case?'
'Don't see why not. Unless it's used for something.'
She bent down to examine a piece of paper encased in plastic stapled to the side. 'It's the case the Bernini came in,' she observed. 'You can't just take it. We'll have to check with the police to make sure it's not needed for something.'
Argyll looked around to see if there was anything else suitable for the task; apart from a few woefully inadequate cardboard boxes, the room was virtually empty.
'It's going to be one of those days,' he said. Then he came over and peered once more into the box. 'And it's perfect, as well. Just the right size, enormously strong and even got lots of padding in it, all ready.'
He stood back. 'I don't see why we can't use it. I mean, if it was vital evidence the police would have taken it, wouldn't they?' Then he made up his mind. 'Come on, give me a hand.'
He grabbed the packing case by the top and pulled. 'Jesus, this is heavy. Push. Come on. Harder.'
Straining away on all three legs, between them they shifted the wooden box about ten feet across the concrete floor of the storeroom to di Souza's statuary. Argyll liked to think that, fully functional, he could have done it himself. But it was still absurdly well built, even by the Moresby's standards.
Puffing and blowing, they leant back on it to recover themselves.
'Are you sure this is a good idea?' Flavia asked anxiously. 'It's going to cost a small fortune just to shift the crate back to Italy. It's ridiculously heavy.'
