The Bernini Bust

'They're like that here,' he said. 'Don't believe in taking risks. Everything is packed, repacked and double packed. You should have felt the weight of the box they put my little Titian in at the airport. Better take the Bernini label off, in case people get confused.'

He reached down and pulled off the old shipment label, scrumpled it up and tossed it into the corner.

Flavia wandered over, retrieved the sheet of paper he had so carelessly thrown away, and carefully flattened it out again.

'Jonathan?' she said.

'What?'

'How heavy do you think this thing is?'

'Search me. About five tons?'

'Seriously.'

'Don't know. Over a hundredweight? Something like that.'

'And how much do you reckon the bust weighs?'

Argyll shrugged. 'Seventy pounds? Maybe more.'

'But this shipping label records the case's weight as 120 pounds. So what does it mean if the box weighs the same now as when it came through customs with a Bernini in it?'

'Urn.'

'It means that the bust wasn't stolen from Thanet's office at all. Which, of course, means that . . .'

'What?'

'It means that you're going to have to find another box to ship di Souza's statues in. And Mr. Langton has got some explaining to do.'

The last person she had to see was David Barclay, whom she tracked down in his office high in the skies over the city. Awfully chic -thick pile carpet and secretaries and high-technology bits all over the place. All in white again; strange how the local population didn't seem to like colour in their rooms.

Flavia tried hard to remember that personal antipathy did not, in law, constitute grounds for conviction. But Barclay was not her sort. Something about the hair, and her strong suspicion that his character and opinions had been so carefully groomed over the years that they had almost ceased to exist, made her dislike the man. Blandness, as universally acceptable as his white sofa, carefully adopted to offend no one.

Not that spending a fortune on clothes and haircuts and shoes and little gold knickknacks offended her; she was Italian, after all. But Italian men were more open about being incurably vain; delighted in it, in fact. They dressed to impress themselves, often succeeded and didn't really care what other people thought. But any vanity in Barclay was a secondary matter; he constructed himself to impress others; there was nothing of him on show at all.

Questioning him was difficult. The best way of loosening him up would have been to inform him that, all things considered, he was lucky he wasn't already in jail. But this strictly wasn't her business, and she was a touch nervous about saying the wrong thing. Other people's legalisms are often very difficult to understand. So she started off with generalities, asking for his opinion about the murder.

'Can't help. Even in abstract I can't think of any reason to kill Moresby.'

It was extraordinary how obtuse people were about their own advantage, she thought. Anne Moresby was inheriting billions; he might well share in it, Langton was after Thanet's job, Thanet was gunning for Streeter, Moresby junior was resentful about being penniless, they were all neurotic about what the old man was about to do with his money, and this lawyer couldn't think of any reason for what had been going on. Extraordinary.

'As far as the bust is concerned, all I know is that I authorised the transfer of money to an account in Switzerland to pay for it.'

'You took no part in the acquisition process?'

'Apart from that, no. The first I heard about it was when I got a call from Moresby telling me to rustle up the money. Buying art is not my business. Paying for it is. Was, rather.'

'And there was nothing unusual about it? Nothing in the process that struck you as odd?'

'Not at all.'

'So you transferred two million dollars on the day the bust was stolen? Or was it four? People seem oddly hazy about this.'

Barclay hesitated. Flavia caught the change in mood and wondered about it. It was, after all, merely a routine question; hardly a penetrating thrust to the heart of the matter. A random sentence designed merely to give her time to think up the next line of enquiry. So she couldn't really take any credit at all for the result.

Which was that, coming at a moment when Barclay was feeling more than a little alarmed at his prospects, the enquiry made him take a leap and open up about a little matter which, he considered, could make him look very bad indeed should he ever be hauled into court. Much better to mention it now; try it out on someone unofficial and see what the result was.

'I wondered when you'd find out,' he said.

'Hmm,' she replied, not being able to think of anything better.

'It was both, of course.'

'Pardon?'

'Both.'

It meant nothing at all to Flavia, but the grave and confiding look on Barclay's face clearly indicated that he regarded the matter as being of some significance. So she nodded in the way you do when you want to suggest that the anomaly was just the little detail that you'd been expecting to find.

'I see,' she said slowly. 'I see.'

Barclay was reassured that she dealt with the revelation in such a matter-of-fact way. Leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling, he elaborated on the theme, while Flavia tried to work out what on earth he was talking about.

'It's been going on for years,' he said. 'I should never have agreed; but Moresby was a man you did not say no to. Now I imagine it's only a matter of time before someone starts going through columns of numbers and totting up figures and finding my name on every authorisation. And Thanet's of course.'

'Thanet?'

'Of course. Couldn't have worked without him. He had to provide the valuations, saying these things were worth the amount Moresby wanted to claim. At the start I think he took it on trust, same as I did. Moresby would say he'd paid a certain amount, and Thanet would say Moresby had donated a piece worth that amount. I don't suppose it ever crossed his mind there was anything wrong. Nor did I; I just did as I was told.

'Of course, Thanet reckoned the old man was paying far too much, but that was his prerogative. Then he mentioned to me that those crooked Europeans were taking him for a ride, and I looked around. By that time it was too late. We could imagine all too easily an IRS inspector staring at us: 'Mr. Moresby has been consistently evading taxes for years by claiming to pay three or four times what he in fact paid, and you expect us to believe you knew nothing about it?'

'Of course they would never have believed it. Both of us were naive, and then both of us, I guess, were too concerned about keeping our jobs. So I transferred money and hid it all over the place, and Thanet kept on making out fraudulent assessments of value for presentation to the taxmen.'

Flavia had at last caught up with him. But just to make sure, she said: 'So you transferred four million to Europe. Two million of that went to pay for the bust itself, and the other two is still in a Moresby account somewhere?'

Barclay nodded. 'That's right. From there on, the process would have been the same. Moresby would have presented a bill saying the bust cost four million, Thanet would have said it was worth four million, and I would have filled out Moresby's tax form to that effect claiming an income tax deduction. The result would be that he got the bust almost free.'

'But where did the two million which paid for the bust go?'

'Automatic transfer to the owner from the Moresby account in Switzerland.'

'Yes, but who? Tell me, is there any chance that the money went into Langton's bank account?'

He shook his head with a quiet smile. 'Oh, no. One thing about Mr. Moresby, he was not the trusting type. Not where the art world was concerned. He always kept tabs on his employees. I've been checking; the money did