initial training; she wasn’t very good yet and to have her nose rubbed in the fact like that must have been distressing.
“You go and recover yourself by writing the reports for a day, and then maybe you can have another go. It’s just a knack. Don’t worry about it. Who’s following her at the moment?”’
“No one.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She stood up and reached for her bag.
“Where is she? In her hotel?”’
Giulia looked at her watch. “She said she was going shopping, and we could find her in the via Condotti most of the morning.”
Grumbling to herself that this was a ludicrous way of running a police force, Flavia walked out of the office to fill the gap. Tell Bottando, she said, to find someone to take over at lunch. If he’s around. She’d ring in later to say where she was.
She tracked Mary Verney down in a shoe shop, as she was trying on a pair of fairly expensive shoes. The wince on her face suggested they were not perfect.
“You’ve taken over watching me for the morning?”’ Mary said when she attracted Flavia’s attention with a wave.
“Faute de mieux. I have.”
“Splendid. I hope you are not going to pretend you don’t know me.”
“It was very unkind of you to do that last night,” Flavia observed gravely. “Poor girl was in tears this morning. She’s only young, you know.”
“I am sorry,” Mary Verney said, with every sign of meaning it. “I was in a bad mood and felt like kicking someone. She was the only person available. I shall apologize later. But I could say that it was unkind of you to put a tail on me like that. Personally, I felt I deserved better.”
“No. Arresting you would have been unkind. Keeping an eye on you is merely sensible.”
“At least we don’t have to play hide and seek all morning. If you’re with me, you can help. You dress so much better than I do. I need a nice coat. Nothing fancy, you know. Or too expensive. Something fitting my age and the Norfolk countryside. One doesn’t want to stand out too much. What do you suggest?”’
Flavia recommended a place which her mother visited on the rare occasions she came to Rome. She was a touch stouter than Mrs Verney, and a little older, but very much more vain as well. It would be a place to start. She led the way, once Mrs Verney had tried on a few more pairs of shoes and given up the attempt to find something which matched comfort and elegance. Such things are hard to find.
“Such an expensive city,” she said as they walked up the street. “I don’t know how you do it, dear. After all, you aren’t paid very much, I imagine.”
“We manage.”
“I was so glad to see that you and Jonathan are still together. When did you say you were getting married?”’
“The autumn. That’s the idea.”
“I am so pleased. I suppose it’s too much to expect an invitation?”’
“Probably.”
She sighed sadly. “I thought as much. Are you terribly cross with me?”’
“No. But only because I’ve taken care not to find out officially what it is I should be cross about. Otherwise I would be.”
“But you don’t trust me any more.”
Flavia grinned. Mary Verney was quite impossible to dislike for long. “Not an inch, no. I don’t know what you are doing here. It may be that the story you have told me is the gospel truth. Even thieves have to have holidays, after all. But I have my doubts.”
“It’s my own fault. However, this time I am being totally reliable. That I can guarantee.”
So they spent the rest of the morning shopping, Mary Verney buying a coat, with which she pronounced herself delighted, a pair of shoes which she didn’t need but couldn’t resist because they were so comfortable, and a leather handbag which was absurdly expensive but so awfully pretty. Then she led the way to a restaurant where they had a slow but (flavia had to admit) very enjoyable lunch and she had a small brandy while Flavia went out to phone for a replacement. This wasn’t quite the discreet surveillance she’d had in mind, but it was too late to do anything about that now. So she thought she might as well avoid making her manning problems worse, and removed Giulia from report writing.
“Oh, don’t bother about that,” she said wearily when Giulia asked where she should pick up the trail. “We’re in Also Moro. Just come straight in.”
Then she went back to the table to find Mary Verney looking impish. She’d paid the bill for both of them.
“Look, do you want me to be had up for corruption or something? We’ve had the spooks all over us recently. I told you …”
“It’s just a bill. But rather a big one. Don’t worry. Your name isn’t on anything. My treat.”
“I don’t want treats.”
“But you deserve one. You have just spent three hours taking me shopping, after all …”
“It was a pleasure.”
“Shall we go?”’
“No. We have to wait for Giulia. She will be your escort for the afternoon.”
“How lovely! This is the way to travel. I should have thought of this years ago.”
“We don’t make a habit of it. Ah, here’s Giulia,” she went on as the trainee arrived and crept cautiously up to their table, a worried frown of uncertainty on her face.
“I fear I owe you an apology, Giulia. Flavia was very cross with me for the inconsiderate way I behaved last night.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said the surprised, but well-brought-up, trainee.
“Splendid. Now, you go back to work, Flavia. And Giulia and I will have a lovely afternoon together. I thought I might visit some old art-dealing friends of mine. Some of them are a bit … perhaps, Giulia, you wouldn’t mind being my niece for the afternoon? We don’t want to frighten anybody, do we?”’
Flavia just about managed to suppress a smile at the disconcerted and uncomfortable look on Giulia’s face. “Enjoy yourselves.”
“We will,” Mary Verney said. Giulia looked more doubtful.
Having nothing better to do that morning, Argyll walked across town to the monastery of San Giovanni to visit Dan Menzies and the Caravaggio. It wasn’t in the slightest bit necessary, although it was in the back of his mind that perhaps, just perhaps, he might sniff around and see if he could find out something about this picture. Then he could write it up—and it didn’t matter whether it was by Caravaggio or not—and get a little publication out of it. It also provided an opportunity to mess around with Flavia’s case. Not that he should, of course, but the prospect offered a bit of variety. Teaching and marking things was all very well, but no one could say that it made the adrenaline run through the veins at high speed. Unless, of course, you found yourself in a lecture room with seventy students and then discovered you’d forgotten to bring your notes. Even then, it wasn’t certain anyone would notice.
And it was a lovely day. The sun was shining and the bus routes were sufficiently complicated to make it not worthwhile waiting in the polluted street for one to come along. It was a decent stroll and put him into a sunny frame of mind. He crossed the river at the island, then did a slight detour through the prettier parts of the Aventino before climbing the hill and getting into the evermore out-of-the-way streets and alleys, one of which contained the surprisingly modest entrance to the monastery of San Giovanni. The baroque style is not normally associated with spiritual humility, but somehow the architect had pulled the trick off. The gateway, all peeling terracotta, had the regulation curls and swirls and twists, but it was all done on a small and almost domestic scale, as though it was the entrance to a private, and not very grand, house. The door itself, however, was well defended to keep the corruptions of the material world outside. Solid, sun-bleached oak was covered in a regular pattern of large metal studs for extra strength, and the little porter’s hole was protected by a thick grid of iron bars. The only modern touch was a little doorbell drilled into the stucco, into which someone had stuck a postcard. The Order of St John the Pietist, it said in several languages, so Argyll pressed it.
He had half hoped for a shuffling of feet and a creak as the porthole opened to reveal a bent-over old monk,
