improving, but no more than most people. Once he got on his feet, and the excess zeal of youth faded, then he became so like his father it is frightening. Sometimes when I see him, I have to blink and remind myself of the passage of the years. They even paint in the same way. He worked his way up through skill and quiet competence. Unlike some people.”
“And here you are referring to Dan Menzies again, are you?”’
“I am. While Gianni tries to bring a picture back to life, Menzies is an executioner, administering the coup de grace to a master’s vision. He paints himself. Whatever the subject. Dan Menzies’s Sistine Chapel, previously attributed to Michelangelo, now in an improved version; although, thank God, they were too sensible to let him near the project. Dan Menzies’s Virgin with St John, previously attributed to Raphael. That’s his line. Give me a forger any day. At least they’re honest.”
“You think he overdoes it?”’
“Overdoes it? Listen, if some lunatic walked in off the street and sprayed acid all over some of the most beautiful pictures in the world, then daubed paint all over them, your boss Bottando would steam and rage until the offender was locked up. Menzies does that all the time. The man is a licensed vandal. Do you know, I went to New York a few months ago and saw a Martini St Veronica he’d just finished with. I could have wept, I tell you. It looked like something out of Playboy. All the subtleties of light, all the toning, all the glazes; everything that made it into a sublime masterpiece rather than merely a decent painting, all gone, and replaced by Menzies’s crudities. I was speechless, I tell you.”
“You seem to be making up for it now.”
“We’ve got to stop him,” Bartolo repeated. “If he gets his hands on the Farnesina it will be the biggest atrocity since the Sack of Rome.”
“We?”’
“Listen, Flavia, over the years I have never asked you for anything.”
“No?”’
“Not very much, anyway, and I’ve given you lots of information in return.”
Flavia, who was now getting an uncomfortable feeling, nodded reluctantly.
“Help us.”
“How?”’
“Oh, you know how. Is there anything on this man? Is there anything we can use to stop him?”’
She gulped. “Not as far as I know. And I wouldn’t tell you anyway. It would only turn up in the papers tomorrow.”
Bartolo looked distinctly displeased by this. “You expect me to dig up information for you …” he began.
“I do. And you expect me to tip you the wink about certain things as well, and I do that. But this is asking too much. And you know it is, as well.”
“I’m very disappointed.” And he sounded as though he meant it.
“You don’t even know whether Menzies will get the job.”
“No,” he conceded reluctantly.
“I suppose there would be no harm in my asking my contacts how the candidates are running.”
Bartolo smiled. “That is kind of you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” She paused for a moment. “Tell me, it wasn’t you who phoned us up to tell us about a burglary at San Giovanni, was it? To focus our attention on the place?”’ Bartolo looked shocked. “Certainly not,” he said robustly. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Menzies did it himself to generate some publicity. That’s just the sort of thing he does. I wonder, though …”
Flavia held up her hands. “No,” she said.
“No what?”’
“No, I don’t want to hear.”
“Very well,” he said, with the faintest flicker of glee in his eyes. “Thank you so much. I’m so glad you came.”
“What for?”’
“Wait and see.”
The following morning, Flavia had not even managed to get out of the shower before the meaning of Bartolo’s words began to dawn on her. Bottando rang.
“Could you go down to that monastery and see this Menzies man?”’ He sounded irritated.
“Why?”’
“He’ll meet you there. I’ve just had a load of abuse hurled at me down the telephone; he’s extremely annoyed and blaming us.”
“But what for?”’
“In between the shouting, I gather that some paper has published an article about him, saying the police are investigating his activities.”
“What?”’
“And that he’s been wasting police time by planting fake stories about thefts to generate publicity. Do you know anything about this?”’
“Ah.”
“You do. You haven’t been talking to journalists, have you?”’ He said it with a slightly incredulous inflection in his voice. In Bottando’s list of human sin, talking to journalists came somewhere between infanticide and arson.
“No. But I probably know who has. Leave it to me. I’ll go and sort it all out.”
“Don’t tell him who’s responsible,” Bottando said. “We don’t want a murder on our hands. And deal with it quickly, will you? I don’t have time for this sort of nonsense at the moment. And I don’t want complaints being made, either.”
There was obviously no point in going to San Giovanni via the office; and no point in going too early and still less in trying to take a bus or taxi. So she and Argyll, in peaceful harmony for the first time in days after a successfully restful and uninterrupted evening together the previous night, had a quiet breakfast on their little terrace, watching the sun beginning to heat up the stones of the city, then walked off together in the direction of the Aventino just before eight. The gentle start successfully soothed Flavia’s irritation about Bartolo, who had obviously had the bright idea of using her to attack Menzies.
Argyll accompanied her because he had nothing to do until a lecture on the early Borromini at noon, but had given up the guilty pleasure of sitting around doing nothing all morning. Very Roman, very agreeable; but not the best way of cutting a dash in the world. Slogging in a dark and sunless archive in the search for that vital publication, alas, was. Especially as Father Jean, when he’d asked, had seemed more than happy to let him have free run of the archives to see what he could find out about St Catherine.
When breakfast was followed by a gentle stroll, walking arm-in-arm through the little back streets of the city, she arrived at their destination feeling totally, if only temporarily, at peace with the world. So what, she thought, if pictures got stolen? What was that in comparison to the morning sun on a crumbling Roman inscription set into a garden wall, half covered in ivy? Who cared about forgers, when she could distract herself with a pigeon that had made its roost in the mouth of an old statue? And who was really interested in irate restorers and their private battles?
“What a lovely place,” she said appreciatively when Father Paul had responded to the doorbell and let them both in. She also found Father Paul quite something as well.
“It is,” said Argyll. “No doubt because it’s under the special protection of the Virgin. So I’m told.”
Rather than smiling at the very idea, Father Paul nodded seriously, and Flavia, who had these turns sometimes, also looked appreciative.
“You’ve heard about that, have you?”’ said Father Paul. “It’s one of those stories we don’t really know what to do with these days.”
“What is the story?”’
“I thought you knew,” he said as he led them towards the block of buildings containing the offices and archives. “How there was a plague in the city, and the monks prayed for help, and an angel flew down bringing the icon. He told them that if they treated it properly, then they would be forever under Our Lady’s protection. So they prayed for its help, and the plague abated and not a single one of them died. As you can see from the building, she
