got us through the Sack of Rome, World War Two and so far has fended off the property developers as well. But of course, they tend to find that sort of thing awkward nowadays.”
“They?”’
“Ah, you caught me,” he said with a faint smile. “Where I come from we have no trouble at all with things like that. Here they are all very Vatican Two and rational, you see, and have a great deal of trouble dealing with the miraculous. Considering that they are all priests, I find that strange, don’t you? After all, everything we believe in is based on a miracle. If you doubt them, what’s left?”’
“So you believe it?”’
He nodded. “I am prepared to. Otherwise you have to attribute everything to chance, and I find that much too far-fetched. It’s the one thing in this place I wouldn’t part with, I think. And the local population are fond of it. Were, in any case, until Father Xavier closed the doors. We still get scowls over that.”
“Has Mr Menzies arrived yet?”’ This was the voice of Father Jean, who came through the door with a worried frown on his face. “I think I should talk to him.”
“Not seen him,” said Argyll, then introduced Flavia. “Good morning, signorina. I’m very concerned about this. I think Mr Menzies will be very angry.”
“This” was a copy of a newspaper in his hand, opened at the arts pages.
“Ah, yes,” Flavia said, scanning it quickly. “In fact, I can tell you he is very angry. That’s why I’m here. To tell him it’s nothing to do with us.”
It was short, but effective. Menzies, greatly criticized for some of his past restorations, was a shameless publicist being investigated for wasting police time. They suspected him of making bogus phone calls to drum up publicity as part of his campaign to get the job to clean the Farnesina. It remained to be seen whether a corrupt and barbaric government would sink so low as to allow one of the nation’s greatest masterpieces to fall into the hands of such a latter-day Visigoth. Or, at least, that was the general line communicated without ever stooping so low as to make any direct accusations.
Argyll tutted as he read, Father Paul looked unconcerned, and Father Jean seemed upset, but more for the way the order was being dragged into public controversy than anything else. “I do think it was a mistake to let Mr Menzies in here, you know.”
“This is hardly his fault,” Father Paul said gently. “Perhaps we’d better go and talk to him now?”’
Such was the awe in which Menzies’s anger was held that, safety in numbers, a sort of unofficial delegation was formed, with all of them shuffling off nervously in the direction of the church, so the reaction could be absorbed collectively.
They never got there; the bell rang again and Father Paul headed off to see who it was. As he seemed to be the sort of person whose natural calm and authority might best deal with an irate restorer, the rest waited for him to return. He came back with someone Flavia recognized. Father Paul also had a look of vague alarm about him as well.
“Hello, Alberto,” Flavia said with surprise. “What are you doing here?”’
She introduced her colleague from the carabinieri, a tall, thin man who managed to have an air of vague perplexity about him all the time. Strange, she thought; he always looked like that. At the moment he also looked like someone who knew full well he was wasting his time when he could be getting on with his paperwork.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The emergency services had an anonymous call …”
Flavia scowled. “Another one? What in God’s name is going on here?”’
“I have no idea. But this call was to say someone had been injured. They’re a bit short of ambulances and get really pissed off with cranks wasting their time, so it was passed on to us. And here I am. Nothing going on, is there?”’
He was unsurprised when Father Jean assured him that, as far as they knew, all was well. No illness, injury or death all night.
Flavia was puzzled, though. And a little alarmed. “This is the second time in a few days,” she said. “We’d better have a look around. What exactly did this call say?”’
“Just that. Nothing else. It came in an hour or so ago. We’ve just heard about it.”
Fathers Jean and Paul exchanged looks, and then the group, augmented by one, resumed their collective move. There was no sign of Menzies; the door of the church was still firmly closed.
So they unlocked it and went in to check. It was unlit, and there was not a sound, certainly none of the grunting and scuffling and whistling that normally accompanied Menzies’s labours. They went over to the transept that Menzies was using for his studio, but that again was empty; the Caravaggio stood there, still a mess but undoubtedly otherwise safe. That was one less thing to be concerned about at least.
Then they stood around, wondering what to do next. “I suppose we just wait. He’ll turn up eventually.”
Both Father Jean and Father Paul were just coming up with very good reasons why they had to go about their business, Alberto was becoming ever more convinced that the perverted sense of humour of some Italians had wasted his time, and the three were preparing to leave Flavia with the task of dealing with Menzies.
From the other side of the church there came a hideous scream, made all the worse by the resounding echo in the building, which made the high-pitched wail and strangled sob, and repeated ululations reverberate all around, seemingly growing louder and louder rather than fading away.
“Jesus …” Argyll began. All of them turned and began to run the short distance to where the scream seemed to have come from, and Father Paul, with more practical sense than all the rest of them put together, walked purposefully in the opposite direction and began switching on all the lights, so that one by one, the gloom receded and they could see what the noise was about.
It was perfectly obvious. The cleaning lady, with her broom tangled in her legs, knelt frantically in front of the bank of candles, scrabbling desperately at the wall in supplication as she continued to cry and scream. The bucket of dirty water was upturned where she had dropped it and flowing all over the floor; the wet broom had fallen against a bank of extinguished candles and knocked them flying and the woman’s old pink slippers, with pom-poms, rested in the thick, sticky blood that had flowed so horrifyingly freely from the broken skull of Father Xavier Munster, thirty-ninth superior general of the order of St John the Pietist.
It took another quarter of an hour before anyone noticed that the little painting of the Virgin to which Argyll had given a candle had been taken out of its frame and had vanished.
“Is there any chance that this might be kept private? Until we know what happened?”’ Father Jean asked humbly of Flavia. “Must the newspapers know?”’
Everybody was slowly calming down after the frenzy of activity that had followed the moment of stunned silence that the sight had caused in all of them. Father Paul, with impeccable resourcefulness, was the first to recover and, as Father Jean said later, had probably saved the superior’s life—if, indeed, it could be saved. He staunched the flow of blood, organized blankets to keep the man warm, summoned the first aid kit and called the ambulance from the hospital which, as it was only a mile or two down the road, arrived with unusual speed. Everybody else more or less stood around as the old man was given emergency treatment, loaded on a stretcher and then rushed to the hospital.
His chances were not great, one of the ambulance men said. But it was a miracle he was alive. He must be a tough old bird even to be still breathing.
Flavia shook her head at Father Jean’s question. “Not a chance, I’m afraid. Somebody will tell a reporter. And it will look very much worse if we try to hide it. I’m afraid you’ll just have to keep your heads down.”
“Will you be investigating, Signorina?”’
“That depends. Assault is not normally our line of business. On the other hand, it looks as though Father Xavier might have been attacked trying to prevent someone stealing that painting.”
“And that would help? If that’s what happened?”’
“We would be involved, certainly.”
“That’s good.”
“Why does it matter?”’ Flavia asked, curious that he should be so concerned with such matters which, in comparison to Father Xavier, seemed almost trivial even to her.
“It’s always best to have someone who is delicate, and tactful, I think. Obviously, the attacker must be apprehended. That must be the first priority. But Father Xavier, I feel sure, would not want his misfortune to bring dishonour upon us.”
“Being attacked is hardly a dishonour.”
