'Very bad manners,' Argyll agreed.
'And wanted to be paid for the portrait,' the old man continued, the indignation still in his voice.
'You have a portrait by Modigliani? Of your mother?”
'Certainly not. My father took it into the garden and burnt it. No great loss.”
'Well . . .' Argyll said, trying to remember how much the last Modigliani to be sold had fetched.
'There's more to life than money, Mr Argyll. How do you think I would have felt knowing there was a painting of my mother with no clothes on in some American museum?”
'I see your point.”
There was a lot to be asked here, Argyll thought. Like, what was his mother doing taking her clothes off in the first place? On the other hand, it might have been considered tactless to mention it.
'It was very kind of you to invite me this evening,' he said, swerving on to what he hoped would be a less complicated topic. 'I wanted to ask you about a painting in your collection; I've spent the day going through the archives at Buonaterra but they didn't have anything I needed.”
Stonehouse considered becoming indignant at the mention of his old house, but decided against it. 'Oblige if I can,' he said.
'An Immaculate Conception.”
Stonehouse furrowed his brow.
'Little thing,' Argyll continued hopefully. 'On panel. Florentine, maybe. Didn't fetch much at the auction. Used to hang in a bedroom. Called a Madonna, then. The Immaculate Conception bit is my guess.”
'Oh yes,' he said. 'That one. I remember now. The one that got stolen.”
Argyll's heart lurched as it always did when the words 'painting' and 'stolen'
appeared too closely together, then slotted back into its normal position. After all, it wasn't his picture.
'Very odd business,' Stonehouse was saying.
Argyll forced his mind to pay attention. 'Ah.”
'Can't tell you the details. I only arrived at the last moment, so much of what I say is secondhand. As I understand it, someone noticed one morning that it had gone. My father called the police, they found it and brought it back. End of story, really.”
'Who stole it?”
'They never found out. Or, at least, no one said. Someone obviously knew more than they were letting on.”
'What makes you think that?”
'Because they said they found it in a ditch about half a mile away from the house.
The story was that the burglar had stolen it, then panicked and thrown it away when he discovered it wasn't the painting he wanted. Or some such.”
'And what was wrong with that?”
'It was a painting on wood. Quite resilient on one side, relatively speaking, but very porous on the back. And it had been raining. There would have been at least some damage. In fact there was none at all. My father reckoned that it had been kept indoors throughout its absence. But we didn't bother to inquire. After all, we'd got it back speedily and if we'd made a fuss the insurance company might have taken too much interest and put up the premiums. Besides, I think my father knew who had stolen it.”
'Really?”
'Or at least, who had wanted it stolen. Ever heard of Ettore Finzi?”
Argyll shook his head. Stonehouse chuckled. 'You have just made my father very happy in his grave, young man. Finzi was my father's greatest rival for this sort of picture. It was a battle that lasted over thirty years. Whenever it was heard my father was going to bid for a painting, Finzi would turn up as well, even if it meant traveling to London from his house in Rome for the purpose. Their rivalry bid prices up quite unnecessarily. Finzi hated my father, and my father, in return, came to have a complete detestation for Finzi, because of his behavior.”
'Just the rivalry of collectors?”
'Oh no. A complete clash of personalities. They were different in every way.
Inherited money and a life of ease on my father's side, self-made man on the other.
Different background, different upbringing, different nationality, different attitude to art in every respect. Finzi wanted his collection to batter his way into the establishment.
Whereas my father considered it a triumph to pay as little as possible, Finzi was most pleased when he spent as much as possible. Entirely different, you see.”
'And this painting? Why would he want it?”
'According to the story, which my father used to tell perhaps too loudly to make Finzi seem ridiculous, because he couldn't change a car tire.”
'Pardon?”
'Whenever it was. The dealer where my father bought it. I don't know who heard about the picture first, but there was a dash through the streets to the dealer. My father got there first as Finzi's Rolls-Royce had a puncture and he didn't know how to change a tire. So he had to walk the last half mile and by the time he arrived, my father had bought the picture for a bargain price. And insisted that Finzi admire it in the street when he arrived, all breathless and flustered. Within a few days everyone in Rome had heard the story, and Finzi never forgave him. My father told me the story when the picture was stolen.”
'This was nineteen forty?' Argyll asked.
'Nineteen thirty-eight, I believe.”
'Are you sure it wasn't later?”
'Oh no. It came from a dealer in Rome, I'm sure of that. My father left Italy in late 1939. Finzi smuggled himself out later.”
'Why?”
Stonehouse looked puzzled, then remembered he'd missed out a bit of the story. 'He was Jewish. And realized he had better make a dash for it. I don't know how he managed it but he arrived very hard up, apparently. My father lent him money to tide him over, although that didn't heal the rift between them in artistic matters. Hostilities were resumed on that front the moment hostilities ended on the other.”
'And the picture was stolen . . . ?”
'Nineteen sixty-two.”
'That's a long time to harbor a grudge.”
'Not for a man like Finzi,' Stonehouse said. 'He vowed that one day he would have that picture, and knew that time was running out. He was old and ill—in fact, he died the following year. So he was in a hurry.”
'But there was never any evidence.”
'Oh no. But then it didn't matter. He didn't get it and he was ill. Why persecute him in his last months? Although I suspect that knowing my father couldn't even be bothered to take any action was the last straw for him. It might well have been that last show of disdain that tipped him into his grave.”
A paper on the psychology of collecting? Argyll thought. The rivalry that drives men—always men, how many women collectors have there been in history?—to such extremes that they will steal from each other to possess the things they want. A bit of connoisseurship, bit of Freud, bit of history? Maybe.
'But who actually stole the picture?”
Stonehouse looked uninterested. 'I've no idea. I wasn't there, alas. The only people in the house were my father, a young student who'd taken his fancy, and a few of his fellow connoisseurs. Most of whom are now dead, I imagine, except Bulovius, who is still on this earth—although not for much longer. Must be ninety if he's a day.”
The good old days indeed. Argyll had heard of Tancred Bulovius, one of those hybrid collector-scholars who no longer exists in any great number. One of the more opinionated connoisseurs in his heyday, which was properly the late 1940s and 1950s.
Probably a detestable man, but encyclopedic in his knowledge, the representative of a time when scholars might properly hope to collect the works of art they wrote about, publish only when they had something to say, and stay as guests for weeks on end at the country houses whose archives they were using. Changed days. Argyll, for a fleeting, nostalgic moment, could grasp Stonehouse's objection to the modern world.
