Elena looked closely at her. 'I wonder why,' she said.
'Tell me about it, though. I don't know many of the details,' Flavia prompted.
'Find them yourself. It's all in the file, isn't it? Young innocent murdered by ruthless terrorists?”
'Is that why you stopped? If I remember, she was killed in 1981, you gave yourself up soon afterward.”
She shrugged. 'My womanly instincts revolted, is that what you think? No; I gave up because I hate lost causes. No other reason. Besides, I thought you were here to discuss the present, not the past.”
'I'm here to discuss Sabbatini.”
'Maurizio was a joker, unreliable, untrustworthy. He doted on his sister, and when he was picked up by the police, she was kidnapped to warn him to keep his mouth closed.
Then she was killed. He never quite recovered from it; he felt responsible, which he was. He stopped laughing. Is that good enough for you?”
Flavia got up and poured herself another coffee without asking. It was very strange how she felt at home here, companionable with this incomprehensible woman, so sweet and gentle, and with such a past. Flavia over the years had come to trust her feelings for people; if she felt comfortable with them, it usually meant they were trustworthy, even pleasant. This time her feelings and what she had just heard were so mismatched that nothing was making sense.
'So how did you get here?”
'I retired,' she said with a faint smile. 'I couldn't take it anymore. There were only two ways to go: ever more violence in a cause that was becoming hopeless, or getting out. I got out; others chose a different course.”
'And Maurizio?”
'You know as much as I do. It has struck you, I suppose, that the theft of this painting mirrors his past antics? That he advertised himself so that it must have been clear—to some people if not to you—who was responsible?”
Flavia nodded. 'And the money?”
'Maurizio was never interested in money.”
Flavia shook her head. 'I'm out of my depth here. I can't even begin to see the logic of this. I'm used to people doing things for simple reasons, even good reasons. Wanting more money is the main one.”
Elena shrugged. She got up, peered through the window into the sunlight where the children were playing, and began to tidy the kitchen. She had said her piece.
'You asked, I answered. Nothing more I can say. But the idea that Maurizio was after money doesn't work. Nor does the idea that he was working with someone. He never did in the past, not even with me. He trusted absolutely no one. No friends, no colleagues. And you are telling me that he suddenly got himself an accomplice and suddenly became interested in money. Very unlikely. But,' she said as she walked Flavia back to the car, 'you must make up your own mind. Tell me one thing, though,'
she said as she watched Flavia open the door and prepare to leave.
'Yes?”
'Boy or girl?”
Flavia frowned in puzzlement. 'What?”
'The baby. Is it a boy or a girl?”
14
As far as Argyll was concerned, Flavia had merely gone off on a routine expedition and would be back, that day or the next, when she had finished. There was no need to hang about waiting for her when there were things to be done. And many of the things that were to be done were proving rather difficult. He rang his old employer in London to see if there were any papers about the Finzi collection around, but was told what he already suspected, that they had all been left to Tancred Bulovius. He decided not to explain why he didn't feel it right to try and look at them just now. So he asked for a list of the Finzi paintings bequeathed to the London National Gallery instead, just to get a feel for the man's tastes.
And he gave a summary of his conversation with Bulovius, to see if Byrnes had any suggestions.
'This picture I told you about. Bulovius said it was hugely important, but I couldn't get the old buffer to come clean. Unless I can get some sort of hint...”
'No one else has ever seen anything in it?”
'Not many people have ever looked at it. Not in the last half century, anyway.
Bulovius said it was obvious when you looked at it, but it wasn't to me. What do you think?”
'Possible,' Byrnes said. 'He was immensely knowledgeable. Unfortunately, he never published much, or wrote much down.”
Argyll groaned.
'And,' Byrnes went on to make things worse, 'there aren't many people who knew as much as he did. He had an uncommonly good eye. His say-so would mean a lot.”
Argyll ground his teeth.
'You're being very noisy,' Byrnes said disapprovingly.
'It reflects my sense of frustration. I suspect I am dealing with one of the most important pictures I have ever come across, but I don't know what it is, and can't find out.”
'I'll have a look if you like. See if anything springs to mind.”
'Thank you. But unless I get a handle on Bulovius's proof, it's still all opinion.
Damnation.”
'What?”
'Nothing.' Argyll thanked him and put the phone down, cursed for a bit and then did some more phoning. And then he, too, packed an overnight bag and, as Flavia had taken the car, headed for the railway station.
It was premature of him; he arrived far too late to do anything of use, and had to spend the evening wandering about Florence killing time and grumbling about the unnecessary expense of a hotel room for the night when he could have been at home in bed. But the idea of Florence had appealed, and by the time he realized it wasn't such a good one it was too late.
Once upon a time, and not very long ago, he would have considered few things nicer than spending an evening in Florence, all alone, not doing very much. He'd spent much of his life, certainly many of the enjoyable parts of it, doing something similar in several dozen cities across Europe. But he had noticed that the charms of solitude were beginning to pall a bit. He got lonely more easily and more quickly. He missed someone to talk to. He found his own company at a table in a restaurant a bit tedious. He went to bed early, and read the copy of Vasari's Lives he had brought with him.
He was still feeling slightly disconcerted by the failure of old pleasures when he got up the next morning and walked over to the Church of San Pietro that Bulovius had mentioned. No help there. Then he hired a car (another unnecessary expense) and struggled through the morning traffic to Fiesole. And here it all came together. Of course it did. The Church of San Francesco was a Franciscan church. And there, in a prominent place, was a version of the Immaculate Conception—again with atypical imagery, not the same at all but fitting what he was looking for.
Out came the Vasari, and there, plain as a pikestaff once you knew where to look, was the reference to un nostro donna con figure, which in 1550 was in the Church of San Pietro. And it wasn't there anymore. No one had ever heard of it.
He went and found an agreeable seat overlooking Florence, and thought about it. It wasn't conclusive; all it did was demonstrate what Bulovius thought the picture was. But now that he had a name, he could follow up at the Uffizi and check the drawing Bulovius had mentioned. Then he'd be close.
His head still spinning, he got back in his car and drove northward. His destination was Poggio di Amoretta, a hamlet more than a village, perched on top of a hill fifteen kilometers outside Florence, and about three from the Villa Buonaterra. It took rather longer than it should have to get there, partly because of the traffic, but more because Argyll got lost, and then stopped minding; it is hard to keep your mind on business when you find yourself in the wrong village, squashed in a tiny square facing the unfinished facade of a Romanesque church with a door beckoningly open— come in and see—together with a minuscule restaurant with an aged waiter hopefully setting out clean, pressed table linen for diners who seemed unlikely to show up.
Argyll's mood was restored in an instant. It was eleven forty-five, and May. It was warm, but the air still had none of the harshness of afternoon. Apart from the waiter, there was no sound at all; Argyll could even hear the reassuring rumble of a tractor from way over the next hill. The vines were neat, ordered, trimmed, and ready to do
