'Now, the matter that confuses me was that the picture was then returned to its owner. Considering that the person who took it was, by then, well into her career as a professional thief, and that she was perfectly in the clear, this is the bit that doesn't make a great deal of sense.
'If,' he went on vaguely, 'there was a ransom paid for it—a big ransom—then I could see the point of giving it back. Much better to have the cash and not have to worry about getting rid of the picture, which is always the tricky bit, so I understand.
But there was no ransom. So it doesn't make sense, you see.”
Not a very impressive performance, in Argyll's opinion. He'd imagined himself delivering a more incisive summary of the business, not the inchoate ramble that in fact had come from his mouth. No matter, it worked. What he said made the right impression; what he didn't say made an even bigger one.
It seemed that Bottando had ceded the lead role here to Mary Verney; he sat quietly and let her do the talking, perhaps because all his years as a policeman had made him better at asking questions than answering them. Or perhaps it was because it was her house.
'What's your interest in this picture, by the way?' she asked.
'It was meant to be a retirement present for the general here,”
he said sadly. 'He'd always said it was valueless. I thought it might be worth something. Flavia said he was worried that retiring a little earlier than he'd anticipated would dent his pension, so I was going to present him with provenance, and all that stuff, so that if he wanted to sell it ...”
'That was very kind of you.”
'But then, of course, it all got wrapped up in other things. And raised lots of questions that have been nagging at me. I have established that it is quite possibly hugely valuable—important, anyway. Bulovius said so, just before he died. But I don't know what it is yet; I can't prove it, anyway, and I don't know exactly where you two fit in, although fit in you do.”
'You're sure of that, are you?' she said, with a faint smile. 'Well, then, I suppose you might as well know the rest, as well. Have some more wine.”
'No. Thank you.”
She shrugged, thought a minute, then began.
'I feel terribly sorry for the youth of today, I really do,' she began.'Their lives are so cramped in comparison to ours. And everything is increasingly the same. Wherever you go, all you see are the same disgusting fast-food restaurants, which seems to have originated in Kansas and should never have been allowed to leave. When I was young, foreign lands were still foreign, life was terribly inexpensive, and jobs easy to get, if you were unfortunate enough to need one.
'And people were so very trusting; now if you even go into a church you're lucky if there is not a camera watching your every genuflection, just in case. I do believe that I had the great fortune to be young at the highest point that civilization has ever reached. It will just about see me out, but when I go I will not regret the pleasures my death will deny me. Well, maybe some, ' she added with a sidelong look at Bottando.
'Anyway, from the end of the fifties until the end of the sixties, life was a delight.
Age, combined with selective memory, make it seem better than it was, no doubt. But, in my opinion, it was a period of a few years where wealth had not yet brought tawdriness, freedom had yet to descend into self- indulgence, and the freshness of change was hopeful rather than a desperate search for repetitive novelty. And I, with no one to please but myself, was determined to make the most of it.
'And so I did. As you know all too well, I embarked on a career for which I was eminently suited, and ensured myself an income which was more than generous. But for all that, I was in every other way utterly respectable; what I really wanted, I think, was the sort of life that everyone else seemed to have. A husband who looked after me, two children, a nice house, preferably with roses growing up the outside. I was even prepared to consider coffee mornings with the girls. My rather disrupted childhood, no doubt, contributed to this desire of mine, and I put it into practice more or less at the first opportunity. I met Jack Verney and, although I knew quite well he was unsuitable in every way, I married him. He was a nice man. He was also the most boring man who has ever walked the face of the earth. I do him no injustice here; he said it himself, and was rather proud of his ability to make entire dinner parties fall asleep under the impact of yet another of his interminable golfing stories.
'He traveled a great deal, fortunately, leaving me to my own devices, and when he was off on one tour, I took the opportunity to go to Italy, where I bought this house. It cost me one hundred and fifty pounds—not much, even then—and I had this fond notion of spending time here, with my husband and children, when I had them. For the rest of the time, I set about supplementing my little Swiss nest egg.
'I was not what you might call truly operational at this stage, you understand. I had stolen one painting in my youth, on which I had made no money for myself, and followed up with a couple of others to keep body and soul together, but turned over a new leaf on my marriage. Then Ettore Finzi approached a dealer about a commission, and the dealer approached me. Would I, for a generous sum, steal a picture of an Immaculate Conception from the Stonehouse villa? It seemed he'd had a pair of pictures and considered he'd been cheated out of both of them. If I would recover the first, then he would also give me a substantial sum later to recover the second.”
'Where's the second?”
She shrugged. 'I don't know. We never got to the second. I was going to be in Italy anyway, and once I thought about it, it seemed an easy enough thing to do; private houses back then were so easy to rob that it was almost embarrassing. So I agreed, wangled an invitation to visit Buonaterra, and was all set.
'I may say, by the way, that I had no idea what the picture was. Still have no idea.
Finzi was old and sick and terribly suspicious. All I got was a description of what I was to take. I knew, of course, that the rivalry between him and Stonehouse had been bubbling away for longer than anyone could remember, but I didn't really need to know more than that in any case.
'So I arrived, settled in, made myself useful, and began to prepare myself. Then that idiot Bulovius showed up and ruined everything. Not only did he spend much of his time chasing me round the rosebushes, so I scarcely had a moment on my own to blow my nose, let alone steal a painting, he then decides to show Finzi what a good boy he is.
He had ingratiated himself with the old man in a quite disgusting fashion—I think he already had ideas about the will—and it occurred to him that bringing Finzi the picture would be just the sort of display of loyalty that would finally secure him his place in the list of beneficiaries. I don't suppose this was the interpretation he gave you, though.
'Anyway, I had everything set up. I'd figured out the way to get the picture out of the house—a runner was going to be waiting down the lane to take it off my hands so that I wouldn't have to hold it for more than a few minutes, another one was going to collect it from the left luggage at the railway station and get it out of the country.
Everything was set; Stonehouse had invited me to dinner, and I would have needed about five minutes to leave the table, proceed to the room, go into the garden, hand over the picture, and be back for pudding. So I went home for the night and arrived the next day to discover the picture had already vanished, the police were everywhere, and Bulovius had this sickly green look of terrified guilt plastered all over his face. His behavior the next day was so laughable that it was hard to resist just asking him to hand it over.
'I was not concerned about the police very much; they did not seem likely to give me much serious competition. The man in charge —what was his name?
'Tarento,' Bottando said, speaking about it for the first time.
'Tarento. Yes. He was a perfect fright, and quite the stupidest policeman I had ever met. But sweet and amiable in his way,' she went on, demolishing part of Argyll's imaginary reconstruction, 'and dreadfully kind to Taddeo here,' she added, flattening another.
'So I didn't really think there was much to worry about from that direction. Which was a mistake, as while his superior lacked investigative drive and enthusiasm, Taddeo had both in abundance. And early on I saw him watching Bulovius with a level of interest that only flickering suspicion could arouse. So I took the trouble to engage him in conversation to try and get his measure. It was a bad mistake. Quite simply, I fell completely in love with him.
'Now, I am not a romantic soul—quite the opposite, in fact. I always believed myself immune from such feelings; this was why I married my husband, as I thought mild affection was more than enough. To fall in love so unexpectedly, so instantly, and with the most inappropriate person in the world simply took my breath away. It
