made me foolish in a way I have never been before. Even worse, Bottando was utterly unresponsive as far as I could see and, moreover, was taking far too close a professional interest in me. He watched me like a hawk; even had I been capable of coherent action, it would have been quite difficult to do anything. I had wild imaginings that there was a file on me, and that they had already earmarked me as the likely thief; that I was going to spend several years in jail for the one picture I didn't steal. The only thing I didn't remotely consider as a possibility was that I had had the same effect on him as he had on me. I had a high notion of my abilities, but I never thought of myself as someone people fell in love with.
'The worst moment was when I forced myself to go into Florence to have a meeting with the runner, to reschedule getting the picture out of Italy should I get hold of it. It was stupid—the one and only time I ever had direct dealings with such people.
Fortunately, the man I had chosen was not well known. Otherwise seeing me come out of his apartment block would have been enough to make even the thickest policeman suspicious.
'And Bottando was not stupid, which was why, when I saw him standing across the street, looking at me when I emerged, I came as near to panic as I have ever done.
Even worse, he wouldn't come to the point, just talked to me, said he was off duty, and would I care to go for a walk? It was the oddest interrogation I have ever been through because, I suppose, it wasn't one. Instead, we just walked. And walked and walked. We visited churches, and we visited museums and courtyards and byways and alleyways.
You do the same with Flavia, I know you do. There is nothing better in the world than to share the pleasure of a little discovery, a new sight, or a new picture with someone. I had never felt so happy in anyone's company before in my life. I will not go into any further details, if you don't mind. I will merely say that we came back here to my little house, and spent a lovely weekend together.
'Except for the fact that he was a policeman. And that was a major stumbling block. I decided that he was warning me. We know about you, he was saying. Watch yourself.
'So I did. I was not about to pay the price of someone else's folly, thank you very much. It was a ticklish situation, as you can imagine. On the one hand, I wanted to get that picture; on the other, the risks were large, and I have always disliked risks.
'So I waited, and slowly became reassured. The police seemed to lose interest, everything went quiet. I had already figured out by watching Bulovius, and the way he got nervous every time someone sat on the sofa, where the picture was, and late one night, after I had spent an hour in the garden waiting for everyone to go to bed, I slipped back into the house, put it in a little bag, and walked out.
'Straight into the arms of Taddeo. He had been hiding nearly every night for days.
Waiting for something to happen. It was a lovely night, with a beautiful moon, and I could see the look of vague amusement on his face. I was speechless, so he did the talking.
' 'Congratulations,' he said. 'You found it.’
'I said I had, and that I could explain.
' 'No need to. I know what happened. You were looking for an earring, peered under the settee, and there it was. So you picked it up and decided to take it yourself to the police station.’
'It seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation to me, so I nodded.
' 'It might be difficult, however,' he went on, 'to explain that to Mr. Stonehouse. He might ask why you were taking it out of the house at all. He might become angry about the whole business, and wonder whether in fact you took it in the first place.’
'I said it would be terribly unkind of him even to think such a thing.
' 'Maybe it would be better, if you were willing to forgo thanks for recovering the picture, if we didn't say how it was recovered? Perhaps if it was just found?’
'I agreed to the inevitable and we left it, wrapped in a bag for protection, in a ditch, where Bottando duly picked it up the next morning with me there as a witness, and handed it in to general applause. It was a terrible emotional wrench, but I left that same afternoon, went back to England, and steered clear of Italy for some time. When I started working again, it was a full decade before I took any commissions for Italy.
'But, for old time's sake, when I heard that the Stonehouse collection was to come up at auction, I looked in the catalog, saw the picture was there, and bought it. I sent it to Taddeo as a little keepsake—complete with the invoice so he wouldn't be concerned.
I was glad to see he still had the picture when we met again. That meant a lot to me.
'Anyway, for more than thirty-five years I put Taddeo Bottando behind me and got on with my life, which was perfectly satisfactory until Flavia began investigating me and I met Taddeo again. Then I realized that some things simply cannot be put behind you.
And as he let it be known that he felt exactly the same, we decided we were too old for any more delay. I was already in retirement, he decided to take his as soon as possible, and here we are. And here, I very much hope, we stay.”
Bottando said nothing during this lengthy exposition; simply sat and looked benignly from one to the other, smiling occasionally, and sipping his drink. When Mary Verney finally finished, Argyll stared glumly at both of them. It was not what she had not mentioned that bothered him, it was the fact that, on what was in some ways the central point, she was clearly and obviously telling the truth. When he saw Bottando looking at her, he knew the expression well, and knew what feeling lay behind it. It was the way he looked at Flavia. He knew just enough about them to realize that both had led lives that had a deeply unhappy core, for both were naturally affectionate, and neither had had any proper object for their affection.
They had tasted it once, walking the streets of Florence, and now they were grabbing it with both hands and with a desperation only the truly deprived can manage. Was he going to spoil it for them? Was it really supposed to be his job to snatch it all away?
'Do you know,' he said, staring hazily in the direction of the sun, which was beginning to sink behind some pine trees halfway up the next hill, 'Flavia has always had a considerable admiration for you. Professionally, that is.”
'I'm flattered to hear it.”
'Hmm. She once told me that of all the thieves she had ever come across, you had one quality which set you apart from the others.”
'And that was?”
'Discipline. Rigorous self-discipline. Most are caught, you see, because they become lazy—these are her words, not mine, you understand—so they repeat themselves. One particular way of stealing something works, so they do it again. And again. You were the only one to have infinite variety, beyond the fact, as the general here once noted, that none of the things you stole were photographed or, until recently, recovered.”
'We all have our little trademarks.”
'So it seems,' he said, a little sadly.
17
The realization that she had told almost everything she knew to a man who, it seemed, was quite possibly still connected to the intelligence services made Flavia feel distinctly paranoid. So much so that when she got to her car—thanking heaven that she always kept the key in her pocket rather than leaving it in the apartment—she checked it carefully, inside and out, underneath and in the engine and around the petrol tank.
Stranger and nastier things had happened.
But the car seemed fine, and she drove off quickly, following a roundabout route, up and down little alleyways, stopping frequently, doing illegal U-turns, driving the wrong way down oneway streets, just to make sure no one was taking an undue interest in where she was going. She kept up the routine when she got to the autostrada as well, although the suddenly uncooperative nature of her bladder and the fact that for the first time in her life she felt carsick meant that she had to stop frequently.
Again, nothing untoward appeared in her mirror, no one seemed to look at her with more attention than was warranted, and gradually she relaxed. It was three o'clock, after a long drive, made longer by the frequent stops, when she arrived once more in Siena. She parked in La Lizza, a part of the town that rarely appears on tourist postcards, considered for a moment whether she was doing the right thing, then walked into the school where Elena Fortini earned her living.
She had to wait; Elena was giving a class, and had another twenty minutes to go, so she sat, walked around,
