amusement. And you have twice dipped your olive into the sugar bowl and eaten it without even noticing.”
So she had. Now she thought about it, the olive had tasted odd. So she heaved a sigh and told him about more serious matters. By the time she finished, Argyll was dipping his olives in the sugar bowl as well. He, in contrast, found them quite tasty. He could see that Flavia's situation did really put the antics of the departmental percolator in the shade.
Oddly, the more important matter was swiftly dealt with. Flavia didn't want Argyll's advice on this one, but she got it anyway. It just wasn't very good. 'Your stomach,' he said. 'It's been playing you up for days now. How about if we got Giulio downstairs to have you admitted to hospital for a week? Urgent tests? Suspected ulcer?
Gastroenteritis? You could blame my cooking. He'd be happy to oblige. Then you could sit out the case of the stolen Claude in peace and security.”
Giulio was the doctor who lived on the grander first floor of their apartment block.
And Flavia was sure he would oblige. He was an obliging fellow. And her stomach—in fact, her entire internal system was misbehaving shockingly, although it was better now, probably thanks to the wine. But this was one case she could not duck out of, and Argyll knew it as well as she did.
'Don't be silly,' she said. 'If you want to be useful, you can tell me about this Claude picture.”
'What's to tell? It's a landscape. Not one of his huge ones, which is no doubt why it's so popular with the thieves.”
'What about the subject, though? Cephalus and Procris.”
Argyll waved his hand dismissively. 'Wouldn't worry about that. They're just mythological figures wandering around the canvas who were put in to give it respectability. Claude couldn't do people for toffee. Arms and legs too long. Bums in the wrong place. But he had to do them to be taken seriously.”
'Still. What's the story?”
'No idea.”
And Flavia clearly wanted to say no more, so he switched the topic. 'Tell me about Bottando. You'll miss him, won't you?”
'Terribly. Father figure, you know. It gives you a shock when permanent fixtures are suddenly not so permanent. Also, he's not happy about retiring, either. It's not a good way to end his career after all this time.”
'We should get him a present.”
She nodded. 'Can you think of anything?”
'No.”
'Nor me.”
They paused. 'What shall I do about Mary Verney?' Argyll said.
She sighed. 'Oh, I don't know. I suppose there are so many thieves in the country, one more won't make any difference. At least we can be certain she didn't steal the Claude.”
4
Argyll was reluctant to criticize his dear wife, especially as she had been his wife for only a short time and it seemed premature to begin carping, but he found it hard to suppress a certain amount of irritation at the way she wouldn't listen to reason—his reason—about this Claude. It was not that he didn't see that it was her job to recover pictures, nor did he blame her for being worried. Normally it was her calm that amazed him. He knew well that he would have been quite incapable of doing what she did without being in a permanent state of panic. The omnipresent possibility of disaster that she seemed to live with was not the sort of thing that gave him pleasure; in his own line of work, now that being an art dealer was more of a hobby than an occupation, the worst that could happen was that he might lose his lecture notes. Selling his remaining stock of pictures and covering his expenses was more than enough stress to have in his life, in his opinion.
There were only a few dozen pictures left now, ranging in quality from the moderately decent to the embarrassing; the rest he had either got rid of to a couple of clients, unloaded onto dealers, or decided to keep for himself. This last batch, in a fit of impatience, he had decided to sell at an auction and, as none was particularly valuable, he had arranged for them to go into a sale in London; they were not subject to any export restrictions and would get a better price there. They were, however, subject to a monumental amount of paperwork, which he had been sweating over for months. It was nearly all done now, most of the pictures were safely boxed and ready to go, but there still remained an alarming number of forms to fill in.
So he didn't blame Flavia for being alarmed; the Italian state in one of its full-blown moods of cranky irrationality is an alarming thing. But she had a sort of absentminded calm about her, which was really quite unwise.
It was not ingratitude that made Flavia dismiss Jonathan's counsel with a touch of impatience, she was merely preoccupied. Since being summoned to the prime minister's office, she had been totally consumed with the Claude while also having to put on an air of not having a care in the world. A long, early-morning phone call with the prime minister to try and extract more specific instructions produced nothing except a convoluted statement that gave the impression that he was unaware of anything to do with ransoms; after it was over, Flavia convinced herself that the call had been taped and would be used in evidence against her if need be. That started her day off badly, but even worse was the lack of any movement; the kidnapper did not follow up with any more details about how much money he wanted or how it was to be paid.
Assuming a ransom was what he wanted. Time was short, after all; Flavia found the desultory approach quite surprising. Even the dimmest thief—and this character clearly was not dim—must realize that the longer he waited, the greater the risk of something going wrong, and that if the news came out, the price would go down dramatically.
At least the delay gave her time to do something, even though she had no great hopes of anything useful resulting. She could not send anyone out to ask questions, but she could comb through the records to see if any obvious candidates presented themselves. Again, she was hampered by not being able to tell anybody what she wanted, but fortunately the department had been assigned another trainee, who was, for once, unusually bright and keen. He had, she told him sternly when he came in, spent far too much time on the streets recently.
The trainee's face fell so far Flavia thought she might have to help him pick it off the floor. 'It's all very well rushing about in flashy cars kicking people's doors down, Corrado, and don't think I'm criticizing. You kick them down very well. But the essence of policing these days is intelligence. Forward planning. That sort of thing. Very interesting,' she added encouragingly. 'So I've constructed a little exercise for you.”
'An exercise?' Corrado, the trainee, said in a scarcely concealed tone of disgust. 'You mean, not even a real case?”
'It might be one day. Got your notebook? Good. Take this down. Let's see now.
Armed robbery at a museum. Lone operator. Painting stolen.”
'What painting?”
'Doesn't matter what painting,' she said. 'It never does in real life either.”
'Oh.' 'Ransom demand. Pay up or else. Right?”
Corrado nodded.
'Good. Now assume this has all just happened. It's your job to head into the records and construct a list of potential people who might have been involved. Do you know how to do that?”
'Start with the computer, then go to the files, look for possibles for the theft itself, compare that with lists of people who are thought to have done kidnappings, etcetera.'
He sounded bored and annoyed. Flavia felt slightly sorry for him, but even if she had just told him a pack of lies at least one part was true. Sitting on your rear end reading files really was now the stuff of policing.
'Quite,' she said brightly. 'And I know you are going to grumble and moan about it.
So the sooner you are done, and done properly, the sooner you can get back to the outside world. Off you go,' she concluded in her best schoolmistressy tone, giving him an encouraging smile as he sloped out of her office.
That was all very well, and even cheered her up a bit, but the improving mood went into a sharp reverse shortly after she had finished her midmorning sandwich. As she brushed the crumbs carefully from her blotting pad into the wastepaper bin, her secretary—it was amazing how quickly you can get used to having a secretary— announced that a journalist was on the phone from II Mattino. Common enough, quite a few checked in regularly to see if there was anything going on, and Flavia was very much pleasanter to them than Bottando had ever been. Ettore Dossoni was a new one to her, however; she vaguely knew the name, but he had never, as far as she was
