This time it was different; within an hour Byrnes sent him a fax about an offer from a colleague for one of the pictures in Argyll's sale, saying that in his opinion the price was good and should be accepted, and added at the bottom of his note that he had tracked down the little house mark.
'According to those people old enough to remember, it certainly refers to Robert Stonehouse, who formed a collection of some worth between the wars. This was broken up in the 1960s; I have looked through the catalog of the sale for you, but the obvious match won't take you much farther. It is given as 'Florentine school, late fifteenth century,' although considering how wayward these people can be sometimes on attributions it could be by Picasso. It sold for ninety-five pounds so we can assume that no one in London at the time rated it. Stonehouse's villa in Tuscany went to some American university; they might know more.”
Another hour with the reference books, books of memoirs, and other impedimenta of the trade brought some more details about the collection—enough at least to indicate that Byrnes's description of the collection as being 'of some worth' was a trifle cool. It had, in fact, been a very good collection indeed. A standard story, such as he knew it; Granddad Stonehouse had made the money in jute or some such, son Stonehouse came over artistic and retired to a magnificent villa in Italy, from which vantage point he not only bought his pictures but also kept a canny eye on the stock market, being one of the few to do very handsomely out of the great crash of 1929—a calamity which caused art prices the world over to collapse, much to the delight of those collectors who hung on to their money.
The great and traditional cycle was completed in the third generation with the last Robert Stonehouse, who had his father's expensive tastes but lacked his grandfather's attention to financial detail. The result was the breakup of the collection, the dispersal of all those works of art to museums around the world, and the sale of the villa to the American university, which established some form of summer camp in the building that had once echoed to the voices of the leading literary and artistic figures of Europe.
So far, so ordinary, and there was nothing in the tale that might help. The point that tickled Argyll's interest was that the second Stonehouse, by repute, had seen himself as an artist-collector whose accumulations were not merely an assorted lumping together of high-quality bric-?-brac, but an artistic ensemble in their own right, every painting and tapestry and bronze and sculpture and majolica and print and drawing carefully acquired to form a perfect and complete harmony. An obscure achievement, certainly, one that virtually no one could ever appreciate, but a remarkable accomplishment nonetheless. A tragedy, in its way, that the whole thing was dispersed, but that was the point. In its way, Argyll thought loftily as he poured himself another drink and put his feet up on the sofa to contemplate his inspiration; collecting was the original performance art, transitory, fleeting, and evanescent. Called into existence for one brief moment, then blown away on the winds of change as economics had their corrosive effect.
And theft. Seen in that way, theft could be presented as an aesthetic act, part of the neverending process of breaking up and reforming groups of pictures. Good heavens, he thought, I might even write my paper on this. Bottando's little gift and the conference taken care of in one fell swoop. Kill two birds with one Stonehouse, so to speak. Windy, no doubt, insubstantial and vague, perhaps, but just the sort of thing that goes down well at conferences. Besides, time was running short. He really had to get on with it soon, and he had no other ideas at all.
His labors didn't fill in any details about the little Virgin, however, although the research gave him hope. If the picture had caught the eye of Stonehouse, there might be something to it; merely mentioning its provenance should add a fair amount to its value if Bottando ever wanted to sell it. Provenance hunting is a compulsive hobby in its own right, and once started it is difficult to stop. There is always the temptation to see if you can push the picture's known history just a little bit farther into the past. Argyll had got back firmly to 1966 and had pinned down only one previous owner. He still knew very little and in any case the idea for the paper had tickled his fancy. And Flavia was so preoccupied and grumpy that he would hardly be missed if he went off to Tuscany to investigate. Better to keep out of the way for a few days.
He thought about, then got the number of the American university occupying the Stonehouse villa from directory inquiries, and rang them up. Charming people. Of course they had papers about Stonehouse; of course he could see them; of course they would be happy to put him up for a night if needed. Would that it was always so simple.
Half an hour later he was packing his bag to be ready for an early train to Florence—and then on to the Tuscan countryside— the next morning.
5
Corrado, the trainee, had done an exemplary job. Not only had he unearthed almost everyone in Italy ever involved in art theft, correlated them with those people known to have a penchant for art, then constructed another list of those connected with organized crime, and broken it down by region (on the reasonable ground that most criminals are remarkably lazy and don't like commuting), but he had also typed his report up in two dozen typefaces, illustrated it with handsome (if largely meaningless) tables, and bound it into a properly professional- looking document some forty-five pages long, complete with references to the case files. Flavia tried not to look impressed.
'Very pretty,' she said as dryly as she could manage, tossing it onto her desk. 'Now, if you would summarize your findings?”
'None,' he said with commendable directness.
'None at all?”
'No one in the files has the profile you need. That is, I was looking for people who work singly and have stolen something similar. I even broadened the search and assumed that the person who stole the painting might be acting for someone else, but still no one fits very well. I didn't manage to check everything, of course, but . . .”
Good, she thought. So he was fallible after all. A chance to be censorious. 'Why not?
Thoroughness is essential in these matters, you know. Without it ...”
'Not all the files were there,' he interrupted, cutting the ground away from her just as she was getting into her stride. 'A few were missing.”
Flavia ground her teeth. The sloppiness of some people was one of the few things that really annoyed her, largely because she had once been the department's worst offender in this regard. As a sign of her Damascene conversion, her ascent to the realm of responsibility, so to speak, her first act on moving into Bottando's office had been to issue a severe memorandum to everyone about signing out files, putting them back afterward and not resting coffee cups on them. Her second act had been to clear out all the old files from her office and send them back to the stacks.
The edict had as much effect as Bottando's similarly worded commands had had on her. Great gaps continued to appear, files were placed in the wrong year or the wrong category even on the rare occasion they were put back at all, and every now and then a bellow of rage would echo through the building's corridors as someone found a blank space where the answer to all their problems should have rested.
'That's your afternoon's entertainment sorted out then,' she said. 'You'd better find them. They must be somewhere in the building.”
'Maybe. One isn't, though.”
'How do you know?”
'The librarian said it's down at the EUR. General Bottando borrowed it yesterday.”
'Do without it, then, but find the rest.' She had ruined his day, she knew that. The poor crestfallen lad had hoped the splendid job he had done would have won her permission for him to get back to accompanying Paolo on his rounds.
'The faster you find the files, the faster you get out again,' she added as he left the office. Then she leaned back in her seat. Really, she must get something for the nausea. The only reason she didn't was her certainty that the doctor would find something wrong. The word ulcer hovered in the back of her mind; the sine qua non of all good bureaucrats. She couldn't stand the idea. Then the phone rang. The ransom demand had shown up. And about time too.
It was classic stuff; so traditional that it caused a mental eyebrow to waggle up and down in suspicion. A telephone call to the museum—although it seemed that the poor robber had had a hard time getting anyone to listen to him initially—then a code word to demonstrate his authenticity. Chocolates, the man had said. Fair enough; only someone who knew about the theft knew about the chocolates. Then the demand: three million dollars' worth
