of mixed European currencies—how much simpler the Euro will make life for everybody in the ransom business—and a statement that the handover would be communicated tomorrow.
'I think you should come down here, by the way,' Macchioli said after he had relayed this information.
'Why? There's nothing else is there?”
'Only this package.”
'What package?”
'The one a deliveryman has just deposited in my office. I had to sign for it on your behalf.”
Flavia shook her head. 'What are you talking about?”
'It arrived five minutes ago. A courier. Don't know where it comes from. It's addressed to you, care of the museum.”
'Why would anyone send me a package there?”
A silence from the other end.
'Very well, I'll come and collect it. While I'm on the way, could you see if you can remember anything else about the phone conversation. And get the tapes for me to listen to.”
'What tapes?”
'We sent someone round, remember? Just in case you had a phone call. Connected tape recorders to the phone system? Didn't they?”
'Oh. That.' Macchioli sounded doubtful. A small bead of apprehensive sweat put in an appearance at the top of Flavia's skull.
And rightly, too. For the technicians who fitted the equipment had done their job perfectly in all respects, except for trusting the switchboard operator of the museum to switch the tapes on every morning. She had put it on the first day, the vastly obese woman explained, more angrily than was warranted in the circumstances, but the tape kept running out. What was she supposed to do? Didn't people realize how tiring and stressful it was, answering phone calls all day and every day, without having to worry about changing tapes as well? It wasn't as if she was paid very much, after all. How often, she asked rhetorically, how often had she told her supervisor that they needed at least two people a day on the switchboard? But did anyone ever listen to her . . .
Flavia found she wasn't listening either, and she smiled politely at the indignant woman in front of her, and went back to Macchioli's office.
'No tape?' he asked.
'No.”
He smiled apologetically. Flavia resisted the temptation to throw something at him.
'You've remembered nothing else?”
'No. Except that we found the frame.”
'Where?”
'In the conservator's office. What with all the excitement, we quite forgot we'd taken it out of the frame to give it a dust.”
'I see. I suppose I'd better tell the prime minister about the ransom demand.”
'Oh, I've already done that.”
'When?”
'When the call came in.”
'And that was?”
Macchioli looked at his watch. 'My, how time flies,' he said. 'A couple of hours ago.”
There was no point in mentioning that Flavia took it as a personal insult that she came so far down everybody's list of priorities. Macchioli would, no doubt, have inquired what difference it made. And, of course, it didn't make any difference at all.
'Splendid,' she said. 'Splendid. Now, this parcel. Where is it?”
Macchioli pointed to a large brown-paper-wrapped box in the corner. Flavia eyed it suspiciously. No one had ever sent her a bomb before, but there was always a first time. And, she supposed, a last time as well. On the other hand, why on earth would anyone send it here? She picked it up—it was surprisingly heavy, like a box of books—gave it a tentative shake, then shrugged and borrowed Macchioli's scissors.
Inside was money. A lot of money. A huge amount of money. A gigantic amount of money. She shut the lid rapidly. How much? It wasn't exactly hard to guess that there would be, in mixed denominations, precisely three million dollars. Nor that it had materialized as a result of Macchioli's call to the prime minister's office.
'Good heavens,' the director said, as he came across and peered over her shoulder.
'What's that?' He specialized in redundant questions.
'Well,' Flavia explained, 'it was my birthday a few days ago.' She stood and picked up the box. 'Do you think you could have my car come into the courtyard at the back? I would hate to lose this. By the way, what's the story of Cephalus and Procris?”
'Pardon?”
'The Claude. The subject?”
'Ah. It's Ovid, I think, although it was mainly known in the seventeenth century from the play by Niccol? da Correggio. Terribly complicated. The gods making mischief, as usual. Diana gives Cephalus a magic spear that never misses its mark; he aims at what he thinks is a deer in the forest and kills Procris by mistake. Then Diana brings her back to life again and everything ends happily. Why do you ask?”
'Curiosity. I've never heard of it.”
'Really?' said Macchioli in surprise. 'Now, when I was young, it used to be part of the school curriculum.”
'What was?”
'Mythology. Everybody had it dinned into them. Mussolini was terribly keen on it, I believe.”
'I suppose that all changed in the sixties.”
'I suppose,' Macchioli said, clearly not thinking it was a change for the better.
'Shows your age, though. I imagine everyone over forty knows it quite well.”
'In that case,' said Flavia, 'I'll stop looking for young thieves. Except that I don't imagine the subject mattered to him much.”
6
The Rome to Florence bit was easy enough; simply a matter of going to the station, getting on the train, and staring at the countryside becoming ever more beautiful as the hours rolled by. An empty train as well, but not what it had been. Argyll was getting old enough to feel nostalgic on the slightest pretext, and the replacement of the ancient green wagons, which had once lumbered along stuffed with redundant conscripts, with shiny, new, fast, and expensive supertrains offering the dubious delights of airline comfort made him sigh for a simpler age.
On the other hand, it was a much faster way of getting there; he hardly had time to read the newspaper before the train slowed down and pulled into Florence. Then the simpler age came back with a vengeance. Whatever innovations modernity has brought in its wake, they have, as yet, had little impact on the Florentine bus system, which, though frighteningly thorough, is also incomprehensible to all except long-term residents.
So Argyll spent the next forty-five minutes shuttling among the dozens of stops outside the station in the hope that one driver would eventually admit to going in the right direction. Even when this hurdle was surmounted, all was not yet complete: the bus dropped him deep in the countryside at the junction of one small road, and another even smaller, with no signposts and no one to ask. He was left to admire the freshness of the country in spring, before the terrible Tuscan summer has parched the landscape.
Simply being out of Rome was a remarkable tonic; he loved Rome dearly, but there was no denying that it could be a touch smelly on occasion. And you only noticed the noise when it wasn't there any longer, when all there was to hear was the lightest of breezes in the tall cypress trees and the sound of those few birds that had not yet been shot and eaten.
Very agreeable—but he couldn't stand breathing in the fresh country air all day. He had a choice of two routes: to walk on along the road the bus had traveled, or to go down the little road to the right. Instinct told him to take the little path, so as was his wont he chose the other, on the grounds that his instincts in these matters were invariably wrong. Then, bag in hand and beginning to overheat, he trudged along for half a mile with not a house or a person in sight, until he paused to get his breath. It was only spring but it was already warm, and he was English. Anything more than tepid weather and he began to melt.
