The Raphael Affair (6 page)

‘Is yours the only department to be cut?’ Bottando asked.

‘Oh, no. But it’s one of the worst. It has lost our friend over there a lot of popularity.’ He smiled whimsically. Bottando felt for the man. He was a real scholar, the sort of person who was dying out in the museum world. He lived, breathed and slept Etruscan antiquities. No one knew more about those mysterious people than Spello. His sort were now being replaced by administrators, by fund raisers and by entrepreneurs. Not at all like the short, stout and eccentrically dressed Spello.

‘I didn’t know he had any popularity to lose,’ Bottando commented.

‘He didn’t really. I don’t know why he bothers. He’s got so much money he doesn’t have to.’

Bottando raised an eyebrow. ‘Indeed? I never knew that.’

Spello looked sideways at him. ‘And you call yourself a policeman? I thought you were meant to know
everything. Vast family riches, so I’m told. Won’t do him any good. One day he’ll be found in his office with a knife in his back. Then you’ll be spoiled for suspects.’

‘Where should I start?’

‘Well,’ Spello began, considering the matter. ‘I trust you would do me the honour of making me top suspect. Then there’s the people in Non-Italian Baroque, who’ve been shunted into a tiny little attic where no one can ever find them. Impressionism doesn’t at all like his decision to merge them with Realism, and Glassware greatly resents the imperialistic designs of Silver. Quite a hornet’s nest, in fact. Our little dining-room resounds daily to tales of his outrages, past and present.’

‘And which past ones do you have in mind at the moment?’ Bottando prompted. He loved gossip, and realised Spello wanted to tell him some anecdote. Besides, he was irritated that he hadn’t known of the Tommaso money.

‘Ah. I was thinking of the Case of the Bum Correggio. This was back in the sixties, when our friend was keeper of pictures at Treviso. Nice museum, traditional starting place for One Who is Destined to Rise in the World. Being an ambitious and aggressive young man, Tommaso began to buy pictures from abroad, commandeering almost everyone else’s budget to do so.

‘He bought dozens of pictures and established his reputation as a thrusting up-and-comer. He likes buying pictures, you may have noticed. He alienated everyone else in the museum by doing so but, what the hell? He’d soon be moving on to better things.

‘But he made a false step. He bought a Correggio for a considerable amount of money, and hung it in the gallery. Then the whispers started. An article appeared, saying that on stylistic grounds it might not be genuine. Then some pieces of provenance were dredged up suggesting it was merely a copy. He forces the dealer – none other than Edward Byrnes – to take it back. But the storm over his competence continues, nonetheless.

‘This is where our friend’s genius comes in. His friends in Rome whisper into ears. He bludgeons his director – a sweet and naïve man – into taking the fire. The director resigns, and Tommaso, enhancing his reputation, resigns out of loyalty. He goes out into the wilderness for a brief period but is soon back, climbing the ladder to the stars. And there he is, in his firmament.

‘So you see,’ Spello added, looking around him at the now thinning room, ‘we may seem a happy family, but what a maelstrom of discontent is there. One mistake from our friend over there, and there’ll be a queue, half a kilometre long, waiting to tear his throat out.’

5

Despite the concern that the presence of Elisabetta continued to create, the work of the department had to go on as much as possible. If the public was entranced by the picture, the art thieves paused only momentarily before getting back to their proper business.

In fact, the furore might have encouraged more activity; with contemplation on the value and transportability of a small piece of canvas tempting more people to try their luck on other, less illustrious objects. This was tiresome, but in some ways satisfying, as the department’s success rate improved by picking up the amateurs. Removing an Italian statue or picture is often very simple, merely a question of breaking down an often frail door, loading the work into a car and driving off. Any second-rate crook can manage it. Getting rid of it afterwards, however, is a different matter. You can’t just take a hot painting in to a sale room and sell it, and if you want to pass it on to a dealer you have to know
the honest ones from the dishonest ones. Successfully stealing works of art is a highly skilled occupation which, unlike many others, continues to breed practitioners of great ability.

It was because of the quiet but persistent activity of a master craftsman that several months after the arrival of Elisabetta in state to Rome, and once much of the excitement had died away to little more than an expanded inflow of income to the Museo Nazionale’s coffers, Flavia returned once more to London.

It was for yet another liaison meeting, a gathering of policemen from France, Italy, Greece and Britain, all brought together because of one man, thought to be French and suspected of running a thriving business in the theft of Greek icons.

Icons are relatively little known outside the art world, an obscure area that interests only the enthusiast. The pictures, generally on wooden panels and hung in Orthodox churches to assist the focusing of attention during prayer, are often difficult to appreciate. With simple backgrounds of gold, their stylised appearance is an acquired taste, especially as the absence of perspective makes them difficult for viewers brought up on the dynamism of the Renaissance. But once the taste is formed, they can become a passion, the stark elegance and uncluttered forms giving an aura of peacefulness and tranquillity which the more robust, active pieces produced in the West rarely approach.

More importantly, perhaps, they command high prices and the market for them is notably more crooked than for other types of art. Because one of the major sources is the
Soviet Union, smuggling them is commonplace. Russian icons are also regularly brought out by
émigrés
who are forbidden to take out currency. They are smuggled to Vienna and on to Tel Aviv, then sent on to the market via New York and London. Buying them is cast almost as a blow for freedom, and few dealers or collectors worry themselves about their origin.

All these factors help create a market which Jean-Luc Morneau evidently found attractive – assuming that the deductions of the Sûrété were correct and that it was this Paris-based dealer who was behind the thefts. When the monastery on the island of Amorgos in the Cyclades contacted the local policeman, who in turn passed a message to Athens, which in due course made enquiries around Europe, Morneau’s name kept on appearing, although no hard evidence could be produced to warrant any sort of action.

Whoever it was, the technique used was simple. A tourist appears on the doorstep of the monastery asking to see the church. Once inside, he takes photographs, and particularly snaps away at the icon above the altar. He then thanks the monk at the gate, makes a donation and departs.

He returns many months later, sporting a beard, moustache or dark glasses to make recognition unlikely. He is again left to wander as he pleases. He checks to see the church is empty, goes up to the altar and unzips the large camera case. He takes out the copy he has painted from the photographs, swaps it for the genuine one over the altar and puts this carefully into his bag. He leaves the island on the next boat
– the visit is timed so that the boat leaves only an hour or so afterwards – heads for Crete or Rhodes where airport customs are scarce, and flies out of the country.

The copy left behind on Amorgos, and on about twenty other islands, as well as a few sites in the north-east of Italy, is detected as a fake the moment that experts examine it. But it is very competent and quite able to withstand the normal scrutiny it receives, half-hidden in the semi-twilight of the church, from both monks and the occasional sightseer. According to the best recollection of the monks, it had done so for more than a year. Other monasteries had been admiring their copies for even longer.

The finger pointed to Morneau firstly because he was a dealer in icons, secondly because he had been trained as a painter, and thirdly because he was not known for his honesty. But, there the evidence had dried up, and the meeting had been called so that efforts could be directed towards tracking down some of the paintings by discreet enquiries.

The Greek police also wanted help in the search for Morneau, who had vanished from sight. French checks had established that he had vacated his studio in the Place des Abbesses some time ago. Without knowing where he was, it was that much more difficult to establish where he had been. Certainly the evidence of the monasteries was of little help; one reported the visitor with the camera case as French, others as Swedish, German, American and Italian. They had all failed to identify him from photographs.

The meeting to discuss the matter was largely inconclusive, mainly because one young and none-too-serious Englishman had sighed and ventured that he wished he could have thought of a crime like that. The remark irritated the Greeks, who had responded by making remarks about crooked French dealers, which sent the Gallic contingent into a sulk. The encounter, indeed, was no great symbol of European co-operation.

It was also as an indirect result of this somewhat inconclusive meeting that Flavia met Jonathan Argyll once more. He had written to her several months before, asking to see her if she should come to England, and saying that he wouldn’t mind returning the favour and taking her to dinner. She had not written back, partly because there had been no immediate plan to go to England, and partly because she hated writing letters; which, to her mind, made up a pretty good reason.

But evenings alone in big cities can be very dull, especially when the days are short, the weather is cold and the rain, as always in London, is coming down in a light, but persistent drizzle. It was impossible to walk around either to see sights or to window-shop. Going to restaurants on your own has little attraction, the cinemas weren’t showing anything that interested her, the one play she wanted to see was booked solid and the thought of a lonely evening in a hotel room with an improving book made those little twinges of imminent depression noticeable.

So, having exhausted all other possibilities, she picked up the phone and gave him a ring. He was instantly delighted to hear her, and invited her to go and eat
immediately. She accepted, and he suggested she come round to his flat. This she considered, assessed for possible trouble, and refused. Even Englishmen could act funny when in their own apartments and, while she had no doubts about her ability to deal with any awkward situation, it always ruined an evening.

‘Oh go on. I’m not sure which restaurant to go to and it would be much easier if you came here first. It’s not very far from the tube.’

A sort of uncalculating friendliness in his request made her change her mind. She agreed to meet him at his flat at seven-thirty, was given directions, and put down the phone.

Getting to Notting Hill Gate from her hotel was easy. On the whole, Flavia’s main objection to London was simply the size of the place and the inhuman way it was laid out. In Rome, she lived about fifteen minutes’ walk away from the office, in a quiet and inexpensive part of town near Augustus’s mausoleum that had an abundance of restaurants, innumerable shops and a boisterous population. But London was entirely different. Almost no one seemed to live anywhere near the centre and everyone spent hours every day on the tubes or trains either going to work or going home again. And the neighbourhoods they lived in were generally unutterably dull, with few shops and an atmosphere of respectability that made you think they were all tucked up in bed by nine-thirty with a glass of hot milk. The constant cavalcade of streetlife, of people wandering around for the sake of it, greeting their friends, having a drink, everything that made city life
worthwhile, scarcely existed. London was not Flavia’s idea of a good time.

Argyll’s part of Notting Hill lay beyond the respectable bit that surrounded the tube station, in the less opulent regions beyond. The building was neither among the best nor the worst that the area had to offer. He lived on the top floor of a terraced house half-way along the street and, when she rang the doorbell, bellowed into a faulty, crackling ansaphone that she should keep walking up the stairs until she ran out.

His flat showed distinct signs of a very hurried and only partly successful attempt at flight. Mounds of notes lay in boxes; open suitcases, half filled with clothes and books, were on the floor; a pile of miscellaneous socks nestled up against the bottle of white wine that Argyll had evidently just been out to buy in her honour.

‘Moving, are you?’ she observed, noting that this was not the sort of conclusion that required the brains of a Sherlock Holmes to reach.

‘Yup,’ he replied, uncorking the bottle and peering into it to see how much cork was left floating in the wine. He frowned in disapproval at the debris, then looked up with a happy smile. ‘Farewell London, hello again Rome. For about a year, maybe more. Until I finish the damn thesis. I’ve done all the English end, so everything I need is in Italy. Which is pretty convenient, if you ask me.’

‘I thought you were impoverished.’

‘So I was. However, not at the moment. It’s one of the unforeseen spin-offs of that Raphael.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, you see, I was invited to a party, and there was Edward Byrnes. He sort of sidled up to me in a sheepish fashion and we got talking. The upshot of it was that he as near as dammit apologised for pinching the picture. Not, of course, that he admitted any double-dealing. Independent research leading in the same direction, and so on. Not his picture, anyway, you know. Entire coincidence, the whole thing. That’s as may be. I don’t believe it. He got wind of it through me, somehow. The important thing was, he offered a disguised form of compensation. His firm has a scholarship for art historians, and basically he said that if I applied for it, I’d probably be given it. So I did, and so I was.’