“Well, I know about it. And I’m not the nosiest person around here.”
“Excuse me,” Flavia said, breaking into this confessional. “Can you tell me why Gordon didn’t tell the police this? It’s not as if he had a great deal to lose.”
“Because…” she began reluctantly.
“Because what?” Mary said sternly, picking up something that entirely passed Flavia by.
“Because Gordon saw George coming out of Forster’s house.”
“Ah,” said Mary with concern. Flavia sat back in her seat. There was no point in her interfering or saying anything at all. Mary Verney was a much better interrogator than she was.
Gradually, Mary got Sally to say that Gordon had walked from his cottage past Forster’s house and seen George coming out of the door. He’d hurried off with his head down, but seemed shaken and upset about something.
She shook her head. “He didn’t pay any attention at the time. But the next morning, when Gordon heard what had happened, he got worried that maybe George had done something drastic. You know about the cottage.”
“And rather than incriminate him, he kept quiet, even when he was arrested. Good for him,” Mary concluded unexpectedly.
Flavia sighed. She was having a hard time understanding the thick East Anglian accent, and was a little bemused by the way in which the façade of English village life was turning out to be just a little thin. On the other hand, she cast her mind back to some little towns she knew in Italy. Incest, wife-swapping and mass family murder seemed to be the local pastimes everywhere.
She leant forward in her chair. “But this was before eight, wasn’t it? It must have been.”
Sally nodded. “Yes. On his way to the pub. About seven.”
“So what’s he worried about? One thing the police seem sure of is that Forster didn’t die until after nine. Maybe later. His evidence doesn’t incriminate George at all, really. Especially as there is no motive.”
“There is a bit of a motive, though,” Mrs. Verney explained. “Or at least something that could be made into one. Did Jonathan not tell you about Forster threatening to evict him?”
“Ah.”
“George has lived there all his life, and wasn’t at all happy. In fact, he hated Forster, and said some regrettable things about him on occasion.”
“Like ‘I’ll kill the bastard’?”
“That’s the general line.”
“I see. He said this to a lot of people?”
Mary Verney nodded.
Flavia considered this. “In that case, it’s only a matter of time before the police find out,” she said eventually. “Gordon has to talk to them. If they find out on their own he’ll be prosecuted for obstruction, or whatever they call it here. As for you, Sally, I suggest you tell Gordon that. There’s no reason for you to get any more involved. The police have more pressing things to concern themselves with.”
Sally nodded reluctantly and stood up. “I’d better get back,” she said. “Otherwise Harry’ll wonder where I got to.”
“Do you want me to have a word with George?” Mary asked. “I’m sure there’s nothing to it. But it might be better if he had his explanation ready. I could talk it over with him.”
“Oh, would you?” Sally said. ‘That would make me feel better.”
“I’d be delighted. Then Gordon can say what he knows without having to bring you into it at all.”
Flavia smiled encouragingly, and Mary ushered a relieved woman out of the house again.
“Non-stop action in this place, isn’t it?” she said once Mary had returned to the sitting room and placed herself in front of the fire to warm up.
Her hostess nodded. “So it seems.”
“Were you surprised?” Flavia asked.
“That Gordon was innocent? Not at all.”
“About George.”
“Very much so. So surprised that frankly I don’t believe it for a moment. I prefer to take a benevolent view of human nature, as Jonathan may have told you. Besides, what about the burning papers? I can’t see George doing that.”
“Forster is dead.”
“Dead, yes. But perhaps not murdered. Besides, I thought you wanted it to have something to do with pictures. Or has poor Jessica become the front runner now?”
“We’re doing our best, you know. Everybody is.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m beginning to lose patience over this a little. You don’t know Geoffrey was murdered and you don’t know he was a thief. So why bash away at it? The village has been turned upside down by all this, you know. You can’t have everybody under suspicion, one after the other.”
“Forster’s death would have been investigated even without us. And if it’s any consolation, the police seem to be losing heart. So am I, frankly.”
“Good.”
13
Seated behind the desk in his office that evening, as the sounds of the city dwindled and the rush hour came to its appointed end, General Bottando was feeling more than a little frustrated. It is very hard, the thought that investigations can get along perfectly well without you. It makes you feel old, and redundant. And, of course, he was vulnerable in that area, what with Argan trying to elevate this line of thought to the status of official policy.
That problem was temporarily quiescent at least, although Bottando thought that this was probably only a lull before the final storm. Apart from a little note again urging greater activity over the raid on the via Giulia, his secretary reported that Argan’s word processor had fallen silent in the past day or so; no more memos were flying around documenting the iniquities of the Art Theft Department.
That said, it was probably because the air was already saturated. The quality of the man’s information was also extraordinary. He had known that Flavia had seen della Quercia, had latched on to Sandano’s withdrawing his confession, figured out the real reason why Flavia had gone to England.
Now, after subtle metamorphosis, Bottando was gullible about these silly theories, believed a convicted criminal because it fitted in with those theories and had sent his obedient little girl to England at vast expense in a last ditch attempt to hang on to his job.
Well, true enough, if you wanted to look at it like that. But where was the information coming from? Who was feeding the information? Bottando, with the heightened senses of a man fighting for his life, reckoned he knew. Paolo. A good boy, he thought a little patronizingly, but wanted to get on faster than was seemly. In too much of a rush, he was, and attaching himself to a victorious Argan would undoubtedly speed things up a bit. Had Bottando neglected him? Maybe so.
But the rights and wrongs of it were irrelevant at the moment. Argan had his office mole. The question was, what to do about it?
Nothing, at the moment. That would have to wait.
The trouble was that the more he jotted down little notes, the more he was, very reluctantly, kicking and screaming and protesting all the way, coming to the appalling conclusion that, perhaps, the abominable Argan was right after all. Maybe he was losing his touch. He could just about encompass the latter, but the former proposition went so much against the fundamental laws of nature that it still made his head swim in bewilderment.
For the umpteenth time, he got out his notes, and read them once more, to see if he could spot any hole through which he, and the rest of the department, could wriggle.
Forster implicated in theft of picture in 1963 from Florence, Giotto number one. Connected loosely with disappearance of a Pollaiuolo from Scotland, 1976, Giotto number thirteen. Connected with theft of a Fra Angelico from Padua, 1991, Giotto number twenty-six.
Three connections, all popping up from nowhere, unbidden, in less than a week. Volunteered, you might say. And that was the thing that was giving Bottando a headache, making his bones creak and giving him the feeling that there was something wrong somewhere. Far too much of a coincidence that someone who, if he were Giotto, had successfully covered his tracks for a quarter of a century, should suddenly have his sticky fingerprints appearing everywhere.