He nodded.
‘Well, you can set your mind at rest there,’ she said gently. ‘By the time I saw you he was already dead.’
‘I think he did know,’ Argyll added. ‘It was why he wanted to examine the bust. And that was why he was killed, in fact. If he hadn’t known, he would never have insisted on talking to Moresby alone, and wouldn’t have been in the way. He was going to come back to Italy to get you to corroborate what had happened.’
‘But how could he possibly have known…’
Flavia glanced up, beyond Borunna, and saw his wife, framed in the doorway. She remembered everything she’d heard. Di Souza’s reputation as a bit of a womaniser. The younger woman alone with him while her older husband was off working. How he had got to know di Souza through his wife, how the sculptor often came home and found them together, how they were so close, how she was so keen that Hector be helped out of trouble. And she understood perfectly why Borunna had felt so happy when he had seen Hector’s head smashed into bits by that sledgehammer. Perfectly natural.
And she also saw the look of fright on the old lady’s face that she might bring it all up, and remembered the look of sadness and devotion when she’d said how worried she was about her Alceo’s fit of depression.
‘He must have found out through contacts in the Borghese,’ she said hastily. ‘I don’t know when, but as far as I can see he dealt with the blow well enough. He certainly didn’t seem to bear you any grudge.’
‘So you don’t think my not telling you made any difference?’
‘None at all,’ said Flavia robustly. ‘If that’s all that’s worrying you then you can put your mind at rest. Even the little you told me was crucial and the full story wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. I confess it’s a shock to find out about the bust, but it was a long time ago. What happened to the bits?’
Borunna was reluctantly and slowly coming out of his gloom, encouraged along by her reassuring comments. Full rehabilitation would take some time, and the ministrations of a doting wife. Still, he at least began the process of coming back to normality. The bits of the bust, he said, were in a box down in his workshop by the cathedral. If they wanted to see them, he’d show them. But only after they had selected and taken a piece of his carving.
‘From both of us,’ his wife added. ‘With our thanks.’
As Argyll had already made up his mind, and Flavia was more than happy with the choice, that bit was easy. So, clutching the madonna wrapped in a piece of old newspaper, and with the old couple holding hands like a pair of adolescents, they walked slowly through the narrow streets to the workyard.
The box was covered in drawings and tools and a thick layer of dust, the lid was formidably heavy, and the contents were covered by old sheets. But underneath them all was the source of their recent problems. One by one, Borunna pulled them out and laid them on a bench, organising them to show how the bust had looked.
Most of the face was there, but he was certainly correct in saying that the piece was irreparable. About half had vanished, and much of the rest was badly chipped.
All four of them looked at it in silence for some time.
‘What a pity,’ Flavia said, a statement so self-evident that it needed little comment from the others.
‘The trouble is I’ve never known what to do with it. It would be criminal just to throw the pieces away, but I don’t know what else to do.’
They stared a while longer, and Argyll got the glimmerings of an idea. Properly set in an upright piece of marble, the face would look almost unblemished. If restored by an expert. A nice bit of lettering…
‘Do you still want to make some apology to Hector?’ he asked.
Borunna shrugged. A bit late now, he said, but yes. How?
Argyll held the face up until it glinted in the autumn light.
‘Don’t you think this could be turned into a wonderful gravestone?’
About the Author
Iain Pears was born in 1955, educated at Wadham College, Oxford and won the Getty Scholarship to Yale University. He is the author of the bestsellers An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream of Scipio, as well as his acclaimed series of Jonathan Argyll art mysteries. He lives with his wife and son in Oxford.
An Instance of the Fingerpost
The Dream of Scipio
The Portrait
The Immaculate Deception
Death and Restoration
Giotto’s Hand
The Last Judgement
The Titian Committee
The Raphael Affair