The Titian Committee
(Jonathan Argyll #2)
by Iain Pears
To Dick
Author’s note
Some of the buildings and paintings in this book exist, others do not, and all the characters are imaginary. There is an Italian art squad in a building in central Rome. However, I have arbitrarily shifted its affiliation from the carabinieri to the polizia, to underline that my account bears no relation to the original.
1
The initial discovery was made by the gardener of the Giardinetti Reali, an old and stooped figure whose labours generally pass unnoticed by the millions of tourists who come to Venice every year, even by those who eat their sandwiches amidst his creation as they get their breath back from overdosing on architectural splendour.
For all that he was underappreciated, the old man was obsessed with his job. In this he was rare. Venice is not noted for its enthusiasm for nature; indeed, its entire history has been dominated by the need to keep the elements from interfering in its business. A flowerpot hanging out of a window is generally the closest the inhabitants come to the joys of the wild. Most cannot even see an open space without imagining it neatly covered with stone flaggings. If you want to grow things, go to the mainland; real Venetians don’t dig holes.
So the gardener felt himself to belong to a small and somewhat persecuted minority. A couple of acres of garden wedged between the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal. Flowerbeds to dig, grass to cut, trees to prune and tend, sea water to keep at bay. All with little help and less money. But today, Saturday, was a big day. The City had especially asked him to provide flowers for a banquet to be held on the Isola San Giorgio that evening. He would give them his best, three dozen lilies he had been cultivating for months in one of his little greenhouses. They would be admired, and he would be praised. A great day.
There was a lot to be done. Cut the flowers, trim them, prepare them, wrap each one carefully and individually, then send them off to take their part in the wonderful arrangements which, he was sure, would be the talk of the evening. So he got up early, just after six, downed a coffee and a glass of acqua vita to get the blood going, and set off in the chilly, damp weather of late autumn to start work. Although cold and still not fully awake, he felt a small surge of anticipatory pleasure as he neared the greenhouse, looming up out of the early morning sea mist that invariably hangs over the lagoon at this time of day and at this time of year.
Until, that is, he opened the door and saw the crushed, mangled and twisted remains of the upright and beautiful flowers that he had so carefully tended. The exquisite creatures he had left the night before were no more. He could not believe his eyes. And then he saw the curled up form of the drunken, late-night reveller in the middle of the flowerbed who was evidently responsible.
He tried to restrain himself, but could not, and let out his venom by trying to wake up the wretch with a well-aimed kick. A woman. When he was young, women knew how to behave properly, he thought bitterly. Nowadays…
‘Damn you, move. Wake up. Look what you’ve done,’ he shouted angrily.
No reply. He put the toe of his shoe underneath the unconscious figure and turned it over, so he could insult the destructive, malicious creature more effectively.
‘Mother of God,’ he said instead. And ran for help.
‘Murder,’ said General Taddeo Bottando, with a ghoulish smile on his face as he sat in his sunlit office in central Rome. ‘Murder,’ he repeated, evidently enjoying the word and the reaction that showed up on the face of the assistant sitting opposite him. ‘Bloody and violent,’ he added, folding his arms over his protuberant stomach, just to make sure there was no mistake in the matter.
It was Sunday, the day after the Venetian gardener had discovered the devastation in his flowerbeds. Since he had run, shocked and alarmed, to find a telephone and call the police, Italian officialdom had been thrown, if not quite into a frenzy of activity, at least into a state of decorous movement. As a result, General Bottando had reluctantly come into his office on his day of rest, and had summoned his assistant from her bed to help.
It is, after all, very thoughtless of anyone to go and die in a foreign land. Indeed, if travellers realised how much trouble it caused, most would undoubtedly delay their departure from this world until they got back home. Firstly, the local police have to be informed, and doctors, ambulances, pathologists and so on brought in to deal with the corpse. Then a message has to be passed to the consulate, which contacts the embassy, which contacts the authorities back home, who contact the local police, who have to inform next of kin. And that is only the start. When you add on the business of writing assorted reports in any number of languages, and organising the transportation of the body with the customs and immigration authorities, it is little wonder many officials wish that foreigners, if they must die, would do so elsewhere.
It is even more tiresome when the foreigner gets himself – or herself, as in this case – murdered. And when that foreigner is a member of an art historical committee funded by the Italian Arts Ministry – and the subject of the committee’s work is Tiziano Vecelli (1486–1576), a Venetian, at a time when the Interior Minister is also a Venetian – telephones ring, telexes are sent, demands are made, bucks are passed. Everybody wants instant action, taken by someone else.
And hence, to return to the point, General Taddeo Bottando’s complacent smile as he mentioned the circumstances of Dr Louise M. Masterson’s untimely end to Flavia di Stefano, his best, brightest assistant in the Italian National Art Theft Squad.
‘Oh good,’ replied this assistant, with relief. ‘You had me worried for a moment. So why am I here and not in bed reading the paper?’
It should not be thought for a moment that either of them was cruel or unfeeling in this matter. Had they thought about it, they would have been properly upset that a thirty-eight-year-old woman, in her prime and with much to offer in her chosen field of Renaissance iconography, had been prematurely sent to the grave by an unknown assailant. But it is one of the constants of policework that there is rarely enough leisure to think too much about matters that are none of your business.
And this death, tragic though it might have been, fell very clearly and obviously into that category. Their little department, small and underfunded, had been set up several years back to battle valiantly but hopelessly against the tide of thefts sweeping Italy’s works of art out of the country. Its members dealt with theft and fraud concerning pictures, prints, drawings, statues, ceramics and even, on one occasion, an entire building that was stolen en bloc for transportation to South Korea. They were proud of having recovered one staircase, a room and part of the library. Alas, the walls and foundations were never seen again. It was, as Bottando explained to the distressed owner as he stared at the heap of rubble and woodwork in the back of the lorry, only a partial success.
The point was, that while crimes against art were in their purview, crimes against art historians were not. Such deeds were liable to be taken out of their hands, even if the entire contents of the National Museum had disappeared at the same time. Quite a lot, admittedly, depended on bureaucratic wrangling between the various parts of the assorted police forces, but a past master like Bottando would have had no trouble avoiding a case involving a murder if he didn’t want it.
And surely he didn’t, Flavia thought, trying to work out why she was not still in bed. It does you no good, no good at all, in the Italian polizia, to rush around volunteering for things. People stop taking you seriously. The thing to do is wait to be asked by some senior figure like a minister, then screw up your eyes in anguish, worry about how many other things you (or your department) have on your plate at the moment, then reluctantly agree that, as no one else is capable of dealing with such an urgent matter, your specialised skills might be made available. Solely because you hold the minister in such high personal esteem and, while on the subject, perhaps the minister might see his way to helping you with…