‘Oh, come on,’ he said with exasperation. ‘Neither you nor Bottando are that cynical. Are you?’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Nor could the General, once I’d worked on him a bit. He took a bit of persuading, but he’s an old softie really and quite open to reason as long as no one knows about it.’
‘Hmph. I still think you’re being a little over-generous. He is a murderer, after all.’
‘True, and I’m sure he feels rotten about it. But Roberts was responsible for it all and did kill Bralle. A nasty man in every way. And dead, too. Nothing we could do could bring him back. Van Heteren, on the other hand, was the only likeable person amongst them. He really loved that woman and was the only person who ever gave her a chance.
‘I find it all quite understandable, myself. Besides, what good would arresting him do? I’ve never really understood the idea that killers have to be delivered up to justice. Seems to me that some people deserve to get away with murder. Depending on who the victim is, of course. Wrong sort of reasoning for a policewoman, isn’t it?’
‘Sort of. But, as you keep on reminding me, you’re not a policewoman, so I suppose you can reason however you like.’
‘Apart from that, of course, Van Heteren did us a favour. I doubt that we could ever have arrested Roberts. We know he killed Bralle, but there is no proof that would stand up in a court. We couldn’t have got him for manipulating Miller, and his picture dealing, however unethical, was not illegal. He would have got off unscathed but for Van Heteren. Doesn’t really excuse Van Heteren, I suppose, if you want to be technical about it. But there you are.’
‘So you cover it all up?’
‘Us? Cover up a murder? Good heavens no. What an idea,’ she said smugly. ‘That’s the beauty of it. We merely stated an opinion. There’s nothing corrupt about being a bit askew over some details. As Bovolo kept on telling us, it was his case, nothing to do with us. He will have to withdraw his original report and write a new one, poor man. Very public and embarrassing for him. Of course, he will write it all down exactly as we described. He will describe the murder of Masterson and will go on to give the official opinion that Roberts committed suicide. Nifty, eh? It’s not as if we’re stopping him finding out the truth, if that’s what he wants to do.’
Argyll went all quiet for a few moments and Flavia assumed he was lost in admiration. He wasn’t, exactly; he was more trying to work out the moral implications of what she had just done. The effort defeated him, so he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. There are some things foreigners in Italy can never really understand.
‘The only difficulty was the Marchesa’s picture,’ she said, wrapping her arm round him as a token of gratitude. ‘And fortunately you saved us from a nasty accident there. It would have been very awkward if you’d announced that Bottando’s causing a policeman to be stationed in her house had indirectly resulted in the only Giorgione self-portrait in existence being washed out to sea.’
He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face. ‘Giorgione?’ he asked curiously. ‘What are you talking about? Who ever said anything about a Giorgione?’
She removed her arm. ‘You did,’ she began doubtfully.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. You said the picture was a self-portrait of Violante di Modena’s lover…’
He burst out laughing. ‘Oh, no,’ he said in great delight. ‘I don’t believe it. That’s not what I meant at all. You poor thing. You must have been feeling dreadful for the past hour.’
‘What the hell did you mean then,’ she said crossly, annoyed she might have used so much sympathy and concern unnecessarily.
He cackled again. ‘I thought I’d told you. That picture of the man with the beaky nose was a self-portrait of a painter. The Padua series Titian wanted to paint showed this man a) accusing Violante di Modena of being unfaithful; b) murdering her; c) being poisoned himself. A bit odd, hijacking a religious commission for such things, but Titian was a young man and under great stress at the time. Maybe it was a sort of creative therapy. Not important, anyway.
‘Obviously nothing to do with Giorgione, who died before Violante did and therefore can’t have killed her. Besides, Giorgione died of a broken heart. I told you that. No one as famous as him could be murdered without somebody knowing. And on top of that, the portrait was as I described it, second-rate. Giorgione could paint better than that in his sleep.
‘That wasn’t what Masterson was getting at. She didn’t think she’d found some lost masterpiece. It was the fact that she’d deciphered an intricate and personal account of a long-hidden scandal that excited her. Iconography, symbolism, reading pictures – that was her speciality, not painting style or archives. What not-very-nice man, to use her words, stole the lady and sent Giorgione to an early grave with a broken heart? And, it seems, killed her in a jealous fit when he thought she was falling in love with Titian? And then was poisoned himself in revenge for what he had done?
‘The friar I talked to in Padua said the paintings were Titian’s revenge, but he didn’t realise what they were really about. Masterson cracked the account by putting all the bits together, reconstructing the Padua series and linking it with the Marchesa’s portrait. Jolly clever of her, too.’
‘Come along, think,’ he said when she continued to look at him silently. ‘Titian would not have run off to Padua unless he’d done something daft. Violante’s brother wouldn’t have quashed proceedings against him if Titian hadn’t restored family honour. And Pietro Luzzi did vanish, with a ridiculous story invented about his death in battle.
‘“A man dies, and he disappears.” That’s St Anthony’s inscription, but it also told the literal truth about Luzzi. Can you imagine the impact of an article, backed by an intricate, almost personal confession, proving that Titian poisoned Pietro Luzzi because he had stabbed one friend and caused another to die of grief?’
‘Ah, I see,’ she said eventually with a huge sigh. ‘That is a relief. So all we have lost is a self-portrait by Pietro Luzzi?’
‘Bravo. The grand finale, of course, came when Louise Masterson saw the link,’ he went on. ‘When Kollmar gave his verdict over that picture in Milan, she said nothing. But the same evening, she went to Lorenzo’s party. She saw the portrait and that nose rang a bell, if noses can do that. She doesn’t know what it means, but she starts thinking hard. An interesting face, she tells Van Heteren, but not a nice one. One that needs to be examined. There must be some sort of connection between it and the picture of Kollmar’s they’d been talking about that morning, and she decides she is going to find out what it is. It is only after this that she announces she is going to work on Benedetti’s picture herself.
‘She needs to work fast when she hears the Marchesa’s picture is up for sale, and even faster when Bralle tells her Benedetti’s might go to the sale room as well. Someone else could also make the connection. So she starts running around. Milan, Padua, libraries in Venice. She begins frantically to rewrite the paper to add in the last bits of evidence she needs. Much to Van Heteren’s irritation, of course. Roberts, I suppose, can’t imagine anyone getting that excited over a mere picture. So when he tracks her movements he leaps fatally to the wrong conclusion. The rest you know.
‘Violante was stabbed by Pietro Luzzi because of jealousy, Titian killed the murderer and the powers that be covered it up. Miller stabs Masterson because of a different sort of jealousy, Van Heteren takes his slightly inaccurate revenge, and the powers that be cover it up once more. Nice parallel, don’t you think? History does repeat itself, it seems.’
‘And you expect me, and the rest of the world, to believe that?’
He shrugged once more. ‘Please yourself. But it’s the only explanation I can think of for why he chose such a strange way of painting those murals in Padua. Not that it matters. I, certainly, am not going to give it much publicity.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like be
ing laughed at, basically. If I could prove it, that would be one thing. But proof depends on a proper examination of the Marchesa’s portrait. Which, thanks to you, can’t be done any more. It’s gone for ever. There aren’t even any photographs; that agency didn’t have any. I was waiting until I took delivery. Masterson was going to take some, but Miller got to her first. And, of course, without that, the story falls to bits and becomes nothing more than supposition, guesswork and fantasy.
‘So,’ he concluded, ‘like Van Heteren, Titian will have to be left in peace, his reputation unsullied. Pity. I wouldn’t have minded having the picture, but I suppose settling for Benedetti’s Titian is a fair swap.’
He looked to see how she was taking what he considered to be a masterly exposition.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, thrusting her hands into her pockets in a gesture of discomfort. ‘Are you sure you’re not just having a little joke at my expense?’
He gave her a whimsical glance which she considered decidedly ambiguous. ‘What’s that?’ he asked eventually.
Flavia was examining an envelope she’d found in her pocket and pulled out.
‘The snaps I took of the landing stage under Roberts’ house. The only real evidence against Van Heteren.’
He took them and studied them by the light of a lamppost. Then grinned at her, tore them in half and tossed them, piece by piece, into the canal, followed by the negatives. They watched them drift slowly off until they sank.
‘If you’re going to pervert the course of justice, do it properly, that’s what I always say. Damn lagoon is awash with evidence tonight, it seems,’ he said. He put his arm round her, thinking such a gesture might be excusable in the circumstances.
‘Ah, well. That tidies up the loose ends. Come on,’ he said, giving her a squeeze which, to his infinite pleasure, she returned. ‘I shall accompany you all the way back to your hotel room.’
He steered her round until she was pointing in entirely the wrong direction. ‘This way, I think.’
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The Titian Committee
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.
Also by Iain Pears
An Instance of the Fingerpost
The Dream of Scipio
The Portrait
JONATHAN ARGYLL NOVELS
The Immaculate Deception
Death and Restoration
Giotto’s Hand
The Last Judgement
The Bernini Bust
The Raphael Affair
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1991
Copyright © Iain Pears 1990
Iain Pears asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007229185
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007380800
Version: 2014-01-02
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Iain Pears, The Titian Committee
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