Giotto's Hand

“Pop. Dead on arrival, so to speak,” she said “Now, don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”

“I do. More annoyingly, so do the local police. Which is why I’m still here.”

“I’m not cooking up a nice meal for a murderer, am I?”

Argyll shook his head.

“Oh, good. That is a relief. Now, what are you going to do while you wait for your Flavia to turn up?”

Argyll opened his mouth to mention having a good look at her family art collection. But before he could even begin, she went on: “How are you at plumbing?”

“Plumbing?”

“There’s a leak in the roof. It’s coming through into one of the bedrooms, and I’m a bit hopeless at that sort of thing. Electrics I can manage. Plumbing’s a closed book.”

Argyll began a lengthy anecdote about what happened last time he tried to change a washer on a tap in his apartment, using lots of biblical allusions to Noah and arks to get across the idea that trusting him with water tanks was not the best idea. Paintings, he said. That was more his line of business.

But she brushed the idea aside; far more urgent matters to hand than a bunch of old pictures, she said; the chances of there being anything valuable in the house after Geoffrey had swept through it were minuscule. Believe her, she’d looked. Come and look at the water tank instead, at least.

So he dutifully followed her up the grand staircase, then diverted into the bedroom where the large drip was coming through the ceiling, which was stained and growing a greenish mould from excessive damp.

“You see?” she said plaintively. “Look at it. The ceiling will come down soon if I don’t do something. And the prices that plumbers charge these days. Outrageous.”

Argyll listened to the first part of the complaint, but completely missed the second. Instead, his attention had drifted off to contemplate a drawing on the wall.

It was love at first sight, which happens, every once in a while. It was badly framed, tucked away in a dark comer, forlorn and neglected and scruffy, a little ragamuffin of a thing, and all the more endearing for it. Byrnes, no doubt, had he been aware of the way in which Argyll studied it so obviously, would have instantly pointed out that this was his great weakness as an art dealer. Argyll did not see it, and scent a profit. Nor did he recognize the likely author, and wonder who it could be sold to. He merely saw and liked: the more so because the poor little thing was so anonymous and untended. It was its lack of value that attracted him. A failing of his.

It was just a sketch of a man’s palm, with one finger and a thumb. The sort of thing art schools have drilled their students in for hundreds of years: there is probably no part of the human anatomy more difficult to get right. Small, no signature, covered in damp spots and foxing.

“What’s this?” he asked Mary Verney, with no attempt to hide his appreciation. Another weakness of his.

“That?” she said. “I’ve not a clue. I think it’s always been there. Done by a member of the family in the days when young women were taught that sort of thing, I expect.”

“Isn’t it sweet?”

She shrugged. “I can’t say I’ve ever looked at it.” She moved over and peered more closely. “Now you mention it, it is handsome, if you like thumbs.”

Argyll did not reply, but merely examined more closely. It looked a bit better than the average family amateur class of thing to him.

“Valuable?” she went on. “I don’t remember the men from the auctioneers noting it; it was Forster’s last service before I kicked him out. They came in to tot up the house after Veronica died and paid no attention to it. More to the point, I can’t remember Veronica ever enthusing about it. She was the one who claimed to have taste and discernment.”

“And did she?”

“I don’t know. But she did make a fuss about running around gurgling over galleries.”

“Oh, yes? She didn’t go to a finishing school in Florence, did she?” he asked, obeying orders to the letter.

“I’m sure she did. Just the sort of silly snobby nonsense she’d go in for. Why do you ask?”

“This woman who mentioned Forster also referred to a woman called Beaumont.”

“Ah. Well, there you are, then.”

“Listen, there wouldn’t be any documentation on your pictures, would there? I might be able to find…”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t exist. Forster looked and reported that there was nothing at all. No inventories, no account books, nothing. God knows what happened to them. But surely, if this is a good drawing…”

“Irrelevant,” Argyll said airily. “People aren’t prepared to spend money on pictures. It took me a long time to learn that. They buy pedigree. Like dogs. Or horses. Or aristocrats,” he went on, wondering whether he was pushing his metaphors a bit too far. “A signature and a provenance are worth ten times as much as a painting, and works without pedigree are often treated with suspicion.”

“Aren’t people silly?”

“They are. Maybe Forster missed the papers?”