Giotto's Hand

He’d developed a thudding headache by the time he came to the end. Nor was it particularly enlightening: Forster’s income was variable but often quite high, so much so that he had bought not only his own house but two cottages in the village a few years back, although efforts to raise the money to tart them up and sell them to Londoners for weekend houses had not progressed too far. One of the cottages, he remembered, was inhabited by George Barton. His turnover of paintings—officially, at least—had dwindled to virtually nothing in the past couple of years, no doubt being hit by the recession like everyone else.

Several years back, his income had received a boost from being given a salary—not a huge one, he noted — by Miss Beaumont for what were ambiguously called services, but this stopped abruptly in January—presumably when Veronica died and Mary Verney gave him his marching orders. What, exactly, he had done for his money was far from clear. Nor did he seem to have bought all that much recently; like many dealers, he kept the catalogues of auction sales where he’d bought things, but there were no more than a couple of dozen of these, going back over five years. Not nearly enough to generate much of an income.

All in all, he appeared to be a man with some financial problems. Unless, of course, there were sources of money which he had kindly decided he needn’t waste the taxman’s time with. Certainly, it wasn’t obviously the financial profile of supposedly the finest art thief of his generation. But you would expect the finest art thief also to be a bit of a whiz in financial skulduggery as well: it was hardly likely that his tax forms would be full of entries like ‘item: one stolen Uccello’…

That, however, was an unproductive line of enquiry. As was the fact that when Forster severed his ties with Weller House, he had apparently not bothered to return some of the papers concerned with it: at least, Argyll assumed that was why there was a probate inventory of the Weller House paintings in one of the files. Dated some fifteen years back, so Argyll assumed that it had been drawn up on the death of Uncle Godfrey. Not hugely illuminating, as the seventy-two paintings and twenty-seven drawings mentioned were treated in a somewhat cursory fashion. But as it might be the only listing there was, and as it clearly wasn’t Forster’s property anyway, he slipped it into his pocket for return to the rightful owner. He noted that the drawing of the hand was described as anonymous French eighteenth-century, which didn’t satisfy him, although it was better than Mrs. Verney’s assessment. It had also been given a value of thirty pounds, which did seem about right.

Argyll yawned from sheer boredom and decided to rest on his laurels. He marked his place, shoved the whole lot in a drawer of the desk, locked it to comply with police wishes on security, and told the ever-patient Hanson that he was finished. There was still three-quarters of the filing cabinet to go through, but that could wait until tomorrow. The police could have a quick job, or a thorough one. On their behalf, Argyll decided they would have the latter: he needed a drink, and the now off-duty Hanson readily accepted the invitation to come along as well.

He arrived back at Weller House at half past seven on the dot, as the last F1-11 of the day rocketed through the chimney pots, bearing a bottle of not very good wine which he’d bought at the pub after turning down old George’s offer of a pint.

“There you are,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been helping the police with their enquiries, in a manner of speaking.”

“Rumbled you at last, eh?”

“Certainly not. I’ve been reading Forster’s accounts and papers.”

“Profitably?”

“Nope. The finer points of accountancy have never been my great strength. He could be as pure as a Trappist or as bent as Al Capone, and I wouldn’t notice.”

“Neither sounds right to me.”

“Hmm. I did find this, though.” He handed over the inventory. She looked at it without much interest.

“He took it, did he? Doesn’t surprise me. If there’s anything else there which belongs to me, could you bring that back as well?”

“As long as the police don’t mind. But it’s curious that he told your cousin there was nothing like this at all.”

“Maybe he didn’t want her to know what he was up to. Still, too late to worry about that now. What’s gone is gone. I hope you like rabbit.”

“I love rabbit.”

“Good. I strangled it myself. Mass murder is another skill of mine. Some people in these parts can’t see a furry animal without wanting to disembowel it. Killing things is a country occupation.”

“So it seems.”

“Eh?”

“Forster. I gather they’ve arrested someone.”

“Oh, that,” she said dismissively. “Gordon. I know. More wishful thinking on their part, I fear.”

“You’re very trusting of your neighbours,” Argyll observed.

“Am I? In what way?”