Giotto's Hand

She looked puzzled at this. “Perhaps. I don’t know. He never mentioned it. I must say I wasn’t happy to come here. I know business was bad, but we would have managed I was ready to go and get a job and help. And I wasn’t sure that tying ourselves to the whim of one woman— who was a bit strange—was a good idea. Bui Geoff never listened to me. And it was no consolation when I was proven right. We should never have left London and buried ourselves here.”

“An unfortunate choice of phrase, Flavia thought And come to think of it, it was a pity he hadn’t listened to her. She might behave like a frightened rabbit but if what she was saying was true, she had more sense—or better judgement — than her husband had. “You dont know what happened to his papers?” she asked.

She looked nervous suddenly, and Flavia knew that she was not telling the truth when she shook her head and explained that she’d been out all day.

“I got back here last night and spent all morning talking to the police. Then I went to Norwich to see the solicitors. After that I spent the evening with friends. I didn’t know anything about it when the police came round this morning, asked to see them and then started shouting when they discovered all the papers had gone.”

Flavia nodded thoughtfully. Such a rush of alibis, with all the tension vanishing as she spoke, almost as though she was reassuring herself as it came out She was on the whole far too nervous. in Flavia’s admittedly uncharitable view.

She sipped a glass of beer and pondered thoughtfully. No, she finally decided she would go hungry. Safer that way. She had never seen food that looked quite like that before and didn’t really care to experiment with what effect it might have on her stomach. Argyll did his best with a sausage roll and, to make up for their lack of appetite, Inspector Manstead, newly arrived from London to view proceedings, tucked enthusiastically into a second Scotch egg, then made the repast even more tasty by adding a large pickled onion to the mixture in his mouth. Flavia shuddered, and tried to concentrate.

“So what do they reckon? Your colleagues, I mean?” she asked.

Manstead chewed meditatively a while longer, then disposed of egg, sausage meat and pickled onion in one mighty swallow. “I don’t think they reckon anything yet. They want to think that our Gordon was responsible; nice and simple, no problems. But they don’t, really. They’re hanging on to him for want of anything better.”

“They’ve talked to Mrs. Forster, I understand?”

“Yup.”

“She mentioned Forster’s safe deposit box?”

Manstead smiled. “Yes, she did. And it’s been checked out.”

“And what’s in it?”

“Nothing. It seems that Forster arrived that afternoon, just before closing time, and took everything out of it.”

“What? What did he take?”

“They don’t know. Of course they don’t.”

“Wouldn’t do to go snooping around in clients’ boxes. It’s not Switzerland, you know.”

Flavia frowned. “So, if I understand this right, Jonathan telephones—when was it?”

“About two-thirty,” Argyll put in. “A bit later, maybe.”

“And Forster immediately leaps into his car, rushes into Norwich and collects his package,” Manstead continued for her. “It takes about forty-five minutes to get in. That evening he is dead, and when we look, there is nothing which appears out of place, as though it was collected from a safe deposit the previous day. But, of course, we don’t know what we are looking for, do we?”

Flavia sniffed and scratched her nose. “Jonathan?” Flavia asked, turning her attention on to him more completely. “What exactly did you say when you rang him up?”

Argyll looked flustered, and tried to remember. “That I was making enquiries about a picture I had heard about through an old friend of his.”

“And?”

“And that I’d heard he might know something about it.”

“And?”

“And that it might have been stolen. And that I wanted to talk to him about it. And that I didn’t want to talk over the phone. He said I should come to see him here.”

“So it’s possible that he thought you wanted to buy it?”

Argyll conceded this was possible.

“And also possible that he rushed off to get it so you could view the goods before making an offer?”

Another nod. “I suppose. Except, of course, that I specifically mentioned the Palazzo Straga.”

“Ah.”

“And it still hardly explains why he’s dead, does it? Or why his papers got burned up. Can’t blame me, this time.”

Manstead, who’d been listening to this with some pleasure, downed a good third of his pint then smacked his lips. “Ah, country life,” he said with satisfaction. ”Good beer, good food, fresh air. What am I doing living in London, eh? Perhaps,” he went on, “pictures have got nothing to do with it.”

Flavia gave him a doubtful look. “My friends in the force say there are lots of other more interesting lines of enquiry, and Gordon’s refusal to say where he was is only one of them.”

“For example?”