Giotto's Hand

“Of course, I should have consulted you. But as you weren’t there…”

“You took control.”

“Exactly. Hope you don’t mind.”

Bottando sighed.

“So I said that the perceptions of the department’s ineffectiveness were quite misplaced. And I told them that the General was at this very moment working on a most important case that would produce an extraordinary result. I told them a bit about Forster, just how much time and effort you’d put into pursuing this man.”

“Did you?”

“And they asked for a full-scale meeting to discuss it with you. Tomorrow? At four o’clock?”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. They’re so keen to hear of how you tracked down this man, that the minister himself will be coming to hear about the triumph of your skill.”

“I shall look forward to it.”

“So will I,” said Argan. “There are few things more rewarding than listening to an expert account of the virtues of experience. It will be very interesting.”

While Flavia was finishing with Dr. Johnson and moving on to talk to the police once again, checking and crosschecking facts without, she hoped, giving much in return, Argyll went for a walk to take advantage of the brief spell of sun. He had a lot to think over and, as is usual in such circumstances, wandered about aimlessly, inspecting nothing in particular with great care before moving on again in a dream.

It was the Leonardo that occupied his mind. How to approach Mary Verney? He briefly toyed with not telling her, and concocting some story about wanting it because he liked it so much, giving her fifty pounds for it. Not worth it, of course, but…

Then he dismissed the idea. Not his sort of thing. He couldn’t do it, and would only hate himself for all eternity if he even tried. So he’d tell her what it was, and hope she’d give him the commission to sell it. It would pay her debts and have more than enough left over to rebuild the house. He could tell Flavia at the same time. It would be something for them all to celebrate before they went back home, case resolutely unsolved.

He wandered in the direction of the church in the hope that a bit more exercise might clear his mind of the lingering regrets that he wasn’t nastier and more unscrupulous. Nothing like a good church for cheering you up in such circumstances, he always considered, so he went through the churchyard gate and paused awhile to examine the noticeboard which had rotas for church wardens (George Barton the first Sunday, Henry Jones the second. Young Witherspoon the third and Old Witherspoon the fourth), a note, dated five months ago, of a parish council meeting, an announcement about the village fête on the second Saturday in July, as usual (with the proclamation that Mrs. Mary Verney would graciously open it crossed out and the name of the vicar substituted instead) and a warning about not using hosepipes because of the drought.

He looked at it all, read it carefully, and forgot it just as quickly. That source of information exhausted, he went in and spent some time staring at the gravestones. One had fresh wild flowers; Joan Barton, beloved wife of George, and mother of Louise and Alice. Next to it was Harry Barton, beloved brother of George, and husband of Anne. born 1935, died 1967. A bit young, poor soul. Didn’t last long, these Bartons.

Thus rendered appropriately melancholic, he wandered around, past the black marble stones of the twentieth century, through the local stone slabs of the nineteenth and on to the more elaborately carved efforts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some were as carefully tended as a suburban garden, others preferred the wild look. The same names cropped up again and again: dozens of Bartons, generations of Browns. He even found Veronica’s husband: Henry Finsey-Groat, tragically drowned, beloved husband, fondly remembered, died 1966. Only the last seemed reliable: farcically drowned seemed more appropriate and, if the overgrown and entirely neglected grave was anything to go by, beloved husband, fondly remembered, seemed less than accurate.

Then he went into the church and examined its run of brasses and eighteenth-century monuments in memory of the various members of the Beaumont family. There had been rather a lot of them. He studied the simple plaque for Margaret Dunstan-Beaumont, she of the wedding present and Kneller portrait, and read how she’d died in 1680 at the age of sixty, greatly missed by her family and all who knew her as a pious wife, devoted mother of fifteen children, and generous giver of eight shillings a year to the poor of the parish. He wondered what Geoffrey Forster’s memorial would say; even given the willingness of memorialists to stretch the truth, greatly missed might seem a little inappropriate. Nobody, so far, seemed to be greatly missing him. Except his wife, who was the only person who had a good word for him. Although how genuine that was seemed unsure.