Giotto's Hand

“Naturally,” Bottando went on, “we kept our ears open nonetheless, using the networks of information that have been built up over the years. The human element of detection which, if I may be so bold, no computer will ever supplant.”

Argan snorted. “And what did it produce?”

Bottando sighed as he thought about the comment. Then, not able to say anything which would answer the question adequately, he leant over and picked up a box stationed by his side. Slowly, piece by piece, he took out the contents and handed them around.

“Thirty-nine Etruscan figurines,” he said, watching carefully as they circulated around the table. “Picked up this morning from underneath the bed of a little old lady in Viterbo.”

There was a pause at this small piece of theatre before Argan recovered himself.

“I hope they will be returned to their rightful owners quickly,” Argan said. “We all know about your tendency to decorate your office with stolen goods.”

Bottando beamed at him. “They will be, when all the paperwork is done. But I would like to put it on record now that I do rather resent the waste of time this little case involved. I mean, had Dottore Argan’s brother-in-law paid the looters who stole the antiquities from the site for him in the first place, they would not have felt morally justified in raiding his gallery to get them back. Honour among thieves, you know.”

Bottando stole a quick glance around the room. A hit, he thought to himself, as he noticed the disapproving stares in Argan’s direction. Argan was not smiling.

“Told you,” he said in a whisper to Flavia. “Never attack an old lion till you’re sure his teeth are gone.

“Now, the more important matter of the case called Giotto,” he went on more loudly, brushing aside Flavia as she tapped him on the arm and whispered urgently that she needed a little word with him outside. Not now, Flavia, he thought. I’m enjoying myself.

“As Dottore Argan has remarked, this was for a long time only a string of vague suppositions on my part. I — my department—followed routine procedure. Unsolved crimes are reviewed at periodic intervals to see if they can be matched with new and apparently unrelated evidence. This process is where, if I may say so, experience comes in once more. To spot the possibility and to interrogate it. To see the shape of a crime. May I point out that, although Dottore Argan had full access to the original file and I understand studied it carefully, he failed to see any possibilities to be exploited.

“My experience,” he said loftily, “and the practical skill of Signorina di Stefano here, did see those possibilities.”

For some reason Signorina di Stefano was looking more distraught than proud at this tribute. She did so much wish she could get him to shut up. He’d won. Did he really need to go for total victory?

He did.

“What Dottore Argan sneered at, we looked into. What he dismissed immediately as a tissue of nonsense, we followed up and pursued. And what Dottore Argan would have consigned to the wastepaper basket, we brought to a conclusion which, I do not mind saying, I am happy to count as the most considerable of my career. If my running of the department is to be judged, then I am more than content that it should be on this case.”

This bold statement produced a nice effect; it is, after all, quite rare in the world of bureaucracy that people go so far out on a limb with such unconditional claims. Flavia, still nervous, examined the top of the table, and fiddled with her pen.

“As for the man I labelled Giotto and of whose existence Dottore Argan is sceptical, I am now in a position to add substance to my original theory. His name was Geoffrey Arnold Forster, and we can prove it. His identity was discovered because we listened to crooks and senile old women, and because we have the skill and experience to know when they are telling the truth and when they are lying.”

Proof? He went on as the questions erupted. Of course. Even if you disapproved of Sandano, there was the testimony of Signora Fancelli; Flavia had forgotten to tell him about the circumstances of its production. The statement of Arthur Winterton who, Bottando said, was renowned throughout the international art world as a dealer of the highest integrity. The testimony of Mary Verney that Forster had claimed to be selling pictures through Weller. Confirmation by Jonathan Argyll that he had not done so. His possible murder of Veronica Beaumont when she discovered how he was using the family name to trade in illegal paintings and had questioned him. The fact that his wife had burnt his papers in order to destroy evidence of his dealings. Finally, the possibility that he was himself murdered on the orders of a discontented client—although this was unlikely ever to be proven, due to the fact that it was in the hands of the English police who lacked a long-established Art Squad to investigate with skill.