Giotto's Hand

Argyll nodded silently. He didn’t really know what he thought at the moment.

Mary Verney continued to regard him with what seemed very like genuine sympathy and affection. “The thing is, what are you going to do?”

“Hmm?”

“Be the straight arrow, as our American friends say? Go to Flavia, and tell her what you know? I’m not going to leap at you with an axe or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. There is a difference, you know. Between you and them.”

Argyll sighed. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“So?”

“In different circumstances, I would have happily sought your advice. I had a high opinion of your good sense.”

“Thank you. I can lay out the options, if you like. I’ll be biased, of course, but you can tell how accurate I am.”

“Go on.”

“The upright good citizen approach,” she said briskly. “You go straight off to Manstead. Please sir. Mrs. Verney is a thief. With the Vélasquez and the leads you provide he would certainly get enough to convict me and Winterton. I doubt I would be even charged with the murder of either Forster or Veronica, though. Absolutely no evidence. Zilch; George would never say anything.

“Still, justice gets done: I atone for a misspent life. Splendid. But, for the satisfaction of locking me up for a few years and getting one extra picture, there will be costs. Mainly borne by Flavia who will have to give a very good account for having deceived her own boss, told lies to the English police and, in effect, conspired to pervert the course of justice in a major way. All of which she did on your recommendation, if I remember. She is, I gather, already unhappy about it. You wait till she hears this one.”

Argyll rubbed his eyes and groaned quietly.

“From what you tell me, her boss won’t come out of it too well either, as he’s just told a pack of lies to his superiors,” she went on. “Saying he didn’t know what was going on won’t exactly impress them, and I imagine the man he has just humiliated will be more than ready to take his revenge.”

Argyll looked at her stonily. “Go on.”

“The other option is to take the advice you are so willing to give others. Forget all about me and Forster and Veronica and Winterton and Vélasquez. You have made a mess. You now have the choice of making it worse, or…”

“Or?”

“Or not. Don’t do anything. Forget it.”

He slumped back in the armchair and stared at the ceiling as he thought about this.

“Here,” she said. “Maybe it’s not appropriate any more. But I was going to give you this as a parting present.”

She handed him a box. He unwrapped it, and pulled off the cardboard lid. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, lay a drawing of a hand.

A Leonardo da Vinci. Just what he’d always wanted.

“I suppose we can take the profuse thanks as read on this occasion,” Mary said drily. “But you seemed to like it and it means nothing to me. A token of affection. Not a precious one, I’m afraid, but I hoped it would indicate my pleasure in your company over the last few days. Which was real enough, although I can’t expect you to believe that any more. I’m very sorry it’s gone sour, but I hope you’ll take it anyway. As an apology.”

Argyll looked at her and it sadly. Oh, sod. Of all the times for someone to give him a bloody Leonardo, this was about the worst. This is a nightmare, he thought.

In the old days, this morning, he would instantly have told Mary Verney exactly what it was. They would have celebrated his cleverness and her good fortune, and sealed a friendship on it. He would never have taken it and kept quiet, even if it was what a real art dealer, a Winterton, would do. But now? Honesty on his part seemed hardly appropriate, given the circumstances.

He looked at it again, in its dusty frame with the cracked glass. Selling it would set him up as a dealer with enough finance to succeed. Good God, he wouldn’t have to succeed any more. He could retire. That’s how you get ahead in this business, he thought. Spotting the opportunity and grabbing it with both hands. Look at Winterton. That’s how he began.

“And if I prefer to go to the police?”

“Then you preserve your purity and self-esteem but would have to live with the knowledge that the costs of your particular brand of principled indecision are being borne by everyone else. Particularly your fiancée.

“Do that if you want: no one can stop you. Not even me any more. But if you do, I’d advise you to start looking for another girlfriend; she’ll find it difficult to forgive you. I know I would. You told her it was her duty to recast the truth for Bottando, and she listened and did just that. Are you not prepared to do the same for her?

“But,” she said firmly, giving him a long, hard look, “whatever you do, make up your mind more quickly this time: indecisiveness and irrelevant feelings of guilt really are your biggest faults. But whatever you do, take that drawing.”

“I don’t want it.”

She picked it up and took out a cigarette lighter, which she held underneath it. “Nor do I. Either you have it or nobody does.”

“I’ll take it. I’ll take it,” he said hurriedly.