Argyll thought about this. Obviously, if this man was prepared to trust him with his bags, then it should be safe to reverse the process. ‘I’ll go instead,’ he offered.
‘Would you? That’s very good of you.’
And with an encouraging smile, he promised to guard the bags faithfully until Argyll returned. It’s one thing about the international confraternity of smokers. Members know how to behave properly. It’s what comes of being an embattled and persecuted minority. You stick together.
Argyll was halfway out of the door when he realized he hadn’t brought any money with him. All the small change he had was in the pocket of his overcoat, lying draped over the chair. So he cursed, turned round and mounted the cast-iron steps back to the bar.
As Flavia explained afterwards, not that he needed any explanation by then, it was the oldest trick in the book. Start up a conversation, win their confidence, distract their attention. Compared with someone as naturally trusting and gullible as Argyll, babies would probably put up a more spirited resistance defending their candy.
But fortune, this grey morning, decided to give him a break. He got to the entrance door just in time to see the man who was meant to be guarding his bags disappearing through the door on the far side of the room. Tucked under his arm was a brown paper package about three feet by two. Approximately the same size as paintings of the Death of Socrates tend to be.
‘Oy,’ called Argyll in some distress.
Then he ran like fury in pursuit, appalling consequences flowing through his mind. He was sure the painting wasn’t worth much; but he was equally sure he would have to refund more than his bank balance could withstand if he let it get away. It wasn’t courage that made him fly across the bar, then run three steps at a time down the stairs. It was simple terror at the thought of this painting escaping him. Some dealers are insured against this sort of thing. But insurance companies, even the most amiable, do not look very sympathetically on claims for thefts committed on paintings left unguarded in bars in the company of total strangers.
Argyll was no sportsman. While not badly coordinated, he had never really thought it worth his while to spend much time trotting around cold, muddy fields in pursuit of inflated bladders. A decorous game of croquet he could manage, but greater athleticism was not at all to his taste.
For this reason the flying tackle he produced, running at full tilt and launching himself from a distance at the legs of the disappearing Frenchman was all the more miraculous for having no forebears. One onlooker in the crowded railway concourse even burst into spontaneous applause – the French, more than most, appreciate elegance on the rugger pitch – at the perfectly timed way in which he flew at low altitude through the air, connected with the man’s knees, brought him down, did a half-roll, grabbed the parcel and stood up, clutching the prize to his chest.
The wretched man didn’t know what had hit him; the violence of Argyll’s assault, and the hard concrete floor, knocked the wind out of him and apparently did severe damage to the funny-bone of his right knee. Easy pickings, if Argyll had had the presence of mind to call for the police. But he wasn’t thinking about that; rather he was too busy clutching the painting, relief at his success and distress at his own stupidity over-whelming him.
By the time he had recovered enough, the thief had rolled over, hobbled off and disappeared into the early-morning crowd thronging the concourse.
And, of course, when he got back to the bar he discovered that some light-fingered lad had taken advantage of his absence to lift his suitcase. But it was only dirty underwear, books and things. Nothing serious, in comparison. He almost felt grateful.
‘All I can say is that you’re damn lucky,’ Flavia di Stefano said much later on the same day when Argyll, slumped in an armchair and refilling his glass, finished telling the story.
‘I know,’ he said, weary but content to be home at last. ‘But you would have been proud of me, none the less. I was magnificent. Never knew I had it in me.’
‘One day it’ll be more serious.’
‘I know that too. But that day was not today, which is all that matters at the moment.’
His friend sitting opposite, curled up on the sofa, looked at him with mild disapproval. It depended very much on her mood, whether she found his unworldliness comforting or profoundly irritating. This evening, because she’d been without him for five days, and because there were no serious consequences, she was in a forgiving frame of mind. It was very peculiar the way she’d missed him knocking around the place. They’d been living together for about nine months and this had been his first trip away without her. In that nine months she’d evidently got used to him. It was very strange. It was years since she’d minded being on her own, objected to having nothing to do for anybody but herself, and felt disrupted by having complete freedom to do whatever she wanted.
‘Can I see the cause of this athletic zeal?’ she asked, stretching herself and pointing at the parcel.
‘Hmm? I don’t see why not,’ he said, sliding off the chair and picking it up from the corner of the room. ‘Although I suspect it’s not really your taste.’
He busied himself for a few moments with knives and scissors, tore the parcel open then slid the painting out and propped it up on the desk by the window, knocking a bundle of letters, some washing, a dirty cup and a pile of old newspapers on to the ground in the process.
‘Damn this place,’ he said. ‘It’s like a junk-yard. Anyway,’ he continued, standing back thoughtfully to admire Socrates’ last moments, ‘what do you think?’
Flavia examined it in silence awhile, offering a brief prayer of thanks that it would be in their little apartment for only a few days.
‘Well, that knocks on the head the theory that it was a professional art thief,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I mean, who in their right mind would risk a jail term to steal that? It would have served him right if he’d got it.’
‘Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. I mean, it’s not Raphael, but it’s fairly decent, as these things go.’
The trouble with Argyll was that he did have this penchant for the obscure. Most people, Flavia had tried to explain, had simple, straightforward, tastes. Impressionists. Landscapes. Portraits of women on swings with a bit of ankle showing. Children. Dogs. That, she occasionally tried to persuade him, was how to make money, by selling things people liked.
But Argyll’s judgement was more than a little out of sync with popular tastes. The more obscure the classical, biblical or allegorical reference, the more captivating he found it. He was capable of going into raptures over a rare treatment of a mythological subject, and then was constantly surprised that would-be clients looked at him as though he were crazy.
Admittedly he was getting better, learning to subordinate his obscure preferences and make some attempt to provide customers with what they actually wanted rather than what he thought would improve their attitude to life. But it was an effort that went against his nature, and given the least opportunity, his bias towards the elliptical would resurface.
She sighed. The walls of their apartment were already covered in so many swooning heroines and posturing heroes that there wasn’t room to swing a cat. Argyll liked it like that; but she was beginning to find being surrounded by so many works of moral virtue a little oppressive. It was all very well his moving in to share her tiny apartment; that, somewhat to her surprise, she loved. It was just that she hadn’t banked on his stock-in-trade coming as well.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘But it’s saved me a lot of trouble. And time as well. By the way,’ he went on as he took a step back and put his foot on an old sandwich cunningly hidden under the armchair, ‘have you thought