Flavia grumbled. Perhaps it was a bit messy, and very overcrowded, and maybe it was a health hazard. But it was her health hazard, and she’d grown fond of it over the years. What to Argyll’s objective gaze was a small, overpriced, under-lit, badly ventilated tip was home to her. Besides, the lease was in her name. Any new one would be held jointly. In Rome, considering the pressures of housing, that was more of a commitment than any formal marriage vows. Not that she didn’t look on such an idea sympathetically, when she was in a good mood, it was just that she was awfully slow about taking decisions. And, of course, she hadn’t been asked. No small point.
‘You go and see it. And I’ll think about it. Meantime, how long is it going to be before that thing is out of here?’
‘If by “that thing” you mean a most unusual treatment of the theme of the Death of Socrates in the French neoclassical style, then the answer is tomorrow. I’ll deliver it to this Muller fellow and you won’t have to look at it anymore. Let’s talk about something else. What’s been going on here in my absence?’
‘Absolutely nothing. The criminal classes are getting really lax. It’s been like living in a well-ordered, civilized and law-abiding country for the last week.’
‘How awful for you.’
‘I know. Bottando can always go around and fill in the time with silly meetings and lunches with colleagues. But the rest of us have been sitting and staring into space for days. I don’t know what’s going on at all. I mean, it can’t be that the criminals are too afraid we’ll catch them.’
‘You caught a couple a few months back. I remember it well. Everyone was awfully impressed.’
‘True. But that was only because they weren’t very good at it.’
‘Considering how much you complain about being over-worked, I think you should enjoy it while it lasts. Why don’t you tidy up? The last time I was in it your office was even more chaotic than this place.’
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, treating the suggestion with the contempt it deserved, as Argyll burrowed through a mound of papers and finally extracted the telephone.
‘I thought I’d give this Muller fellow a ring. Set up an appointment. Nothing like seeming efficient.’
‘It’s a bit late, isn’t it? It’s past ten.’
‘Do you want me to get rid of it or not?’ he said, as he dialled.
He presented himself at the door of Muller’s apartment just after ten the following morning, as arranged. Muller had been delighted when he’d rung, enthused about his efficiency and consideration and could scarcely contain his anticipation. Had Argyll not protested that he was completely exhausted and could barely move a muscle, he would have been summoned round immediately.
He wasn’t entirely certain what to expect. The apartment indicated a reasonable amount of money; Delorme had said that he was American, or Canadian, or something transatlantic. The marketing man for some international company. Muller ran the Italian operation. So he thought.
He did not appear to Argyll to be the epitome of the international salesman; the sort who eyes up whole portions of the world and coolly maps out master strategies for penetrating regions, grabbing market share or cutting out the opposition. For a start, he was at home at ten o’clock in the morning, and Argyll thought such people normally took off only seventeen minutes a day to do things like wash, change, eat and sleep.
Also, he was a little fellow, showing no obvious signs of hard-boiled commercialism. Across a vast middle there were all the indications of decades of eating the wrong sort of food. Arthur Muller was a model of how to die young, with the sort of weight-to-height ratio that makes dieticians wake up in the middle of the night screaming with terror. The type who should have keeled over thirty years before of clogged arteries, if his liver hadn’t got him first.
But there he was, short, fat and with every sign of living to confound the medical statisticians a while longer. On the other hand, his face let the image down a little: although he looked quite pleased to see Argyll standing at his door, parcel in hand, it didn’t exactly light up with glee. The habitual expression seemed almost mournful; the sort of face that didn’t expect much and was never surprised when disaster struck. Most odd; it was almost as if there’d been a mismatch in the assembly process, and Muller’s body had emerged with the wrong head on it.
But he was welcoming enough, at least.
‘Mr Argyll, I imagine. Do come in, do come in. I’m delighted you’re here.’
Not a bad apartment at all. Argyll noted as he walked in, although with definite signs of having been furnished by the company relocation officer. For all that the furniture was corporate good taste, Muller had, none the less, managed to impose a little of his own personality on the room. Not a great collector, alas, but somewhere along the way he had picked up a couple of nice bronzes and a few decent if unexceptional pictures. None of these indicated any great interest in neoclassical, mind you, still less in the baroque pictures cluttering up Flavia’s apartment; but perhaps, Argyll thought to himself hopefully, his tastes were expanding.
He sat down on the sofa, brown paper parcel in front of him, and smiled encouragingly.
‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am you’re here,’ Muller said. ‘I’ve been looking for this picture for some considerable time.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Argyll said, intrigued.
Muller gave him a penetrating, half-amused look, then laughed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘What you mean to say,’ his client said, ‘was “why on earth would anybody spend time looking for this very ordinary painting? Does he know something I don’t?”’
Argyll confessed that such thoughts had scuttled across his mind. Not that he didn’t like the picture.
‘I’m quite fond of this sort of thing,’ he confessed. ‘But not many other people are. So a friend of mine says. A minority taste, she keeps on telling me.’
‘She may be right. In my case, I haven’t been looking for aesthetic reasons.’
‘No?’
‘No. This was owned by my father. I want to find out something about myself. A filial task, you see.’
‘Oh, right,’ Argyll said, kneeling reverently on the floor and trying to unpick the knot keeping the whole package together. He’d been too conscientious about packing it up again last night. Another where-are-my-roots? man, he thought to himself as he fiddled. A topic to be avoided. Otherwise Muller might offer to show him his family tree.
‘There were four, so I gather,’ Muller went on, watching Argyll’s lack of dexterity with a distant interest. ‘All legal scenes, painted in the 1780s. This is supposed to be the last one painted. I read about them.’
‘You were very lucky to get hold of it,’ Argyll said. ‘Are you after the other three as well?’
Muller shook his head. ‘I think one will suffice. As I say, I’m not really interested in it for aesthetic reasons. Do you want some coffee, by the way?’ he added as the knot finally came undone and Argyll slid the picture out of the packing.
‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ Argyll said as he stood up and heard his knees crack. ‘No, no. You stay there and admire the picture. I can get it.’
So, leaving Muller to contemplate his new acquisition, Argyll headed for the coffee-pot in the kitchen and helped himself. A bit forward, perhaps, but also rather tactful. He knew what these clients were like. It wasn’t simply the eagerness to see what they’d spent their money on; it was also necessary to spend some time alone with the work. To get to know it, person-to-person, so to speak.
He came back to find that Muller and Socrates were not hitting it off as well as he’d hoped.