‘But is he any good?’
Argyll shrugged again. ‘Again, opinions vary. His book on Venetian art competitions is generally accepted as a revolution in methodology. The less enthusiastic add that he’s done damn all since. And twenty years is a long time to live on your reputation. As for me, I don’t know. I’ve never met him. He is an avid collector of pictures and as far as I know he pays his bills. What more could anybody want?’
The fondazione Cini is another name for the old monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, a sixteenth-century masterpiece by Palladio taken over by the state and converted into an upmarket conference centre. It is the sort of place where you hold international summits, or conferences for people who need to be impressed. Nothing, it seemed, was too good for the historians of Venice’s most successful painter and every year a well-appointed conference room, a suite of convenient bedrooms, telephones, fax machines, photocopiers, as well as a bevy of cooks and housemaids, were set aside for the Titian committee’s exclusive use.
If anything should have focused their minds on the task at hand, quarters on the island should have done the trick. Facing San Marco, with the Salute on the left, the stone, terracotta and brick of the buildings positively glowed in the fading and ever rarer autumn sunlight, ample proof on its own that Venice was one of the great wonders of the world.
Flavia stood on the vaporetto and watched, entranced, as the island drew nearer. Her face was lightly tanned from the summer, her long, fair hair streamed backwards in the breeze. Had Argyll seen her standing like that, legs slightly apart to keep her balance, hands thrust into the pockets of her jeans, a slight frown on her forehead from the sun, he would have been even more lost in admiration than at breakfast. But he would never have found any way of telling her, and Flavia was incapable of divining what he was thinking.
‘Too late,’ said the guardian brusquely as she approached, gesturing at the timetable that announced the building was closed to tourists from noon. It was now only ten. She fished out her identification card and announced herself as a member of the police. He examined it carefully, back and front, glancing up at her suspiciously as he read.
‘From Rome, eh?’ he said, suggesting strongly that she should be ashamed of herself.
‘The Titian committee,’ she said severely. ‘Where do I find its meeting rooms?’
‘Oh,’ he said knowingly. ‘That lady that got herself killed, is it?’ He said it in a way which implied that it had been the American’s own fault. Everybody seemed to do that.
‘That’s right. Did you know her?’
‘A bit. Not much. Some people take the time to stop and talk, even know my name. Not her. She did chat to my wife, though. She says she was pleasant, not that they had much to talk about. My wife,’ he added, heading off at an apparently unrelated tangent, ‘cleans the rooms here, you know.’
‘Really?’ said Flavia, taking the hint about conversation. ‘How long has she been doing that for?’
‘Oh, years, now. The year of the flood she started.’ Flavia tried to remember. 1966? October? Something like that. Not that it mattered. ‘Eight hours a day. And she helps wash up in the evenings. And do you know how much she’s paid?’
Probably very little, but she had no time to listen to complaints, however well justified. ‘Doesn’t seem very busy now, though. There are only the historians here at the moment, aren’t there?’
He grudgingly admitted that it was pretty slack. ‘Doesn’t mean this place is easy to keep clean,’ he countered.
‘No?’
‘No. Shoddy, that’s what it is. Looks nice, I grant you. But shoddy. Can’t do anything properly round here these days.’
She was on the verge of asking if by chance he was related to an old gondolier she knew. ‘Workmanship. Hah. International conference centre, so-called. Can’t even stop the roof leaking. That’s because all the contracts – you know.’ He glanced at her slyly and put his finger to his nose to imply dirty dealings in high places. She knew what he meant. He was probably right.
‘Do you know, last week, there was water coming in? Would you credit it? Puddles of it in the corridors. Which my wife had to clean up even after her shift had ended. Faulty roofing. Lets in the rain. Lucky none of it got into the bedrooms, or this lot would have complained. They always do, you know. Never satisfied, some people.’
‘There must be some interesting people who come here,’ she ventured desperately, hoping to get him off the subject so she could find out where the meeting room was.
‘Interesting? Don’t know about that. Odd, certainly. Some funny people we’ve had here. Don’t know that I approve. They call themselves respectable, you know.’
‘Are they not?’
‘Some of them. Some I wouldn’t let into my house. Of course, I don’t want to judge them. Live and let live, I suppose, and people always do get a bit frisky in Venice, if you know what I mean.’
She had some idea.
‘Take that lady that got herself killed,’ he continued.
The twinkle in his eye told Flavia he knew quite well he was playing with her.
‘She didn’t get herself killed. Someone murdered her.’
‘That’s what I said,’ he replied, clearly thinking she was being pedantic.
Flavia sighed. ‘Take her how?’ she asked.
‘Is that for me to say? All I know was, that she was a bit of a night-owl, that one.’
‘You mean she worked late?’
The guardian snickered, and rubbed his red, drinker’s nose with the back of his hand. ‘Work, it might have been.’ He leered at her in a peculiarly repulsive fashion.
‘Perhaps she had friends in?’
This he found a great joke and looked at Flavia as though he’d found a soul-mate at long last. ‘Oh, yes,’ he gurgled. ‘Friends, eh?’ He cackled away merrily.
Flavia sighed once more. It was always hard to deal with gossips. On the one hand, they had an incurable urge to tell you what they knew, on the other there was the long-standing unwillingness to say anything to the police at all. The result was often such a series of elliptical hints, designed to satisfy both imperatives.
‘Tell me about the others,’ she began, and promptly abandoned the question when she saw the distrustful expression taking over again. ‘I assume your wife was in the kitchen with Dr Miller on Friday evening?’
This he could answer. No harm in exonerating people. ‘Yes. He came to the kitchen from the laundry-room to ask for some water at about half ten. We had a little chat. Very considerate, charming man.’
‘And he didn’t leave the island at any time?’
‘Oh, no. He was here, all right. No public transport and if he’d taken a taxi I would have seen it. And before you ask,’ he said conclusively, ‘there are no private boats here at the moment he could have taken.’
‘You have to open the door to let people in after hours?’
‘No. People are given their own keys. But, as I say, I was on duty from six to midnight and would have seen anybody coming or going. No one did.’
That seemed pretty conclusive. After a brief pause to note the conversation down, she made her way through to the second cloister in search of the committee’s rooms. Yet again, her sense of direction abandoned her and she ended up at what seemed to be a service entrance somewhere at the