The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears

Author:Iain Pears
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780007369348
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1990-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

‘We need to prove the picture was a forgery, which is difficult now it’s destroyed. The notebooks help, but they’re not conclusive. So we have to find the original original, so to speak.’

Flavia was sitting in the kitchen of Argyll’s new apartment. He’d explained when she knocked on the door that he’d taken up the offer by his old friend, Rudolf Beckett, of a spare room. He looked tired and told her that he had not, in the circumstances, slept very well. Flavia might have been more sympathetic had she not been so alarmed at the possibilities suggested by the fact that suspect number one was living in the same flat as a journalist.

Argyll, however, reassured her. His flatmate was at the moment in Sicily on an extended trip to write stories about the Mafia. Flavia wondered whether any reporter ever went to Sicily to do anything else. He would not be back for several days, at least, so she stopped worrying and got back to the subject of Argyll’s chance to rehabilitate himself.

‘If the evidence about the forgery is so weak, why are you convinced?’

Flavia held up her hand and counted off the points, one by one. ‘Firstly, I want to be, because I hate the idea of a genuine Raphael being charred. Secondly, because otherwise we’re looking for a real nutcase, and I don’t want to believe that either. Thirdly, because we’ve got to explore all the possibilities anyway. Fourthly, intuition. Fifthly, because I trust your judgement.’

Argyll snorted. ‘Sixthly, you’re also crazy. Certainly you’re the only person who trusts my judgement. But I’m just a graduate student. I can’t really see myself wandering around looking for picture forgers.’

‘Indeed not. But you know more about that damned man Mantini than anyone else. He’s now very much the artistic flavour of the month. The end of our troubles probably lies somewhere in your file cards.’

Argyll brushed his fingers through his hair, hummed a little, then twiddled his thumbs, all symptoms that Flavia now recognised as symptomatic of embarrassment on his part.

‘Yes, lovely. Glad to oblige. But, I mean, I hardly like to raise the subject and all that, but, well…’

‘Why should you bother when you could possibly find it yourself and make a fortune?’

‘I wasn’t going to put it quite like that…’

‘But I got hold of your general line of thought, correct?’

‘Suppose.’

‘Simple enough,’ she said sweetly. ‘Step more than a centimetre out of line and Bottando will arrest you as a prime suspect, and throw you to the wolves to get the press off his back. I had a very hard time this morning,’ she added with some exaggeration, ‘dissuading him from locking you up immediately. He found your reasoning about why he should very convincing. And, of course, if you are innocent, you would earn the immense gratitude of almost everyone from the prime minister down to myself, if you helped.’

Argyll reached for another slice of toast, buttered it, and covered it with about a quarter inch of Beckett’s expensively imported marmalade.

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