was the place he slept in, had showers in and kept his clothes in, little more. They’d only been there for twenty minutes before going to a restaurant nearby.
All the more remarkable, then, to see the little picture above the long-extinct fireplace, covering up the old stained wallpaper. The only thing in the entire place, in fact, that wasn’t strictly utilitarian; Bottando had spent much of his career recovering paintings, but never seemed to have wanted actually to have any himself.
But this one was lovely; oil on panel, 8 inches by 11, somewhat bashed and battered, and a representation of the Virgin with a baby flying around in the air just above her head. Unorthodox. Quirky. Not your average Virgin, in fact. Her face was uncommonly pretty, and the painter had added two extra characters on their knees before her, praying devoutly. It was nice, was in decent condition, and an asset to any mantelpiece. Little sign of heavy-handed restoration, though the inevitable bit of touching up was visible here and there. He guessed 1480s or thereabouts and central Italian in origin, although it was so far out of his usual area of operation he was incapable of being more precise. But, and it was an important but in his mind, it gave him a little tingle down his back.
‘What’s this?’ he’d asked, standing as close as possible.
Bottando had paused, and looked. ‘Oh, that,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘It was a present, given to me long ago.’
‘Lucky you. What is it?’
‘I’ve no idea. Nothing special in itself, I think.’
‘Where does it come from?’
Another shrug.
‘May I…?’ Argyll said, taking it off the wall before Bottando could say, no, I’d rather you didn’t…
He’d looked more closely and saw that the damage and wear and tear were more obvious. Flaking in one part, scratches in another, but not bad nevertheless. Then he’d turned it over. No useful scribbles, just a little piece of paper stuck on, with a little stamp that looked like a house, and a number – 382 – written in faded ink. Not one that Argyll knew. He’d shrugged, and put it back, and later jotted down the mark in a little notebook he kept for these things; it was one of his rare shows of organization. Useful things, owners’ marks; the only decent dictionary of them had been published three-quarters of a century previously and was so out of date and incomplete it was only occasionally helpful. Argyll had the vague notion that one day he might publish a supplement, and ensure his ever-lasting fame. ‘Is it in Argyll?’ People would ask in decades to come. Or they would, if he ever got around to doing it.
And now, nine months later, the picture and the mark came back to him. That could be his present. He could track it down. Figure out what it was, where it had come from, who had owned it. Make all the details up into a little report. A gesture, nothing more than that, but a nice thing to have, he thought. Personal. Individual. Better than the little print or watercolour the office whip-round would probably produce.
The iconographies were of little help, but a start. Virgins with airborne babies were generally taken to be an early representation of the Immaculate Conception, long before the doctrine took over the hearts and minds of the religiously-inclined. The two figures kneeling before her probably had the faces of the donors, but might well also represent Mary’s parents. And if it was an Immaculate Conception, then it had probably been painted for the Franciscans, who were early enthusiasts for the idea of Mary being born without sin. But he had no artist or even school to start with; just a guess at date and region. All he had was his note of the little stamp on the back. Great oaks from little acorns grow. Argyll phoned his old employer, Edward Byrnes, who said he’d ask around. He always said this, and rarely did anything about it.
This time it was different: within an hour Byrnes sent him a fax about an offer from a colleague for one of the pictures in his sale, saying that in his opinion the price was good and should be accepted, and added at the bottom of his note that he had tracked down the little house mark.
‘According to those people old enough to remember, it certainly refers to Robert Stonehouse, who formed a collection of some worth between the wars. This was broken up in the 1960s; I have looked through the catalogue of the sale for you, but the obvious match won’t take you much further. It is given as “Florentine school, late fifteenth century”, although considering how wayward these people can be sometimes on attributions it could be by Picasso. It sold for ninety-five pounds so we can assume that no one in London at the time rated it. Stonehouse’s villa in Tuscany went to some American university; they might know more.’
Another hour with the reference books, books of memoirs and other impedimenta of the trade brought some more details about the collection – enough at least to indicate that Byrnes’s description of the collection as being ‘of some worth’ was a trifle cool. It had, in fact, been a very good collection indeed. A standard story, such as he knew it; Grandad Stonehouse had made the money in jute or some such, son Stonehouse came over all artistic and retired to a magnificent villa in Italy, from which vantage point he not only bought his pictures but also kept a canny eye on the stock market, being one of the few to do very handsomely out of the great crash of 1929 – a calamity that caused art prices the world over to collapse, much to the delight of those collectors who’d hung on to their money.
The great and traditional cycle was completed in the third generation with the last Robert Stonehouse, who had his father’s expensive tastes but lacked his grandfather’s attention to financial detail. The result was the break-up of the collection, the dispersal of all those works of art to museums around the world, and the sale of the villa to the American university which established some form of summer camp in the building which had once echoed to the voices of the leading literary and artistic figures of Europe.
So far, so ordinary, and there was nothing in the tale which might help. The point that tickled Argyll’s interest was that the second Stonehouse, by repute, had seen himself as an artist-collector, whose accumulations were not merely an assorted lumping together of high quality bric-a-brac, but an artistic ensemble in their own right, every painting and tapestry and bronze and sculpture and majolica and print and drawing carefully acquired to form a perfect and complete harmony. An obscure achievement, certainly, one that virtually no one could ever appreciate, but a remarkable accomplishment none the less. A tragedy, in its way, that the whole thing was dispersed, but that was the point. In its way, Argyll thought loftily as he poured himself another drink and put his feet up on the sofa to contemplate his inspiration, collecting was the original performance art, transitory, fleeting and evanescent. Called into existence for one brief moment, then blown away on the winds of change as economics had their corrosive effect.
And theft. Seen in that way, theft could be presented as an aesthetic act, part of the never-ending process of breaking up and re-forming groups of pictures. Good heavens, he thought, I might even write my paper on this. Bottando’s little gift and the conference taken care of in one fell swoop. Kill two birds with one Stonehouse, so to speak. Windy, no doubt, insubstantial and vague, perhaps, but just the sort of thing that goes down well at conferences. Besides, time was running short. He really had to get on with it soon, and he had no other ideas at all.
His labours didn’t fill in any details about the little Virgin, however, although it gave him hope. If it had caught the eye of Stonehouse, there might be something to it; merely mentioning its provenance should add a fair amount to its value if Bottando ever wanted to sell it. Provenance hunting is a compulsive hobby in its own right, and once started it is difficult to stop. There is always the temptation to see if you can push the picture just a little bit further back into the past. Argyll had got back firmly only to 1966 and had pinned down only one previous owner. He still knew very little and in any case the idea for the paper had tickled his fancy. And Flavia was so preoccupied and grumpy that he would hardly be missed. Better to
