The Bernini Bust. Iain Pears

replaced the cloth and made the object once more a fairly unobtrusive shape under a sheet.

      Morelli was in a bad mood. He had just been turned down for a promotion and felt a summer cold coming on. He’d been on duty for eighteen hours and badly wanted a shave, a shower, a decent meal and some peace. On top of that he had chronic gum inflammation and dreaded the prospect of a visit to the dentist. It wasn’t the pain; that he could cope with. It was the bill that would follow that alarmed him. As his dentist kept on telling him, fixing gums was an expensive business. The man collected antique cars, so it must be profitable as well. Detective Morelli wasn’t sure whether his gums were really going, or whether the dentist merely wanted a new carburettor for his 1928 Bugatti.

      ‘Do you need any help?’ Argyll asked, thinking it was a supportive thing to say. No harm in offering, after all.

      The detective looked scornful. ‘From you? Don’t trouble yourself.’

      ‘No trouble at all, honestly,’ he said brightly.

      Morelli was halfway through indicating that the Los Angeles homicide division, having managed without Jonathan Argyll for more than half a century, could probably stagger on without him for a bit longer when a pained groan came from the other recumbent form on the floor. Thanet, when he collapsed, had done so inconsiderately, straight in front of the door, causing a major bottleneck to traffic. The groan was caused by a large police boot inadvertently kicking him in the ribs.

      ‘Oh, the Sleeping Beauty,’ Morelli said, then turned to Argyll. ‘You really want to be useful? Bring him round and get him out of the way. Get yourself out of the way while you’re at it.’

      So Argyll did, bending over the director and slowly helping him to his feet. Propping him up uncertainly, he called to Morelli that they’d be down the corridor, if needed. Then he steered Thanet in that direction, settled him on a sofa and fussed around vainly trying to open windows and, more successfully, to provide glasses of water.

      Thanet was no great shakes at conversation for some time. He stared at Argyll owlishly for several minutes before the power of speech returned.

      ‘What happened?’ he asked, with a striking lack of originality.

      Argyll shrugged. ‘I was rather hoping you’d tell me that. You were on the scene. I’m just a nosy passerby.’

      ‘No, no. Not at all,’ he said. ‘First I knew was when Barclay came running back to the museum, telling people to phone the police. He said there’d been some sort of accident.’

      ‘He must be a bit thick if he thought that was an accident,’ Argyll commented.

      ‘I think he was concerned not to let on too much to the newspaper men around. They always turn up. Can’t keep anything secret from them, you know.’

      ‘He found the body?’

      ‘Mr Moresby said he was going to use my office to talk to di Souza…’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Why what?’

      ‘He could talk to him anywhere, couldn’t he?’

      Thanet frowned disapprovingly at the Englishman’s concentration on irrelevancies. ‘Di Souza wanted to talk about that bust and it’s in my office. Anyway, later on…’

      Argyll opened his mouth to ask how much later on. This concentration on detail was a habit he’d picked up from Flavia over the years. But he decided it might throw Thanet off his stride, so shut it again.

      ‘…later on, Mr Moresby used the internal phone to call Barclay and told him to come over. He went, and found…that. We called the police.’

      Argyll had about two dozen questions he wanted to ask, but made the grave mistake of pausing briefly to arrange them in order of importance. What was the conversation with di Souza about? Where was di Souza? What time was this? And so on. Unfortunately, Thanet took advantage of the momentary silence to wander off in pursuit of his own thoughts.

      These came across as almost entirely selfish, although this was perhaps forgivable under the circumstances. Samuel Thanet had never liked Moresby; no one had. While it was dreadful that the man should be shot, to Thanet’s way of thinking it was much more terrible that such an event should take place in his office and in his museum. The worst thing of all was that it should take place before Moresby had made his announcement about the Big Museum. Had all the relevant documents been signed? He’d be frantic with worry until he found out.

      ‘I assume that all the papers were drawn up and signed in advance,’ he said. ‘But it really couldn’t have come at a worse time.’

      ‘You mean to tell me that Moresby was topped just before he publicly committed himself to this project? Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

      Thanet stared at him blankly. Clearly, everything struck him as odd at the moment. But before he could reply, the door opened and Detective Morelli, hair ever more rumpled and rubbing his inflamed gums in a thoughtful fashion, walked in.

      ‘Case in your room,’ he said flatly. ‘What is it?’

      Thanet paused a moment while he collected his thoughts. ‘Case?’ he asked.

      ‘Big wooden thing.’

      ‘Oh, that. That’s the Bernini. It hasn’t been opened yet.’

      ‘Yes, it has. It’s empty. What’s a Bernini, anyway?’

      Thanet’s mouth flapped around uncertainly for a while before he stood up and rushed out of the room. The other two trailed after him, and reached his office just in time to see him bent over the large wooden box scrabbling around desperately among all the packing inside.

      ‘Told you,’ Morelli said.

      Thanet re-emerged with little bits of plastic padding in his thinning hair, white with shock.

      ‘This is terrible, terrible,’ he said. ‘The bust has gone. Four million dollars, and it wasn’t insured.’

      It occurred to Morelli and Argyll simultaneously that Thanet was more obviously upset about the Bernini than he was about Moresby.

      Argyll suggested that it was a little careless not to insure it.

      ‘The insurance came into operation tomorrow morning, when we were going to move it into the museum. The company won’t cover stuff in the administration building. It’s not secure enough for them. Langton had it put here temporarily so Moresby could inspect it if he wanted. We didn’t feel he should have to go down to the storerooms.’

      ‘Where is Hector di Souza?’ Argyll asked, finally deciding that this was the central point that needed to be answered.

      Thanet looked blank. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he replied, looking around as though he expected to see the Spaniard emerging from a cupboard.

      There was a brief interlude as Morelli asked who di Souza was and Argyll explained.

      ‘Señor di Souza brought the bust over from Europe. He was upset about something and wanted to talk to Moresby. They came over here to discuss it in Thanet’s office. Some time later, Barclay discovers the body and presumably by then the bust had gone as well.’

      Morelli nodded in a fashion which communicated understanding and profound irritation in equal parts. ‘And why didn’t you mention this di Souza before?’ he asked Thanet. It was clearly a rhetorical question as he didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he picked up a phone and gave instructions that di Souza was to be found as fast as possible.

      ‘If you ask me…’ Argyll began, thinking that Morelli would undoubtedly want the benefit of his experience.

      ‘I’m not,’ the detective pointed out kindly.

      ‘Yes, but…’

      ‘Out,’ he said, pointing helpfully to the door, lest there be any confusion about where the stairs were situated.

      ‘All