The Immaculate Deception. Iain Pears

lay simmering inside her until Argyll once more proffered his well-meaning, and quite possibly sound, advice.

      While she was thus unemployed, Argyll was left at home, feeling terribly left out, abandoned and slighted. On the whole he hit it off well with Flavia’s work; they had cohabited nicely for years and tolerated each other with only a few hiccups along the way. He endured the frequent absences, the preoccupations and the occasional flashes of ill-humour that it generated in her, and her work, in return, had provided him with a fairly constant diet of entertainment. He had even, so he prided himself and Flavia readily acknowledged, given material assistance on a few occasions. The three-way relationship had become a little more complex when the great promotion arrived, not least because Flavia spent more time on the drudgery of policing and less time looking for stolen works of art. She had also become more like Bottando in office, more prone to calculate risks, see dangers and watch for hidden traps. This occasionally gave her a furtive, not to say suspicious, air, and Argyll was interested to note that Bottando, relieved of his position, had become more like her – full of bright, if not always respectable, ideas.

      He had been prepared for this and usually it was only an occasional problem. With this particular case, however, domestic life swiftly became all but unendurable. Information had to be winkled out of her, her usual good humour had vanished, she would not talk over, as she habitually did, even the outlines of what was going on. Quite apart from the fact that she was, in his opinion, taking an appallingly silly risk in having anything to do with it. The fact that it was her job, and that she had been brought in by the prime minister, seemed insufficient reason, in his opinion, for not ducking and diving for all she was worth.

      So, while he waited for his wife to recover herself, he lay on the sofa, considering which of his own tasks he should tackle first. This used up a great deal of time which the more censorious might have considered better spent on actually doing one of them, but Argyll was particular on the matter and wanted to get it right. So his mind wandered from topic to topic. Papers. Export regulations. The weekly shopping. Back again.

      And then he had an idea for Bottando’s farewell present. They would, of course, get him a conventional trinket of some sort to mark the occasion, but Argyll felt like producing something special. He liked the general, and Bottando liked him. He almost felt he’d miss the old fellow as much as Flavia would. And his idea was perfect. Not long ago they’d been to Bottando’s apartment for a drink; the first time Argyll had ever been there, as he rarely invited people. A dingy place it was, too, as Bottando’s bachelor existence had never had much space for housework. His apartment 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