The Last Judgement

It seemed time to be open and honest about things; weaving tangled webs had got him nowhere, after all. But it might well turn out that Besson and Guynemer were bosom buddies and he would be thrown out on his ear in a matter of minutes if he were straightforward. In which case it would be a case of so near and yet...

‘Before I say, can I ask why he left?’

‘We decided that he was not suitable,’ Guynemer parried back. ‘A clash of personalities. Your turn.’

‘This picture, if it was stolen, subsequently turned up in Besson’s hands. I don’t know yet how it got there.’

‘Probably because he stole it,’ Guynemer said simply. ‘He’s that sort of person. That’s why he wasn’t suitable. When we found out. We hired him as an expert in tracking paintings down and getting their owners to lend them. Then we discovered that we were in effect helping to introduce a wolf into a sheep pen, so to speak. The police got wind of it and came to warn us. Once I saw the dossier on him—’

‘Ah.’

‘So, if I may take it one stage further for you, he would have known where this picture was, and may well have visited the house where it was kept. Draw any conclusions from that you want.’

‘Right. Did you not like him?’

The subject of Besson did nothing for Guynemer’s amiability. Clearly he had a lot to say, but decided against saying it. However, he indicated that they were not close.

‘But I think I should go and find out about your picture, do you not?’

And he disappeared for about five minutes, leaving Argyll to stew silently.

‘You’re in luck,’ he said when he returned.

‘It was stolen?’

‘That I couldn’t tell you. But I spoke to the owner’s assistant, and she is prepared to meet you to discuss the matter.’

‘Why couldn’t this woman just say?’

‘Possibly because she doesn’t know.’

‘Is that likely?’

Guynemer shrugged. ‘No more unlikely than anything you’ve told me. Ask yourself. She will meet you at Ma Bourgogne in the Place des Vosges at eight-thirty.’

‘And now can you tell me who is the possible owner?’

‘A man called Jean Rouxel.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Of him. Of course. A very distinguished man. Old now, but immensely influential in his day. He’s just been awarded some prize. It was in all the papers a month or so ago.’

Research is the secret of the good dealer; this was the little motto that Argyll had adopted in the few years since he had taken up the business. It wasn’t necessarily true; at least, it was clear that he knew an awful lot about pictures he hadn’t managed to sell, while colleagues unloaded others so fast they wouldn’t have had time to find out about them even if they’d been so minded.

Clients were a different matter. However philistine some dealers may be — and many take a very jaundiced view indeed of the things they sell and the people they sell to — all believe that the more you know about a client the better. Not about the ones who wander in off the street, see something they like and buy; they don’t matter. It’s the private clients who deserve this treatment, the ones who, if you work out their tastes and inclinations properly, may come back again and again. Such people vary from the idiots who like to say loudly at dinner parties ‘My dealer tells me...’ right through to the serious, judicious collector who knows what he wants — ninety nine out of hundred collectors are men — and will buy if you provide it. The former type is lucrative, but no pleasure to deal with; a good relationship with the latter can be as enjoyable as it is profitable.

So Argyll set to work on Jean Rouxel, not in the hope, this time, of selling him anything, but merely to know what he was getting involved in. For this task he had to go to the Beaubourg, which houses the only library in Paris regularly open after six o’clock in the evening. Fortunately it was not raining; the place becomes strangely popular when it’s wet, and queues form outside the door.

Merely being in the place put him in a bad mood. Argyll liked to think of himself as a liberal sort, open to modern ideas and a fully paid-up believer in the notion that education was a good thing. The more people had it, the better the world would be. Stood to reason, although in the twentieth century the available evidence seemed to contradict the idea. Many academics he’d met didn’t help the argument, either.

Being on the fifth floor of the Pompidou Centre, however, made Argyll’s belief wobble. The building itself he loathed: all that dirty glass and peeling paintwork on pipes. Classical buildings can take grime; a bit of weathering even improves them sometimes. The high-tech look just seems battered, sad and miserable when it stops being squeaky-clean.

Then there was the library itself, a haven of popular learning. The trouble was that it was the intellectual equivalent of a fast-food outlet. It was the reverence Argyll missed. Just another consumer temple, offering information instead of clothes or food. Take your pick; Socrates or Chanel, Aristotle or Asterix, they all become of equal value in the Beaubourg.