The Raphael Affair. Iain Pears

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      Argyll swung in through a door in the via Condotti and mounted the stairs. He walked quickly past the janitor at the bottom, waving in a familiar sort of style. He should, properly, have shown the card which proved he was entitled to visit Rome’s foreign press club. As he didn’t have one, that was difficult. Janitors in Rome, anyway, don’t often care too much about minor details.

      He headed for the bar, an unattractive, tubular steel and artificial wood affair, sat down and ordered an aperitif. Then he looked around and spotted his quarry. Rudolf Beckett could be seen in the next room, alone at a table, eating a late lunch. A large glass of whisky rested in front of him. Argyll walked over and sat down.

      ‘Jonathan. What brings you back to Rome?’ Beckett thumped him on the shoulder with one hand, and shook his hand vigorously with the other. He had become one of Argyll’s closest friends during his stay in Rome a year or so back. They had run into each other at a minor diplomatic party on the via Giulia. Both had felt out of place, so had naturally spent much of the evening drinking their host’s alcohol and being rude about the guests. Afterwards they had gone on to a bar nearby and drunk some more. It had cemented the friendship.

      Not that they had anything in common. Argyll was a quiet and somewhat introverted Englishman, Beckett an aggressive workaholic with a permanent shake derived from too much drink, too little sleep, and all-consuming neuroses about the next story, the next cheque and whether anybody really liked him. As Argyll clearly did, he had never borne the brunt of one of the tumultuous outbursts of rage that made Beckett’s colleagues a little wary of his company.

      ‘Wild geese,’ he replied to the greeting. ‘I’ve just been let out of jail.’

      Beckett suppressed a smirk.

      ‘No jokes, please,’ he continued, to head off the quip that the journalist was obviously on the verge of uttering. ‘I’m not resilient enough yet. I was wondering if you wanted a nice story.’

      ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Course I do. Depending on what it is. As long as you remember I can’t pay anything for it.’

      ‘I don’t want anything like that. To see it in print would be enough.’

      Argyll then retold the story of his discovery and the incursion of Sir Edward Byrnes, ending with his night in the cell. ‘My discovery. Pinched. Just like that. Could you write something so everyone knows what really happened? Otherwise Byrnes will get all the credit as well as all the money.’

      ‘Nice story,’ commented Beckett, finishing off another whisky and moving straight on to a large grappa. ‘But the lead is the Raphael, not your being diddled. However, an expert hack like myself will be able to do it. Great discovery, famous artist, etc., etc. Then a bit of stuff about you further down, undermining the whole thing and making Byrnes out to be a proper toad. Easy.

      ‘You’ll forgive me, though, but I must check up on the story first. A few phone calls, here and there, that sort of thing. OK? Feel better? You don’t look as though you’ve been greatly enjoying the eternal city.’

      ‘I haven’t. The only good thing that’s happened so far has been having dinner with that policewoman last night…’

      ‘That does sound bad.’

      ‘Not at all. She’s very lovely. Remarkably lovely, in fact. As I’ve got to go back to London tomorrow, it doesn’t really matter, though.’

      As Beckett explained in a letter a few weeks later, it wasn’t really his fault, and he sent his original article to prove it. He had written the story as promised: revelation about a possible new Raphael, attributed to ‘museum sources’; a quotation of cautious optimism from Byrnes, a few comments from a couple of art historians, then some quite well-researched background about other remarkable discoveries in the past few years. From there on, Beckett had written about Argyll and had clearly and concisely got the message across. Young graduate student cheated by machinations of sly dealer. It didn’t actually say that, of course, but the general implication was crystal clear. It was a good article.

      Unfortunately, it was a bit too good. He had sent it off to the editor of his paper in New York and this man had been excited by it. So it had gone on the front page, left side, single column, instead of in the arts section as Beckett had expected. But it was a busy time of year. A summit meeting was in the offing, another bribery and corruption scandal had broken out among local politicians, the administration was indulging in another spate of Libya-bashing. The editor hadn’t wanted to run the story over on to an inside page. So he made it fit by cutting it down a bit, and had sliced off the bottom seven paragraphs. With these went all mention of Argyll.

      In every other respect, the article worked wonders, and stimulated enormous public interest. Over the next few months, all of Argyll’s predictions to Flavia about the Raphael came true. The story of the eighteenth-century fraud and its discovery captured the imagination. The New York Times colour supplement, and the arts supplement of the London Observer, duly carried lengthy accounts of the art-historical detective work which had led to the pot of gold. They, also, neglected to mention Argyll, but were otherwise solidly written. Byrnes’s sales campaign was well under way.

      Argyll indulged his sense of mild masochism by collecting the articles. All sorts of critics and historians invaded what he had previously considered to be his turf. The diligent research of others produced dozens of little fragments to complete his partial picture and show the results of his haste. One article reproduced letters from the Earl’s brother-in-law indicating he had died of a heart attack from shock at the fraud, and that the family had covered up their loss for fear of embarrassment: ‘Rest assured, dear sister, no fault attaches to you for the attack. Such an event was entirely due to his own injudicious choice and hasty character. But these matters will remain between us alone; the disgrace to our family, and the scorn of certain of our friends could not be tolerated…’ That particularly outraged him. He had seen the same letter, but had decided it was inconclusive. Now everything else was clear, so was the letter.

      What was worse was that all these little articles meant that even the modest piece he had planned for the Burlington Magazine was not possible; everything had already been published at least once. He avoided his friends and found a peculiar form of solace in going back to the Life and Times of Carlo Mantini, 1675-1729. At least he could finish that. It wouldn’t be so good now that one of his central chapters had become about as original as the plot of Romeo and Juliet, but it would do.

      He was also correct in assuming that Byrnes, one of nature’s salesmen despite his mild manner, would turn the whole СКАЧАТЬ