Even more surprisingly, he was quite good at it. His boundless enthusiasm for the more obscure and impenetrable aspects of baroque iconography slowly transferred itself to some of his students. Not many, admittedly; half a dozen out of thirty or so, but this was held by his colleagues to be pretty good going considering the motley collection of raw material they had to work on.
And the great virtue of it all was that he didn’t really have to prepare anything: his only problem was deciding what to leave out. And marking. That was depressing, of course.
“Medieval monks scourged themselves with birch rods; we do the same thing with essays,” the head of his department, a Renaissance man himself, explained in a philosophic vein. “It comes to the same thing in the end. Painful and humiliating, but part of the job. And purifying, in its way: it makes you see the futility of your existence.”
There was, however, a snag. Lurking ambition, somnolent or at least beaten into submission, had been awoken once more by the transition. Old habits and pleasures came back to haunt him. Having taken the job as a temporary measure because of the flaccid state of the art market, Argyll found himself rather liking the business, despite the students. He had even taken out his doctorate, long since forgotten and mouldering on the shelves while he tried to make a living as a dealer, and dusted it off. The itch was upon him once more: the desire to see his name in print. Nothing grand. A little article, with a decent array of footnotes on some minor topic, to get him back into the mood. An excuse for ambling around in the archives. Everybody else was at it; and it was a bit awkward to have lunch with a colleague. What are you working on? It was an inevitable question. It would be pleasant to be able to answer.
What indeed, though? He had been flailing around, trying to come up with something for a couple of months. Nothing, so far, had struck his fancy. Too big, too small or done already. The universal chorus of modern academia. It occupied his mind mightily these days.
Except when there was marking. That was the little nagging detail in the back of his mind which stopped him enjoying the view of Isola Tiburtina as he trudged through the thick fumes of evening carbon monoxide and across the Ponte Garibaldi on his way home. Fifteen essays on Jesuit building programmes. Could have been worse; they might all have managed to pull themselves together and produce something. And judging by the look of it, some of the offerings were going to be a touch thin. In abstract, he loved the conscientious students who worked hard and tried. When he had to mark the result, he loathed the little swots for the reams of paper they produced. But there was nothing to be done about it; a couple of hours of his evening were going to be devoted to reading their efforts, and trying to stay calm when, as was inevitable, one of them informed him that Raphael had been a pope, or that Bernini taught Michelangelo everything he knew about sculpture.
When what he really needed was a nice quiet evening with Flavia, who had promised faithfully to be home early and cook dinner for the first time in weeks. Now that they had, tentatively, decided to recognize reality and get as married in law as they seemed to be in practice, and Argyll had settled into his new job and was no longer fretting continually about his career, life had become as blissful as it could possibly be when you were proposing to link your life’s fortunes to a woman who never knew when her job would allow her to come home.
Not her fault; police work was like that, and she did her best. But it was galling, occasionally, to be so obviously pushed into second place by a purloined chalice, however much a marvel of sixteenth-century Tuscan workmanship it undoubtedly was. All very well, once in a while. But these things kept on vanishing. The thieves never rested. Did they not feel the need for a quiet evening with their feet up now and then like everyone else?
This time, Flavia would be home; she had left a message to that effect not half an hour ago, and Argyll was looking forward to it; he had even done his duty and got all the shopping on the way home so they could have a properly civilized meal together. He was so much looking forward to it that he felt a little anticipatory skip as he turned into the vicolo di Cedro, and began the last stage of the journey home.
And met Flavia coming down the street. She gave him a quick kiss, and looked apologetic.
“You’re going back to the office, aren’t you?” he said accusingly. “I know that look.”
“‘Fraid so. Just for a while. I won’t be long.”
“Oh, Flavia. You promised …”
“Don’t worry. I won’t be long.”
“Yes, you will be.”
“Jonathan. There’s nothing I can do. Something’s come up. It really won’t take a long time. There’s a little problem.”
He scowled, his good mood evaporating.
“I’ll go and do my marking, then.”
“Good idea. And I’ll be back by the time you’re finished. Then we can have a quiet evening together.”
Grumbling to himself about essays, Argyll mounted the stairs to the third floor, said good evening to the old signora on the first floor and nodded coolly but politely to Bruno, the young lad with a taste for filling the night air with very loud and extremely bad music on the second, before fumbling in his pocket for his keys. Odd, he thought. There was a very strong inverse relationship between the volume of music and its quality. He’d never noticed it when he was young.
Two hours later, he’d finished his marking; Flavia had not yet returned. Three hours later, he’d eaten his dinner and she was still not there. Four hours later he went to bed.
“When did this come in?” Flavia asked incredulously when she got back to the office and saw the slip of paper containing a brief summary of the anonymous phone call.
The office trainee, a young, fresh-faced girl called Giulia who looked as though she should still be doing her homework before washing up for her mother, blushed with distress. It was hardly her fault; the call had come in, and there was no one to tell. She said as much.
“About five. But you weren’t here, and I did go up to the General’s office.”
“And what did he say?”
“Well, nothing,” she said reluctantly. “He was asleep.”
“And you didn’t want to wake him because you’re new here and don’t know that it is quite acceptable to give him a prod. I know. Don’t get upset. It’s not your fault.”
She sighed. Being just and fair is hard sometimes. It would have been much more satisfactory if she could have shouted at the girl.
“OK. Let’s forget about that now. Did you take the call?”
The infant nodded, realizing that the worst was over. “It was very imprecise.”
“No code-words? Not one of our regulars?”
“No. Just that there was going to be an important raid in the next few days. On this monastery, or whatever it is. San Giovanni.”
“What do they have? Are they on our list? Have you checked the computer?”
She nodded again, grateful that she had done the basics. “They were burgled a couple of years ago, and were put on the register then.” She pulled out a piece of paper the computer had disgorged an hour ago.
“In fact, they have very little. Quite a lot of gold and silver ornaments, but that is mainly kept in a bank safe deposit; General Bottando recommended that after the last time. The only thing on the list which would seem to be worth anything is a painting by Caravaggio. Which is an important painting, although according to the book, not one of his best. And according to another book, isn’t by Caravaggio at all.”
“Insured?”
“No note of it here.”
Flavia looked at her watch. Damn. Jonathan would not be pleased. She could see his point. It was some time …