‘Tomorrow morning. I’m finished here. The only thing keeping me was the prospect of getting all the export licences.’
The Frenchman nodded as he thought it over. ‘Why not?’ he said eventually. ‘Why not indeed? It would be more convenient than you can imagine, in fact.’
‘Will it need export permission as well?’
Delorme shook his head. ‘Well, technically, maybe. But it’s only a formality. I’ll deal with that, don’t worry. You just take it out and I’ll square it with the powers that be.’
OK, so it was a little bit dishonest. But not much. It was hardly as if he were taking out the Mona Lisa. The only tiresome thing was that it meant Argyll would have to carry it by hand. Packers and shippers require lots of formal bits of paper with stamps on them.
‘Who is the lucky buyer?’ Argyll asked, ready to write the name and address down on the back of a cigarette packet. Somehow he had missed the Filofax generation.
‘A man called Arthur Muller,’ replied Delorme.
‘OK. Address?’
Delorme fumbled around — he was almost as badly organized — then fished out a scrap of paper and dictated. It was a street Argyll didn’t know, up in the north where the rich folk live. No great trouble; of course, it was a little below his dignity as an up-and-coming international dealer to be running around acting as someone else’s courier, but that didn’t matter so much. Everybody’s life would be made a lot simpler; and that was what counted. With the feeling that he had accomplished something useful on this trip after all, he wandered off into the street for lunch.
The next morning, he was sitting in the great restaurant of the Gare de Lyon, drinking a coffee and sitting out the twenty minutes or so before his train left on the journey south. His early arrival — he’d been in the station for half an hour or so already — was due to a combination of factors. Partly it was because he was congenitally incapable of giving trains a chance to sneak off without him; he liked to have them under his eye well in advance just in case they got ideas.
Next, the Gare de Lyon was, of all the stations in the world, his favourite. It brought a touch of the Mediterranean into the gloomy, north-European air. The tracks stretched off into the distance, heading for those magical places he had adored long before he ever ventured out of his wind-swept little island to see them for himself. Lyon, Orange, Marseille, Nice; on to Genoa, through the hills of Tuscany to Florence and Pisa, then across the plains of the Campagna to Rome before heading ever further south to Naples. Warmth, sun, terracotta-coloured buildings, and an easy-going, relaxed gentleness completely alien to the lands bordering the North Sea.
The station itself reflected this in its exuberant architecture and pompous, ridiculous and entirely lovable bar, covered with gilt and plasterwork and swags and paintings, all combining to evoke the earthly paradise at the far end of the track. It was almost enough to make the most hardbitten of travellers forget he was in Paris, and that the rain was still coming down in cold, wet, autumnal torrents.
The bar was fairly empty, so he was mildly surprised when he suddenly acquired some company. With a polite ‘May I...?’ a man in his late thirties sat down beside him. Very French, he was, with his green Alpine raincoat, casually expensive grey jacket. A very Gallic face as well, darkly handsome and marred only by a small scar above his left eyebrow that was partly hidden by the long dark hair that swept down from a high-domed forehead in the peculiar cut that France’s educated middle classes seem to favour. Argyll nodded politely, the man nodded back and, the requirements of civilization satisfied, both settled back to hide behind their respective papers.
‘Excuse me,’ said the man in French as Argyll was halfway through a depressing account of a cricket match in Australia. ‘Do you have a light?’
He fumbled through his pocket, fished out a bashed box, and looked in it. Then he took out his cigarettes and looked in that also. No cigarettes either. This was becoming serious.
They commiserated together for a while, and the Englishman considered the awful implications of a thousand-mile train journey without nicotine.
‘If you’d guard my bag,’ said the man opposite, ‘I’ll go and get some from the platform. I need a new packet myself.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Argyll.
‘Do you know the time, by the way?’ he said as he got up to go.
Argyll looked at his watch. ‘Quarter past ten.’
‘Damn,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘My wife is meant to be meeting me here at any moment. She always gets so upset if I’m not where I say I’ll be. I’m afraid we’ll have to go without.’
Argyll thought about this. Obviously, if this man was prepared to trust him with his bags, then it should be safe to reverse the process. ‘I’ll go instead,’ he offered.
‘Would you? That’s very good of you.’
And with an encouraging smile, he promised to guard the bags faithfully until Argyll returned. It’s one thing about the international confraternity of smokers. Members know how to behave properly. It’s what comes of being an embattled and persecuted minority. You stick together.
Argyll was halfway out of the door when he realized he hadn’t brought any money with him. All the small change he had was in the pocket of his overcoat, lying draped over the chair. So he cursed, turned round and mounted the cast-iron steps back to the bar.
As Flavia explained afterwards, not that he needed any explanation by then, it was the oldest trick in the book. Start up a conversation, win their confidence, distract their attention. Compared with someone as naturally trusting and gullible as Argyll, babies would probably put up a more spirited resistance defending their candy.
But fortune, this grey morning, decided to give him a break. He got to the entrance door just in time to see the man who was meant to be guarding his bags disappearing through the door on the far side of the room. Tucked under his arm was a brown paper package about three feet by two. Approximately the same size as paintings of the Death of Socrates tend to be.
‘Oy,’ called Argyll in some distress.
Then he ran like fury in pursuit, appalling consequences flowing through his mind. He was sure the painting wasn’t worth much; but he was equally sure he would have to refund more than his bank balance could withstand if he let it get away. It wasn’t courage that made him fly across the bar, then run three steps at a time down the stairs. It was simple terror at the thought of this painting escaping him. Some dealers are insured against this sort of thing. But insurance companies, even the most amiable, do not look very sympathetically on claims for thefts committed on paintings left unguarded in bars in the company of total strangers.
Argyll was no sportsman. While not badly coordinated, he had never really thought it worth his while to spend much time trotting around cold, muddy fields in pursuit of inflated bladders. A decorous game of croquet he could manage, but greater athleticism was not at all to his taste.
For this reason the flying tackle he produced, running at full tilt and launching himself from a distance at the legs of the disappearing Frenchman was all the more miraculous for having no forebears. One onlooker in the crowded railway concourse even burst into spontaneous applause — the French, more than most, appreciate elegance on the rugger pitch — at the perfectly timed way in which he flew at low altitude through the air, connected with the man’s knees, brought him down, did a half-roll, grabbed the parcel and stood up, clutching the prize to his chest.
The wretched man didn’t know what had hit him; the violence of Argyll’s assault, and the hard concrete floor, knocked the wind out of him and apparently did severe damage to the funny-bone of his right knee. Easy pickings, if Argyll had had the presence of mind to call for the police. But he wasn’t thinking about that; rather he was too busy clutching the painting, relief at his success and distress at his own stupidity over-whelming him.