The Bernini Bust by Iain Pears Page A

calculations. That fitted. No way he could have got back that fast. What a suspicious person you are, he thought.
    “And where were you?” Moresby asked.
    “Me?”
    “Yes. You. After all, if you’re going to check up on me, it’s only fair I should check up on you.”
    “Fair enough. I was in a restaurant until an hour after the murder. Lots of witnesses. No trouble there.”
    “Hmm. OK, I’ll believe you. That’s us out. That leaves that Spaniard, doesn’t it?”
    Argyll wrinkled his nose to indicate disapproval of police thought patterns. “So the police seem to think, but I don’t rate him as a murderer. He wanted to sell your father too much sculpture. Killing the goose is one thing, but a sensible person would wait until it laid an egg or two. Besides, Hector’s always appallingly polite to clients. Shooting them is not in his book of etiquette. On the other hand, I must admit that until he turns up he’s likely to be the front runner.”
    “You reckon?”
    “Yes. But I’m sure he’ll reappear. He hardly seemed homicidal when I talked to him just before the murder. Did he?”
    Moresby confessed he didn’t really know how homicidal tendencies manifested themselves in party conversation.
    “I rather suspected your stepmother, myself,” Argyll confessed, not sure whether this was a good thing to say. Jack didn’t seem to mind. “But Morelli tells me she’d already left and has an alibi from her chauffeur. Are you sure she was having an affair?”
    “Oh, sure. Lots of absences, extended shopping expeditions, weekends away with girlfriends. Easy enough to work out.”
    “And your father knew?”
    “He did after I’d rung his office to tell him, yes.” Jack looked at him curiously. “I suppose you reckon that’s pretty disgusting, eh? And you’re right. But that bitch poisoned his mind to get me cut out, and all I was doing was fighting back. Fair’s fair.
    “I guess it’s sad I didn’t see the old man before he died,” he went on meditatively. “I shouldn’t have left so soon. Hadn’t seen him for, oh, must have been six months or so. Call me an old sentimentalist, but I would have given a lot just to have called him a mean old bastard one more time. By way of farewell. You know.”
    Argyll nodded understandingly. “Well, I’m glad you’re taking it OK. Just came to see.”
    “Appreciate it. Come up for a proper drink sometime.”
    Argyll considered it. “Thanks. Maybe I will. But I think I’ll go back to Rome in a few days. If I stay here much longer I’ll probably get run over.”
    “Safest drivers in the world, we Californians.”
    “Tell that to the driver of the purple truck that nearly took my kneecaps off.”
    Moresby looked sympathetic.
    “Of course, it might have been my fault,” Argyll said, determined to be fair. “Partly, at least.”
    “Don’t say that,” Moresby advised. “Never admit fault. Then you can sue the driver if you find him.”
    “I don’t want to sue him.”
    “But if he finds you, he might sue you.”
    “What on earth for?”
    “Emotional distress caused by the closeness of damage to his fender. Sort of things courts take seriously out here.”
    Only just convinced that Moresby was joking, Argyll took his leave, first asking for directions back to his hotel. His sense of direction was such that he could well have landed in the Rockies without guidance at every turn. Right, right and left at the bar, Moresby said. Then follow your nose. Yes, it does serve food. Argyll didn’t want any, really, but thought it would be a good place to stop, so he could get more directions and soak up the whisky. Just in case.
    He did. Ate a vegetarian hamburger of mind-boggling awfulness, drank a cup of coffee so weak you could see through it, and proceeded to round off a perfect day in a hospital bed with a broken leg.
    It was perfectly simple. He drove all the way back to the hotel without making a single wrong turn, had a shower and then headed up the