Death and Restoration Read Online Free PDF Page B

Was. There is a big difference. I told you. I’m retired.”
    “Somehow I find that difficult to believe …”
    “Look,” she said patiently. “I am on holiday. Nothing sinister at all. I just hope that I can convince you eventually. If I can, I am sure your sanctimoniousness will evaporate and you’ll become a normal human being again.”
    “Sanctimonious? Me? You turn up here out of the blue …”
    “I know. You’re in shock …”
    “Really?”’ asked Flavia brightly as she came in through the door with pasta and a couple of bottles of wine. “What about?”’
    “With sheer pleasure at seeing me,” Mrs Verney said smoothly.
    “Yes,” Flavia said. “Isn’t it nice? When I noticed she was here, I thought, how nice it would be …”
    Mrs Verney smiled. “And here I am. I’m delighted to see you both again. I’m most anxious to hear all your news. How are you both? Married yet?”’
    “In the autumn,” Flavia said. “That is the plan.”
    “Oh, congratulations, my dears. Congratulations. I must send you a wedding present. I hope you will both be very happy.”
    “Thank you. I was wondering whether you would like to have dinner with us. Unless you’re busy, that is …”
    “I’d be delighted. But I was going to invite the both of you. If there’s a decent restaurant nearby …?”’
    “That is kind. Why not?”’
    They smiled at each other with total lack of sincerity. Argyll scowled at both of them.
    “Not me, I’m afraid,” he said with entirely fake regret as he saw his opportunity and patted the pile of essays by his side. “Confined to barracks.”
    Five minutes of a routine attempt at persuasion followed, but he stood firm, and although it cost him disapproving comments about being an old misery, he eventually saw the pair of them off to the restaurant round the corner which was their usual eating place when cooking seemed too much to bear. He had a miserable meal of pasta instead, followed by two hours of essays. Not an ideal evening; not what he’d planned at all. But in comparison to the alternative it seemed positively heavenly.
    It was an agreeable meal; no doubt about it. Pleasant little trattoria, simple but delicious food and that combination of amiable informality that only Italian restaurants ever seem to manage properly. The two women chatted happily throughout, working their way through a fund of gossip like long-lost friends. Flavia even enjoyed herself. The same could not be said for Mary Verney.
    She was seriously, deeply alarmed. It was too much to expect that the Italian police wouldn’t notice her arrival, but she had assumed that demarcation disputes, bureaucracy and lack of manpower would delay things. She had done her best to be invisible, arriving by train rather than aircraft because checks at airports were better, not using her credit card, that sort of thing. It must have been the hotel registration that did it. Odd that; she’d believed no one bothered with those sort of checks any more. Evidently wrong. Maybe it was the computers. It just showed how old she was getting.
    And instead of coming to police attention in a week or so, or not at all, they had noted her on her first day, and gone out of their way to make that clear. It was obvious that Flavia didn’t know why she was here, but it was likely she would be watched; and that would cramp her insufferably.
    She poured herself a whisky when she got back to her hotel room to think it over. She had stayed in the Borgognoni once before, in 1973. It was an ideal hotel, even nicer now it was under new management and had been redecorated. Then it had been comfortably luxurious and had the inestimable advantage of being within a few minutes’ walk from the Barberini Gallery. As she had been in Rome to steal a picture from the Barberini—a small but delightful Martini, which she had been seriously tempted to keep for herself—it could not have been better. But the feature which tipped her finally in