LITMIR.BIZ

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venture, it was tough earning a decent living. The market was bad. The only thing worse was conversation with colleagues, as they managed to talk about nothing else except how dismal life was at the moment.

      ‘Who is this man with money, anyway?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t want any nice baroque religious pieces, does he?’

      ‘Got a surfeit, have you?’

      ‘One or two.’

      ‘Sorry. Not as far as I know, anyway. He particularly wants this one. The only problem is how to bring him and it into contact soon enough to satisfy my creditors.’

      ‘I wish you luck. Have you had it for a long time?’

      ‘No. I wouldn’t spend money on something like this unless I knew I could unload it fast. Not at the moment. You know how it is …’

      Argyll did indeed. He was in something of the same position himself. A properly disciplined art dealer would act like any other business. Small stock, high turnover. The picture trade didn’t seem to work like that, somehow. Paintings just demand to be bought, even though there may be no client in sight. So Argyll had lots of them now; many had been hanging around for months, and almost no one was buying anything.

      ‘Now, about these drawings,’ Delorme continued.

      And so they got down to some hard bargaining. It wasn’t so difficult, considering that Delorme’s bank was pressuring him to sell something and Argyll was more or less under orders to buy the drawings whatever the price. It was the only thing keeping him going at the moment, his part-time post as European agent for an American museum. Without that he would have been in real trouble. It had been decided months ago that it really ought to have a Prints and Drawings collection, as it had a Prints and Drawings room with nothing to put in it. So when Argyll mentioned that he’d heard of a Boucher portfolio wandering around the Paris market, he’d been instructed to go and get it. And if he saw anything else …

      He had. He’d dropped in on Delorme, whom he’d met a year or so back, and the Frenchman mentioned this Pontormo sketch. A quick telephone call to California and the bargaining could get under way.

      The mutually enjoyable haggle ended satisfactorily; more than the drawing would have fetched on the open market, but a decent price none the less. A little ruthlessly, Argyll exploited the fact that Delorme evidently needed the cash. One thing about the Moresby Museum, it paid fast. Business was concluded with a promise of cash on delivery, a cup of coffee, a shake of the hand and a mutual sense of well-being. All that was needed now was a rudimentary letter of contract.

      The only snag was the tiresome business of getting all his drawings off to California. Argyll just about knew his way around the Italian bureaucratic labyrinth; the French one was entirely different. He wasn’t looking forward to spending the next couple of days hanging around offices in Paris, trying to get all the forms signed.

      Then he – maybe it was a hint from Delorme that jogged his mind – had one of those little ideas which are devastatingly brilliant in their simplicity.

      ‘Tell you what,’ he said.

      ‘Hmm?’

      ‘That picture. Your Death of Socrates. How about me taking it to Rome for you, to deliver to this client of yours? In return, you could do the paperwork for these drawings and send them off for me.’

      Delorme thought about it. ‘That’s not a bad idea, you know. Not bad at all. When would you go?’

      ‘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,’

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