Giotto's Hand

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General Taddeo Bottando’s triumphantly successful campaign towards the unmasking of the shadowy English art dealer, Geoffrey Forster, as the most extraordinary thief of his generation began with a letter, postmarked Rome, that turned up on his desk on the third floor of the Art Theft Department on a particularly fine morning in late July.

Initially, this small hand grenade of sticky-taped and stamped information lay there until the General—a stickler for routine in the morning until he was sufficiently wide awake to improvise—completed his morning rounds of watering his pot-plants, studying the pages of the newspapers and having a cup of the coffee which came up in regular shipments from the bar across the Piazza San Ignazio.

Then, item by item, he dug his way through the mail put in the in-tray by his secretary, slowly excavating the pile of miscellaneous messages until, eventually, at about 8:45 a.m., he picked up the thin, inexpensive paper envelope and slit it open with his paper knife.

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