A Death in Cornwall

Book 24: Gabriel Allon

by Daniel Silva

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Thrillers

Synopsis

#1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in his action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue.

A brutal murder, a missing masterpiece, a mystery only Gabriel Allon can solve . . .

Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon has slipped quietly into London to attend a reception at the Courtauld Gallery celebrating the return of a stolen self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh. But when an old friend from the Devon and Cornwall Police seeks his help with a baffling murder investigation, he finds himself pursuing a powerful and dangerous new adversary.

The victim is Charlotte Blake, a celebrated professor of art history from Oxford who spends her weekends in the same seaside village where Gabriel once lived under an assumed identity. Her murder appears to be the work of a diabolical serial killer who has been terrorizing the Cornish countryside. But there are a number of telltale inconsistencies, including a missing mobile phone. And then there is the mysterious three-letter cypher she left behind on a notepad in her study.

Gabriel soon discovers that Professor Blake was searching for a looted Picasso worth more than a $100 million, and he takes up the chase for the painting as only he can—with six Impressionist canvases forged by his own hand and an unlikely team of operatives that includes a world-famous violinist, a beautiful master thief, and a lethal contract killer turned British spy. The result is a stylish and wildly entertaining mystery that moves at lightning speed from the cliffs of Cornwall to the enchanted island of Corsica and, finally, to a breathtaking climax on the very doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

Supremely elegant and suspenseful, A Death in Cornwall is Daniel Silva at his best—a dazzling tale of murder, power, and insatiable greed that will hold readers spellbound until they turn the final page.

Release date: July 9, 2024

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 480

Sample

1: The Lizard Peninsula

The first indication of trouble was the light burning in the kitchen window of Wexford Cottage. Vera Hobbs, owner of the Cornish Bakery in Gunwalloe, spotted it at 5:25 a.m. on the third Tuesday of January. The day of the week was noteworthy; the owner of the cottage, Professor Charlotte Blake, divided her time between Cornwall and Oxford. Typically, she arrived in Gunwalloe on a Thursday evening and departed the following Monday afternoon—three-day workweeks being one of the many perquisites of academic life. The absence of her dark blue Vauxhall suggested she had decamped at her usual time. The glowing light, however, was an aberration, as Professor Blake was a devout environmentalist who would sooner stand in the path of a speeding train than waste a single watt of electricity.

She had purchased Wexford Cottage with the proceeds of her bestselling exploration of Picasso’s life and work in wartime France. Her withering reappraisal of Paul Gauguin, published three years later, fared even better. Vera had attempted to organize a book party at the Lamb and Flag, but Professor Blake, after somehow getting wind of the project, had made it clear she had no wish to be fêted. “If there is indeed a hell,” she explained, “its inhabitants have been condemned to spend the rest of eternity celebrating the publication of someone else’s latest waste of paper.”

She had made the remark in her perfect BBC English, with the ironic drawl that comes naturally to those of privileged birth. She was not, however, from the upper classes herself, as Vera discovered one afternoon while stalking Professor Blake on the Internet. Her father had been a rabble-rousing trade unionist from Yorkshire and a leader of the bitter coal miners’ strike in the 1980s. A gifted student, she had won admission to Oxford, where she had studied the history of art. After a brief stint at the Tate Modern in London, and an even briefer one at Christie’s, she had returned to Oxford to teach. According to her official biography, she was considered one of the world’s foremost experts in something called APR, or artistic provenance research.

“What in heaven’s name does that mean?” asked Dottie Cox, proprietor of the Gunwalloe village store.

“Evidently, it has something to do with establishing a painting’s history of ownership and exhibition.”

“Is that important?”

“Tell me something, Dottie, dear. Why would someone be an expert in something if it wasn’t bloody important?”

Interestingly enough, Professor Blake was not the first art world figure to settle in Gunwalloe. But unlike her predecessor, the reclusive restorer who had lived for a time in the cottage down by the cove, she was unfailingly polite. Not the talkative sort, mind you, but always a pleasant greeting and an enchanting smile. The consensus among Gunwalloe’s male population was that the professor’s author photograph had not done her justice. Her hair was nearly black and shoulder length, with a single provocative streak of gray. Her eyes were an arresting shade of cobalt blue. The puffy pillows of dark flesh beneath them only added to her allure.

“Smoldering,” declared Duncan Reynolds, a retired conductor for the Great Western Railway. “Reminds me of one of those mysterious women you see in the cafés of Paris.” Though as far as anyone knew, the closest old Duncan had ever come to the French capital was Paddington Station.

There had been a Mr. Blake once, a painter of minor note, but they had divorced while she was still at the Tate. Now, at fifty-two years of age and in the prime of her professional life, Charlotte Blake remained unmarried and, by all outward appearances, romantically unattached. She never had guests and never entertained. Indeed, Dottie Cox was the only inhabitant of Gunwalloe who had ever seen her with another living soul. It was last November, down at Lizard Point. They were huddled on the windblown terrace at the Polpeor Café, the professor and her gentleman friend.

“Handsome devil, he was. A real charmer. Had trouble written all over him.”

But on that morning in January, with the rain falling in sheets and a cold wind blowing from Mount’s Bay, the state of Professor Charlotte Blake’s love life was of little concern to Vera Hobbs. Not with the Chopper still on the loose. It had been nearly a fortnight since he had struck last, a woman of twenty-seven from Holywell on the north Cornish coast. He had killed her with a hatchet, the same weapon he had used to murder three other women. Vera took a small measure of comfort in the fact that none of the murders had taken place during rainy weather. The Chopper, it seemed, was a fair-weather fiend.

Vera Hobbs nevertheless cast several anxious glances over her shoulder as she hastened along Gunwalloe’s only road—a road with neither a name nor a numeric designation. The Cornish Bakery was wedged between the Lamb and Flag and Dottie Cox’s Corner Market, which wasn’t on a corner at all. The Mullion Golf Club was about a mile down the road, next to the ancient parish church. With the exception of an incident at the restorer’s cottage a few years back, nothing much ever happened in Gunwalloe, which was just fine with the two hundred souls who lived there.

By seven o’clock Vera had finished baking the morning’s first batch of sausage rolls and traditional cottage loaf bread. She breathed a small sigh of relief when Jenny Gibbons and Molly Reece, her two employees, hurried through the door a few minutes before eight. Jenny settled in behind the counter while Molly helped Vera with the steak pasties, a staple of the Cornish diet. A Radio Cornwall newscast played quietly in the background. There had been no murders overnight—and no arrests, either. A twenty-four-year-old motorcyclist had been seriously injured in a crash near the Morrisons in Long Rock. According to the weather forecast, the wet and windy conditions would persist throughout the day, with the rain finally ending sometime in the early evening.

“Just in time for the Chopper to claim his next victim,” interjected Molly as she spooned meat-and-vegetable filling onto a circle of short-crust pastry dough. She was a dark-eyed beauty of Welsh extraction, a real handful. “He’s past due, you know. He’s never gone more than ten days without burying his hatchet into some poor girl’s skull.”

“Maybe he’s had his fill.”

“Got it out of his system? Is that your theory, Vera Hobbs?”

“And what’s yours?”

“I think he’s just getting started.”

“An expert now, are you?”

“I watch all the detective shows.” Molly folded the dough over the filling and crimped the edges. She had a lovely touch. “He might stop for a while, but eventually he’ll strike again. That’s the way these serial killers are. They can’t help themselves.”

Vera slid the first tray of pasties into the oven and rolled out the next sheet of short-crust dough and cut it into plate-size circles. The same thing every day for forty-two years, she thought. Roll, cut, fill, fold, crimp. Except Sundays, of course. On her so-called day of rest, she cooked a proper lunch while Reggie got drunk on stout and watched football on the telly.

She removed a bowl of chicken filling from the fridge. “Did you happen to notice the light burning in the window of Professor Blake’s cottage?”

“When?”

“This morning, Molly, dear.”

“Didn’t.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Who?”

Vera sighed. She had a good pair of hands on her, did Molly, but she was simple. “Professor Blake, my love. When was the last time you actually laid eyes on her?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Try.”

“Maybe yesterday.”

“Afternoon, was it?”

“Could have been.”

“Where was she?”

“In her car.”

“Headed where?”

Molly inclined her head to the north. “Up-country.”

Because the Lizard Peninsula was the most southerly point in the British Isles, everywhere else in the United Kingdom was up-country. But it suggested that Professor Blake had been bound for Oxford. Even so, Vera thought there would be no harm in having a look through the window of Wexford Cottage—which she did at half past three during a break in the rain. She reported her findings to Dottie Cox an hour later at the Lamb and Flag. They were sitting in their usual snug near the window, with two glasses of New Zealand sauvignon blanc between them. The clouds had finally broken, and the sun was dropping toward the rim of Mount’s Bay. Somewhere out there beneath the black waters was a lost city called Lyonesse. At least that was the legend.

“And you’re sure there were dishes in the sink?” asked Dottie.

“And on the countertop as well.”

“Dirty?”

Vera nodded gravely.

“Rang the bell, did you?”

“Twice.”

“The latch?”

“Locked tight.”

Dottie didn’t like the sound of it. The light was one thing, the dirty dishes quite another. “I suppose we should probably ring her, just to be on the safe side.”

It took a bit of searching, but Vera eventually found the main number for the University of Oxford’s Department of the History of Art. The woman who answered the phone sounded as though she might have been a student. A lengthy silence ensued when Vera asked to be connected to Professor Charlotte Blake’s office.

“Who’s calling, please?” the young woman asked at last.

Vera gave her name.

“And how do you know Professor Blake?”

“She lives down the road from me in Gunwalloe.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Is something wrong?”

“One moment, please,” said the woman, and transferred Vera to Professor Blake’s voicemail. She ignored the recorded invitation to leave a message and rang the Devon and Cornwall Police instead. Not the main number, but the special hotline. The man who answered didn’t bother to state his name or rank.

“I have a terrible feeling he’s struck again,” said Vera.

“Who?”

“The Chopper. Who else?”

“Go on.”

“Perhaps I should speak to someone a bit more senior.”

“I’m a detective sergeant.”

“Very impressive. And what’s your name, my love?”

“Peel,” he answered. “Detective Sergeant Timothy Peel.”

“Well, well,” said Vera Hobbs. “Imagine that.”

 

2: Queen’s Gate Terrace

It was a few minutes after 7:00 a.m. when Sarah Bancroft, still in the clutches of a turbulent dream, stretched a hand toward the opposite side of the bed and touched only cool Egyptian cotton. And then she recalled the text message that Christopher had sent her late the previous afternoon, the one about a sudden trip to an undisclosed destination. Sarah had been seated at her usual table at Wiltons at the time, partaking of a post-work Belvedere martini, three olives, Saharan dry. Depressed at the prospect of spending yet another evening alone, she had unwisely ordered a second. What followed was for the most part a blur. She recalled a rainy taxi ride home to Kensington and a search for something wholesome in the Sub-Zero. Finding nothing of interest, she had settled for a tub of Häagen-Dazs—gelato creamy fudge brownie. Afterward she had fallen into bed in time for the News at Ten. The lead story concerned the discovery of a body near Land’s End in Cornwall, by all appearances the fifth victim of a serial killer the lesser tabloids had christened the Chopper.

It would have been reasonable for Sarah to blame her unsettled dreams on the second martini or the Cornish axe murderer, but the truth was she had more than sufficient horrors buried in her subconscious to disturb her nights. Besides, she never slept well when Christopher was away. An officer of the Secret Intelligence Service, he traveled often, most recently to Ukraine, where he had spent the better part of the autumn. Sarah did not begrudge his work, for in a previous life she had served as a clandestine operative for the CIA. She now managed a sometimes-solvent Old Master art gallery in St. James’s. Her competitors knew nothing of her complicated past and even less about her ruggedly handsome husband, believing him to be a well-to-do business consultant called Peter Marlowe. Thus the handmade suits, the Bentley Continental motorcar, and the maisonette in Queen’s Gate Terrace, one of London’s poshest addresses.

The windows of their bedroom overlooked the garden and were streaked with rain. Not yet prepared to face the day, Sarah closed her eyes and dozed until nearly eight, when she finally roused herself from bed. Downstairs in the kitchen she listened to Today on Radio 4 while waiting for the Krups automatic to complete its labors. It seemed the corpse in Cornwall had acquired an identity overnight: Dr. Charlotte Blake, a professor of art history from Oxford University. Sarah recognized the name; Professor Blake was a world-renowned specialist in the field of provenance research. Moreover, a copy of her recent bestselling book about the turbulent life of Paul Gauguin was at that moment resting on Sarah’s bedside table.

The remainder of the morning’s news was little better. Taken together, it painted a picture of a nation in terminal decline. A recent study had concluded that the average British subject would soon be less affluent than his counterparts in Poland and Slovenia. And if the British subject were to suffer a stroke or heart attack, he would likely endure a wait of ninety minutes for an ambulance to take him to the nearest A&E ward, where some five hundred people were dying each week due to overcrowded conditions. Even the Royal Mail, one of Britain’s most revered institutions, was in danger of collapse.

It was the Conservatives, in power for more than a decade, who had presided over this state of affairs. And now, with the prime minister foundering, they were bracing for the prospect of a bruising leadership contest. Sarah wondered why any Tory politician would aspire to the job. Labour held a commanding lead in the polls and were expected to easily prevail in the next election. Sarah, however, would have no say in the composition of the next British government. She remained a guest in this country. A guest who moved in elite circles and was married to an SIS officer, she thought, but a guest nonetheless.

There was one piece of good news that morning—from the art world, of all places. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh, stolen from the Courtauld Gallery in a daring smash-and-grab robbery more than a decade ago, had been recovered under mysterious circumstances in Italy. The painting would be unveiled that evening during an invitation-only event in the gallery’s newly refurbished Great Room. Most of London’s art glitterati would be in attendance, as would Sarah. She had acquired an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute before collecting a PhD from Harvard, and now served on the gallery’s board of trustees. She also happened to be a close friend and associate of the Venice-based conservator who had knocked the Van Gogh into shape before its repatriation to Britain. He, too, planned to attend the unveiling—clandestinely, of course. Otherwise, his very presence might well overshadow the return of the iconic painting.

The ceremony was on the early side—six o’clock, with a cocktail reception to follow—so Sarah dressed in a striking Stella McCartney double-breasted blazer and skirt. The heels of her Prada pumps tapped a metronomic rhythm, forty-five minutes later, as she crossed the paving stones of Mason’s Yard, a tranquil quadrangle of commerce concealed behind Duke Street. Isherwood Fine Arts, purveyors of museum-quality Old Master paintings since 1968, stood in the northeast corner of the courtyard, occupying three floors of a sagging Victorian warehouse once owned by Fortnum & Mason. As usual, Sarah was the first to arrive. After disarming the alarm, she unlocked the two doors, one fashioned of stainless-steel bars, the other of shatterproof glass, and went inside.

The gallery’s office was located on the second floor. Once there had been a desk for a receptionist—the ravishing but useless Ella was the last occupant—but Sarah, in a cost-cutting move, had eliminated the position. The telephone, email correspondence, and appointment book were now her responsibility. She also handled the day-to-day business affairs and had veto authority over all new acquisitions. Ruthlessly she had shed much of the gallery’s dead stock—manner of such-and-such, workshop of so-and-so—at bargain-basement prices. Even so, Sarah was the curator of one of the largest collections of Old Master paintings in Britain, enough to fill a small museum, if she were so inclined.

There were no appointments scheduled for that morning, so she tended to an outstanding billing matter, namely, a certain Belgian collector who seemed shocked to learn that he actually had to pay for the French School painting he had acquired from Isherwood Fine Arts. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book, effectively borrowing a painting from a dealer for a few months and then sending it back. Julian Isherwood, the gallery’s founder and namesake, seemed to specialize in these types of arrangements. By Sarah’s estimate, Isherwood Fine Arts was owed more than a million pounds for works that had already shipped. It was her intention to collect every last penny, beginning with the one hundred thousand pounds owed to the gallery by one Alexis De Groote of Antwerp.

“I would prefer to discuss this matter with Julian,” the Belgian sputtered.

“I’m sure you would.”

“Have him call me the minute he arrives.”

“Yes, of course,” said Sarah, and hung up the phone as Julian teetered through the doorway. It was a few minutes after eleven, considerably earlier than his normal arrival time. These days he typically dropped by the gallery around noon and by one o’clock was sitting down to lunch at one of London’s better tables, usually with female company.

“I assume you heard about poor Charlotte Blake,” he said by way of greeting.

“Awful,” replied Sarah.

“A terrible way to go, the poor thing. Her death will undoubtedly cast a pall over tonight’s proceedings.”

“At least until the veil comes off that Van Gogh.”

“Is our friend really planning to attend?”

“He and Chiara arrived last night. The Courtauld is putting them up at the Dorchester.”

“How are they possibly managing?” Julian removed his mackintosh and hung it on the coat tree. He wore a chalk stripe suit and a lavender necktie. His plentiful gray locks were in need of a pruning. “What in heaven’s name is that awful sound?”

“Could be the telephone.” “Shall I answer it?”

“Do you remember how?”

Frowning, he snatched up the receiver and raised it resolutely to his ear. “Isherwood Fine Arts. Isherwood himself speaking . . . As a matter of fact, she is. One moment, please.” He managed to place the call on hold without disconnecting it. “It’s Amelia March from ARTnews. She’d like a word.”

“About what?”

“Didn’t say.”

Sarah picked up the phone. “Amelia, darling. How can I be of help?”

“I’d love a comment from you for a rather intriguing story I’m working on.”

“The Charlotte Blake murder?”

“Actually, it concerns the identity of the mysterious art restorer who cleaned the Van Gogh for the Courtauld. You’ll never guess who he is.”

3: Berkeley Square

Where do you suppose she got the story?”

“It certainly wasn’t me,” said Gabriel. “I never speak to reporters.”

“Unless it suits your purposes, of course.” Chiara gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s all right, darling. You’re entitled to a little recognition after toiling in anonymity all these years.”

Gabriel’s enormous body of work included paintings by Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Caravaggio, Canaletto, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck—all while serving as an undercover operative of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Isherwood Fine Arts had been complicit in his decades-long deception. Now, having officially retired from the intelligence trade, he was the director of the paintings department at the Tiepolo Restoration Company, the most prominent such enterprise in Venice. Chiara was the firm’s general manager. Which meant that, for all intents and purposes, Gabriel worked for his wife.

They were walking in Berkeley Square. Gabriel wore a mid-length overcoat atop his zippered cashmere sweater and flannel trousers. His Beretta 92FS, which he had carried into the United Kingdom with the approval of his friends in the British security and intelligence services, pressed reassuringly against the base of his spine. Chiara, in stretch trousers and a quilted coat, was unarmed.

She plucked a phone from her handbag. Like Gabriel’s, it was an Israeli-made Solaris model, reputedly the world’s most secure.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“What do you suppose she’s waiting for?”

“I imagine she’s hunched over her computer trying desperately to put you into words.” Chiara gave him a sidelong look. “An unenviable task.”

“How hard can it be?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“May I offer a more plausible explanation for the delay?”

“By all means.”

“Amelia March, being an ambitious and enterprising reporter, is at this moment fleshing out her exclusive story by gathering additional background material on her subject.”

“A career retrospective?”

Gabriel nodded.

“What would be wrong with that?”

“I suppose that depends on which side of my career she chooses to explore.”

The basic contours of Gabriel’s professional and personal biography had already managed to find their way into the public domain— that he had been born on a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley, that his mother had been one of early Israel’s most prominent painters, that he had studied briefly at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem before joining Israeli intelligence. Less well known was that he had abruptly abandoned his service after a bomb exploded beneath his car in Vienna, killing his young son and leaving his first wife with catastrophic burns and acute post-traumatic stress disorder. He had placed her in a private psychiatric hospital in Surrey and locked himself away in a cottage in remotest Cornwall. And there he would have remained, broken and grieving, had he not accepted a commission in Venice, where he fell in love with the beautiful, opinionated daughter of the city’s chief rabbi, not knowing that she was an operative of the very service he had forsaken. A twisted tale, surely, but hardly beyond the reach of a writer like Amelia March. She always struck Gabriel as the sort of reporter who had a novel hidden in the bottom drawer of her desk, something sparkling and witty and full of art world intrigue.

Chiara was frowning at her phone.

“Is it that bad?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s only my mother.”

“What’s the problem?”

“She’s concerned that Irene is developing an unhealthy obsession with global warming.”

“Your mother only noticed this now?”

Their daughter, at the tender age of eight, was a fully fledged climate radical. She had taken part in her first demonstration earlier that winter, in the Piazza San Marco. Gabriel feared the child was now on a slippery slope to militancy and would soon be adhering herself to irreplaceable works of art or splashing them with green paint. Her twin brother, Raphael, was interested only in mathematics, for which he possessed an unusual aptitude. It was Irene’s ambition that he use his gifts to save the planet from disaster. Gabriel, however, had not given up hope that the boy might take up a paintbrush instead.

“I suppose your mother thinks I’m to blame for our daughter’s climate obsession.”

“Evidently it’s all my fault.”

“A wise woman, your mother.”

“Usually,” remarked Chiara.

“Can she keep Irene out of jail while we’re away, or should we skip the unveiling and go home tonight?”

“Actually, she thinks we should stay in London for another day or two and enjoy ourselves.”

“A fine idea.”

“But quite impossible,” said Chiara. “You have an altarpiece to finish.”

It was Il Pordenone’s rather pedestrian depiction of the annunciation, which he had painted for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Murano. Several other works in the church, all of lesser merit, were also in need of cleaning. The project was their first since assuming control of the Tiepolo Restoration Company, and already they were running several weeks behind schedule. It was essential the restoration of the church be completed on time, with no cost overruns. Still, another forty-eight hours in London might prove advantageous, as it would give Gabriel a chance to drum up a few lucrative private commissions, the kind that supported their comfortable lifestyle in Venice. Their enormous piano nobile della loggia overlooking the Grand Canal had diminished the small fortune he had accumulated during a lifetime of restoration work. And then, of course, there was his Bavaria C42 sailboat. The Allon family finances were sorely in need of replenishment.

He made this point to his wife, judiciously, as they turned into Mount Street.

“I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of work after Amelia’s article appears,” she replied.

“Unless her article is less than flattering. Then I’ll be forced to sell knockoff Canalettos to the tourists on the Riva degli Schiavoni to help make ends meet.”

“Why would Amelia March write a hit piece about you, of all people?”

“Perhaps she doesn’t like me.”

“That’s not possible. Everyone loves you, Gabriel.”

“Not everyone,” he replied.

“Name one person who doesn’t adore you.”

“The barman at Cupido.”

It was a café and pizzeria located on the Fondamente Nove in Cannaregio. Gabriel stopped there most mornings before boarding the Number 4.1 vaporetto bound for Murano. And the barman, without fail, slid his cappuccino onto the glass countertop with a sneer of polite disdain.

“Not Gennaro?” asked Chiara.

“Is that his name?”

“He’s quite lovely. He always adds little hearts to my foam.”

“I wonder why.”

Chiara accepted the compliment with a demure smile. It had been twenty years since their first encounter, and yet Gabriel remained hopelessly in the thrall of his wife’s astonishing beauty—her sculptural nose and jawline, her riotous dark hair with its highlights of auburn and chestnut, the caramel-colored eyes that he had never succeeded in rendering accurately on canvas. Her body was his favorite subject matter, and his sketchbook was filled with nudes, many executed without the consent of his slumbering model. He hoped to explore the material further before tonight’s gathering at the Courtauld. Chiara was amenable to the idea but had insisted on a long walk first, followed by a proper lunch.

She slowed to a stop outside an Oscar de la Renta boutique. “I think I’ll let you buy me that delicious little pantsuit.”

“What’s wrong with the one you packed?”

“The Armani?” She shrugged. “I’m in the mood for something new. After all, I have a feeling my husband is going to be the center of attention tonight, and I want to make a good impression.”

“You could wear a burlap sack, and you’ll still be the most beautiful woman in the room.”

Gabriel followed her into the boutique, and fifteen minutes later, bags in hand, they went out again. Chiara held his arm as they rounded the gentle curve of Carlos Place.

“Do you remember the last time we went for a walk in London?” she asked suddenly. “It was the day you spotted that suicide bomber headed for Covent Garden.”

“Let’s hope Amelia doesn’t somehow find out about my role in that one.”

“Or the incident at Downing Street,” said Chiara.

“What about that business outside Westminster Abbey?”

“The ambassador’s daughter? Your name got into the newspapers, as I recall. Your picture, too.”

Gabriel sighed. “Maybe you should check the ARTnews website again.”

“You do it. I can’t bear to look.”

Gabriel drew his phone from his coat pocket.

“Well?” asked Chiara after a moment.

“It seems my fears about Amelia March being an ambitious and enterprising reporter were well founded.”

“What did she discover?”

“That I am regarded as one of the two or three best art restorers in the world.”

“Who else does she mention?”

“Dianne Modestini and David Bull.”

“Rarefied company.”

“Yes,” agreed Gabriel, and slipped the phone into his pocket. “I guess she likes me, after all.”

“Of course she does, darling.” Chiara smiled. “Who doesn’t?”

* * * * *

They had lunch at Socca, a pricey bistro in South Audley Street, and walked back to the Dorchester through a sudden burst of brilliant winter sunlight. Upstairs in their suite, their lovemaking was unhurried, excruciatingly so. Exhausted, Gabriel toppled into a dreamless sleep and woke to find Chiara standing at the foot of the bed in her new suit, a strand of pearls around her neck.

“You’d better hurry,” she said. “The car will be here in a few minutes.”

He swung his feet to the floor and went into the bathroom to shower. His labors before the mirror were perfunctory. No miracle creams or ointments, just a subtle rearrangement of his hair, which was longer than he had worn it in many years. Afterward he dressed in a Brioni single-breasted suit and a regimental necktie. His accessories were limited to a wedding band, a timepiece by Patek Philippe, and a pistol by Fabbrica d’Armi Pietro Beretta.

Chiara joined him before the full-length mirror. In her stiletto-heeled pumps she hovered over him.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think your jacket must be missing its top button.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to fit, darling.”

“In that case, you should probably wear a nice rollneck sweater underneath it. It’s going to be quite chilly later.”

Downstairs, the car was waiting, a Jaguar saloon model, courtesy of the Courtauld Gallery. It was located in the Somerset House complex on the Strand, adjacent to King’s College. Amelia March, looking pleased with herself, stood outside the entrance along with several other reporters who covered the art world. Gabriel ignored their questions, in part because he was distracted by the sudden vibration of his mobile phone. He waited until he was inside the lobby before answering. He recognized the name of the caller, but the voice that greeted him seemed to have deepened an octave since he had heard it last.

“No,” said Gabriel. “It’s no trouble at all…The quay in Port Navas? I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock at the latest.” ...