Page 7

“H ow did she make contact with you?”

“Email.”

“Your ARTnews address?”

“Proton Mail. Her address was total gibberish.”

They had left the coffeehouse and were walking along the Portobello Road.

Amelia’s step was slow and pensive, as though she were wrestling with the implications of what she had just been told.

Most of her work dealt with sales and acquisitions and gallery openings and other assorted art world gossip.

Gabriel was all but certain she had never once lost a source to murder.

“The exact gibberish, please.”

“LDV followed by eight numbers. I assumed they were her initials.”

“And the content?”

Amelia dug her phone from her handbag and, after retrieving the email in question, handed it over.

The sender’s address was [email protected].

The text was three sentences in length, formal in language, and accurately punctuated.

The anonymous author wished to make Amelia aware of a startling artistic discovery she had made, the nature of which she could not disclose in an email, not even an encrypted one.

It was her wish to discuss the matter in person at the earliest possible juncture.

If Amelia was amenable to such a meeting, a time and place could be arranged, provided the location was somewhere in Italy.

Gabriel returned the phone. “And your reply?”

“I asked for additional information, didn’t I?”

“Did she provide it?”

“She said the matter in question involved a painting. There was a suggestion of criminality.”

“What sort of criminality?”

“She declined to go into the details.”

“Could it have been theft?”

“Haven’t the foggiest.”

“Forgery?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Mr. Allon. But as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t enough to justify a plane ride to Italy. I told her so in no uncertain terms.”

“How did she reply?”

“She assured me that I was making the biggest mistake of my career.”

“Second biggest.” Gabriel dropped his half-drunk coffee into a rubbish bin. “Who was the one to reestablish contact?”

“She was.”

“Was she any more forthcoming?”

“Only about herself. Her education, to be specific. She was obviously trying to impress me.”

“What was it like?”

“She did her undergraduate work at Cambridge and then picked up a graduate degree at the Courtauld Institute. Needless to say, I was unmoved.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“She sent me another email. Time and place, one last chance. Otherwise she was going to give the story to a reporter from the New York Times .”

“Bar Dogale, three o’clock?”

“Half past, actually.”

“What were the ground rules?”

“She said she would recognize me.”

“Why were you late?”

“My flight was delayed at Heathrow by a mechanical problem. I sent her an email explaining the situation, and she assured me that she would wait. But by the time I arrived, there was no sign of her. I spent the night in a little hotel near the Piazza San Marco and returned to London the next morning, certain that I had been the target of an elaborate practical joke.”

“Did you try to make contact with her again?”

“Several times.”

“And?”

“Radio silence.”

“Now we know why,” said Gabriel. “If I had to guess, she was murdered a few hours after she left that café.”

“By whom?”

“First things first, Amelia.”

“Her identity?” Amelia thumbed through the contacts on her phone. “It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who she was. After all, we know what she looked like and where she earned her graduate degree.”

“May I ask who you’re calling?”

“The director of the Courtauld Gallery. He’s one of my better sources.”

“Please don’t,” said Gabriel .

“Why not?”

“Because good things come to those who wait.”

She slid the phone into her handbag. “Don’t forget about me, Mr. Allon.

Otherwise I’m going to write a very long profile about you.

It will include all the material that came over the transom after my original story appeared.

You have quite a track record in the art world. Especially here in London.”

“Trust me, Amelia. You don’t know the half of it.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

***

Gabriel rang Dr. Geoffrey Holland, the esteemed director of the Courtauld Gallery, while hurtling along Bayswater Road in the back of a taxi.

He explained that he had popped into London on short notice and was wondering whether Holland had a spare moment or two.

The director assumed it had something to with the painting propped on the easel in Gabriel’s studio in Venice.

Gabriel did nothing to disabuse him of the notion.

“I’ll meet you in the café at half past four,” said Holland before ringing off. “I believe you know where to find it.”

The prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art and its affiliated gallery were located in Somerset House, a palatial Renaissance complex located along a recently pedestrianized portion of the Strand.

Gabriel spent a pleasant forty-five minutes roaming the exhibition rooms before making his way downstairs to the café.

Geoffrey Holland, in a Savile Row suit and necktie, arrived at the stroke of four thirty. He was nothing if not punctual.

They ordered tea at the counter and sat down at a table near the window. Gabriel showed Holland a photograph depicting the current condition of the Florigerio. The director was clearly displeased by the rate of Gabriel’s progress.

“You assured me that the restoration would take no more than three months.”

“I’m sorry, Geoffrey, but I received a better offer. One that actually pays.”

“The Titian?”

Gabriel nodded.

“We had a deal,” said Holland. “I allowed you to see that surveillance video, and you agreed to clean my Florigerio. Free of charge, I might add, and in a timely fashion.”

The video in question had been shot in this very room and had implicated the wife of the British home secretary in the murder of an art historian from Oxford.

The resulting scandal had been one of the worst in British political history.

The minor role in the affair played by the esteemed director of the Courtauld Gallery had never come to light. Neither had Gabriel’s.

“Don’t worry, Geoffrey. I intend to keep my end of the bargain. In the meantime, however, I require your assistance on an unrelated matter.”

Holland sighed. “What is it this time?”

Gabriel handed over his phone. “Do you recognize her?”

“Yes, of course. That’s Penelope Radcliff. She was a graduate student at the institute. A real superstar.”

“Art history?”

“Conservation, actually. She specialized in the painters of the Florentine School.”

“Where is she now?”

“I believe she’s in Rome.”

“Doing what?”

“Serving an apprenticeship.”

“The Borghese Gallery? The Doria Pamphili?”

“Neither.”

“Where, Geoffrey?”

Holland returned Gabriel’s phone. “The Vatican.”