Page 120 of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

The Maserati was parked outside the building. Rossetti behaved himself in town but let it rip when they hit the Autostrada. He waited until they reached Orvieto before informing his forger—with a phone call placed in speaker mode on the car’s Bluetooth system—that he was coming to see him on an important matter. His forger expressed disappointment at the intrusion on his privacy, as he was hoping to complete a painting that evening.

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“I’m afraid not. Besides, I have some good news.”

“Speaking of news, have you seen theTimes? Oliver Dimbleby announced that he sold the Veronese to a private collector. Thirty-five million. At least that’s the rumor.”

And with that, the call went dead.

“He doesn’t sound pleased,” said the Spanish woman.

“With good reason.”

“It wasn’t a consignment deal?”

“Straight sale.”

“How much did Dimbleby pay you for it?”

“Three million.”

“And the new painting?” asked the woman.

“It’s a Van Dyck.”

“Really? What’s the subject matter?”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” said Rossetti, and put his foot to the floor.

Shortly before midnight Isabella was awakened from a pleasant dream by the frenzied barking of the dogs. Usually, the culprit was one of the wild boars that dwelled in the surrounding woods. But on that evening the source of the commotion was the two men traipsing across the moonlit pasture. They were part of a large all-male party of guests who had arrived that afternoon. Isabella was of the opinion that theguestswere not guests at all, but were in fact police officers. How else to explain the fact that two of them were now strolling the pasture by moonlight, each armed with a compact submachine gun?

Eventually the dogs fell silent, and Isabella returned to her bed, only to be awakened a second time, at 12:37 a.m. Now the culprit was the wretched Maserati sports car. The same car, she thought, that had delivered the restorer to Villa dei Fiori earlier that week. It shot past her bedroom window in a blur and raced up the tree-lined drive toward the villa. Two figures emerged into the moonlit forecourt. One was an athletically built man, perhaps another police officer. The other was a tall, raven-haired woman.

It was the woman who entered the villa first, with the man a step behind. The shrieking began a few seconds later, a terrible anguished wailing, like the cry of a wounded animal. Surely it had something to do with the painting.Portrait of an Unknown Woman...Perhaps she had been mistaken, thought Isabella as she covered her ears. Perhaps Signore Allon was the same man after all.