Page 63 of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

“How so?”

“You had no arms or legs.”

That evening Gabriel experienced the same dream. It was so vivid he didn’t dare close his eyes again for fear of its return. Repairing to his studio, he completed the painting of Chiara in a few fevered hours of uninterrupted work. In the broad light of morning, she declared it the finest piece he had produced in years.

“It reminds me of a Modigliani.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You were inspired by him?”

“It’s hard not to be.”

“Could you paint one?”

“A Modigliani? Yes, of course.”

“I like the one that fetched a hundred and seventy million at auction a few years ago.”

The painting in question wasReclining Nude. Gabriel commenced work on it after dropping the children at school and completed it two days later while listening to Anna Rolfe’s new CD. Then he produced a second version of the painting, with a change of perspective and a subtle rearrangement of the woman’s pose. He signed it with Modigliani’s distinctive signature, in the upper-right corner of the canvas.

“Obviously, your hand suffered no permanent damage,” remarked Chiara.

“I painted it with my left.”

“It’s astonishing. It looks exactly like a Modigliani.”

“Itisa Modigliani. He just didn’t paint it.”

“Could it fool anyone?”

“Not with a modern canvas and stretcher. But if I found a canvas similar to the type he was using in Montmartre in 1917 and was able to concoct a convincing provenance...”

“You could bring it to market as a lost Modigliani?”

“Exactly.”

“How much could you get for it?”

“A couple hundred, I’d say.”

“Thousand?”

“Million.” Gabriel placed a hand reflectively to his chin. “The question is, what should we do with it?”

“Burn it,” said Chiara. “And don’t ever paint another.”

Chiara’sdirective to the contrary, Gabriel hung the two Modiglianis in their bedroom and then retreated once more to his quiet,unhurried life of semiretirement. He dropped the children at school at eight o’clock each morning and collected them again at half past three. He visited the Rialto Market to fetch the ingredients for the family’s evening meal. He read dense books and listened to music on his new British sound system. And if he were so inclined, he painted. A Monet one day, a Cézanne the next, a stunning reinterpretation of Vincent’sSelf-Portrait with Bandaged Earthat, were it not for Gabriel’s modern canvas and palette, would have set the art world ablaze.

He followed the news from Paris with mixed emotions. He was relieved that Quai des Orfèvres had seen fit to conceal his role in the affair and that his old friends Sarah Bancroft and Julian Isherwood had suffered no reputational damage. But when three additional weeks passed with no arrests—and no suggestion in the press that Galerie Georges Fleury had been flooding the market with paintings produced by one of the greatest art forgers in history—Gabriel reached the unsettling conclusion that a ministerial thumb had been laid upon the scales of French justice.

The arrival of the Bavaria C42 came as a welcome distraction. Gabriel took it on a pair of test runs in the sheltered waters of thelaguna. Then, on the first Saturday of May, the Allon family sailed to Trieste for dinner. During their starlit return to Venice, Gabriel revealed that Sarah Bancroft had offered him a minor but lucrative commission. Chiara suggested he execute something original instead. He commenced work on a Picassoesque still life, then buried it beneath a version of Titian’sPortrait of Vincenzo Mosti. Francesco Tiepolo declared it a masterpiece and advised Gabriel never to produce another.

He disagreed with Francesco’s favorable assessment of the work—it was by no means a masterpiece, not by the mighty Titian’s standards—so he cut the canvas from its stretcher and burned it. Next morning, after dropping the children at school, he repaired to Bar Dogale to consider how best to squander the remaining hours ofhis day. While he was consumingun ’ombra, a small glass ofvino biancotaken by Venetians with their breakfast, a shadow fell across his table. It was cast by none other than Luca Rossetti of the Art Squad. His face bore only the faintest trace of the injuries he had suffered some six weeks earlier. He bore a message from Jacques Ménard of the Police Nationale.

“He was wondering whether you were free to come to Paris.”

“When?”