The Rembrandt Affair

possible.”
    Chiara scrutinized the image carefully for a moment. “Do you know what else I think? She’s keeping a secret. She knows she’s pregnant but hasn’t worked up the courage to tell him.” Chiara glanced up at Gabriel. “Does that sound familiar to you?”
    “I think you would have made a good art historian, Chiara.”
    “I grew up in Venice. I am an art historian.” She looked down at the photo again. “I can’t leave a pregnant woman buried in a hole, Gabriel. And neither can you.”
    Gabriel flipped open his mobile phone. As he entered Isherwood’s number, he could hear Chiara singing softly to herself. Chiara always sang when she was happy. It was the first time Gabriel had heard her sing in more than a year.

8
    RUE DE MIROMESNIL, PARIS
    T he sign in the shop window read ANTIQUITÉS SCIENTIFIQUES . Beneath it stood row upon row of meticulously arranged antique microscopes, cameras, barometers, telescopes, surveyors, and spectacles. Usually, Maurice Durand would spend a moment or two inspecting the display for the slightest flaw before opening the shop. But not that morning. Durand’s well-ordered little world was beset by a problem, a crisis of profound magnitude for a man whose every waking moment was devoted to avoiding them.
    He unlocked the door, switched the sign in the door from FERMÉ to OUVERT , and retreated to his office at the back of the shop. Like Durand himself, it was small and tidy and lacking in even the slightest trace of flair. After hanging his overcoat carefully on its hook, he rubbed an island of chronic pain at the base of his spine before sitting down to check his e-mail. He did so with little enthusiasm. Maurice Durand was a bit of an antique himself. Trapped by circumstance in an age without grace, he had surrounded himself with symbols of enlightenment. He regarded electronic correspondence as a disagreeable but obligatory nuisance. He preferred pen and paper to the ethereal mist of the Internet and consumed his news by reading several papers over coffee in his favorite café. In Durand’s quietly held opinion, the Internet was a plague that killed everything it touched. Eventually, he feared, it would destroy Antiquités Scientifiques.
    Durand spent the better part of the next hour slowly working his way through a long queue of orders and inquiries from around the world. Most of the clients were well established; some, relatively new. Invariably, when Durand read their addresses, his mind drifted to other matters. For example, when responding to an e-mail from an old client who lived on P Street in the Georgetown section of Washington, he couldn’t help but think of the small museum located a few blocks away. He had once entertained a lucrative proposal to relieve the gallery of its signature painting: Luncheon of the Boating Party by Renoir. But after a thorough review—Durand was always thorough—he had declined. The painting was far too large, and the chances for success far too small. Only adventurers and mafiosi stole large paintings, and Durand was neither. He was a professional. And a true professional never accepted a commission he could not fulfill. That’s how clients became disappointed. And Maurice Durand made it his business never to disappoint a client.
    Which explained his anxious mood that morning and his preoccupation with the copy of Le Figaro lying on his desk. No matter how many times he read the article surrounded by a perfect red triangle, the details did not change.
    Well-known British art restorer…shot twice in his Glastonbury residence…motive for murder unclear…nothing missing …
    It was the last part—the part about nothing being missing—that troubled Durand most. He scanned the article again, then reached for his phone and dialed. Same result. Ten times he had called the same number. Ten times he had been condemned to the purgatory of voice mail.
    Durand replaced the receiver and stared at the newspaper. Nothing missing …He wasn’t sure he believed it. But given the circumstances, he had no choice but to investigate personally. Unfortunately, that would require him to close the shop and travel to a city that was an affront to all things he held sacred. He picked up the phone again and this time dialed a new number. A computer answered. But of course. Durand rolled his eyes and asked the machine for a first-class ticket on the morning TGV to Marseilles.

9
    GUNWALLOE COVE, CORNWALL
    I n the aftermath of the affair,