The view from the train window was freckled with soot, now and then obliterated by clouds of steam; the song of the wheels made a tempting accompaniment. She had a compartment to herself, so to use the time productively she took out her violin and spent the rest of the journey practising.

At Edinburgh’s Waverley station, iron girders overhead clashed with the bright northern sky. Jelly packed up the Bergonzi and swung down her old leather suitcase – she’d travelled light, for once. She could not see Tovey at first in the cluster of people waiting to meet the train – then out of the steam-misted station depths there emerged a familiar tall figure, wearing a pale hat and a light suit, perfect for a spring evening. Under bushy eyebrows, his eyes, wide-set and capable of what she regarded as inspired ferocity, glowed at her across the concourse as he strode forward to help her with her case.

*

The morning after a joyous musical dinner party in her honour at Tovey and his wife Clara’s house, the professor took Jelly to work with him. Edinburgh University’s music library was well populated with students cramming for their exams, though Tovey remarked as they passed that its catalogue system desperately needed updating. On his study door, a plaque declared him the Reid Professor of Music: inside, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were stuffed with volumes accumulated during his two decades in the post. Running her fingertips along their cracked spines and embossed titles, Jelly thought the books smelled of all the lost worlds within their pages. She imagined sentences fluttering out like moths, dusted with the scents of coffee, chocolate, cigar smoke, a hint of whisky.

‘The coffee and chocolates are real.’ Tovey settled behind his desk. ‘Have some.’ He pushed a box towards her; Jelly pounced on a walnut praline that reminded her of the palacsinta she had loved in Hungary. Tovey sipped coffee. ‘Now, tell me what’s going on. Something is eating you up.’

Jelly took a breath, then began to explain in full her search for Schumann’s Violin Concerto.

He heard her out. ‘Gott in Himmel,’ he breathed when she’d finished. ‘Jelly, are you sure about this? You must realise it sounds perfectly preposterous.’

‘But think, Donald, please – you see, it doesn’t matter how we know, if the concerto is real… ’

‘Adila has never heard of it?’

‘She insists Onkel Jo never said a word, and she’d remember, wouldn’t she?’

‘Perhaps. But Adila is a busy lady. She gives a great deal, to her career, her family, her students and the best parties in Chelsea. And this spiritualist stuff – she regards it as central to her life, doesn’t she? Personally I can’t help being a scornful sceptic… ’ He took another chocolate and a sip of coffee, mingling the two in his mouth. ‘We need written evidence. I have some books that may tell us, so let’s go hunting.’