He shrugged. A private try-out with piano, no orchestra, precious little audience; that didn’t really count.

‘You’re over-romanticising the entire situation. Someone already knew about it,’ Ebba protested. ‘A lost concerto? That, my dear, is not “lost” in the slightest.’

‘But the concerto is strictly embargoed,’ Erik explained. ‘There is a clause, apparently placed there by – Adila and Jelly – your cousin Johannes Joachim, who apparently wrote this, according to his memory of his father’s words. When did Schumann die?’

‘In 1856… Oh no.’ Jelly, calculating, took a long draught of wine. ‘That means – it is not to be seen for another 23 years?’

‘Willy Strecker at Schott’s is bound to help,’ Adila insisted. ‘Jelly, didn’t you say Tovey had been in touch with him, or his assistant, some nice young man there?’

‘Embargoes are extremely awkward in legal terms,’ Alec said. ‘Often you’re dealing with someone’s last wishes, people’s wills, that type of thing… ’

‘But what is this note? Some silly, unreadable squiggle from Johannes?’ Adila was tapping her heel hard against the wooden floor, which fortunately was protected by an oriental rug.

‘But why?’ said Jelly. ‘How can we ever see the piece?’

‘We’ll have to wait until 1956,’ Adila growled. ‘You will be 63. I will be 67.’

‘Seventy,’ Alec mouthed at Jelly, with a wink. Adila sometimes took executive decisions to reduce her own age.

Adila ignored him. ‘There has to be another way.’

*

While the men went into the wood-panelled library for post-dinner drinks and cigars, Jelly and Adila adjourned with the other women to Ebba’s parlour. Adila gazed with delight, as she usually did, at the sweep of staircase and down at the pillared entrance hall, tiled in black and white. ‘Wouldn’t you love to live in this house?’ she said.

‘Perhaps you should move in,’ Jelly remarked, with equanimity. She wondered how Adila could possibly be happily married and still entertain such closeness to another man; she was sure that in her sister’s place, she could never have done so. Nor did she share Adila’s passion for the Swedish Residence. She could be happy living anywhere, provided it had heart – which was precisely what she found lacking chez Palmstierna. If everything looked too perfect, you couldn’t tell what was going on beneath. She regarded perfection as a graceful variety of hiding place, possibly a form of dishonesty.