But one could not just invent reclusive collectors or uncertain bumpkins or hidden basements. The forger had to find ones that already existed and slide the story in, making as small an incision in the truth as possible in order to promote unscarred healing to the timeline. Sometimes, depending on the buyer, this was as simple as including a news clipping of a recent manor house fire. For good museums or discerning buyers, bills of sale or insurance claims for stolen works or letters from contemporaries mentioning the work or photographs of the work next to relatives of the artist sometimes needed to be forged.

Provenance.

“The crux of it, the crux of the plan,” Jordan said, “would be convincing the museum what they already had on their wall was a forgery, had been a forgery all along. Probably I’d get a slick young fella with good teeth to convince them the original was swapped at some prior time, ideally before their tenure, so no hard feelings. I’d pick a year before it had got the hardest scientific evidence, the most scrutiny, all that noodly stuff that would make it tricky to forge. Before it was X-rayed. Lead soap damage analysis, all that. I’d convince them all the things they’d been studying and writing up in their academic papers were actually attributes of the forgery, that the original has entirely different layers and damage.”

Declan had followed along beautifully. He said, “You’d need a whipping boy.”

“Of course.” She was always surprised by how well he knew this sideways world; he just didn’t seem to fit the part. She supposed that had been the point of his camouflage all along. Look like a man who takes his dates to cheesy tourist attractions. Be a man who steals paintings. “You’d have to place the blame for the first theft on someone who is currently there or stands to suffer from it.”

“Then you’d sweep in with your ‘original,’ ” Declan said. “And tell them you’re willing to secretly swap it for the forgery on display, and let their negligence stay secret, too, if they help you.”

“You’ve got it.”

“The Dark Lady play.” He didn’t sound sore that the theft of his mother’s portrait had been what brought them together in the first place. “But you don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t understand how to live that way,” Jordan said. “I can’t carry around, like, a famous painting while I go about my day in order; I’d be trapped in the same room as it. A painting. A whole painting. Could I cut it into little pieces?” She felt Declan’s body recoil at the prospect. “There’d be no way to find out until you ruined the thing you just worked very hard to steal. And could I live with knowing I’d chopped up a Sargent? Not bloody likely.”