All through Fitcher’s recital, Paulette had been listening for the name ‘Chinnery’. Not having heard it, she said: ‘And did you meet anyone else, sir?’

Fitcher glanced at her, and after a moment’s silence, muttered: ‘So I did. I also went to see Mr Chinnery.’

‘Oh? And it was a useful visit, sir?’

‘Yes. But not in the way I had expected.’

Mr Chinnery had received Fitcher in his studio, which was on the uppermost floor of his residence, at number 8, Rua Ignacio Baptista: a large, sunlit room, it was hung with several excellent portraits and landscapes, including one that was in the process of being finished by a pair of Chinese apprentices.

Within a few minutes Fitcher understood that Mr Chinnery had invited him into his studio in the expectation of receiving a commission for a portrait. When Fitcher explained that he had come in regard to an entirely different matter – a mission that concerned a pair of plant-pictures from Canton – the artist’s expression had grown a little peevish. He favoured the camellia paintings with no more than a cursory glance before declaring them to be inconsequential little gew-gaws: the daubings of Canton’s painters were not worthy of the attention of a serious man, he had declared; indeed, the scribblers who produced botanical illustrations and the like could scarcely be called artists at all – they were but counterfeiters and copyists who produced cheap souvenirs for travellers and seamen.

‘Art is a dead letter in China, sir, a dead letter …!’

Fitcher had understood that he had found the artist in one of his dark moods: he had decided to excuse himself, perhaps to return another day. But when he stood up to leave, the artist, perhaps repenting of his ill-humour, had asked if Fitcher knew the way to the jetty, where he was to catch his boat. When Fitcher said no, he did not, Mr Chinnery offered to send someone with him, to show him the way: it so happened, he said, that he had a nephew staying with him, his brother’s son; he had arrived from India some time ago and had quickly learnt his way around the city.

Fitcher had gratefully accepted this offer, whereupon Mr Chinnery had summoned his nephew, who proved to be a young man in his mid-twenties. He bore a close family resemblance to the artist: their faces, with their prominent eyes and knob-like noses, were so similar that they could have been avatars of each other, separated only by age, and also, perhaps, by a slight tint of complexion, which in the case of the younger man, was a little swarthier. So alike, in fact, were the two Chinnerys that if Fitcher had not known better he would have taken them to be father and son rather than uncle and nephew: nor was the likeness merely a matter of appearance – on the way to the jetty Fitcher learnt that the young man was also an artist, much in the mould of the senior Mr Chinnery. Indeed Mr Chinnery had been his first teacher, said the youth: now following in his footsteps, he was planning to go to Canton in search of commissions; through his uncle’s influence he had already secured a chop and intended to leave in a few days.