She lifted something from the desk-top. It was a Polaroid she’d taken in Surgeons’ Hall – the portrait of Lovell. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered the ravages of Africa. His skin was pale and smooth, his face youthful. She had pencilled the artist’s name on the back. She got up and left her room again, opened the door to her boss’s office and switched on his light. He had a shelf of thick reference books, and she found the one she needed, turned to the painter’s name, J. Scott Jauncey. ‘Active in Edinburgh 1825–35,’ she read, ‘chiefly landscapes, but some portraiture.’ After which he’d taken himself to Europe for many years before settling in Hove. So Lovell had sat for the portrait during his early years in Edinburgh, before his own travels. She wondered if such a thing was the luxury it seemed, to be afforded only by the well-off. Then she thought of Reverend Kirkpatrick … maybe the portrait had been at his request, something to be sent west to the Ayrshire parish, to remind the minister of his charge.

Again, there might be a clue buried deep within Surgeons’ Hall, some record of the portrait’s history prior to its arrival there.

‘Monday,’ she said out loud. It could wait till Monday. She had the weekend to look forward to … and a Lou Reed concert to survive.

Switching off her boss’s light, she heard another noise, much closer. The door to the outer office swung open and the lights all came on. Jean took half a step back, then saw it was just the cleaner.

‘You gave me a fright,’ she said, putting a hand to her chest.

The cleaner just smiled and put a bin-bag down, heading back into the hallway to fetch her vacuum cleaner.

‘Mind if I get started?’ she asked.

‘Go ahead,’ Jean said. ‘I’m finished here anyway.’

As she tidied her desk, she noticed that her heart was still racing, her hands shaking slightly. All her night-time walks through the museum, and this was the first time she’d been fazed. The portrait of Kennet Lovell stared at her from the Polaroid. Somehow, it seemed to her, Jauncey had failed to flatter his subject. Lovell looked young, yes, but there was a coldness to the eyes, and the mouth was set, the face full of calculation.

‘Heading straight home?’ the cleaner asked, coming in to empty her bin.

‘Might make a pit-stop at the off-licence.’

‘Kill or cure, eh?’ the cleaner said.

‘Something like that,’ Jean replied, as an unwanted image of her husband flashed up in her mind. Then she thought of something and walked back to her desk. Lifted her pen and added a name to the notes she’d taken so far.

Claire Benzie.

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