The professor thought for a moment. ‘I believe that the best thing to do will be to keep her here for a couple of days while we stabilise her and observe her. Then we shall move her to the care of a very fine community of nuns in the countryside, the Convent of the Tiny Sisters. They are very solicitous of patients such as these, and she will be well cared for. She should spend three weeks with the sisters before she is fit enough to travel.’ He looked enquiringly at Domenica. ‘Will that be all right?’

Domenica nodded her approval. ‘You are very kind.’

‘It is nothing,’ said the professor. ‘I only regret the disturbance that this must cause to your own holiday plans.’

‘That is but as nothing,’ said Domenica quickly. ‘We shall rise above it, shall we not, Angus?’

‘Completely,’ said Angus.

They chatted with the professor for a few minutes more. He asked them where they were staying, and told them that he knew the area well. He had a friend who had a villa nearby and he would be happy to write a letter of introduction to this person and suggest that Domenica and Angus be invited for dinner.

‘He keeps a very good kitchen,’ said the professor. ‘And a fine cellar too. His grandfather was one of the principal producers of Brunello di Montalcino, and some of the bottles in his cellar go back to the early 1930s.’

‘He is a fortunate man,’ said Angus.

‘Indeed,’ said the professor. ‘But we are all fortunate in one way or another. The task for most of us is to identify in what way that is, would you not agree?’

81. A Terrible Mistake

It was a curious coincidence of the sort that, although quite explicable in terms of statistical likelihood, none the less leaves us surprised, or at least vaguely unsettled. By such a coincidence, on the very day that Antonia Collie experienced her intense bout of Stendhal Syndrome and collapsed on the floor of the Uffizi Gallery, Matthew felt disinclined to get out of his bed in India Street and found himself burying his head under the pillows when Elspeth brought him an early morning cup of tea.

He had not slept well. His dreams had been vivid and vaguely disturbing; not nightmares in the conventional sense, but nevertheless characterised by a feeling of foreboding, by a sense that something vaguely unpleasant was about to happen. And while the light of dawn, and, a fortiori, a cup of tea will normally put such dreams into perspective, this did not happen today. On the contrary, when Matthew awoke it seemed to him that reality, if anything, was slightly worse than the uneasy world of his dreams.