Uniformed up to his ears, a footman opened the solemn iron door for her. Inside the foyer stood an illuminated lectern behind which she caught sight of an individual wearing a suit. His face wizened with age, he glanced at her from head to toe a couple of times before granting her a meek smile.

“Good afternoon,” said Alicia. “I’ve arranged to meet Señor Gustavo Barceló here.”

The employee looked down at the notebook on the lectern and pretended to study it for a few moments, lending solemnity to the ritual. “And your name is . . . ?”

“Verónica Larraz.”

“If you’d be so kind as to follow me—”

The receptionist led her through the sumptuous interior of the palace. As she walked by, the members of the club interrupted their conversations to look at her in surprise. Some almost seemed scandalized. This was clearly not a place that was used to receiving female visitors, and more than one patrician seemed to take her presence as an affront to his ancestral masculinity. Alicia merely returned their attentions with a polite smile. At last she was shown into a reading room facing a large window that looked out onto Avenida Diagonal. There, sitting in a plush armchair, sipping a glass of brandy the size of a fish tank, was a gentleman with majestic features and a no less grand mustache, sporting a three-piece suit, complete with two-toned shoes. The receptionist stopped a couple of meters away and broke into a fainthearted smile.

“Don Gustavo? The visitor you were expecting . . .”

Don Gustavo Barceló, honorary chairman of the Barcelona guild of booksellers and a scholar of everything pertaining to the eternal feminine and its most refined manifestations, stood up to receive Alicia warmly with a deferential bow. “Gustavo Barceló, at your service.”

Alicia held out her hand to him, and the bookseller kissed it as he would the hand of a bishop, taking his time and making the most of the moment to look her over properly, probably even noting what size gloves she wore.

“Verónica Larraz,” Alicia introduced herself. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Is Larraz the surname of your collector relative?”

Alicia supposed that Barceló’s employee, Benito, had called him as soon as she’d left the bookshop and told him all about the meeting in minute detail.

“No. Larraz is my married name.”

“I see. Discretion above all. I quite understand. Please, take a seat.”

Alicia sat down in an armchair opposite Barceló and took in the exclusive aristocratic air that emanated from the room’s decor.

“Welcome to the illustrious sanctuary of the nouveaux-riches and of those who have fallen on hard times and marry off their children to them, in order to perpetuate the caste,” remarked Barceló, following her eyes.

“You’re not a full member of the club, then?”

“For years I resisted on grounds of moral hygiene, but in the end circumstances forced me to succumb to the realities of the city and go with the flow.”