“No,” agreed Barrow, “the bastard just created beautiful paintings that were rather out of fashion at the time. He did challenge ideals of art—but even those are quite exquisite. He once remarked that being in the war, he’d seen many forms of hell in his life, and the one thing it had taught him was to value beauty.

“After I’d learned what happened to him—that his death was shrouded in some mystery—that added another layer for me,” said Barrow. “No one had ever really solved what had killed him or where these paintings had gone. There were various theories, but no one had taken the time to study it. That, and my mother took me to all of the circuses when she was on photo shoots—Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Montreal—the Rivoli.”

She hadn’t thought he was a fan of the circus, but it made sense. “So it was the scholarship,” said Lara. “I’m curious. You said there was a mystery about his death? What killed him?”

“Bright’s disease,” said Barrow, distracted.

Lara looked puzzled.

“An old term for kidney failure,” said Gaston, clarifying.

“That’s hardly mysterious,” said Lara.

Barrow shrugged. “The disease came on rather suddenly. His friends said that he’d cut his hand at Le Cirque Secret and never recovered. They attributed it to Bright’s disease, but the feeling was that it might have been some strange blood disease. He just seemed to waste away within a week’s time. The circus lasted another eight months or so after Giroux died. And just like that”—Barrow snapped his fingers—“it was never heard from again. Its last performance was held sometime in 1926. Mourier looked for word about it anywhere… Barcelona… Rome… London, but it never appeared again.”

Lara couldn’t imagine spending a lifetime researching one person’s work. She understood that these men liked their little art lectures—liked to listen to themselves. Yet as they talked, the ticket burned in her bag. She took a little joy in knowing that she had a secret that wasn’t being tossed around by the two of them for discussion. If they knew she had the ticket, she’d be irrelevant in the conversation about it.

“And you both believe Le Cirque Secret is responsible for his death?” If she was going to go to Le Cirque Secret, she should know what she was getting into. She hadn’t finished the third journal yet. So far, there was nothing indicating that Giroux was about to meet a mysterious end. On the contrary, he seemed to be a man very much in love.