“The joke?” I said.

“Come have a look,” she said.

The study was dark, totally unlike the bright, modern sitting room, bookcases sagging under the weight of overfilled shelves, an easy chair with stuffing dangling beneath its seat, wallpaper curling along the seams. But none of this mattered. What caught my eye was the painting.

“It is humorous, no?” Madame Leblond said. “The joke, as I have always called it.”

Neither Smith nor I were smiling, the two of us mesmerized by the painting, which hung on a wire, unframed.

“I guess it is quite good,” she said, “for a copy.”

I came in closer to study the brushwork, the soft blurring sfumato. I saw the initials too, could even make them out upside down.

“And this belonged to your grandfather?” Smith kept his voice steady and calm.

“I believe so. It has been hanging in this spot since I was a little girl. This was my grandfather’s study, then my father’s. I did not want to change it. Not even to change the wallpaper or paint the walls. Sentimental of me, I suppose, but after my father died, I decided to leave everything as it was.” She turned to face us. “This can’t possibly be the painting you have come to see.”

“It is,” Smith said.

She asked why, and he said there were other such fakes and that INTERPOL was collecting and cataloging them so they could never be sold as originals.

Madame Leblond looked incredulous. “How could anyone believe this painting is real when everyone knows the original is in the Louvre Museum?”

“Some people are easily fooled,” Smith said, trying to sound offhand.

“Goodness,” she said, “if I thought that were possible, I would have sold it for a million euros years ago!” She laughed for the first time, then sobered. “I am kidding, of course. It was the only painting left in the house when I took possession. As far as I know, my mother had sold all of her father’s collection after he died.”

I couldn’t help but ask how her grandfather had died.

“I believe it was a heart attack,” she said, frowning, “on vacation in the south of France.”

Smith asked to take a few pictures, cell phone already out, photographing the full painting several times and details, then asked if it was okay if we took the painting off the wall.

“Mon dieu!” she said when she saw the back, the faux stains and the Louvre seal, all perfectly replicated. “I never saw the back,” she said. “How remarkable.”

Smith said nothing, his cell phone camera clicking away. While he took pictures, I asked another question. “You say your grandfather died in the south of France. Do you happen to know the name of the town?”

“A small town in the Vaucluse region,” she said. “I believe it was Lacoste.”

Lacoste.

The medieval town Vincent had described was back in my mind, along with too many unanswered questions: Did he find Valfiero and Chaudron? Get what he was owed? Ever see his son again?