“I told you before that I did not know my great-uncle.”

“I understand, but there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

“There is nothing to discuss.”

I was about to tell him how the forgeries made by his great-uncle Yves were chronicled in Vincent’s journal, but he had already hung up.

“Are there other cartons of Professor Guggliermo’s papers?” I asked Chiara when I arrived at the library later that day.

I had awakened with the thought that if Guggliermo had been planning to write something about the journal there could be notes about it.

“Di che tipo?” she asked.

“What kind? Oh, notes, papers, that’s all.” I strained for nonchalance.

“There is one box of…how you say…note varie, not yet put in category. I will find for you, after I finish this.” She indicated a stack of index cards.

I wanted to shout Do it now! but smiled and said, “Grazie,” then went into the courtyard to walk off my impatience.

One of the monks was burning leaves, gray smoke coiling into low clouds as if creating them. I circled the courtyard, wondering if Brother Francesco had seen something or someone he shouldn’t have. I peered through the dark alleyway. The police tape in front of the dormitory door was no longer there—and nobody was waiting by the stone stairs.

Chiara had Guggliermo’s carton of note varie waiting, everything as neat and orderly as it had been in the other carton, each folder carefully labeled: Essays and Notes for Essays, School Assignments, Receipts and Sales for Books. In each folder were others, subdivided into more specific binders.

I started with Essays and Notes for Essays, all pertaining to art historical subjects and nothing about the journal. Nothing in School Assignments either. I doubted there would be anything in Receipts and Sales for Books, but it was here I had another idea that had me going through bills and receipts for over an hour, compiling a list of about forty rare-book dealers that Antonio Guggliermo had dealt with on a regular basis. I then cross-checked the receipts to see who might have sold any kind of notebook, diary, or journal. There were nine possibilities.

Sitting at a nearby café, laptop open, an espresso for energy, I found the nine book dealers’ websites and sent a general email to all of them. Within minutes, I received three responses from dealers who said they had never sold any kind of journal or diary that matched my description—though each offered to look for the kind of journal I’d described if I wanted to buy it. I politely declined and crossed them off the list. Two more responses, neither of which had sold the kind of journal I had described.

I ordered another espresso, and by the time I’d finished it, a book dealer in Berlin emailed to say he had sold Guggliermo an old journal. I called. Though the dealer confirmed the cover had been blue and the paper buff, it turned out to be a nineteenth-century notepad, never used and with no writing in it at all.