“Of course not.” She said this as an insult. “My father always warned me that one day a greedy French art dealer would try to get the painting away from me. It is not for sale, and if it ever turns up missing, I’ll make certain to give the police your description.”

“I’m not an art dealer—and I’m not French.”

“Then who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want with my painting?”

15. The Marais, Paris

The Marais, Paris

THE COURTYARD WAS EMPTY and dark, lit only by the lights burning in the windows of the apartments above. They crossed it in silence and entered the foyer, where an old-fashioned cage lift stood ready to receive them. She mounted a flight of wide stairs instead and led him up to the fourth floor. On the landing were two stately mahogany doors. The door on the right was absent a nameplate. She opened it and led him inside. Gabriel took note of the fact that she punched the code into the keypad before switching on the lights. Hannah Weinberg, he decided, was good at keeping secrets.

It was a large apartment, with a formal entrance hall and a library adjoining the sitting room. Antique furniture covered in faded brocade stood sedately about, thick velvet curtains hung in the windows, and an ormolu clock set to the wrong time ticked quietly on the mantel. Gabriel’s professional eye went immediately to the six decent oil paintings that hung on the walls. The effect of the decor was to create the impression of a bygone era. Indeed Gabriel would scarcely have been surprised to see Paul Gachet reading the evening newspapers by gaslight.

Hannah Weinberg removed her coat, then disappeared into the kitchen. Gabriel used the opportunity to look inside the library. Leather-bound legal volumes lined formal wooden bookcases with glass doors. There were more paintings here—prosaic landscapes, a man on horseback, the obligatory sea battle—but nothing that suggested the owner might also be in possession of a lost van Gogh.

He returned to the sitting room as Hannah Weinberg emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of Sancerre and two glasses. She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew and watched his hands carefully as he removed the cork. She was not as attractive as she had appeared in Uzi Navot’s photograph. Perhaps it had been a trick of the nickeled Parisian light, or perhaps almost any woman looked attractive descending a flight of steps in Montmartre. Her pleated wool skirt and heavy sweater concealed what Gabriel suspected was a somewhat chunky figure. Her eyebrows were very wide and lent a profound seriousness to her face. Seated as she was now, surrounded by the dated furnishings of the room, she looked much older than her forty-four years.