Robin Maugham sighed and then stared up at the ceiling as if hoping he might find the answer hanging off the dusty wooden chandelier. The French windows were none too clean either; bright sunlight showed up cobwebs like giant fingerprints on more than one pane of glass, and in the lost domain that was one corner under the refectory table was a champagne glass containing a cigarette end. Maybe I did belong somewhere like that; I wasn’t exactly gleaming myself.

“Don’t get me wrong, Robin. I’m no better than you. In many ways I’m worse. Long ago I concluded I don’t have a soul of my own. Not anymore.”

“Look, if I tell you the truth, will you promise not to tell my uncle?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. It all depends on what you tell me.”

“I’ll pay you to keep silent about this.”

“I think you’re mistaking me for another double-dealing bastard, Robin. I’m not a blackmailer. And I agreed to help your uncle, not help someone else to put the squeeze on him.”

“Look, I’ve made mistakes. I’m only human. But you must believe me, I’d never do anything to hurt my uncle Willie.”

“Not consciously, perhaps. So. Why don’t you tell me? How did Harold Hebel come to be in possession of this photograph?”

Robin Maugham got up and went to close the drawing room door. Then he lit a cigarette, quite forgetting there was one already burning in the ashtray, and walked around the room nervously for a few seconds before sitting down again. It wasn’t yet eleven but already he was sweating profusely.

“I’m not exactly sure, to be honest.”

“Take your time. I’m in no hurry. I took the whole morning off.”

“There’s a man in London who used to be a friend of my uncle’s. Chap named Blunt, Anthony Blunt. He’s queer, too.”

“Blunt’s one of the naked men in the photograph that was taken here at the Villa Mauresque, right?”

“The one taken in nineteen thirty-seven, yes.”

“Go on.”

“He’s now a very prominent art dealer. Very well connected. Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Anyway, I was a bit short of cash and so the last time I was in London, Anthony and I met for lunch at my club and I offered to sell him the photograph and some letters from him to Gerald. You see, Blunt’s a friend of this fellow Guy Burgess, too. In fact, I think they even shared a house during the war. Naturally, it would mean that Blunt would have to resign from all his offices if that picture ended up in the newspapers. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t a fortune I was asking. Just a thousand pounds, that’s all. Cheap at the price in view of how much Hebel is asking for it.”