He had also been unable to find any reference to Estelle Allard. There had been, at the back of the bureau’s file, a neatly typed report that made mention of a Frenchwoman, part of the Resistance operating out of Paris, who was referred to only as La Chanteuse. According to the report, the Frenchwoman had provided invaluable assistance to the SOE and had been smuggled out of France three weeks after Sophie’s arrest. The report indicated that La Chanteuse had delivered an intelligence package on behalf of the British agent Celine to a Miss V. Atkins in London via Colonel James Reed at Tempsford. It did not say what was in the package, and what had happened to the Frenchwoman after that was lost to time.

Gabriel had decided that it was possible—likely, even—that the woman referred to as La Chanteuse had been Lia’s grandmother. It seemed obvious that the Frenchwoman had been instrumental in helping the English agent named Celine complete her mission in 1943. And to Gabriel, it seemed just as likely that La Chanteuse had been the angel who had whispered hope into the ear of a suffering pilot on a sunny Norfolk morning.

Gabriel set the letter aside and sat back in his studio chair, gazing at the three Degas dancers caught forever in motion. They were the last of the collection he had worked on, most of the paintings needing very little in the way of restoration. He would crate and pack them properly after lunch and add them to the shipment that was set to be returned to Paris. The gallery for Aurelia Leclaire’s collection had been selected, and the exhibition date three weeks from now decided upon. Advertisement for the exhibit had already garnered a great deal of interest.

The images of each painting had been showcased in art publications across the globe. International columnists from major newspapers had featured the collection in their respective arts and leisure sections, and art history professors from a storied collection of schools had incorporated the collection into lecture material. Each work had been uploaded into a variety of lost-art databases in the hopes that a rightful owner might be identified.

Thus far, Gabriel’s office had received inquiries from museums and galleries and private collectors, all anxious to acquire various pieces. The museums and galleries had been engaged in conversation regarding loan or exhibition of pieces in the collection, and the private collectors had been turned away. But no one had come forward to indicate that any of the art might once have belonged to them or their family.