“She said she’d see you,” Josh said, not answering her question. “But she’s my client, D’Arcy. I have to look out for her. If you ask her something and she doesn’t want to answer, you can’t push her, okay?”

“You know, don’t you?” D’Arcy felt a shiver prickle her skin, a mixture of both excitement and fear.

“It’s not my place to tell you.”

“I think you might be the only man in the world who’d put his client’s interests over making one of the biggest discoveries in the art world for years.”

Josh started to speak but she held up her hand. “I meant it as a compliment,” she said. “I can see why she has you as her agent.”

He studied her face. “Are you going to ask her about your mother too?”

“Of course,” D’Arcy said breezily, as if that were of small concern in the light of the other revelation that might be made.

“She has a sitting room up there. Second door on the left.”

D’Arcy ascended the staircase, one half of her brain buzzing. What if the photographer really was Jessica May? What would D’Arcy do with that knowledge? Quiz her on the thinking behind every photograph from 1943 through to the present day at the very least. Ask her why she’d chosen to vanish. Tell her that the world needed to know she was still alive, needed to remember work that was so very important when it was taken, and was still important now, not just artistically, but in jolting the memory of a world that seemed too ready to fight at any provocation. The Photographer was a renowned artist; Jessica May could, once again, be similarly acclaimed.

D’Arcy stopped before the door to settle herself before she knocked, knowing it was most likely she would say none of that. Instead, she would probably stare open-mouthed and be too awed to speak. If it were true.

“Entrez!” a voice that was lighter and clearer than D’Arcy expected called out.

D’Arcy pushed open the door and came face to face with a woman who still held the trappings of a beautiful face in the cheekbones, only slightly attenuated by the lines age had etched into them, and in the large brown eyes. The woman smiled at D’Arcy from her chair, a warm smile, one that belonged in this place of beauty and exuberance.

“Thank you for taking such good care of my work,” the woman said in the voice that wasn’t at all blurred or slowed by age. “I’m sorry you expected more of it to have been packed. We did get someone in to begin the process but I found I couldn’t trust him to handle it the way I prefer. By all accounts, you’re doing a vastly better job.”

“Thank you,” D’Arcy said. “It honestly doesn’t feel much like work. Being so close to your photographs is what every art historian dreams of. I’ve been fed extremely well. The chateau is magnificent. And Josh has been very…” She felt herself blush a little. “Kind.”