His father smiled at him. “Yes, in a new way, I think. But there is a mystery,” he told them both. “What was going on in Will’s lost hours, between visiting the cathedral and getting on that ferry? His mind was engaged in something. And in his second-to-last message on my cell phone he said he had something extraordinary to tell me. I’ve been wondering about that.”

Max had been trying to get the computer to talk to him, but he and Simon were unable to log in. The password prompt had flashed: The only woman I can handle…“What was Uncle Will’s password, Daddy? Who was the only woman he could handle? It’s not ‘Siân’; and not Grandma either. We’ve tried both of those.”

Alex shrugged casually. “What did he call the bike?” he suggested.

“Claudia.” Max and Simon returned in unison, and tried that.

“Touché, Alex.” Simon couldn’t believe it was that easy, and he suddenly found himself looking at Will’s familiar wallpaper of a favorite Joshua Reynolds painting, of Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in a glass of wine. It made him feel strangely close to him again right now, and he looked at Alex with a flash of inspiration. “Whatever he was thinking, he might well have sent it to his own e-mail address. He was definitely sending ideas and documents back from Rome—he told me that.”

“Simon, that’s so simple and clever. Can you log on to his server?” Max looked disappointed about the delay. “Let’s quickly check the mailbox, Max, then have our supper, and straight afterward you can get back to your game. It’ll be ready in about ten minutes anyway.”

“And I think your dad’s right that the PC game won’t boot on this, Max.” Simon tried to console him. “It’s a completely different system.”

Max looked slightly sulky as he sidled over to his father’s desktop in the other half of the large ground-floor reception room, which had the open-plan kitchen in the middle. He loaded his software and began playing there. Alex smiled resignedly, knowing the child’s wish to use the Apple was about proximity to Will, and nothing to do with the graphics. He walked to his son and kissed the top of his head; then he picked up his glass to go and join Simon at Will’s iBook. He realized Simon’s insight was exactly right—that all of Will’s photos, thoughts, everything would be there. His Apple had been part of his working life—he’d enhanced his pictures on it before sending them off, edited them, stored everything. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to look at it before.