She brushed this aside, offhanded and yet insistent. “ ’Fraid not. It’s Rhinehart’s romantic version of the Magi, that’s all. It’s supposed to be the Three Kings bringing their gifts to the infant Christ. We know that because it was part of a Nativity triptych. One of the other panels shows a very folkloric sort of Madonna in the woods, the other’s just the babe in the manger. I’m afraid it hasn’t anything to do with murdered nuns and that sort of thing.”

“Still, isn’t it kind of a coincidence? Me coming over, you standing there …”

“Not really,” she answered at once, very coolly now. “We’re considering making a bid at the auction next week. I don’t see any sort of coincidence about it.” And with that settled, she busied herself straightening the golden brooch pinned to the breast of her cardigan: a design something like a horseshoe enclosing something like a figure eight.

Storm was afraid to press the point. “That’s nice,” he said, for want of something better. “Nice brooch.”

’Oh, thank you. It was my mother’s.” She went on fussing with it, not even glancing up. “I haven’t worn it since I was a child.”

They reached the front of her gallery. Stood between two little spruces in cast-iron planters, under the wine-red awning with Endering Gallery written in gold letters, and beside the window in which was displayed a landscape of rocky hills and misty distances in a heavy frame. Sophia paused here with her hand on the door, her face turned up to him, her brown eyes remote. He stood over her with his shoulders low, his own hands pressed deep into his trench coat, his own eyes flooded with longing and sadness.

“Would you like to come in?” she said finally—reluctantly, he thought. “We have plenty of works from the period.”

She held the door open. Storm went into the gallery.

The place was darkly paneled, dimly lit, a long room hung with paintings all the way down the line. A balcony ran along the wall to his left, with another long gallery of paintings above.

There was a pretty blonde seated at a desk just in front. She was only a bit younger than Sophia, but she smiled up at her deferentially. When she held out a few pink message slips, Sophia took them from her with hardly a glance.

“You see? It’s really just the style you’re reacting to,” Sophia said to Storm. “Look around. You’ll find half a dozen paintings in here that remind you of your ghost story.”