He was sitting at a small, round table behind her. Chin down. His left hand wrapped round a glass of Diet Coke. His right hand massaging his left shoulder. He didn’t know she was looking at him and was staring into the fizzy brown surface of his drink with all the grief in his grief-stricken eyes plain to see. Around him, the dark wood tones of the tavern faded into obscurity. Only the brass rail of the bar was gleaming. A couple of older fellows stood propped against it, pints in hand, talking at times, but mostly staring into the gas fire, which burned high, blue and orange, in the large grate. Except for a video slot machine—sparkling with blithe idiocy in a corner, unused—the place was dim, the yellow lanterns on the wall kept low. The atmosphere was mellow, as usual, quiet.

After a while, Storm stirred where he sat. “All right,” he said slowly. “Run this by me again.”

Harper had to dredge herself out of her brown study. She answered with a sigh. Not turning. Keeping watch on the scarred man outside as he smoked in the shadows. “ ‘The Alchemist’s Castle,’ ” she said. “It was published anonymously, in German, sometime around 1798, about a hundred years before the English story ‘Black Annie.’ When I raised the issue of a possible link between ‘Black Annie’ and the Belham Abbey ghost, Jorge was reminded of the German work. He located the ‘Alchemist’ manuscript in a private collection in Dresden. In Dresden, mind. The collector attributed the work to one Hans Baumgarten, who was a member of the artistic circle that included Rhinehart. Baumgarten wrote the story in Dresden, shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century. At the same time and place, in other words, at which Rhinehart painted the triptych of which The Magi is the first panel.”

“Right. Okay.” Storm went on kneading his arm, working his way down from shoulder to elbow. “And all this is stupendously incredible and fantastic because ‘The Alchemist’s Castle’ and The Magi have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”

“Precisely,” said Harper Albright. “The Magi—with its cowled figures before a wedge of wall—is reminiscent of ‘Black Annie.’ But ‘Black Annie’—with its foully murdered child and its reiterated sound—reminds us of ‘The Alchemist’s Castle.’ A possible inference is that all three works had a common, earlier source.”

“You mean the painting I saw at the auction house with Sophia and the story of Black Annie might actually be based on the same thing.”

“So a reading of ‘The Alchemist’s Castle’ would suggest.”

Storm thought this over, massaging his arm. “So then I was right—when I saw the painting and said it looked like Black Annie, I was right. And all that stuff Sophia was saying about German Romantics and English ghost stories was—”

“Interesting,” said Harper, “but not to the immediate point.”