“We’ll get to that. First we need to know if he put the truth on paper.”

Faust took out the rest of the first-movement manuscript and handed it to the girl. She spread it out in sequence. She followed the melody with her finger, humming silently. She raised the piano’s lid again and picked out phrases on the keys, haltingly. She jumped to the bloodstained page and continued. Middleton nodded to himself. He heard continuity, logic, sense.

Until the last measure.

The last measure was where the movement should have come home to rest, with a whole note that settled back to the root of the native key, with calm and implacable inevitability. But it didn’t. Instead it hung suspended in midair with an absurd discordant trill, sixteenth notes battling it out through the whole of the bar, a dense black mess on the page, a harsh beating pulse in the room.

The girl said, “The last bar can’t be right.”

Faust said, “Apparently.”

The girl played the trill again, faster. Said, “OK, now I see.”

“See what?”

“The two notes are discordant. Play them fast enough, and the inter-modulation between them implies a third note that isn’t actually there. But you can kind of hear it. And it’s the right note. It would be very obvious on a violin.”

Middleton said, “Chopin didn’t write like that.”

The girl said, “I know.”

Faust asked, “What’s the implied note?”

The girl played the trill for half a bar and then stabbed a key in between and a pure tone rang out, sweet and correct and reassuring. She said, “Two notes.”

Faust said, “Sounds like one to me.”

“The last note of this movement and the first of the next. That’s Chopin. Who did this to my uncle?”

Faust didn’t answer, because right then the door opened and Vukasin walked in. He had a silenced Glock held down by his thigh and from six feet away Middleton could smell that it had been used, and recently. Faust said, “We’re all here.” He made the formal introductions, one to the other, Vukasin, Middleton, Nacho, Kaminski. He let his gaze rest on Kaminski and said, “Colonel Middleton killed your uncle. He tortured that page out of him and then cut his throat. In Warsaw, after their lunch.”

“Not true,” Middleton said.

“True,” Vukasin said. “I saw him leave. I went in and found the body. Three bodies. Two bystanders got in the way, apparently.”

Faust stepped aside as Nacho took Middleton’s arms and pinned him. Vukasin raised the silenced Glock and pointed it at Middleton’s face. Then Vukasin lowered the gun again and reversed it in his hand and offered it butt-first to the girl. Said, “Your uncle. Your job, if you want it.”