‘You must know, then, Mr Alleyn, that a preoccupation with the arts is not to be tampered with—my English is unable to explain me, I think—it is not to be cut off and turned on like taps. Beauty and, for us, antique beauty in especial—is absolute. No misfortune or anxiety can colour our feeling for it. When we see it we salute it and are greatly moved. The day before yesterday at S. Tommaso I was furnished with the money demanded of me as a price of silence. I was prepared to hand it over. The decision had been taken. I have to confess that a lightness of spirit came over me and a kind of relief. The beauty of the Etruscan works in that underworld did much to enhance this feeling.’

‘And also it was advisable, wasn’t it, to keep up appearances?’

‘That, too,’ said the Baron steadily. ‘I admit. That too. But it was not difficult. There were the Etruscans to support me. I may tell you that I believe our family, which is of great antiquity, arose in classical times in the lands between the Tiber and the Arno.’

‘Your wife told me so. Did you hand over the money?’

‘No. There was no opportunity. As you know, he had gone.’

‘A further and very understandable relief.’

‘Of course.’

‘You were not his only victim in that party you know.’

‘So I believe.’

Alleyn took his glass. ‘Let me give you a drink.’

‘It will not increase my indiscretion,’ said the Baron. ‘But thank you.’

When Alleyn had given it to him he said, ‘You may not believe me when I say that it would solace me if I could tell you what it was that he had discovered. I cannot. But on my honour I wish that I could. I wish it with all my heart, Mr Alleyn.’

‘Let us take it as read.’

Alleyn collected the Baroness’s photographs, prints and negatives. ‘You will take these, won’t you?’ he said. ‘There is nothing in the earlier ones to distress your wife.’ He gave them to him. The picture in profile of the Van der Veghels’ heads was on top.

‘It’s a striking picture,’ Alleyn said lightly, ‘Isn’t it?’

The Baron stared at it and then looked up at him.

‘We think alike, too,’ he said. ‘My wife and I. You may have noticed it.’

‘Yes,’ said Alleyn. ‘I noticed.’

‘When such a bond occurs, and I think it occurs very seldom, it cannot be—I am lost for the English word.’

‘Gainsaid?’

‘Perhaps. It cannot be interrupted. You have it in your literature. In your Wutherink Heights you have it.’

It was not easy, Alleyn thought, to clothe the Van der Veghels in the mantles of Heathcliff and Cathy, but all the same, it was not altogether a ludicrous association.