Chiara reached for her phone and typed, then handed it to Irene. “She’s very beautiful,” said the child.
“All of your father’s female friends are beautiful. And they all adore him to no end.” Chiara reclaimed the phone. “Tell your brother that dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”
“I want to stay here.”
“I need to have a word with your father in private.”
“About Gennaro the barman?”
Chiara squeezed the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “Irene, please.”
“I’m very torrid,” she said, and left the kitchen in a sulk.
Chiara dropped a handful of bigoli pasta into a stockpot of boiling water and gave it a stir. “You’re incorrigible, you realize.”
“You’re one to talk.”
She took up her phone again. “It’s funny, but she looks like a Naomi.”
“How does someone named Naomi look?”
“Like a beautiful historian who’s trying to purge the Louvre of looted paintings.” Chiara set the phone aside. “But why did you go to Paris to see her? And, better yet, why did you withdraw one thousand euros from an ATM machine in the Eighteenth?”
“Because you were right about Professor Blake’s murder.”
“Of course I was, darling.” Chiara smiled. “When have I ever been wrong about anything?”
14
San Polo
“How much will you earn for Nicky’s Gentileschi?”
“Barely enough to cover the cost of my solvents and cotton wool.”
“Your work will be effectively pro bono, you mean?”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Rather like my work for you.”
Having dealt with the dishes and supervised the bathing of the children, they had repaired to the loggia overlooking the Grand Canal. The bottle of Barbaresco stood on the table before them. A butane outdoor heater, purchased over Irene’s tear-streaked objections, burned the cold from the air. Gabriel wore no coat, only a zippered woolen pullover. Chiara was wrapped in a quilted down duvet.
“And to think that none of this would have happened if you hadn’t attended that ceremony at the Courtauld.”
“You’re wrong about that.”
“Me? Impossible.”
“Charlotte Blake would still be dead, regardless of whether I had showed my face at the Courtauld. And so would Emanuel Cohen.”
“I was referring to your personal involvement in this matter,” said Chiara. “Therefore, I was in no way wrong. And I resent the implication that I was.”
“Can you ever forgive me?”
“That depends on whether Irene tells her teacher and her friends about my torrid affair with Gennaro the barman.”
“So you admit it, after all?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I’ve been tending to your boundless sexual needs as well as his. And in my spare time, I’ve been running the most prominent restoration firm in the Veneto and raising two children, not to mention a tiger.” She emptied the last of the wine into Gabriel’s glass. “But back to the matter at hand.”
“My boundless sexual needs?”
“Your latest investigation.”
“I should probably tell the British and French police everything I know.”
“With all due respect, darling, you know very little. In fact, you can’t even prove that Emanuel Cohen was murdered.”
“I have a witness.”
“The Senegalese seller of counterfeit handbags?”
“He has a name, Chiara.”
“Obviously I meant no disrespect. I was just pointing out that your friend Amadou Kamara is less than reliable.”
“What possible motive did he have to mislead me?”
“Fifteen hundred euros.”
