Then, in the studio on the roof, we came across a large easel portrait that had just been varnished. The artist had produced a deliberate travesty of the sentimental and powder-blue tints of a fashionable society painter, but beneath this gloss he had visualized Leonora as a dead Medea. The stretched skin below her right cheek, the sharp forehead and slipped mouth gave her the numbed and luminous appearance of a corpse.

My eyes moved to the signature. “Nolan! My God, were you here when he painted this?”

“It was finished before I came-two months ago. She refused to have it framed.”

“No wonder.” I went over to the window and looked down at ‘the bedrooms hidden behind their awnings. “Nolan was here. The old studio near Coral D was his.”

“But why should Leonora ask him back? They must have-”

“To paint her portrait again. I know Leonora Chanel better than you do, Beatrice. This time, though, the size of the sky.”

We left the library and walked past the cocktails and canapés to where Leonora was welcoming her guests. Nolan stood beside her, wearing a suit of white suede. Now and then he looked down at her as if playing with the possibilities this self-obsessed woman gave to his macabre humour. Leonora clutched at his elbow. With the diamonds fixed around her eyes she reminded me of some archaic priestess. Beneath the contour jewellery her breasts lay like eager snakes.

Van Eyck introduced himself with an exaggerated bow. Behind him came Petit Manuel, his twisted head ducking nervously among the tuxedos.

Leonora’s mouth shut in a rictus of distaste. She glanced at the white plaster on my foot. “Nolan, you fill your world with cripples. Your little dwarf-will he fly too?”