“From another branch of the family, the Moncadas. A great-uncle. Moncada was Ana’s second family name. One of her ancestors, Luis Moncada, was a quartermaster general under Alejandro Farnesio, around 1500 or so… He must have been something of an art enthusiast.”

Julia consulted the documentation that was lying on the table.

“ ‘Acquired in 1585’, it says here, ”possibly in Antwerp, at the time of the surrender of Flanders and Brabant…‘ “

The old man nodded, almost as if he’d been witness to the event himself.

“Yes, that’s right. It may have been part of the spoils of war from the sacking of the city. The troops of the regiment my wife’s ancestor was in charge of were not the kind of people to knock at the door and sign a receipt.”

Julia was leafing through the documents.

“There are no references to the painting before that,” she remarked. “Do you remember any family stories about it, any oral tradition? Any information you have would help us.”

Belmonte shook his head.

“No, I don’t know of anything else. My wife’s family always referred to the painting as the Flanders or Farnesio Panel, doubtless so as not to remember the manner of its acquisition. It appeared under those names for the twenty-odd years it was on loan to the Prado, until my wife’s father recovered it in 1923, thanks to Primo de Rivera, who was a friend of the family. My father-in-law always held the Van Huys in great esteem, because he was a keen chess player. That’s why, when it passed into his daughter’s hands, she didn’t want to sell it.”

“And now?” asked Menchu.

The old man remained silent for a while, staring into his coffee cup as if he hadn’t heard the question.

“Now, things are different,” he said at last. He seemed almost to be making fun of himself. “I’m a real old crock now; that much is obvious.” And he slapped his half-useless legs. “My niece Lola and her husband take care of me, and I should repay them in some way, don’t you think?”

Menchu mumbled an apology. She hadn’t meant to be indiscreet. That was a matter for the family, naturally.

“There’s no reason to apologise,” said Belmonte, raising his hand, as if offering absolution. “It’s perfectly natural. That picture is worth a lot of money and it serves no real purpose just hanging in the house. My niece and her husband say that they could do with some help. Lola has her father’s pension, but her husband, Alfonso…” He looked at Menchu as if appealing for her understanding. “Well, you know what he’s like: he’s never worked in his life. As for me…” The sardonic smile returned to his lips. “If I told you how much I have to pay in taxes every year just to hang on to this house and live in it, you’d be horrified.”

“It’s a good area,” Julia said. “And a good house.”

“Yes, but my pension is tiny. That’s why I’ve gradually been selling off little souvenirs. The painting will give me a breathing space.”

He remained thoughtful, nodding slowly, although he didn’t seem particularly downcast. On the contrary, he seemed to find the whole thing amusing, as if there were humorous aspects to it that only he could appreciate. Perhaps what at first sight seemed only vulgar pillaging on the part of an unscrupulous niece and her husband was, for him, an odd kind of experiment in family greed: it’s always “uncle this and uncle that”, here we are at your beck and call, and your pension only just covers the costs; you’d be better off in a home with people the same age as you; it’s a shame, all these pictures hanging on the walls for no purpose. Now, with the Van Huys as bait, Belmonte must have felt safe. He could regain the initiative after long years of humiliation. Thanks to the painting, he could finally settle his account with his niece and her husband.

Julia offered him a cigarette, and he gave a grateful smile but hesitated.

“I shouldn’t really,” he said. “Lola allows me only one milky coffee and one cigarette a day.”

“Forget Lola,” Julia replied, with a spontaneity that surprised her. Menchu looked startled, but the old man didn’t seem bothered in the least. He gave Julia a look in which she thought she caught a glimmer of complicity, instantly extinguished, and reached out his thin fingers. Leaning over the table to light the cigarette, Julia said: “About the painting… Something unexpected has come up.”

The old man took a pleasurable gulp of smoke, held it in his lungs as long as possible and half closed his eyes.

“Unexpected in a good way or a bad way?”

“In a good way. We’ve discovered an original inscription underneath the paint. Uncovering it would increase the value of the painting.” She sat back in her chair, smiling. “It’s up to you what we do.”

Belmonte looked at Menchu and then at Julia, as if making some private comparison or as if torn between two loyalties. At last he seemed to decide. Taking another long pull on his cigarette, he rested his hands on his knees with a look of satisfaction.

“You’re not only pretty, but you’re obviously bright as well,” he said to Julia. “I bet you even like Bach.”

“I love Bach.”

“Please, tell me what the inscription says.”

And Julia told him.

“Who’d have thought it!” Belmonte, incredulous, was still shaking his head after a long silence. “All those years of looking at that picture and I never once imagined…” He glanced briefly at the empty space left by the Van Huys, and his eyes half-closed in a contented smile. “So the painter was fond of riddles.”

“So it would seem,” Julia said.

Belmonte pointed to the record player in the corner.

“He’s not the only one,” he said. “Works of art containing games and hidden clues used to be commonplace. Take Bach, for example. The ten canons that make up his Musical Offering are the most perfect thing he composed, and yet not one of them was written out in full, from start to finish. He did that deliberately, as if the piece were a series of riddles he was setting Frederick of Prussia. It was a common musical stratagem of the day. It consisted in writing a theme, accompanied by more or less enigmatic instructions, and leaving the canon based on that theme to be discovered by another musician or interpreter; or by another player, since it was in fact a game.”

“How interesting!” said Menchu.

“You don’t know just how interesting. Like many artists, Bach was a joker. He was always coming up with devices to fool the audience. He used tricks employing notes and letters, ingenious variations, bizarre fugues. For example, into one of his compositions for six voices, he slyly slipped his own name, shared between two of the highest voices. And such things didn’t happen only in music. Lewis Carroll, who was a mathematician and a keen chess player as well as a writer, used to introduce acrostics into his poems. There are some very clever ways of hiding things in music, in poems and in paintings.”

“Absolutely,” said Julia. “Symbols and hidden clues often appear in art. Even in modern art. The problem is that we don’t always have the right keys to decipher those messages, especially the more ancient ones.” Now it was her turn to stare pensively at the space on the wall. “But with The Game of Chess we at least have something to go on. We can make an attempt at a solution.”

Belmonte leaned back in his wheelchair, his mocking eyes fixed on Julia.

“Well, keep me informed,” he said. “I can assure you that nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

They were saying good-bye in the hallway when the niece and her husband arrived. Lola was a scrawny woman, well over thirty, with reddish hair and small rapacious eyes. Her right arm, encased in the sleeve of her fur coat, was firmly gripping her husband’s left arm. He was dark and slim, slightly younger, his premature baldness mitigated by a deep tan. Even without the old man’s remark about him, Julia would have guessed that he had won a place in the ranks of those who prefer to do as little as possible to earn their living. His features, to which the slight puffiness under his eyes lent an air of dissipation, wore a sullen, rather cynical look, which his large, almost vulpine mouth did nothing to belie. He was wearing a gold-buttoned blue blazer and no tie, and he had the unmistakable look of someone who divides his considerable leisure time between drinking aperitifs in expensive bars and frequenting fashionable nightclubs, although he was clearly no stranger either to roulette and card games.