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there?” he asked.
    “I would try about ten o’clock in the morning,” she answered. “I don’t imagine he will be an early riser. Later, and he might have gone out. He has friends.”
    “Thank you. I certainly will not mention your name when I talk to him,” Pitt promised.
    She hesitated for a moment, at a loss for words herself. Then she gave a brief smile and allowed him to escort her to the door and the street, where her carriage was waiting.
    —
    P ITT FOUND A LEXANDER D UNCANNON not at his flat but at an art exhibition three blocks away from the Autonomy Club. The man at the door told him who he was. Apparently he came often. A dark, slender young man. He looked about twenty-five. He was standing alone in front of a large painting of a country scene. Laborers stood with scythes in hand. The August sun shone out of a clear blue sky onto the golden cornfield. A few scarlet poppies burned bright at the margins.
    Pitt had grown up in the country. This looked idyllic, and quite unreal to him. It had a kind of beauty, but it was set back from the smell of the earth, the relentless heat of harvesttime, the ache of backs too long bent.
    “Do you like it?” he asked.
    The softness of Alexander’s youth was in his cheeks when he turned, but there were hard shadows around his eyes. He was clearly familiar with pain. He smiled, suddenly and charmingly. It lit his face. “No,” he said with candor. “Do you? Or have you not looked at it long enough?”
    Pitt smiled back. “How long do I need to look at it in order to like it?” he asked.
    Alexander was amused. “I don’t know, but longer than I have. What do you not like about it? It’s pretty enough…isn’t it?”
    Pitt decided in that moment to engage him in an honest conversation. “Is that what you think it should be, pretty?” he asked.
    “You don’t like pretty pictures?” He took him up on the challenge instantly and—from the grace of his posture and the sudden life in his eyes—with pleasure.
    Pitt gave it consideration. “No, I think I don’t. At least not if it is at the expense of the real. Artifice has its own kind of ugliness.”
    Now Alexander was eager, his eyes alight.
    “Do you know the place?”
    “Not recognizably.”
    Alexander laughed. “Touché,” he said cheerfully. “But are you familiar with what it is meant to be? What it was, before it was sentimentalized?”
    “Many like it, yes,” Pitt admitted, for a moment caught back in a memory so sharp it was almost physical.
    “Funny. I don’t.” Alexander shrugged. “And yet I know it’s wrong. Perhaps anyone can develop a distaste for the artificial, don’t you think?”
    “Yes, I agree.” Long ago, before graduating to murder cases, Pitt had dealt with theft, especially of fine art. He had learned a lot more about it than he had expected to, and found it gave him great pleasure. He need not tell this young man who he was, not just yet. Special Branch was not police. No such disclosure was required. “It is an emotional lie,” he added.
    Now he had Alexander’s complete attention. “How perceptive of you, Mr….?”
    “Pitt.” There was no escaping giving his name without just the kind of dishonesty he had spoken of. “Thomas Pitt.”
    “Alexander Duncannon.” He held out his hand.
    Pitt shook it. “There has to be something better here, surely?” he asked. “What do you like?”
    “Ah! Let me show you something lovely,” Alexander responded. “It’s very small, but quite beautiful.” He turned away and began walking rather unevenly toward the next room.
    Pitt followed, interested to see what the young man would like.
    Alexander stopped in front of a small pencil drawing of a clump of grass depicted in intense detail. Every blade was perfectly drawn. In the heart of it was a nest of field mice. He stared at Pitt, waiting for his verdict.
    Pitt looked at the picture for several moments. He was uncomfortable. Alexander had shown him something that was