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200 reserve as a Romney. It’s barely a “school of” .’
    ‘Shocking,’ I muttered in agreement, pen between my teeth. One of the first things I’d learned at the House was that the reserve is the minimum price a seller requires a piece to fetch. I jerked my head towards his back pocket. ‘New book, Dave?’
    ‘Yeah, I’ll lend it to you if you like. Smashing.’
    ‘Remind me when Romney was in Italy?’
    ‘1773 to 1775. Rome and Venice, mostly. So, this bloke’s wife did him in the Cuisinart. In Ohio.’
    ‘As if, Dave.’
    ‘As if that’s a Romney.’
    My phone pinged with a text from Rupert, the head of department. I had to get out on a valuation the minute I’d taken the notes up.
    At his desk Rupert was treating himself to what was probably his third breakfast of the morning, a sausage sandwich that had already oozed mustard onto one of his heavy double cuffs. I’d be off to the dry cleaner again later, I thought ruefully. What was it about me and fat men? He gave me an address in St John’s Wood and the client details, and told me to get a move on, but as I reached the door of his office, he called out to me.
    ‘Er, Judith?’ One of the many things I hated about Rupert was his affectation that my first name was ‘Er’.
    ‘Yes, Rupert?’
    ‘About these Whistlers –’
    ‘I read up on them yesterday, like you told me.’
    ‘Er, yes, but please remember that Colonel Morris is a very significant client. He will expect absolute professionalism.’
    ‘Of course, Rupert.’
    Maybe I didn’t hate Rupert so much, I thought. He was trusting me with a serious valuation. I’d been sent on a few jobs before, minor things, even out of London a couple of times, but this was the first opportunity I’d had to speak to a ‘significant’ client. I took it as a good sign, that my boss’s confidence in me was growing. If I could judge the price right, accurate but appealing to the seller, I could score the deal for the house by acquiring the pieces for sale. Whistler was a major artist, one who attracted serious collectors, and could mean serious money for the House.
    To celebrate I charged a cab to the department’s account, even though we juniors weren’t permitted cabs. That budget was reserved for vital transportation such as fetching Rupert from the Wolseley round the corner on Piccadilly. I let it off a few streets from the address so that I could walk quietly under the summer-heavy trees by the canal. My head was clear now, and there was a scent of wet lilac from security-walled gardens. It made me smile to think that these streets, with their gangs of solemn Filipina nannies and Polish workmen installing vast basement pools, had once been little more than a vast and notorious high-class brothel, where women waited behind heavy plush curtains, arranged like Etty nudes, for their lovers to call on the way home from the City. London had always been and would always be a city of whores.
    *
    A beady laser eye scanned over me as I rang the bell at the ground-floor flat. The client opened the door into the creamy double-fronted stucco himself. Somehow I had expected a housekeeper.
    ‘Colonel Morris? I’m Judith Rashleigh,’ I introduced myself, holding out my hand, ‘from British Pictures? We had an appointment about the Whistler studies?’
    He snorted a greeting and I followed his Cavalry-twilled rump into the lobby. I’d hardly been expecting a dashing officer, but I had to prevent myself from recoiling as the yellow-nailed claw of his hand briefly grasped mine. Vicious little eyes twitched above a greying Hitlerish moustache, which clung to his upper lip like a slug on a ski jump. He didn’t offer me a cup of tea, leading me straight into a stuffy drawing room, where fussy pastel drapes made an odd, provincial contrast with the extraordinary paintings on the walls. The Colonel drew the curtains as I gazed at a Sargent, a Kneller and a tiny, exquisite Rembrandt cartoon.
    ‘What wonderful