The Fan Painter of Seville – Part 1: The Robbery

Someone stole a painting from the Museo de la Luz. They left only one thing behind: a silk fan, painted by Andrés Molina.

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Seville in spring smells of orange blossom. The streets are narrow and shaded, the tiles are blue and yellow, and the cathedral bells ring out over the rooftops all day long.

Andrés's studio was a single whitewashed room off a courtyard full of geraniums. Fans hung from every wall, open like butterflies: lace and silk, painted with birds, flowers and dancers. He made each one by hand, and no two were ever the same.

He was painting a peacock feather on silk when Inspector Lola Ríos walked in without knocking.

She held up an evidence bag. Inside was a fan, deep blue silk painted with tiny swallows.

"Is this yours?"

"Yes," Andrés said, smiling. "I made it last winter. I remember every swallow." He paused. "Where did you find it?"

"On the floor of the Museo de la Luz," Lola said. "Right where a seventeenth-century painting used to hang. It was stolen last night."

Andrés's smile disappeared.

"You think I stole it?"

"I think whoever stole it either owned your fan," Lola said, "or wanted me to think you did."

He went to his order book and turned the pages carefully. The swallow fan had been a private commission. The client had paid in cash and given only an initial: B.O.

There was only one B.O. in Seville who collected art seriously.

Doña Beatriz Ortega.

"She is one of the museum's biggest donors," Lola said. "She sits on its board."

That evening, Andrés was closing his shutters when he noticed something on his workbench that had not been there before.

A fan. Folded. Unfamiliar.

He opened it slowly.

Painted across the silk, in a style that copied his own almost perfectly, was a picture of his studio. And of him, standing at the door.

And behind him, painted in black, the shadow of a man.

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Next: Part 2, The Copyist. A marble palace, a copy hanging on a wall, and a security office with an empty desk.