The Fan Painter of Seville – Part 2: The Copyist

Lola came at once. She studied the fan under the light for a long time.

"Someone's been watching you," she said. "Someone who can paint like you."

"Almost like me," Andrés said. He pointed with his little sable brush. "The swallows. I paint the tail feathers with one stroke. This painter uses two. He is careful, but he is slower." He paused. "Whoever painted this studied my work for months."

Lola looked at him with new interest. "Could you spot his hand on other things? Paintings?"

"Perhaps."

The next morning, she took him to the museum. The empty frame still hung on the wall. Beside it, the security chief, Iván Sanz, explained that the alarms had been switched off for exactly four minutes.

"Only three people have the codes," he said. "Me, the director and Doña Beatriz."

They went to Doña Beatriz's house that afternoon, a palace of marble and fountains near the river. She received them graciously and denied everything. Yes, she had ordered the swallow fan, as a gift. No, she did not know who it was for.

Then Andrés saw it.

On her wall hung the stolen painting. Or something exactly like it.

He walked closer. He looked at the brushstrokes in the corner, the way the painter had built up light on a woman's sleeve. Small strokes. Patient. Two where one would do.

"This isn't the original," he said quietly. "It's a copy. And it was painted by the same hand that painted my studio."

Doña Beatriz went pale. "I bought that years ago. It was sold to me as the original. By the museum's own expert."

Lola's phone rang. It was the museum.

The security chief, Iván Sanz, had not come back from lunch.

His office was empty, except for a box of fine sable brushes.

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Next: Part 3, The Feria. A forger in a flamenco hat, a red fan in the crowd and a swallow that gives the game away.