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In a Barcelona museum, art conservator Nina Vidal discovers a hidden mark beneath varnish the same day a beloved guard dies in a stairwell “accident.” A forged frame, a secret warehouse, and a key shaped like an olive leaf pull her into a quiet hunt. With an old UV lamp and a wary inspector, she lifts lies like varnish and finds the hands behind them.
The conservation lab was the quietest room in the Museu de Santa Eulàlia, not by decree but by the way solvent fumes and concentration made even footsteps soft. Nina Vidal stood beside a table under a bank of cold LEDs. A shallow tray held distilled water. Cotton swabs lined a porcelain dish. The small portrait in front of her, an eighteenth‑century gentleman with a faint smile, watched from behind a fog of aged varnish. She dipped a swab, rolled its tip against a cloth, and touched the varnish with a surgeon’s care. Amber softened, lifted in a pale streak, and the paint beneath breathed again.
The dehumidifier muttered to itself. A long‑necked fan swiveled, brushing her bare forearm with cool air. Resin and time sat in her nose: cracked shellac, clove oil, a whiff of coffee she had forgotten to finish. She leaned closer. Under the grime the gentleman’s gaze sharpened. A clue stirred along the edge of the collar. A line too crisp. It looked like a hidden border, as if a second image had lived here once.
“Do you ever talk to them?” Ernesto asked from the doorway, voice warm as felt. A paper cup steamed in his hand. He wore his guard’s blazer even on days he could have been in a T‑shirt.
“Only when I want them to behave,” Nina said, taking the cup. “And sometimes when I don’t.”
“You’ll make him sing, I know it.” He peered at the portrait, eyebrows lifting. “He looks like someone who lies well.”
“Then he’ll be at home in this building,” she said, but it was gentle teasing. Ernesto had a granddaughter who visited the museum on Tuesday afternoons and showed Nina her drawings of cats in hats. He had been here longer than anyone, and he knew every shortcut, every hesitant hinge.
“There’s a door on the -1 stairwell that sticks,” he said, tapping his knee. “New hinges. If you take that route, mind your step. I’m telling maintenance, but you know how they are with forms.”
Nina nodded and blew on her coffee. “I’ll avoid cruising the catacombs for a while.”
“The catacombs applaud your caution,” he said gravely, and he left, walking with that tiny pause at the top stair he always had, as if measuring the first fall of his foot.
She set the cup aside and lifted a portable UV lamp over the corner. A violet wash passed over the canvas. The varnish glowed a dull river. At the bottom right, a brighter halo answered: a repair covered with shellac. No surprise. The faint line at the collar flickered too. She marked the spot in pencil on a mylar overlay. Beneath the gentleman’s smirk something else waited, not a face but a number of strokes that hinted at a different collar. The air hummed with the building’s breath, the smooth certainty of machines that had always been there and always would be.