CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS INEVITABLE: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of

the fate of

unrequited love. Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the

still darkened

house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him

had lost all

urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-

Amour, disabled

war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent

in chess, had

escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.