The Lesser Hands

Thomas Hale reads the histories of valuable objects for a living. From a quiet flat in Marylebone he traces the chain of hands a painting has passed through, the stretches where the record goes dark, the question of whether the dark stretches mean anything at all. He has built a life as exact as the work and keeps it the way he keeps the chain on his door, every night, without fail.

Then one morning the chain is already off, and he knows he set it. The route he has run for years measures lon...