Chapter 1 Of all the people who knew about the big house in the middle of Wyndham Woods, very few had ever been inside. For over a century, the owners had been importing their chefs from France, their butlers from England. Occasionally, someone from town would be summoned through the tall gates and down the winding lane to repair a pipe or deliver supplies; but for the most part, the house was like a dragon in the hills, a sleeping legend that barely touched anything beyond its line of trees. But that never stopped the stories. The ceilings are forty feet high, some people would say. The bathroom faucets are made of solid gold. Every so often, one teenager would dare another to climb the fence and wander through the grounds to get a look at the house, and the trespasser would show up at school the following day with tales of armed guards, Doberman pinschers, and a narrow escape through a tunnel lined with barbed wire. (The one-way ride in the back of a squad car and the stern call to their parents, however, always went unmentioned.) But more than anything, people talked about the painting. Sure, most of the town gossips knew only the most basic facts about Claude Monet. For them, it was enough just to imagine what a hundred million dollars might look like, hanging on a wall in