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.