//------------------------------//
// The Last Gigliaro 
// Story: Mini Mysteries 
// by Acologic 
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‘My pitch last night was glorious!’ lamented Cecil Andrews, the hopeless mareboy whose woeful chat-ups were yet to bag him a lass. ‘How on earth did Lucky Lane catch on? 

‘Lucky’s father collects paintings,’ explained Cecil, ‘and he’s well known for it. She’d douse a fellow with her drink if he let slip his apathy for art, so I was careful to spin a yarn about a Gigliaro I own. 

‘Rossetti Gigliaro was a watercolourist who passed away in the frozen north eighty years ago. A keen mountaineer, he led an expedition to the peak of Mount Kazan, where he died of a heart attack. Rumour has it that, hours before his death, Gigliaro painted one final portrait – a likeness of his daughter, Ruby, who was stillborn. The story goes that Aims, Gigliaro’s best friend, brought the portrait back to Gigliaro’s wife, who stowed it away. 

‘The existence of such a painting has been much disputed, of course – but twenty years ago it was reportedly sold at an auction. I told Lucky I’d paid a great deal of money to trace, authenticate and restore the painting and offered to show it to her father.’

‘At which point she doused you, no?’

‘Yes. It was a load of hot air, of course, but how did she know?’

‘Though most captivating,’ said Slipstar, ‘your story is as easily invalidated as that painting.’

How come?

Gigliaro’s portrait could not exist. No watercolourist could paint at the peak of Mount Kazan, in the frozen north, where the temperature was lower than that at which water freezes.