 A society matron is stabbed to death while examining a painting she has purchased at auction. She had started to scrape off the painting to get at another painting underneath, and had uncovered the artist s signature -- "Lazar," a key figure in an unsolved (and heinous) murder in Paris 25 years earlier. When the rest of the painting is revealed, it s a portrait of the dead woman herself. Investigation reveals that the woman was in Paris at the time of the murder and may well have been the killer, but she subsequently completely lost her memory. Somebody didn t want her to regain it.