Liam was already delighted to return to his Noah’s ark so I tiptoed away and off I went. My mention of Aggie had me thinking of her again. My present worries had pushed her loss from my mind, but now I pictured her in stark contrast to the round and healthy-looking Madeleine. Poor little Aggie who never had a chance to know joy in her life. And the guilt flooded over me again.

I thought I caught a glimpse of the group of young artists sitting in the Nouvelle Athènes. I wondered when they got any painting done. I asked the man in the ticket booth at the Métro station for directions to the Jardin du Luxembourg. He told me to change to Line 1 as I had done the day before, to get out at Châtelet station, cross the Seine, traverse the Île de la Cité, cross the second bridge until I came to the Boulevard St. Michel. If I followed that I should come to the Jardin. It seemed like an awfully long way. I just hoped I located this rich American called Stein quickly and that she hadn’t also decided to vanish. I tried to remember whether Sid or Gus had mentioned her in any of their letters. An American art collector and a female one at that was just the kind of person whose acquaintance they would have sought, surely?

I came out of the Métro at the Châtelet station to find it was already raining. I opened my brolly and headed for the bridge across the Seine. Holding it tilted down against the wind and rain I almost didn’t notice the magnificent fortress on the other side of the bridge and had to stop—windswept and rain blown, midway over the Seine—to admire it. There were mutterings of annoyance while the crowd had to part around me but I didn’t care. As I continued I passed between imposing yellow stone buildings, one with an arched gateway and sentry boxes beside it, the other with columns and a gilded portico. I took them for palaces until I read that the one with the arch was the Prefecture of Police. This then was where Inspector Henri said he could be found. And the one opposite was the Palais de Justice. I was glad I wasn’t a criminal. The French clearly took their justice seriously.