“Who else might have any idea where they went, Liam?” I asked my son who was crawling across the wood floor to me with a look of determination on his face. I tried to think whom they might have mentioned in their letters. Gus’s cousin Willie Walcott for a start. I had no idea where I might find him but he was an artist who knew Reynold Bryce. American artists obviously met at the same establishments. One of those would be the American Club but I would only go back there to face the rude porter again as a last resort. And it wasn’t likely that Willie Walcott was a member. It didn’t look like the sort of place that accepted young art students. The Walcotts were a wealthy family, but surely a young artist would find the formality horribly stuffy. There must be places where he would congregate with other art students. Hadn’t they mentioned something about the other bank of the Seine? Perhaps my new artist friends from the café in Pigalle would know. I didn’t think I should go to seek them out this evening. From the little I had seen, the Place Pigalle was not a suitable environment for a woman alone after dark.

I bent to pick up Liam before he knocked over a table with a plant on it. “Time to feed you, my love,” I said. I made him some bread and milk then attempted to nurse him, but he was quickly bored with both, indicating that my friend in the bakery had indeed shared her own milk with him. Ah, well, rich children had wet nurses, didn’t they? I bet the Hartleys had a wet nurse. I shivered as this amusing thought rapidly became serious. To know that Justin Hartley was in the same town compounded the worry that already threatened to engulf me. Surely I was worrying for nothing over that, I told myself. Paris was a big city. It wasn’t as if I was likely to bump into them dining at Maxim’s. They probably weren’t staying long and I’d be too busy with my own matters to want to make the round of the tourist sites at this moment.