On my way home, I dropped in at the Café de Flore, which was full of writers and artists who’d gathered to speculate on the latest developments, as the radio wasn’t to be trusted. I ran into Tristan Tzara, who advised me to go straight to the nearest train station. Of course, I had no intention of following his advice. Passing the Montparnasse station on the way home, I noticed Republican Guards separating men fighting for train tickets in the forecourt.

Between my painfully thumping heart and the rumble of distant artillery, I slept little that night.

At noon on Monday, with Madeleine’s derringer in my jacket pocket, a leather satchel slung around my shoulder and a newspaper in hand, I took a seat on a shaded bench at the far western corner of the Île Saint-Louis. From here, I could survey everything happening on the cobblestoned street that ran along the riverbank, including anyone entering or leaving the Baudelaire Society. I’d brought the newspaper to hide behind, but after scanning the headlines—Reynaud’s latest appeal to Roosevelt, four spies executed, reports of poisoned milk—I folded it away.

The Baudelaire Society’s headquarters was the Hôtel de Lauzun, formerly known as the Hôtel Pimodan, where Baudelaire and Jeanne Duval had lived together, when she was his muse and he her protector and they were, in their own fashion, in love. Beneath and around me the river flowed silently, while above, in a slight breeze, the leaves of a willow whispered their secret language. The rumble in the east was constant now, putting the lie to the warm, dappled sunshine.

Shortly before two o’clock, a gleaming burgundy Delahaye cabriolet pulled up in front of the Baudelaire Society. The thick-necked man I’d seen at the Hôtel Drouot the previous week jumped out from behind the steering wheel and opened the rear passenger door. A lithe woman in a black dress emerged and disappeared into the building. She was too far away to make out her face, but even from this distance it could be no one other than Chanel.