There was a forty-watt bulb in the bedside lamp, and the lavatory was at the far end of the corridor. But there was a washbowl in a corner, and a shower with a plastic curtain, which was some sort of relief. One could always have a pee there without trailing down to the WC with a torch.

I unpacked the little I had, put it away in the two deep drawers of the wardrobe and went down to ask for a stronger lamp bulb.

‘I am a writer. I have to work at nights sometimes and it’s not possible with so small a wattage.’

‘Ah.’ The elderly woman in a black and white overall, looked worried. ‘There is a good light in the bar … people sit there after dinner, not in their rooms.’

‘I can’t sit in the bar and correct a manuscript. You’ll understand, Madame?’

She nodded in a rather distracted manner, muttered something which I couldn’t hear and then screamed, ‘Eugène! Eugène! Venez vite.’

Eugène, who seemed to be about thirty and was the waiter, probably the cook, and the luggage carrier as well, found a stronger bulb in a hideous lamp shaped like an elephant with a howdah. The bulb and the lamp, it would appear, went together; they did not come separately. But I thanked him and tipped him over-generously and he left smiling with a preoccupied expression. Maybe his soup was in danger of catching. He turned at the door suddenly.

‘M’sieur is eating in the hotel?’

‘I am. Certainly.’

‘Then may I recommend the trout? Fresh this afternoon from the river below. And the veal is perfect, well hung, no hormones; from a man I know who farms at La Butte.’

‘I shall have both. I’m hungry. A sandwich on the train last night, and only a croissant for breakfast.’

‘You will eat well.’

‘I expect to.’

He inclined his head gently, turned to leave again, turned back.

‘You speak excellent French. Not many of our English guests can do that.’

‘Two years at the Sorbonne, a year at Berlitz. But you knew that I was English, alas!’

‘Ah yes! Perhaps the clothes M’sieur is wearing; perhaps just a lingering trace of … Albion?’

‘I am rusty. The clothes are useful for travelling. Wasn’t certain if it was tweed-weather or not.’

‘Tweed-weather at this time of year. We have a fire in the evenings even. In the summer, of course, it is different, in the eighties in July.’

‘Do you get very many English guests up here? Perhaps in summer?’

‘Not so many, they prefer the coast. Some do come for the peace, it is a quiet place; one man even stayed here for a time, a painter.’

‘Oh?’

‘He went away. He was pleasant, very quiet, not rich, I think. Yes. He went away.’

‘Ah. And never came back?’

Eugène was in the doorway.