At that instant Florence returned with a large battered envelope. She appeared not to have overheard anything which her mother had said, and when she handed it to me Madame Prideaux was still humming away under her breath and scolding, quietly, various plants to which she was attending.

‘Here are the papers, and a diary. Only a part, I fear. He was not a regular diary-keeper, I’m afraid: he was either busy in the studio or else working on the walls of Jericho, as he called them. It took us a long time … but this is all that is left of his stuff. He burned almost everything he had, except the canvases.’

I thanked her, took the packet, and prepared to leave.

‘I would like to have them back, when you have read them.’

‘I’ll bring them to you as soon as I can. Is there any day which is not a suitable one for you?’

Madame Prideaux suddenly said, ‘One likes notice. The house becomes disturbed by sudden arrivals, and it vexes Annette greatly, and that cannot be allowed.’

Florence touched my arm gently.

‘You can leave them, with a note if you wish, on the front doorstep, if no one answers your ring. The mornings are busy here. I work, but about this time, your English tea-time, is usually …’ – she hesitated for a moment, looked at her mother’s back among the ferns and geraniums – ‘… safe,’ she said. ‘But half-past two is better. She rests then.’

I said goodbye to Madame Prideaux, who merely waved her unoccupied hand in the air without turning her head, and Florence showed me into the hall.

‘I hope that Mama was not too fierce? She frightens people sometimes. Very much the colonel’s wife … widow … but she has a kind heart under the brusque exterior.’

‘I’m certain she has. No. She was most interesting. Very cross with her white-flies.’

Florence had her hand on the open front door. She laughed softly, thanked me for coming and began to close the door. As I stepped out into the garden and turned back to promise to bring the papers back as soon as possible, I noticed that, on the floor behind her, the little blue Wellington boots were no longer there.

Chapter 4

The following day, to my vague surprise, was the 1st of May, a holiday, and suddenly cool and cloudy. April had gone. I stayed in my small room overlooking the hotel vegetable garden for the day, sorting out the scattered relics of James’s past which I had been given, and venturing out only for a short walk to clear my head, to get some air, and have a beer and a meal at Chez Titin, which made a change from the hotel.

I discovered that it was a holiday when I got down to the hall and narrowly avoided a collision with Eugène, hurrying through with a wooden box filled with little pots of lily-of-the-valley.