She opened the door and stood aside to let me pass first. In the hall a dumpy little woman in an apron seemed to appear from the darkness behind the stairs wiping her hands on a cloth. It was almost as if she had been summonsed. She bobbed lightly, opened the front door.

Late sunlight glanced and glinted on glass and brass, on the polished banister, faded Persian rugs. A tall plume of pampas grass trembled in the draught.

Florence stood leaning against the door-jamb, arms folded, looking out into the quiet street, avoiding me.

‘In any case,’ she said, ‘what does it matter whose fault it was? His or mine. The child was made. I kept him, I love him, and James is dead.’

‘There is one small thing,’ I said.

She looked at me, face quite drained, tears dried.

‘What?’

‘Is he dead? Are you certain? Do we know?’

She turned away, shrugged lightly. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘and that is all that matters. In my heart I know.’

‘But there is no proof, Florence. No proof, is there?’

She stood upright and moved back into the hall, one hand on the door. ‘No proof. No. Goodbye. There is nothing more to say.’

I felt profoundly miserable walking back to the hotel. All that I had managed to do by my error in returning the envelope in haste, and without having the tact to merely shove it through the letter box, was to cause infinite distress in this small fortress which had so long sought to keep the invader at bay. I had assaulted the sanctity of a family’s private grief.

I remembered the grey eyes full of pain, the welling tears, and knew that I had been responsible. But, I reasoned, after all, it was my family as well. James, even if we were not particularly close, was my brother. My blood was at stake here if he was responsible. Did the ‘monstrousness’ course in all our bodies? Imponderable. But I was not a complete outsider, married or not. Thomas was a Caldicott whatever name they chose to attach to him.

She had said, ‘There is nothing more to say.’ She was right.

For the time being.

Madame Mazine handed me my key, and a postcard, when I got back to the hotel. Her face was perhaps a little less disinterested than usual and she asked me, with civility, how long I intended to stay. Did I know yet? There was absolutely no urgency, it was just a matter of bookings made ahead and I remembered, she supposed, that May had already begun?

‘I think two or three weeks. Would that be possible? The last week of May?’

‘Perfectly.’ She scribbled something on a paper before her. ‘After the 26th of May I would have to move you. An old client always comes then; he has your room. He walks a great deal, and he likes the peace in that room.’