“I can’t think of any parents I know who would want their daughter’s life to be an adventure,” said James with perfect truth. “You have not quarreled, I hope?”

“No. But there’s trouble brewing. I can feel it.” She nodded thoughtfully, and he wondered what else had been said. “So if I am to lead my own life, Mr. Fox, I’d like to know who I really am. And I want you to tell me. Who were my parents?”

James shook his head.

“Even if all your surmises were correct, I could tell you nothing. Your father is my client, not you. I have never divulged a client’s private business in my life.”

“Couldn’t you tell me anything? Just a hint. Something to work with.”

“No, I could not. Nor do I admit any knowledge of the subject at all.”

“I really wish …,” she began, when there was a noise in the street. She turned and frowned.

Fox was looking toward the window too. The noise from Chancery Lane seemed to be turning into a roar. He saw faces appearing at the window of the lawyer’s office across the alley. Then there was a shout from the alley itself. Moments later, footsteps came rapidly up the stairs. His own office door burst open without even the courtesy of a knock, to reveal his elderly clerk, suddenly flushed and with his half-moon spectacles not quite straight.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but the war is over.”

Everyone had believed that it must come soon. But the day London heard that the Great War had truly ended and that the Armistice was signed was like no other before or since. Four years of slaughter, done with. From street to street, from smokestack to steeple, from grimy terrace to stucco mansion, there was not a household, an office, a congregation that had not lost at least a friend. Thanks to the food shortages, there was not a child who had had enough to eat.

And now at last the great cloud over their lives was about to be lifted. The bleak, seemingly endless nightmare was over. The loved ones would be reappearing over the horizon.

As the news was heard, as the realization took hold, an extraordinary thing occurred. Spontaneously, like some huge chemical reaction, people started pouring into the streets. From shops, from offices, from department stores, even from Harrods itself, they came out. People were cheering, smiling, weeping with relief. All work stopped. People who had never seen each other in their lives embraced.

Outside the offices of Fox and Martineau, the sedate little alley was filling with the workers from legal offices. Twenty yards away, the traffic in Chancery Lane had already halted. The roadway was suddenly full of lawyers, clerks, typists, stationers, even wigmakers.