“When he disappeared, we feared something might have happened. But one always hopes, you know.”

“I trust it meets with your approval, monsieur, but to honor him as best they could, his comrades buried him in Père Lachaise.”

“Père Lachaise? There are some great names there.”

“His grave is close to that of Chopin. For the moment, it is marked with a wooden cross, very simple, with his name. You may wish a priest …”

“Of course.” Roland paused and thought for a moment. “Was he carrying anything?”

“No papers, monsieur. They preferred not to carry identification, on a mission.”

“I understand. There wasn’t perhaps a little lighter, made of a bullet casing?”

“Not that we found, monsieur.”

The letter from Richard Bennett did not arrive until the summer of 1945.

It explained the great difficulties he had encountered in tracing the benefactor he had known only as Monsieur Bon Ami.

But eventually, I was able to discover through a Paris lawyer that the owner of a Voisin C-25 coupe kept at a château in a certain part of the valley of the Loire was a Monsieur Charles de Cygne. I have learned with great sorrow that he died not long after he saved my own life. Please accept my deep condolences for your loss.

More than a hundred and sixty airmen, from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were betrayed or captured, many being sent to the camp at Buchenwald. Thanks to your son, I was one of the lucky ones to escape.

When I parted from your son, he gave me a little lighter, which I enclose, telling me it would bring me luck, which it certainly did. He told me I could return it after the war. Alas, he is not there to receive it himself, but I believe he leaves a son who, perhaps, might like to have it as a memento of a friendship, and with respectful gratitude from a Canadian airman whose life his father saved.

It was a graceful and charming letter.

“You know what’s worst of all,” Roland said. “If Charlie had kept that lighter, it might have brought him luck instead of the Canadian. He might be alive today.”

The next day they went to Père Lachaise. Roland de Cygne showed the little lighter to Esmé and told him that one day he should have it, as his father had before him. Standing together beside Charlie’s gravesite, they let a moment pass in silent remembrance.

CHARLES DE CYGNE
PATRIOTE
MORT POUR LA PATRIE
JUIN 1944

Epilogue

•  1968  •

If Paris in the spring was romantic, Claire thought, there was a beauty about the city in the autumn season that was just as lovely. And it brought new stirrings too. For after the traditional holiday month of August, when the place is strangely quiet, September marks the beginning of a new school and cultural year. And then, in October, comes the wine harvest.