She followed his gaze. ‘No snakes over there, if you’re wondering. I keep them in another room.’ Her eyes crinkled with mirth. ‘So many people are terrified of them.’

He swallowed. Snakes in the flat? Since he was a child, he’d had an atavistic fear of anything reptilian. Especially snakes.

‘Just a couple of ordinary garden toads,’ she said, pointing at the ledge by the window. ‘Tristan and Isolde. Come spring, I’ll release them into a quiet corner of the Bois de Boulogne, but for now they make for very pleasant company.’

As intrigued as Gessen was by a woman who kept garden toads named Tristan and Isolde, he was afraid she might hold him captive for hours with her tales of amphibian delights. Best to get straight to the point, and then be on his way.

He bit into one of the tea cakes. Of course, it would be a madeleine. But no Proustian wave of memories coursed through his mind. Just thoughts of the matter at hand: to confirm Vidor’s story of his flight from Hungary as a child.

‘I’m looking for information about someone who used to live in this building,’ Gessen said, setting his teacup on the table. ‘According to civil records, a family named Kiraly lived here in the late fifties. If it’s the one I’m looking for, they would have had four daughters and a son. The gardienne mentioned you were living here during that time.’

‘Indeed I was.’ She dabbed her lips with a tissue. ‘I’ve been here for decades, though I spent my girlhood in Provence. My husband and I met during the war.’ Her eyes clouded and she picked at a loose thread on the chair cushion. ‘I sometimes wish I’d been born after it was all over, if only to be spared from the horror, but when we first came to Paris, the city was still recovering from the cataclysm. My husband found a cheap flat down the street from what had been the Gestapo’s headquarters, during the occupation, but I couldn’t bear to live there.’