‘Good morning,’ he said with a smile.

Annette looked anxiously about her, but no one seemed to be interested in either of them.

‘We can’t talk here,’ she said and, pointing out the café she and Pierre usually frequented, added, ‘I’ll meet you there as soon as Benny comes back.’

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the corner at the back of the café with coffee and pastries in front of them.

‘How is she?’ Rupert asked. ‘Is she safe?’

‘She’s quite safe,’ replied Annette. ‘No one knows where we are.’

‘Well,’ Rupert said, ‘I don’t want to worry you, but Simon Barnier turned up at my hotel this morning, warning me away. Saying that he and Hélène were about to get married.’

‘How did he know where to find you?’

Rupert shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just bad luck, I think. He must have seen me yesterday when I arrived. Anyway, he came to the hotel this morning to warn me off.’

Annette stared at him, pale-faced. ‘What did you do? What did you say?’

‘Well, first of all I didn’t say I wasn’t married,’ Rupert said, ‘so he doesn’t think I’m a real threat at present. I don’t know how he found out I was in Paris, but he set someone to follow me when I left the hotel this morning.’

‘You haven’t been followed here, have you?’

‘No, my man Parker dealt with him. However, now they know where I’m staying, they may well try again and it would certainly be better if you didn’t come back to the hotel.’

‘Madame Sauze was here in Paris yesterday. She came to tell me that you were on your way and to warn you not to go to St Etienne. She was afraid you might meet up with Simon Barnier and everything would be stirred up again. Anyway, when she was catching the train she saw him. He was catching it too, though he didn’t see her at the time. The trouble is he did see her at the station when they arrived. She had waited until he’d disappeared but then almost bumped into him as he was getting into a fiacre.’

‘Did he speak to her?’

‘Yes, she told him she was going to a funeral. But the thing is, he seemed to know what was happening at Belair, news that Agathe had only heard herself the day before. He must have someone spying for him there.’

‘Then Pierre must take extra care,’ Rupert said.

‘Aunt Agathe was going to warn him. She considered warning Madame St Clair too, but that would have meant revealing that we were all involved in Hélène’s disappearance, and perhaps lead them to her.’

‘I think we have to leave that end of things to Pierre,’ Rupert said. ‘As long as he’s been warned. I’m more worried about what Simon Barnier is doing here in Paris and how he found me so quickly.’

Silence lapsed about them for several moments as each of them assessed the new situation. It was Rupert who broke it, his thoughts returning to Hélène.