Inside it is arranged into classes of curio. On the first table there are stone heads, fragments of carving, and shards of letter-cut marble that look like sections of a blown-apart tomb. Edie holds up a piece of stained glass to the light. It is a lively gem-blue, the lead around it horribly bent and buckled.

“Beautiful blue,” she says. “Ecclesiastical blue? A fragment of sky, do you think, or the Virgin Mary’s cloak?”

A triangle of refracted blue light trembles on Edie’s throat. It takes all of his willpower not to extend a finger and touch it. “Supernatural blue. The windows of the cathedral, I guess?”

She raises an eyebrow.

The next table is all variations of shell cases. They are worked into napkin rings, ashtrays, money boxes, vases, tobacco jars, milk jugs, inkwells, dinner gongs, and crucifixes. They are engraved, embossed, beaten into patterns, and emblazoned with slogans. The metalworkers of Ypres cannot be faulted for any want of variety or inventiveness, it seems. Stacks of copper driving bands and aluminum nose caps (on sale at two francs apiece) look almost abstract.

“I am odd that I think it all rather grim?” she asks.

“Not in the slightest.”

There are smaller items laid out for more modest budgets. As he watches Edie’s hand glide over the brooches, bracelets, and rings, he recalls the touch of Rachel’s ringed fingers.

“Who would want such things now?” Edie grimaces as she holds earrings either side of her face. They are worked from bullet cartridges and engraved with the words Vive la France!”

He dips his hand into a bowl of brass buttons (BON MARCHÉ says the sign, at fifty centimes) and pulls out one that bears the insignia of a Yorkshire regiment. A trestle table at the back is lined with helmets, an arrangement of rusty-bladed bayonets, and a collection of variously twisted pieces of metal. Edie shakes her head and turns away.

“You mean you don’t want a souvenir pickelhaube? I can’t tempt you with a lump of shrapnel?”