She reached inside a leather pouch and produced a very racy magazine. Some might have called it downright filthy. But I was a trainee surgeon and I’d seen all those parts before. The tram had pulled away, leaving my man alone on the sidewalk. He crossed the boulevard and walked directly to an expensive-looking apartment building opposite. He opened the main door and before it shut behind him, I noticed the uniformed concierge at the reception desk salute him. He lived there. Damn. I had to admire his audacity. Who would oversee an assassination three Metro stops from his home?

“Bravo,” I said, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. Neither was I likely to walk into a gendarmerie and file a report. And I wasn’t about to seek help from my new comrades at the PCF. They’d have hoisted the assassin on their shoulders and treated him to a slap-up meal.

There was only one person I thought I could talk to. The following morning, I was due to attend the second lecture of three from an army general called Richard from the French medical corps. It was he who had described the rapidly approaching blight of heroin that morning. I’d been impressed by his distress and concerns about the drug business and his preparedness to accept the blame on behalf of the French government for its involvement in the opium trade.

After his lecture the following morning, I invited him for coffee in the university refectory. I told him what had happened after the assassination of Doumer. He asked why I hadn’t filed a report immediately, but I could see he understood. He asked for my address but made no comment as to my actions or suspicions. I thought he might have considered me to be some sort of crackpot. I heard nothing for the rest of the day. I met Boua for lunch and told her I’d been at the book exhibition and witnessed the killing of Doumer. I’m not sure why, but I decided against telling her my theory of the second shooter and about my pursuit of him. It was the first time I’d withheld information from her but would not be the last, and we weren’t even married yet. Perhaps I felt she’d consider it her duty to tell her Communist friends and things would have become . . . messy. I wanted to marry her without issues pulling us apart. Even then I was cautious of Boua’s hypersensitive buttons and which ones launched missiles.

That evening, two young plainclothes army officers found me at my local café. Boua was at a policy meeting. The soldiers came directly to me even though we’d never met. They sat down at my table, introduced themselves and produced a manila envelope. From it they took two large photographs. Both were close-ups of my man.

“Is this him?” one asked.

“Yes,” I said.