No one knows who composed the Protocols. The strong evidence is that it was written on Rachkovsky’s orders, with aims much like Notovitch has described. Various candidates for authorship have been proposed. Mulhouse’s name conceals an author whose identity is, in fact, unknown and probably irrecoverable. If we could pull off that mask, who would we find behind it? A converted Russian Jew named Élie de Cyon, perhaps. Rachkovsky himself. Perhaps. But at the time the Protocols were composed, there was another bright young writer of Jewish ancestry in Paris, consumed with a frivolous attitude to words and stories, who believed that a writer could alter reality with his pen. I often wonder if Nicolas himself was the sorcerer’s apprentice who unwittingly unleashed poison and spent the rest of his life remorsefully searching for its antidote.

*

THE HOMELY FUG of a 1930s kitchen. Blacked stove. The crimson arms of Vincenzo’s wife, Peggy, in the washing copper. Everything covered with a layer of damp. The new Pye wireless, paid for with Notovitch’s guineas, warbles a dance tune. Shirt collar off, suspenders dangling, Vincenzo drinks sweet milky tea from a saucer. The little girl beside him with chapped red cheeks and hand-me-down woollen clothes is Francesca herself, future custodian of Notovitch’s memories.

‘You told him he was fibbing? What did you do that for, love? That’s looking a gift horse in the mouth,’ says Peggy.

Having confessed his outburst, Vincenzo has no sensible reply and takes refuge in his native tongue. ‘Vieni qua, tesoro,’ he says to his daughter. ‘Prendi il cestino.’ He closes her hand round the wicker handle of the basket.

Outside in the garden, he picks the fat pods of the broad beans and passes them to Francesca.

He knows he needs to make amends.

Hatchards on Piccadilly is a ten-minute walk from the Scriptovox showroom. Vincenzo goes there one weekday in his lunch hour. A book is a good present for a writer. He looks at the table of staff picks by the entrance and reads: ‘I heart this eye-opening account of life at the bottom by one of our brightest young progressive writers!! Must read!’, written in passionate scrawl beside a new book called Down and Out in Paris and London. The title makes him smile. That might work. As long as Notovitch gets the joke. He picks up a copy. It’s a good-looking volume, but priced rather steeply at eight shillings and sixpence.

‘Can I help you?’

A man in brilliantined hair and shiny spectacles. As a fellow salesman, Vincenzo has reservations about the assistant’s method: he’s moved too early and too forcefully.

‘I’m looking for a gift.’