He smiled and swung the Porsche round the hairpin bend that plunged towards the river. ‘I had wondered,’ he confided, ‘where you learned to speak your French.’

It took a minute for his words to hit their mark. I’d spoken French to little Lucie, when I’d first approached her in the fountain square, and then … well, I suppose I’d simply gone on speaking it. In all the confusion, I hadn’t really noticed. I shrugged now, suddenly self-conscious. ‘My father’s in the foreign service,’ I explained. ‘He wanted me to have a second language.’

‘You have one. Your French is very beautiful.’

‘Thank you.’

He didn’t ask me what I did for a living, but then the French didn’t ask such things, as a rule. It was considered impolite, a means of pigeonholing people before one really got to know them. Since the Revolution, everyone was meant to be equal anyway. Almost equal, I amended, leaning back against the glove-soft leather of the Porsche.

Armand Valcourt had missed the Revolution. There was a certain feudal gallantry about the way he dropped me at my hotel door, coming round to help me out of the car as if I were royalty. His handshake lingered, by design, and his smile was deliberately charming. ‘You have your key?’ he asked me.

‘Yes.’ I rummaged for it in my handbag, pushing aside a stiff white card with printing on it. ‘Oh,’ I said. I’d quite forgotten, in all the confusion, about my mysterious invitation to taste wine at the Clos des Cloches. ‘This was from you, then, I presume?’ I held it up to show him. ‘It was left for me this morning.’

‘Was it?’ The charming smile broadened, refusing to take responsibility.

‘Yes.’

‘Ah. That is very curious, you know, because we don’t give tours this time of year.’ Taking the card from my hand, he assumed a mock-serious expression. ‘Still, it appears quite genuine. I am sure,’ he said, as he gave it back, ‘that we would honour it.’

‘So you did send it, then.’

His dark eyes held a deep amusement. ‘Well, if I did, I could have saved myself the trouble.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you came to see me anyway.’

Definitely a flirt, I thought, as he walked back round to the driver’s side of the car. Smiling faintly, I watched the Porsche’s back lights twinkle out of sight along the Place du Général de Gaulle.

It was a lovely night for late September, crisp and clear, filled with the drifting scents of autumn – pungent leaves and petrol fumes and slowly burning coal. My watch read ten past eleven, but there were still people passing me by on the pavement – young people, mostly, in boisterous clusters, making their way to the lively bar on the nearest corner. The mingled sounds of dance music and laughter spilled out across the square. Saturday night, I thought. I thrust my hands in my pockets, feeling suddenly at a loss. I could almost hear my cousin’s voice reminding me, in disapproving tones: It’s been six months since you so much as stopped in at the pub for a drink.

Frowning, I hovered there a moment, trying to decide whether to go out for a drink or go up to my room. In the end I did neither. I crossed to the fountain and sat on the bench where I’d found Lucie Valcourt.

Here, beneath the whispering tangle of acacia branches, it was easy to go unnoticed. I sat back, facing the brilliant glow of the Hotel de France and the bustling bar on the corner, and focused on the pleasantly murmuring fountain in front of me.

The bottom pool was perhaps two feet deep, a stone hexagon raised on a sloping step. Water cascaded into it from a bronze basin set high overhead like an upside-down umbrella, and that basin in turn was fed by the overflow from a smaller bronze bowl above it. From the centre of the fountain rose three women, cast in bronze, supporting the entire structure. Back-to-back the women stood, arms lowered to their sides, their fingers linked in an eternal show of sisterhood. There was no mistaking their classical origins – even without their flowing draperies and tightly coiled hair, there was a depth of beauty to their faces that told me they belonged in ancient Greece.

A hopeful nudge against my legs disturbed my contemplation. It was a cat, a rather familiar-looking black-and-white cat, and when the green gaze locked expectantly with mine I fancied that I recognised it. It was the same cat, surely, that I’d seen that afternoon perched on the high wall of Christian Rand’s house. It rubbed itself against my legs a second time, more demanding now than hopeful, and I tapped my fingers on my lap. ‘All right, then,’ I coaxed it, ‘it’s OK.’ Pleased, the cat leapt up and padded round in circles on my knees, pausing once to sniff my face in a delicate sort of greeting.

It was clearly a stray – one stroke of my fingers along the dirt-encrusted back told me that – but it was nonetheless affectionate. And trusting. It stopped circling and curled itself inside my jacket, claws working against the stiff fabric, and within seconds the green eyes closed. Head nestled heavily against my breast, the cat breathed deeply with a steady, rumbling purr that vibrated up through the thick fur to my caressing hand. Surprised, and oddly moved, I crooked my neck to stare down at the sleeping animal.

I ceased to be aware of time. I don’t know for certain how many minutes had passed before I heard the footsteps coming down the steps from the château, between the shuttered buildings.

Neil Grantham’s hair was almost white beneath the street lamps, white as his shirt beneath the soft brown leather jacket he was wearing over faded jeans. Oh, damn, I thought, feeling again the unwanted stirring of emotion, like a persistent hand tugging at my sleeve. I shrank back further into shadow, hoping he’d go straight into the hotel without seeing me. His head came round as if I’d called to him, and with easy strides he crossed the square to join me on my bench beside the fountain.