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here to cast her Paris– how do you say – influence, there will be a proper investigation . An autopsy, too.’ He flicked his burning cigarette into the water. ‘So we shall know.’
    Heavy steps echoed over the length of the deck. Two uniformed men bearing a stretcher appeared. They paused at the door of the cabin. James saw Madame de Landois come out, followed by Raf, Chief Inspector Durand and the surly thickset man they had first seen, who was evidently the boat’s owner.
    James walked towards the group. Touquet followed.
    ‘He found her,’ Touquet gestured. ‘Quite a
raconteur
he is, when he’s got a few glasses in him. Fished her out. Thought he’d fished himself a
sirène
, at first. You’ll read all about it in the paper.’
    The prospect took James aback. He gave the man a sharp look. The latter was oblivious to it.
    They had reached the others. Durand was gesticulating, his demeanour Napoleonic. ‘You can rest secure, Madame. My men and I will take care of everything. Everything.’ He bowed to Madame de Landois with the magisterial panache of some defender of the grandeur of the French state and ushered them away.
    Raf held back and looked once more into the room where a single light had now been lit. By its yellow glow, the body of Olympe was being raised onto the stretcher.
    James was struck by the longing in his gaze, Orpheus losing Eurydice to eternal darkness. Everything was clear in that shivering look. His mother had been right. Raf loved this woman more than he ought. Loved her with a terrible passion which made James recoil. He held himself rigid against a sudden tide of nausea.
    Madame de Landois urged Raf into motion. Two-by-two, like a funeral cortège, they made their way slowly off the boat and onto solid ground, trudging up the steps and along whatwas now deserted terrain. The spectral frames of the twilit pavilions hovered like some ghost town to their side.
    Madame de Landois’s carriage waited at a short distance from where the paved road began. She and Raf were engaged in a murmured conversation. James would have liked to overhear , but he kept his distance. In the flickering light the carriage lamps cast, her face was sombre. She turned to James as the coachman held open the door.
    ‘Our first meeting may not have been propitious, Monsieur Norton, but I hope for all that we shall meet again soon.’
    James bowed. He only realised as the carriage pulled away that he had half expected Raf to accompany her. Instead, the three men were left on the darkened street. They walked along it in desultory fashion, his brother firing off short bursts of sentences to Touquet until the man tipped his hat and disappeared round the first turning.
    ‘I badly need a drink, Jim. What about you?’
    James nodded.
    Raf hailed a passing cab, gave directions to the driver, then sat back in his seat. His handsome face, so often a witness to fleeting passions, was stonier than those of the statues which flanked their passage to the right bank. James, himself, felt seized by a torpor which made both mind and tongue too heavy for use.
    At last, after what seemed an interminable rat run over cobbles, the cab stopped.
    ‘You should feel right at home here, Jim.’ Raf spoke at last. ‘It’s one of my regular haunts.’
    He led him into a long dim tavern tucked between unremarkable buildings on an unremarkable side street. A few lone drinkers sat at its highly polished zinc counter. The wall behind it, covered in mirror, reflected a string of booths and trebled their number.
    ‘This is Bill. From Minneapolis.’ Raf introduced theshirt-sleeved barman. ‘A whisky for me, Bill, a large one. And for Jim here … what’ll it be, Jim?’
    ‘The same.’
    ‘And get Armand to bring us a plate of whatever’s best.’
    They settled in a booth towards the rear of the bar. Raf swallowed a large mouthful of his whisky and met his brother’s eyes. ‘To paraphrase our grand friend, you’ve chosen one helluva time