Illumination. Matthew Plampin

a strict system of checkpoints, to be observed by all regular soldiery and militia of the French army. If you are apprehended outside the enceinte – either by them or by the Prussians – you might or might not be shot, depending on the circumstances.’

      The bold company dissolved; the clamour around Mr Wodehouse resumed. Clem and Elizabeth looked at each other. This was useless. Without an ambassador to helm negotiations or petition the French authorities, none of them was going anywhere – via the official channels at least.

      ‘The Grand,’ Clem said. ‘We’ll keep our rooms on credit. Perhaps a scheme will be established for this very purpose. It’s worth a try. We can lie low and maybe in a few days they’ll—’

      ‘Credit that will be repaid how, Clement, exactly? A place like that will want some kind of guarantee.’

      ‘Surely your Mr Inglis would vouch for us. He’s well known there, isn’t he? Couldn’t we call on him and—’

      His mother shook her head. ‘Out of the question.’

      ‘Why not? I mean, the fellow’s an absolute arse, that’s manifestly obvious, but we’re running rather short on options, wouldn’t you agree?’

      Elizabeth made for the stairs, not speaking again until they had passed back through the embassy gate. The Champs Elysées lay across some litter-strewn gardens. It had the appearance of a drab, dusty fairground, its broad avenue jammed with stalls and carts, all draped in discoloured bunting. Many hundreds were milling about, mostly women and children from the workers’ districts, playing games and swapping gossip. Elizabeth came to a halt on the pavement. Eyes fixed on the crowds, she explained her refusal.

      ‘Last night, after we left Montmartre, my intercourse with Mr Inglis became a little difficult. A little heated. You may have gathered that there is a modicum of ill feeling between us; buried, perhaps, but very much present. He imagines that I once did him an injury, you see, decades ago now. It is complete claptrap – I was far more sinned against, Clement, than sinning – yet he insists on regarding me with a degree of bitterness, and welcomes any chance to disparage me.’

      Clem was gaping at her, on the verge of revelation. Could Inglis be responsible for the letter – for their current peril? Had the Sentinel’s correspondent come across Hannah up in Montmartre, and then lured them there so that he might address this unfinished business with Elizabeth? More peculiar things had been done by men seeking to gain Mrs Pardy’s attention.

      ‘What – what did he say?’

      Elizabeth sighed. ‘Mont made it clear that he thought I meant to remain in Paris – that our talk of departure was entirely false. He knows that I still have my contacts among the Parisian press, even after all these years. He believes that I came here to claim this siege as my next subject, and that this might draw notice from his own work.’ She pinched the wrist of her right glove, pulling it tight. ‘Apparently he has plans to publish a diary.’

      Clem’s excitement ebbed; he put their cases on the pavement and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Inglis didn’t want Elizabeth in Paris – quite the opposite. He would hardly pen an anonymous letter urging her to visit.

      ‘An open exchange of views ensued, I take it?’

      His mother’s expression grew positively icy. ‘You might say that. The scapegrace told me that I intended to take what was rightfully his in order to buff my faded star, as he put it. He informed me that all right-thinking people considered me to be—’

      From over the treetops came the thud of a heavy impact. The crowds went quiet. Several seconds passed, everything held in a strange suspension; then there was another, then three more, the sounds shaking through the bed of the city.

      ‘That’s cannon-fire,’ said Clem quickly. ‘That’s where all the bloody soldiers had gone, back on the rue Lafayette. Dear God, Elizabeth, the battle has begun.’

      The Champs Elysées was defiant. The people gathered there were not fragile bourgeois worried about their personal safety or the preservation of their property. Liberated from factories and workshops and stoked with patriotic fervour, they were eager for a confrontation with the enemy. Bonnets emblazoned with tricolour cockades were launched into the air; young boys scaled trees in their dozens, barking like baboons.

      ‘À bas les Prussiens!’ everyone cried. ‘Vive la France!’

      Clem took hold of his mother’s arm. ‘We need to find somewhere to stay. This is the best course open to us. Forget your rivalries for the moment. We need to talk with Mr Inglis.’

      Elizabeth was gazing skyward, anger and pride wrestling with her common sense. Common sense prevailed; she removed her arm from Clem’s grasp and set off towards the boulevards.

      Montague Inglis lived in a splendid apartment building barely a hundred yards from the boulevard des Capucines. He would not see them there, however; a note was sent down to the concierge’s desk saying that he would be in the lobby of the Grand Hotel at ten, where he was due to meet with a friend.

      ‘See how he tries to put me in my place,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Pathetic man.’

      They passed an hour in a large café opposite the hotel. It was an elegant establishment, all polished brass, potted ferns and mosaic table-tops, and it was devoid of both waiters and customers. Their order was served by a woman in a brown velvet dress who Clem guessed was the proprietor’s wife; she quivered at each distant rumble of artillery, spilling his coffee into the saucer as she poured.

      Little was said. Elizabeth wrote in her notebook, filling several pages. Clem sat staring out at the boulevard, paralysed by imaginings of the café’s wide windows shattering; the ornamental stonework being blown to powder; the great block of the Grand cracking and crumbling apart. His coffee went cold in its cup, a pastry lying untouched on a plate beside it.

      Inglis was twenty minutes late for his meeting. They cornered him at the reception desk, at almost exactly the same spot where he’d greeted them the afternoon before.

      ‘Still in Paris then, Mrs P,’ he observed. ‘Can’t say I’m much surprised.’

      The journalist’s clothes were smarter today, his coal-black coat cut long in the Imperial style. Clem, in his faded travelling suit, felt humble indeed beside him – as was surely Inglis’s intention. Elizabeth was not cowed in the least, though, stating without preamble that they had little money, nowhere to stay and required his assistance. Inglis’s eyes held a hint of scorn, but he seemed to find it amusing to play the charitable gentleman. Clem looked from one to the other, wondering what had happened between them. Could it have been some form of writers’ quarrel, back at the height of Elizabeth’s renown – or a romantic entanglement, after she’d been widowed? Inglis hardly struck Clem as his mother’s choice of paramour. Perhaps this had been the problem.

      A manager was summoned with whom the Sentinel correspondent was particularly friendly. The two men reached an agreement and the Pardy luggage once more vanished behind the desk of the Grand.

      Elizabeth’s gratitude was restricted to a brief nod. ‘You will lose nothing, Mont,’ she said. ‘I promise you that. I have funds enough in London to cover any bill that might be run up.’

      This was patently untrue. Clem had been forced to pawn a pair of his late father’s silver ink pots just to pay for their travel and a single night’s accommodation. He began a silent inventory of their remaining possessions. By his reckoning, a stay in the Grand of anything over a fortnight would have them down to bedsteads and door handles.

      The thump of faraway cannon sent a vibration through the hotel’s glass doors. Without speaking, the manager gathered up half a dozen ledgers and a cash-box and retreated to a back room.

      ‘Mrs P,’ said Inglis, ‘since you are to remain with us, I must absolutely insist that you come on this morning’s jaunt. My friend and I are heading south, outside the wall. Word is that there’s quite a skirmish being fought up on the Châtillon plateau. What d’you say?’

      Clem