The next day, Friday—yesterday—he’d been at work and I’d had no distractions whatsoever. Only Noah, who had wandered past my workroom now and then, his presence heralded by the repeating tune of his Robo Patrol game, like the ticking of the clock that had been swallowed by the crocodile in Peter Pan and warned of its approach.

It hadn’t bothered me too much, though, and my work on Friday had been steady, following Mary Dundas as she finally left Chatou for Paris.

The 28th I did depart, she’d written, with the woman who was sent to be my chaperone, Madame Roy, who smiles little and speaks less but is in every other way agreeable. Her face has been disfigured by the smallpox which no doubt accounts for some of her demeanor. As we left, the bird was singing loudly at the window which I took to be a hopeful omen. Lady Everard herself remarked upon it when she came to farewell us, believing (for Sir Redmond has so told her) that I was but going to rejoin my brother, having lingered with them for no other reason than to give my brother’s wife more time to ready my new rooms. Sir Redmond seems most careful that his wife should be kept sheltered from his Jacobite activities, and I suppose he does this because, much like Mistress Jamieson, he does not wish his actions to put those he loves in danger.

I had paused here with a certain satisfaction to take up the list of names that I’d been keeping and write firmly “Mistress Jamieson” in place of “Mistress Harrison.” It was, when I looked back at that first entry in the diary that was written in plain text, quite clearly “Jamieson.” The woman who had thought this cipher up while drinking tea now had her proper name restored and duly noted, if that had in fact been her true name.

By bedtime Friday, I had settled in with Mary to the house in Paris, on the rue du Coeur Volant.

She had described the household neatly, with the six rooms on the first floor of the house and the two ground-floor rooms beneath, linked by the private staircase with a door out to the street. She had not named the cook, nor the cook’s boy—who from what Mary wrote of him appeared to be not actually the cook’s son but an older teenaged boy assigned to help her in the kitchen with the heavy work—but she did name the maid, Yvette, and Madame Roy of course, and there was Jacques.

And so here I was, pencil in hand, picking up where I’d been interrupted by Noah’s belabored arpeggios from the piano.

I fear the man across the street…

I concentrated, studying the numbers. The piano playing stopped, and in the blissful silence I was finally able to complete the line:

I fear the man across the street is watching us.

Another interruption—a soft knocking at my door.

“Come in,” I told Denise.

She had her coat on. “We’ll be leaving in a minute,” she announced. This time, I’d paid attention when she’d rattled off her plans at breakfast, so I had remembered the rough schedule of her day: she would be driving Noah first to his piano lesson, then he had a birthday party to attend, while she went to the cinema. “We should be back by three o’clock. I’ve left you soup and cheese and bread, and there is still some chicken if you’re very hungry.”

“Thank you. Is Claudine at home?”

She shook her head. “She has a wedding. Saturdays are always very busy for her.” Giving me a long look she asked, “Have you been outside at all since yesterday?”

“I wasn’t outside yesterday.”

“Well, if you want to get some fresh air, take a walk, the keys to the back door are in the soup tureen,” she told me, “in the kitchen.”

“All right.”

She hovered for a moment. “It is beautiful outside. The sun is shining.”

“Yes, all right.” I kept my eyes fixed on my work.

“And Luc is home, I think, if you need anything.”

I only nodded this time, and she must have left it there because the next time I glanced up she had already gone. Returning to the diary, I continued, learning Jacques had not shared Mary’s doubts about the man across the street.

To prove to me my worries were unfounded he conveyed us all to church, where I was much soothed by the music and the liturgy. So back again and welcomed by a dinner from our cook as fine as any I have ever had, and then a peaceful afternoon and evening, and to bed.

The next two entries were as regular as that. She’d settled in, I thought. And knowing she might be in Paris for a while to come, I took a break and turned once more to the computer, searching out old maps of Paris that would help me get a better sense of where she was and what the streets around her had once looked like.

She’d been on the Left Bank in the Latin Quarter, and in studying the old maps and the modern ones I noticed many of the streets had stayed the same. Including Mary’s, which while it had changed its name to rue Grégoire-de-Tours, still had the same tight, crowded look of the original. I felt a sudden urge to see it. To the empty room I said aloud, “I need to go to Paris.”

Luc is home, Denise had said, if you need anything.

It took me under five minutes to gather my mobile, a notebook and pen, put my coat on, and slip out the back door. I made sure the house was locked, taking the keys from the soup tureen with me. The green metal door in the garden wall stood halfway open and I passed through easily into the lane, where the trees grew across in an arch at the end, where Luc’s house stood.

It wasn’t an overly large house. I noticed that much, even in my fixated state, and as I climbed up the steps to the covered front porch I could see an old-fashioned bell hanging beside the door. Ringing it soundly, I stood back and tucked my hands into my pockets and waited.