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Rey. But this was more important. I could phone Rey any time, from London.
    ‘Oh, the police knew. It’s their job, non ?’
    ‘But no one was arrested.’
    ‘You can’t exactly arrest a corpse. The picture was returned. No harm was done. What would have been the point of making a fuss? Perhaps they thought the family had suffered enough.’
    ‘I’m amazed the police were so tactful,’ I said. ‘In England they aren’t.’
    ‘They probably are, simply you don’t hear. That’s the point, isn’t it?’ He raised his eyebrows and waved towards the staircase. ‘So, you want to look at the fatal spot? I believe it was just in front of the window. You can photo-graph it if you like. Perhaps if I put a hook in we could take parties round. The original hook . . . The tourism of death. What d’you think? If the photo’s good enough you could make it part of your exhibition.’
    I let that pass: what could one say? Instead I tried another question. ‘Did the house look like this then?’
    ‘I don’t expect so. My grandmother had it all done up a few years ago.’
    ‘It belongs to her?’
    Manu nodded.
    So she was still alive: perhaps she was the J. Rigaut of the phone book. ‘I’d love to see her. Do you think that might be possible?’
    ‘Why not? She doesn’t come to Paris much, though.’
    I opened my mouth to ask where, in that case, his grandmother did live, but before I could do so he moved the conversation on. ‘Did you want to look upstairs?’
    Once again he’d sidestepped me. But I could hardly let the opportunity slip. ‘Of course.’
    With an exaggerated, courtly gesture, he indicated the staircase.
    The upstairs room – it was the middle floor of the house: the staircase, zigzagging back on itself, continued upwards – was as charming and impersonal as the salon. It was a bedroom, also white-carpeted, with wainscoting and built-in panelled cupboards in shades of pale blue-grey. There was a large bed with a bright green cover, over which hung a picture that might have been a small Chirico, of the early period. To the right a door opened into a bathroom; to the left, a window, curtained in the same green fabric as the bedcover, looked on to the little front garden. The ceiling was blandly white and smoothly plastered. Like everything about Robert de Beaupré’s fatal exploit, it had been efficiently covered over.
    Manu’s voice floated up from below. ‘Are you going to take a photo?’
    I always carry a little camera in my bag, but what would be the point? This might be the same space, but it certainly wasn’t the same room. ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Fine, whatever you want.’
    I tried to picture the room as it had been, with the swing-ing body. I wondered how tall Robert de Beaupré had been. Manu would have a job hanging himself in here.
    Downstairs, the phone began to ring. I heard him answer it – ‘ Oui, allo? ’ Then, in the first display I’d heard of any-thing approaching emotion, he said, ‘ Quoi? ’ This was followed by a series of questions – ‘Where?’ ‘You’re quite sure?’ and a series of Yeses and Of courses. After a while he said, ‘ A bientôt, alors ,’ and I heard him replace the phone. Only then did I venture downstairs.
    Manu was striding about the room, as though trying to gather his thoughts from its various corners and crevices. He looked stunned, thunderstruck. I said, ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’
    He started – whatever the phone call had been about, it had completely overlaid all memory of my presence. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. Yes, there are some things I must do now.’
    ‘Bad news?’
    He shook his head like a dog in the rain, as if to slough off what he had just heard. ‘My uncle’s died.’
    ‘I’m so sorry. Was he ill?’
    ‘No, not at all. It was an accident.’
    ‘God! Who found him – not your aunt, I hope?’
    ‘No, no, he wasn’t married . . . You knew him,’ Manu said, finally answering one of the questions I had failed to