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garden of the Palais Royal from the house.
    â€˜Eighteen million, Inspector,’ muttered the old woman abstractedly. ‘Poor Monsieur de Brisson will be beside himself and will forget absolutely to tell his daughter to let the cat in. It is the toughs these days, the police.’
    â€˜Ah no, madame, surely not the police,’ urged St-Cyr. One had to speak loudly.
    â€˜Yes, yes, the police.’ She would purse her lips and glare at him. She would have to dismiss the girl. One could not have one’s days interrupted by the Sûreté. How shameful.
    The maid had let him into the house which was next door to the house of Monsieur Vergès. The hour of the apéritif had come and gone with two glasses of well-watered port he had not been given a chance to share.
    Little had been accomplished. The bank manager’s house was across the garden. ‘The daughter, Madame Lemaire?’ he hazarded. ‘Does Mademoiselle de Brisson let the cat in through one of the attic windows perhaps?’
    â€˜The cat …? What cat?’
    â€˜The robbery, madame. You were only just saying …’
    The thin shoulders beneath the mound of sweaters and shawls quivered with indignation. ‘Please do not interrupt me, Inspector. I know perfectly well what I was saying.’
    The woman drifted off into silence and left him waiting, though not purposely. Fortune had passed by, leaving faded, once plush, wine-purple armchairs with holes in their arms and loose threads trailing to the floor to join frayed tassels.
    There were two of these armchairs, one on each side of a smoke-blackened grey marble chimneypiece; no fire, no fuel tonight. A cross, a small ormolu clock, a photo in its frame, two plates of dubious value and a vase from someplace occupied the mantelpiece beneath a gilded Louis-Philippe mirror that had lost the top left corner of its carving. An accident years ago.
    A pair of flanking, gilded sconces, mounted on the cracked, pale yellow walls, held stubs of candles in each of their three holders. He felt the stubs had been left for propriety’s sake though the thought of melding all six together would have presented a dilemma whenever it registered.
    Impatient at the continued delay but telling himself to go easy, he cleared his throat and said, ‘The robbery, madame?’ But now the grey eyes that had only this past moment been so fiercely defiant, drifted into memory at the thought of food as she touched the faded menu at her side.
    â€˜The ninety-ninth day of the siege, 25 December 1870,’ she said, wistfully reading it.
    The Franco-Prussian War. The winter of 1870-71. How old had she been? he wondered. Fifteen or twenty, no more …
    â€˜â€œHors-d’oeuvre: Langue de kéabau en gelée écarlate. Cervelle d’éléphant. Animelles de zèbre à la crème sur canapés. ”’
    Jellied water buffalo tongue, elephant brains, and zebra testicles sliced, in cream, and on little wedges of toast.
    The city had been ringed by the Prussians. Napoleon III had been taken prisoner. No food could enter Paris … ‘Madame …’
    â€˜Please do not interrupt me, Inspector. I read this every day to remind myself of the brave and to beg God to let them return since men such as yourself have not stopped the Boches.’
    A purée of emu with croutons, a consommé of kangaroo thickened with tapioca, garnished with dried royale and sprinkled with chervil, no doubt. On the ninety-ninth day of the siege, the Paris zoo had been emptied and the contents shared.
    The menu was perhaps from the restaurant Le Grand Véfour that was off the north-western corner of the garden with an entrance on the rue de Beaujolais. It had been founded in 1760, was still open and still much the same. A classic. Balzac had eaten there.
    Duchess potato croquettes dipped in egg and breadcrumbs and fried in very hot, deep fat … Camel stew, braised shank of