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when the sun was high enough to clear the trees that lined the Rue Blatin and hit the front of the house full-on. But if one entered quietly when nobody else was about and took care not to bump into anything, it was actually possible to smell one’s way around the room, which turned out to be so much more exciting than actually being able to see it. Starting on an anti-clockwise course, the fireplace came first with its acrid reek of cold, unswept chimney; next the long bookshelves, which gave off a heady whiff of leather; round past the grand piano, which was always sweet with beeswax; feel one’s way to one side of Dr. Lafitte’s high-sided armchair with the rich aroma of hair oil on its linen head cloth; then along the smooth-fronted sideboard, which gave off first the obnoxious tang of spent pipe tobacco, followed by the fading bouquet of potpourri; and then, finally, journey’s end came by the small Louis XV chair nestling beside the door, which ponged of Madame Lafitte’s two elderly Pekineses.
    It was during one of these unsighted sojourns, when the perpetrator had decided to widen the search for new discoveries behind the grand piano, that a foot came into contact with some form of solid object, causing it to sound off a muffled reverberation in protest. After a moment of thumping heartbeat, during which ears were sharply attuned to the possible approach of footsteps, small hands were used to explore the shape of the object. First curvaceous around its base, then into a narrow waist, then some smaller curves before its lines ran parallel to the top. Imagination could not help in any way to understand what the box contained, and that was not to be of any satisfaction to one so curious. Accordingly, ten little fingers sought to break the sacrosanct spell of darkness, gripping hard at the edge of one of the tall shutters and pulling it open to allow the narrowest sliver of light to fall upon the box and upon nothing else. The little girl in the shapeless cotton dress and dirty plimsolls, who now revealed herself for the first time to her inanimate acquaintances in the room, knelt down in front of the box and slowly undid the three spring catches on the lid, and then carefully, oh, so carefully, she opened it up.
    She did not touch its contents. She just gazed at them, so mesmerized by what she saw that, after an unknown quantity of time, she felt no discomfort from kneeling on the hard parquet floor, nor was she aware of the commotion that had started outside the room.
    “You try upstairs, Marie. I will look for her down here.”
    A door on the opposite side of the hallway groaned open on un-oiled hinges before being closed immediately with an echoing bang, and then the door to the drawing room was opened and a light turned on.
    “Angélique? Are you in here?”
    As she stood by the door, the woman, who, despite her advanced age, was tall and upright and elegantly turned out, her grey hair pinned in a circular plait to the back of her head, was puzzled by the crack of light that showed through the shutters. She walked over to the window and let out a cry of surprise when she came across the little girl huddled on her knees behind the piano.
    “Oh, Angélique, what a fright you gave me,” she said, clutching a hand to her white-bloused heart. “What are you doing in here, little one?”
    The little girl looked up at the old lady, her face radiant with delight. “What is this?” she asked, pointing at her discovery.
    The lady was so warmed by the child’s expression that any thought of reprimand quickly melted from her mind. “That, Angélique, is a violin.”
    “Is it very special?”
    The old lady smiled. “That one is, yes.” She held a finger up to the little girl. “You wait right there. I must tell your mother I found you.” She walked over to the door and called out, “Marie?” into the hallway.
    “I have not yet found her, Madame Lafitte,” a panicked voice sounded out from some distant point