14

The Café Cosmopolitain

That same evening, Dick Orchard pushed open the door and went into the public bar of the Trout. He knew many of Oxford’s pubs but, like everyone else, he had his favourites, and the Trout was too far out of the way for him to visit often. Still, the beer was good.

He ordered a pint and looked around warily. There was no one among the customers who looked like a scholar: a group of old men playing cards near the fireplace, two men who looked like farm workers stolidly working their way through a long and winding argument about stock fencing, two younger couples ordering a meal; nothing more than a quiet night in a traditional waterside pub.

When the meal had been ordered and the younger couples were sitting down with their drinks, Dick spoke to the barman, a hefty man of sixty or so with thinning red hair and a genial expression.

‘Scuse me, mate,’ Dick said. ‘I’m looking for someone called Malcolm Polstead. D’you know him?’

‘He’s my son,’ said the barman. ‘He’s in the kitchen at the moment, having a bite of supper. You want to speak to him?’

‘When he’s finished. No hurry.’

‘You’ve only just caught him, as a matter of fact. He’s leaving shortly for somewhere abroad.’

‘Oh, is he? Lucky I came when I did then.’

‘Yes … he’s got to go and sort out some of his affairs at the university and then he’ll be catching a train. I don’t think he’s got all that long – he’ll be off by tomorrow night latest, I’d guess. Why don’t you take your drink over to the corner table and I’ll let him know you’re here, then he can come and say hello before he leaves. What name is it?’

‘Dick Orchard. He won’t know it, though. It’s about … It’s about Lyra.’

The barman’s eyes widened. He leaned a little closer and said quietly, ‘You know where she is?’

‘No, but she told me the name Malcolm Polstead, so …’

‘I’ll get him now.’

Dick took his pint and sat down at the corner table. Something in the barman’s manner made him wish he’d come here sooner.

Less than a minute later a tall man, not quite as hefty as his father the landlord but still someone Dick would have hesitated to tangle with, sat down at the table with him. He held a mug of tea in one hand, and he was wearing a brown corduroy suit. His dæmon, a large ginger cat, touched noses courteously with Dick’s vixen, Bindi.

Dick held out his hand, and Polstead shook it firmly.

‘You know something about Lyra?’ he said.

He spoke quietly, but his voice was very clear. It was deep and resonant, the voice of a singer, perhaps. Dick was puzzled. It wasn’t surprising to know the man was a scholar, because of the intelligence in his face, but he had the air of someone who knew his way around the real world.

‘Yeah,’ said Dick. ‘She’s a … she’s a friend. She came round my house the other morning because she was in trouble, she said, and she asked if I could help her. She wanted to get to the Fens, you see, and my grandad’s gyptian, and he happened to be in Oxford just then with his boat, and I gave her a … I told her how to introduce herself to him. I think she must’ve done that and gone off with him. She told me about something that had happened down near the Oxpens, by the river, and—’

‘What was that?’

‘She saw someone being killed.’

Malcolm liked the look of this boy. He was nervous, but he didn’t let it get in the way of speaking clearly and frankly.

‘How did you know my name?’ Malcolm said. ‘Did Lyra tell you?’

‘She said you knew about that business by the river, and she’d been staying here in the Trout, but she had to go, because …’

He was finding it hard to say. Malcolm waited. Dick looked around and leaned in closer, and finally said almost in a whisper:

‘She felt … the thing was, her dæmon, Pan … he’d gone. He wasn’t with her. He’d just disappeared.’

And Malcolm thought: Of course. Of course … This changes everything.

‘I’d never seen anyone like that,’ Dick went on, in the same tone. ‘You know, separated. She was frightened and she thought everyone’d be looking at her, or worse. There was someone she knew in the Fens, an old gyptian man, she knew she’d be safe with him, and she thought my grandad might be able to take her there.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘My grandad? Giorgio Brabandt.’

‘And the man in the Fens?’

‘I dunno. She never said.’

‘What did she have with her?’

‘Just a rucksack.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Quite early. I’d just come home. I work the night shift at the Royal Mail.’

‘Was it you who told Lyra about Benny Morris?’

‘Yeah. I did.’

Dick wanted to ask whether Malcolm had found out anything about that man, but he held his tongue. Malcolm was taking out a notebook and pencil. He wrote something down and tore out the page.

‘You can trust these two people,’ he said. ‘They both know Lyra well. They’ll be anxious to know where she’s gone. If you could tell them what you’ve just told me I’d be very obliged. And if you have the time to come out here, my mother and father would be glad to know if you hear any more from her. But don’t tell anyone else.’

He passed over the paper, on which he’d written Alice’s name and address and Hannah’s.

‘You going abroad, then?’ Dick said.

‘Yes. I wish I didn’t have to. Listen, there’s a possibility that Pan, that her dæmon, might turn up. He’ll be just as vulnerable as she is. If he knows you, he might do what she did and ask for help.’

‘I thought people died when they got separated like that. I couldn’t believe it when I saw her.’

‘Not always. Tell me, do you know anything about a man called Simon Talbot?’

‘Never heard of him. Is he summing to do with this?’

‘Quite possibly. What’s your address, by the way?’

Dick told him, and Malcolm wrote it down.

‘You going away for long?’ said Dick.

‘No way of telling at the moment. Oh: one of the people on that piece of paper, Dr Relf, would be interested in anything else you can tell her about Benny Morris. He’ll be back to work soon.’

‘You seen him, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he do it?’

‘He said he didn’t.’

‘Are you …? You en’t police, are you?’

‘No. Just a Scholar. Look, I’ve got to go – lots to do before I can leave. Thanks for coming here, Dick. When I get back I’ll buy you a drink.’

He stood up, and they shook hands.

‘Cheers, then,’ said Dick, and watched as Malcolm made his way out of the bar. He moves easy for a big man, he thought.

At about the same time, Pantalaimon was crouching in the shadow of a derelict warehouse near a wharf in the Thames estuary, watching three sailors steal a ship’s propeller.

There wasn’t much light from the sky; a few stars flickered between the ragged clouds, and the moon was somewhere else. There was a feeble glow from the anbaric bulkhead light on the warehouse wall, but very little else to see by except the naphtha lantern in the prow of the rowing boat that had wavered across the creek from a battered old schooner tied up further along the wharf. The schooner was called the Elsa, and her captain had spent the day drinking beer after beer and persuading the mate to help him make off with the propeller, which was bolted to the deck of an almost equally squalid-looking coaster that seemed to have no crew at all, and to consist entirely of rust apart from the four hundredweight of phosphor-bronze on the foredeck. They’d spent hours looking at it through the captain’s cracked binoculars and speculating about how much it would fetch in a tolerant shipyard, while two deckhands languidly tossed various splintered planks and bits of rope overboard, the remains of a badly stowed deck cargo that had come apart after a storm in the Channel and was now never going to be paid for.

The tide was coming in, and the jetsam was floating slowly upstream over the rotting skeleton of a barge and the broken bottles and tin cans in the mud as the silent water gradually lifted the coaster upright. Pantalaimon was watching intently. He’d been interested in the Elsa since he’d arrived at the filthy little harbour the night before, and heard German conversation on the deck. From what he could make out they were intending to leave with the tide and cross the Channel, heading north for Cuxhaven near Hamburg. That was when Pan knew he’d have to go with them: Cuxhaven lay at the mouth of the river Elbe, and the city of Wittenberg, where Gottfried Brande lived, lay many miles inland on the same river. It couldn’t be better.

The crew of the Elsa had been waiting for a cargo but someone had let them down, or more likely, from what Pan could gather, the skipper had simply got the date wrong. All day long the captain and the mate had bickered on the deck, drinking beer and tossing the bottles over the side, and finally, when the skipper agreed to split the proceeds fifty-fifty, the mate gave in and said he’d help liberate the propeller.

Pan saw his chance to get aboard the Elsa, and as soon as the rowing boat began to move across the creek towards the coaster, he crept silently along the wharf and darted up the gangplank. There were four crewmen apart from the skipper and the mate: one of them was rowing the boat, another two were asleep below decks, and the fourth was leaning on the rail watching the expedition. The Elsa was older than Pan could guess, patched and mended over and over, her sails worn and shoddy, her deck filthy with grease and rust.

Plenty of places to hide, anyway, thought Pan, and he sat in the shadow of the wheelhouse and watched the thieves clambering up on to the coaster. At least, the mate climbed up, after the skipper tried twice and failed. The mate was a youngish man, lean and long-limbed, whereas the skipper was swag-bellied, bow-legged, and three-quarters drunk, and he’d never see sixty again.

But he was determined. He stood up in the unstable dinghy, hand on the side of the coaster, growling orders at the mate, who was trying to free the nearest davit from enough rust to let it swing out over the water. He kept up a stream of curses and abuse until the mate leaned over the side and snarled back at him. The mate’s herring-gull-dæmon added a sardonic squawk. Pan knew no more German than Lyra did, of course, but it wasn’t hard to understand the drift of the conversation.

Finally the mate got the davit to move, and then turned his attention to the propeller. The skipper was refreshing himself from a bottle of rum, while his parrot-dæmon clung half insensible to the gunwale. The oily water was slipping into the creek without a murmur, bringing with it ragged clumps of scum and the body of an animal so dead it was more than half rotted away.

Pan looked at the crewman who was watching from the Elsa, and at his dæmon, a scabby-looking rat who sat at his feet cleaning her whiskers. He looked back at the little scene across the creek, with the crewman drooping over the oars, more than half asleep, and the mate wielding a spanner on the deck of the coaster above, and the skipper clinging with one hand to a rope hanging from the davit while the other hand lifted the bottle to his lips again. Into Pan’s mind came a memory of the night-scene from the allotments near the Oxpens, with the Royal Mail depot across the meadow, the wisps of steam rising from the sidings, the bare trees by the river, the distant clank of wire on mooring post, everything silver and calm and beautiful; and, motionless, he felt a thrill of wild exultation at the loveliness of these things and at how the universe was so full of them. He thought how much he loved Lyra and how much he missed her, her warmth, her hands, and how much she would have loved to be here with him watching, how they would have whispered together and pointed out this detail or that, how her breath would have caressed the delicate fur of his ears.

What was he doing? And what was she doing without him?

That little question wormed into his mind, and he flicked it out. He knew what he was doing. Something had made Lyra immune to the intoxication of night-beauty such as this. Something had robbed her of that vision, and he would find it, and bring it back to her, and they would never be apart again, and stay together as long as they lived.

The mate had freed the propeller, and was looping the rope round and round it, ignoring the growled instructions from the skipper, while the oarsman paddled lethargically to keep the dinghy roughly under the davit. Pantalaimon wanted to see what happened when they lowered the propeller into the boat, and whether the dinghy would sink under it; but he was tired, more than tired, almost delirious with exhaustion; so he prowled the length of the deck until he found a companionway, and then crept down into the bowels of the Elsa, found a dark spot, and curled up and fell asleep at once.

Speeches long and short, motions for and motions against, objections, qualifications, amendments, protests, votes of confidence, more speeches and yet further speeches had filled the first day of the Magisterial Conference with argument and the Council Chamber of the Secretariat of the Holy Presence with warm stale air.

Marcel Delamare sat through every word, patient, attentive, and inscrutable. His owl-dæmon did close her eyes once or twice, but only to ponder, not to sleep.

They broke at seven for a service of Vespers, followed by dinner. There was no formal seating arrangement; groups of allies seated themselves together, while those with no acquaintance among the other delegates, or those who realised the small influence their own organisation could wield, sat wherever they could find space. Delamare watched it all, observing, counting, calculating, but at the same time greeting, exchanging a word here or a joke there, being prompted by a murmur from his dæmon when it would be wise to lay a friendly hand on a shoulder or a forearm, and when a silent twinkle of complicity would be more effective. He paid particular though unobtrusive attention to the representatives of the large corporations who were sponsoring (in the most ethically conscious and, again, unobtrusive way) some aspects of the arrangements: medical insurance, that sort of thing.

When he sat down to eat, it was between two of the least powerful and most timid delegates there, the aged Patriarch of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople and the Abbess of the Order of St Julian, a tiny body of nuns who by a historical fluke had come to manage a large fortune in stocks and shares and government bonds.

‘What did you make of the arguments today, Monsieur Delamare?’ said the Abbess.

‘All very well put, I thought,’ he said. ‘Cogent, honest, from the heart.’

‘And where does your organisation stand on the matter?’ said the Patriarch Papadakis: Saint Simeon by courtesy.

‘We stand with the majority.’

‘And which way will the majority vote, do you think?’

‘They will vote with me, I hope.’

He could assume a pleasant tone when he needed to, and the gentle jocularity of his expression made it clear to his neighbours that this was a jest. They smiled politely.

The candlelight on the long oak tables, the aroma of roast venison, the chink of cutlery on fine porcelain plates, the heady glow of the crimson wine and the golden wine, the unobtrusive swift skill of the servants – it was all very pleasing. Even the Abbess, who lived frugally, found herself approving of these arrangements.

‘The Secretariat of the Holy Presence is certainly looking after us very well,’ she said.

‘You can always rely on—’

‘Delamare, there you are,’ said a loud voice, emphasised by a heavy hand on his shoulder. Delamare knew who it was before he turned to look. Only one man interrupted so readily and so rudely.

‘Pierre,’ Delamare said blandly. ‘Can I help?’

‘We haven’t been told about the arrangements for the final plenary session,’ said Pierre Binaud, the Chief Justice of the CCD. ‘Why’s that been left off the schedule?’

‘It hasn’t. Ask someone from the Office of Ceremonial and they’ll explain.’

‘H’mm,’ said Binaud, and left frowning.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ Delamare said to the Abbess. ‘Yes, the Secretariat: we can always rely on Monsieur Houdebert, the Prefect. He has a perfect knowledge of how to make events like these move with unruffled serenity.’

‘But tell me, monsieur,’ said the Patriarch, ‘what do you make of the recent troubles we’ve been having in the Levant?’

‘I think you’re very wise to use the word troubles,’ said Delamare, filling the old man’s water glass. ‘More than anxieties, but less than alarms, h’mm?’

‘Well, from the viewpoint of Geneva, perhaps …’

‘No, I don’t mean to downplay their importance, Your Serenity. They are indeed troubling. But it’s just this sort of trouble that makes it important for us to speak with one voice, and act with one purpose.’

‘That’s what has been so difficult to achieve,’ said the Patriarch. ‘For us in our eastern churches, to feel that we have the authority of the entire Magisterium behind us would certainly be a blessing. Things are getting harder, you know, monsieur. There is more discontent than I have ever known among our people, in their cities and markets and villages. A new doctrine seems to be arising that holds a great attraction for them. We try to confront it, but …’ He spread his old hands helplessly.

‘That is precisely what the new representative council will be perfectly placed to deal with,’ said Delamare, with warm sincerity. ‘Believe me, the effectiveness of the Magisterium will be greatly magnified. Our truth, of course, is eternal and unchangeable, but our methods have been hampered over the centuries by the need to consult, to advise, to listen, to placate … It is action that your situation cries out for. And the new council will deliver that.’

The Patriarch looked solemn, and nodded. Delamare turned to the Abbess.

‘Mother, what is the feeling among your sisters about your place in the hierarchy?’ he said. ‘May I help you to some more wine?’

‘How kind. Thank you. Well, we don’t have views, really, Monsieur Delamare. It’s not our place to have opinions. We are here to serve.’

‘And very faithfully you do it. But you know, ma’am, I didn’t say views. I said feelings. You can argue someone out of their views, but feelings go much deeper and speak more truly.’

‘Oh, that is certainly true, monsieur. Our place in the hierarchy? Well, I suppose our feeling about that would be one of modesty. And – and gratitude. Humility. We don’t presume to feel discontented with our lot.’

‘Quite right. I hoped you’d say that. No – I knew you’d say it. A really good woman would say nothing else. Now –’ he dropped his voice a little and leaned towards her – ‘suppose a representative council were to emerge from this congress. Would it please your holy sisters if their abbess were to have a seat on that council?’

The good lady was speechless. She opened her mouth twice and closed it again; she blinked; she blushed; she shook her head, and then stopped, and almost nodded.

‘You see,’ Delamare went on, ‘there’s a particular kind of holiness that I think is underrepresented in the Magisterium. It’s the kind that serves, as your holy sisters do. But serves with a true modesty and not a false one. A false modesty would be ostentatious, don’t you think? It would seek to turn away emphatically from public distinctions and offices while privately lobbying to get them. And then allow itself to be dragged into them, protesting volubly about its unworthiness. I’m sure you’ve seen that cast of mind. But true modesty would accept that there is a place that one could fill, that one’s talents are not illusions, that it would be wrong to turn away from a task if one could do it well. Don’t you think?’

The Abbess was looking warm. She sipped her wine and coughed as she swallowed too much at once. Delamare tactfully looked away till she’d recovered.

‘Monsieur, you speak very generously,’ she said in what was nearly a whisper.

‘Not generous, Mother. Merely juste.’

Her dæmon was a mouse with pretty silver fur. He had been hiding on her shoulder, out of sight of Delamare’s owl-dæmon, who, sensing their nervousness, had not looked at him once. But now he appeared, just a face and whiskers, and the owl slowly turned and bowed her head to him. The mouse just gazed with bright button eyes, but didn’t retreat. Presently he crept around on to the Abbess’s other shoulder and made a little bow to Delamare’s dæmon.

Delamare was talking to the Patriarch again, reassuring, flattering, explaining, sympathising, and inwardly reckoning: two more votes.

As the first day of the Magisterial conference drew to an end, some of the delegates withdrew to their rooms to read, or to write letters, or to pray, or just to sleep. Others gathered in groups, to talk over the day’s events; some with old friends, some with new acquaintances who seemed to be agreeable, or of like opinions, or better informed about the politics that lay behind the gathering.

One such group sat with glasses of brantwijn near the great fireplace in the Salon des Étrangers. The chairs were comfortable, the spirits unusually smooth, the room skilfully lit so that chairs were grouped in pools of illumination, with dimmer areas between, isolating each group in a way that reinforced its identity and made it comfortable to be in. As well as money, the Secretariat of the Holy Presence had gifted and experienced designers.

The group by the fire had assembled almost by accident, but they soon found themselves in a state of warm agreement, almost complicity, in fact. They were discussing the personalities who had made most impact during the day. The Prefect of the Secretariat, naturally, as their host, was one of these.

‘A man of calm authority, he seems to me,’ said the Dean of the Court of Faculties.

‘And much experience of the world. Do you know how much property the Secretariat owns?’ said the Preceptor of the Temple Hospitallers.

‘No. Is it a great deal?’

‘I understand they command funds reaching into the tens of billions. Much due to his skill in the world of banking.’

Murmurs of admiration went around the little group.

‘Someone else who made an impression, I think,’ said the Chaplain of the Synod of Deacons, ‘perhaps in a different way, was Saint, Saint … the Patriarch of the, of the, of Constantinople. A very holy man.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Dean. ‘Saint Simeon. We are lucky to have him among us.’

‘He’s led his organisation for fifty years, no less,’ said a man none of the others recognised. He was a dapper Englishman, wearing a faultlessly cut tweed suit and a bow tie. ‘With increasing wisdom, no doubt, but perhaps in recent years a little lessening of strength. Moral authority undiminished, of course.’

Nods of assent. The Dean said, ‘Very true. I’m afraid I don’t recognise you, sir. Which body do you represent?’

‘Oh, I’m not a delegate,’ said the Englishman. ‘I’m reporting on the congress for the Journal of Moral Philosophy. My name is Simon Talbot.’

‘I think I’ve read something of yours,’ said the Chaplain. ‘A very witty piece about, er … about, umm … about relativism.’

‘How very kind,’ said Talbot.

‘It’s the younger men who hold the future,’ said a man in a dark suit, who was an executive of Thuringia Potash, one of the corporate sponsors, a powerful pharmaceutical company. ‘Such as the Secretary General of La Maison Juste.’

‘Marcel Delamare.’

‘That’s it. An extraordinarily able man.’

‘Yes, Monsieur Delamare is a remarkable man. He seems very keen to promote this idea of a council,’ said the Preceptor.

‘Well, frankly, so are we,’ said the Thuringia Potash executive. ‘And I think it would do well to include your Monsieur Delamare in its ranks.’

‘A clarity of mind, a vigour of perception,’ murmured Simon Talbot.

All in all, Marcel Delamare could be pleased with his day’s work.

The Café Cosmopolitain, opposite the railway station in Geneva, was a long rectangular low-ceilinged room, badly lit, not very clean, the only decoration on the smoke-brown walls being placards of chipped enamel or faded paper advertising apéritifs or spirits. There was a zinc-topped bar along one side and staff apparently chosen for their freedom from the constraints of courtesy and competence. If you wanted to get drunk, it would do as well as anywhere else; if you wanted an evening of civility and fine cuisine, you were in the wrong place.

But it had one great advantage. As a centre for the exchange of information it was unmatched. The presence within a few hundred metres of a news agency, not to mention several government bodies as well as the cathedral, and of course the railway, meant that journalists or spies or members of the detective police could practise their various trades at the Cosmopolitain with great ease and convenience. And with the Magisterial Congress now underway, the place was crowded.

Olivier Bonneville sat at the bar and ordered a dark beer. His hawk-dæmon murmured into his ear, ‘Who are we looking for?’

‘Matthias Sylberberg. Apparently he knew Delamare at school.’

‘Surely a man like that wouldn’t come to a place like this?’

‘No, but the people he works with would.’ Bonneville sipped his beer and looked around.

‘Isn’t the man over there a colleague of Sylberberg?’ said his dæmon. ‘The fat man with the grey moustache who’s just come in.’

The man was hanging his hat and coat on a hat stand near the mirror, and turning to greet the two men at a table beside it.

‘Where did we see him before?’ said Bonneville.

‘At the opening of the Rovelli show at Tennier’s gallery.’

‘So we did!’

Bonneville turned away from the bar and sat with his elbows on it behind him, watching the bald man sit with the two others. The newcomer snapped his fingers at one of the surliest waiters, who nodded briefly at his order and swept away.

‘Who are the other two?’ Bonneville murmured.

‘I don’t remember seeing either of them. Unless the one with his back to us is Pochinsky.’

‘Pochinsky the art man?’

‘The critic, yes.’

‘I suppose he could be … Yes, you’re right.’

The man’s face became visible briefly in the mirror as he turned to move his chair.

‘And the fat man is called Rattin.’

‘Well remembered!’

‘It’s a pretty tenuous connection.’

‘The best we have at the moment.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

‘Introduce ourselves, of course.’

Bonneville finished the beer, put his glass on the bar, and set off confidently across the crowded room just as the surly waiter was approaching the men’s table. He contrived to trip up as someone moved a chair unexpectedly, and lurched against the waiter, who would have dropped the tray had Bonneville not caught it adroitly.

Exclamations of surprise and admiration from the three men – a snarl from the waiter – a flurry of arm-waving and shoulder-shrugging from the man who had apparently set it all off by moving his chair.

‘Your drinks, I think, gentlemen,’ said Bonneville, putting the tray down on their table and ignoring the waiter, whose lizard-dæmon was protesting volubly from the pocket of his apron.

‘Very skilfully caught,’ said Rattin. ‘You should be a goalkeeper, sir! Or perhaps you are?’

‘No,’ said Bonneville, smiling. He passed the empty tray back to the waiter, and Rattin went on:

‘You must have a drink with us to thank you for saving ours.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said the third man.

‘Well, how generous … A dark beer,’ Bonneville said to the waiter, who scowled and left.

Bonneville was about to pull out a chair when he looked again at the man with the grey moustache as if recognising him.

‘Isn’t it … Monsieur Rattin?’ he said.

‘Yes, it is, but …’

‘We met a couple of weeks ago at the opening of the Rovelli show at Tennier’s gallery. You won’t remember, but I found what you said about the artist quite fascinating.’

One of the things that Bonneville had noticed in the course of his life was that older men, homosexual or not, could be very susceptible to the flattery of younger ones if it was expressed with frankness and sincerity. The essential thing was to confirm the views of the older ones in such a way as to convey the simple and genuine admiration of a young person who might one day become a disciple. Bonneville’s sparrowhawk-dæmon, as if eager to continue the flattery, at once hopped on to the back of Rattin’s chair to speak with the man’s snake-dæmon, who lay curled along the top.

Meanwhile, Bonneville turned to Pochinsky. ‘And you, sir – I don’t think I’m mistaken – surely you’re Alexander Pochinsky? I’ve been reading your column in the Gazette for years.’

‘Yes, that’s who I am,’ said the critic. ‘And are you involved in the world of the visual arts?’

‘Only a humble amateur, one who’s content to read what the best critics have to say about them.’

‘You work for Marcel Delamare,’ said the third man, who hadn’t spoken before. ‘I think I’ve seen you at La Maison Juste. Am I right?’

‘Quite right, sir, and very privileged to do so,’ said Bonneville, holding out his hand to shake. ‘My name is Olivier Bonneville.’

The man gave Bonneville his hand. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve had occasion to visit La Maison Juste on business once or twice. Eric Schlosser.’

He was a banker: Bonneville had placed him at last. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘my employer is a remarkable man. Of course you’re aware of the Magisterial Congress?’

‘Did Monsieur Delamare play a part in organising that?’ asked Rattin.

‘Yes, indeed, a prominent one,’ said Bonneville. ‘Your good health, gentlemen!’

He drank, and they reciprocated.

‘Yes,’ Bonneville went on, ‘working in daily communication with someone whose brilliance is dazzling – well, you know, one can’t help but be a little intimidated.’

‘What is the business of La Maison Juste?’ said Pochinsky.

‘We are continually seeking a way of accommodating the life of the world to the life of the spirit,’ said Bonneville easily.

‘And will this congress help with that?’

‘I truly think so. It should bring a clarity, a sharp edge of purpose to the work of the Magisterium.’

Rattin said, ‘And what is La Maison Juste? Is it part of the judicial system?’

‘It was set up a century ago – “The League for the Instauration of the Holy Purpose”, that’s the official title – and it’s been working hard for a long time. But in recent years under Monsieur Delamare it’s become a really potent force for good in the ranks of the Magisterium. Of course we should always refer to it by that name really, but the building where we work is so beautiful that I suppose it’s a way of paying tribute to it. It was used centuries ago for the examination of heresy and heretics, hence the name.’

Bonneville sensed that his dæmon had discovered something important, but he gave no sign of it. Instead he turned to the critic.

‘Tell me, Monsieur Pochinsky,’ he said, ‘what do you think about the place of the spirit in the visual arts?’

Pochinsky could talk about that for hours. Bonneville settled back to nurse his drink, to listen with assiduous attention, and to wait for the perfect moment to depart, when he thanked them all for their fascinating conversation and left them with a strong impression of the courtesy, modesty, capability, and charm of the younger generation.

As soon as they were outside, his dæmon flew to his shoulder. Bonneville listened closely as they made their way to the attic apartment where they lived.

‘Well?’

‘Rattin works with Sylberberg, as you remembered. And Sylberberg knew Delamare at school, and still has an acquaintanceship with him. According to Rattin’s dæmon, Delamare had an older sister to whom he was devoted. She was a prominent force in the Magisterium – she set up an organisation devoted to some purpose that Rattin couldn’t remember, but she was very influential. A beautiful woman, apparently. She married an Englishman called Courtney, Coulson, something like that, but there was a scandal when she had a child by another man. Delamare was devastated when she vanished about ten years ago. He believes that the child was to blame, but as for why he thinks that, Rattin couldn’t say.’

‘A child! Boy or girl?’

‘Girl.’

‘When?’

‘About twenty years ago. Lyra Belacqua. She’s the one.’