They arrived in Dunkirk on the boat and made for the railway station and the train to Paris. At the railway station, Abigail did what she always did on arriving somewhere new: she bought a couple of newspapers.

‘Just to find out what’s happening,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.’

‘You’ll have to fill me in,’ said Daniel. ‘French is a foreign language to me.’

‘French is a foreign language to everyone who’s not French,’ Abigail pointed out.

‘You know what I mean. You can read it; I can’t.’

Once they’d settled themselves in the railway carriage, Abigail opened the newspapers.

‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed, surprised. ‘Alfred Dreyfus is back in France.’

‘Who?’ asked Daniel.

‘Alfred Dreyfus. A former captain in the French Army. Do you remember I told you about him last year when there was that article about him in The Times?’

‘No,’ said Daniel.

‘It was a major scandal,’ said Abigail. ‘Still is. He was accused of treason, passing French military secrets to the Germans. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Some hellhole of a place in French Guiana.’

‘I guess he deserved it, betraying his country.’

‘No, that’s the scandal. He didn’t do it. He was set up. It was all in this piece in The Times.’

‘How come The Times did a piece on it? They’re not usually that interested in foreign news, unless it’s something fairly major. And then only if it’s a war involving Britain.’

‘This is major. Dreyfus was accused of treason on faked evidence. According to the article, the person who actually committed the treason was another officer. I can’t remember his name, but he was named, after Dreyfus had been sentenced. But instead of letting Dreyfus go and charging this other man, the army authorities let the guilty man escape to England. It was in England that this reporter spotted him. She did an interview with him in which he admitted he was the one who’d passed the secrets on to the Germans, not Dreyfus. But, according to this piece, the courts and the army refused to have Dreyfus released; they still insisted he was guilty.’

‘Why?’

‘According to The Times, it was because Dreyfus is Jewish and the most senior officers in the French Army are anti-Semitic.’

‘That’s a bit of an allegation,’ said Daniel. ‘I’m surprised the French Army didn’t sue them.’

‘They couldn’t because it was published in another country, but when it was republished in France, they took action.’

‘People were sued?’

‘Not just sued – people were physically attacked. On both sides. Those who supported Dreyfus and demanded his freedom, and those who insisted that Dreyfus was guilty, including some who wanted him executed.’ She checked the story in the paper again. ‘Anyway, it appears that Dreyfus has been granted a retrial. He’s been brought back from Devil’s Island for it.’

‘So we can expect Paris to be a place of uprisings, with one group attacking the other,’ said Daniel wryly.

‘No,’ said Abigail. ‘It seems his retrial is going to be held in Rennes.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In Brittany.’

‘Well, at least he’ll get justice this time.’

Abigail looked doubtful. ‘I wouldn’t count on it. It sems it’s going to be held in a military court, so it’ll be a court martial, run by the military.’

‘Surely they can’t convict him again, not with all this publicity?’

‘I’m afraid organisations like the military have a habit of protecting themselves at all costs.’ She looked at Daniel. ‘You should know that from your time in the Metropolitan Police.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Daniel with a sigh. ‘It’ll be interesting to see how this court martial works out.’

On their arrival at the Gare du Nord, they caught a cab from the line of hansoms waiting in a queue outside the station, and Abigail gave the driver the name of their hotel in Montmartre, the Olive House. She’d booked it by post once they’d agreed they were both coming to Paris.

‘I stayed at it when I was last here in Paris, about eight years ago. It was clean and comfortable and not expensive.’

‘The Olive House,’ mused Daniel. ‘Something to do with olives?’

‘No. The owner at that time was a woman called Olive Pascal. She died a couple of years ago. Her daughter runs it now with her husband. She wrote back to confirm our booking, and at the same time told me about her mother dying.’

‘What’s the area like? Montmartre?’

‘It’s a hill, very high, but don’t worry, the Olive House is at the bottom of the hill so we won’t have to haul ourselves up it after a day’s sightseeing. I’m due to meet Professor Flamand tomorrow morning, so I suggest we spend this afternoon taking in some of the sights.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Daniel. ‘As you’ve been here before you’ll know which will be the best places for us to visit.’

‘It’s been eight years since I’ve been here,’ Abigail reminded him. ‘Some of the places will have changed.’

‘The buildings won’t have,’ said Daniel.

‘Don’t count on that,’ warned Abigail. ‘The Eiffel Tower hadn’t been long completed when I was last here, and the Sacré-Coeur church in Montmartre was still under construction. I suggest we do one major attraction, Notre-Dame Cathedral.’

‘A church?’

‘Not just any church, possibly one of the most famous in Europe. Then we’ll stroll around a bit so you can get an idea of the city, so you’ll know where to go while I’m seeing Professor Flamand at the Louvre.’

‘I expect I’ll still get lost.’

She shook her head. ‘You’ve got a good sense of direction. Look at how you find your way around London.’

‘That’s because I was born and brought up there.’

‘What about when we were in Oxford and Cambridge? And Manchester.’

‘The difference is the street signs and everything there were in English, and so were the people if I wanted to know where anything was.’

‘All right. Then I suggest while I’m at the Louvre you walk around Montmartre, get familiar with the local area.’

That evening, tired after their long journey and their visit to Notre-Dame, they decided to have a meal at their hotel rather than explore Paris for a restaurant that looked to be to their taste.

Next morning, Abigail left Daniel to explore Montmartre while she headed for the 1st arrondissement and the Louvre. It had been a long time since she had last been here, when her main occupation had been as an archaeologist specialising in ancient Egypt. In those days she had spent almost as much time at the Louvre as she had the British Museum, keen to find out about the latest discoveries from the French excavations of the pyramids. In the later days of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, the French had dominated Egyptology with the work of men like Jomard, Coutelle, Lepere, Champollion, Auguste Mariette and Ferdinand de Lesseps. Now, Flamand, Gauthier and Jéquier were seen as the last ones flying the flag for France’s role in Egyptian excavations, in the face of the recent dominance of Britain’s Flinders Petrie and the German Ludwig Borchardt.

Was this why Flamand had invited her to take part in his forthcoming excavations? Because he would know she’d worked with Petrie at Hawara and would be interested to get as much information from her as possible about Petrie’s work and plans.

The 1st arrondissement was the least populated of Paris’s many arrondissements, as well as being one of the smallest, but in Abigail’s eyes it was the most fascinating. Most of the area was taken up by the vast Louvre Museum and the large open space that was the Tuileries Garden. Les Halles was also here, a massive area where vegetables and fruit of all kinds were brought to be distributed to the various greengrocers, the smell from the vegetables, particularly the cabbages, lingering over the whole area.

As she crossed the Place du Louvre and approached the vast and impressive building that housed the Louvre Museum, she puzzled over the invitation from Flamand. It went...