Besson wasn’t listening. ‘Mr Inglis,’ he said in accented English, putting away his sketch, ‘I have a notion. I shall head up to the circular railway. I can get a good view from there – of Montrouge, of the plateau. A fine picture could be taken in this light.’
Spying Elizabeth’s industry, Inglis had dug out a pencil of his own and was scribbling in the corner of an old theatre programme. ‘Capital, capital,’ he said. ‘Just be sure that you’re at that church on the rue du Château within the hour, d’you hear? I know what you’re like, Besson, wandering off wherever your fancy takes you.’
Dislike flickered across the photographer’s face as he slid a case from the luggage rack. He said nothing.
Clem saw a chance for escape. ‘I’ll come along to assist you, Monsieur Besson. I’ve put up a few photography tents in my time. I – I could use the air, to be quite honest.’
Elizabeth made no comment; she turned a page, touching the tip of her pencil against her tongue.
Besson eyed him with a marked lack of enthusiasm, but couldn’t think of a reason to refuse. ‘Very well,’ he said.
The Paris circular railway ran along a steep-sided embankment a short distance from the city wall. Besson’s pace didn’t change as he went from the street to the slope; Clem, despite having only been given the doctor’s bag to carry, soon fell far behind. When he reached the top Besson had already assembled his tent poles and was shaking free the canvas cover. Clem panted across the train tracks towards him.
‘So there it is,’ he gasped, setting the doctor’s bag down next to the camera, ‘a deuced battle.’
They were up above the rooftops, perched on the very edge of Paris. Directly in front of them were the fortifications, heavy ramparts of earth and stone crowded with National Guard. Just outside the city gates lay a village, Montrouge Clem assumed, its lanes blocked by stationary carts. Beyond, perhaps a mile away, was the chain of forts on which the defence of the capital depended. He could see three of them, brownish mounds heaped upon the smooth farmland like shovelfuls of clay. Past this everything grew indistinct, enveloped in a haze of sunlight and vapour; but off to the west a low plateau was boiling with dust, threads of black smoke trailing from the village atop it. Around the buildings was the shifting grey-blue stain of a large body of men, moving at speed as they obeyed some unknown command. Rifles crackled; artillery hammered out a lopsided beat. It was easier to take than Clem had anticipated. The alarm he’d felt in the carriage was allayed, more or less; he even felt an odd invigoration. He lit a cigarette and watched.
Beside him, Besson was hard at work. The Frenchman’s suit rustled as he moved. It was made from some kind of fire-retardant material, with scorch-marks on the jacket cuffs and waistcoat – curious garb for a photographer.
‘Tell me, Monsieur,’ Clem asked, ‘what particular composition do you have in mind? The action seems a touch too distant to me.’
Besson just waved vaguely at the landscape before taking a mallet and tent pegs from his canvas sack. There was something hurried about his actions; this was a man eager to dispense with a chore.
‘How many images is Mr Inglis planning to include?’
The photographer crouched to knock in a peg. ‘Who can say what that fool might want?’
Clem smiled. ‘He’s an old acquaintance of my mother’s, you know.’
‘They are opponents. It is plain. He plans to keep her close to make sure she does not get ahead of him.’
The smile faded. ‘Yes, well, you may be onto something there …’
‘Both are here to feast on our defeat, our misery.’ Besson moved from one corner of the tent to another. He sounded more sad than angry. ‘Vultures on the carcass of France.’
‘I suppose that I am a vulture too then, Monsieur Besson?’
‘I don’t know what you are,’ Besson said. He drove the final peg all the way into the ground with a single blow from his mallet. ‘What are you?’
Clem raised his hands, indicating his harmlessness. ‘Merely a brother, Monsieur, motivated by concern for his sister. She lives in Montmartre – that’s why we came. Why I came, at least. And I thought I’d be long gone by now, believe me.’ A shell sparked in the distance, the sound of the blast reaching them a second later. ‘I certainly never imagined that I’d be seeing anything like this.’
The photographer walked around his tent: basic enough, but it would serve. He took in the view for a few moments, then he set up a tripod, attached his Dallmeyer and slotted in a focusing screen.
‘She is not with you, though, this sister,’ he said, ducking under the hood to operate the sliding-box mechanism. ‘Could you not find her?’
‘Oh, we found her all right, tucked in the seediest corner of the seediest dive – and having a bloody whale of a time.’ Clem’s laugh rang hollow. ‘We thought that she might have need of us, Monsieur, but it swiftly transpired that she very much did not. There’s a man involved, you understand. Some red from the provinces named Jean-Jacques Allix.’
The hood was whipped back. Besson looked at him with new interest. ‘I know of him. I have heard him speak.’ He made a connection. ‘Your sister is his Anglaise. The painter.’
‘That she is.’ Clem drew on his cigarette. ‘I suppose she must cut a pretty distinctive figure.’
‘Plein-air painters are becoming common in Montmartre. It is a cheap place to live.’ Besson worked a leather cap over the camera lens and picked up the doctor’s bag. The faintest patch of colour had appeared on his cheek. ‘But a woman, and a foreigner as well – this is not so common.’
‘Have you actually met Hannah, Monsieur Besson? Are you two acquainted?’
‘Yes – no.’ The photographer started for the tent, avoiding Clem’s eye as he passed. ‘We have spoken on a couple of occasions. Only pleasantries. I see her, though, in the lanes and gardens. At her easel.’
Besson was talking quickly, as if attempting to deny something. Clem hid his amusement. It could safely be asserted that this photographer numbered among his sister’s Parisian admirers; the poor cove couldn’t even begin to disguise it. He turned to the tent. Besson was kneeling within, frowning slightly as he mixed his solutions. Keen to advance the conversation, sensing that he’d given himself away, he asked about Clem and Elizabeth’s original plan.
‘You meant to leave today, did you not, but have been trapped in with us.’ The Frenchman slid a glass negative plate from its case. ‘Why did you arrive in Paris so late, Mr Pardy? Surely you could have come for your sister a week ago. Why take such a risk?’
‘We wouldn’t have come at all had we not been summoned. Han is not overly fond of surprise visits.’
Clem paused; he tapped off a half-inch of ash and gave Besson the whole sad story, from the arrival of the letter in St John’s Wood to their restitution in the Grand Hotel that morning. He’d never been one for holding things back; and besides, he’d gained a definite impression that this fellow might be able to help. The photographer was pretty astute, that much was clear, despite his curtness. His perspective, as a resident of Montmartre who knew a little of Hannah’s life, could be exactly what was required.
If any original observations occurred to Monsieur Besson, however, he kept them to himself. While Clem rambled on he set about preparing his negative plate, coating it with treacle-like collodion, dipping it in silver nitrate and transporting it carefully to the camera.
‘It is good that you are still here, Monsieur,’ he said when Clem had finished, as he pushed in the plate. ‘Your sister may have need of you yet.’
Clem remembered his minute-long exchange with Hannah the previous evening. ‘She would disagree with you there, old man,’ he replied with a rueful chuckle. ‘She would