‘M. Dupont has arrived here at this house, sir?’

‘About half an hour ago. He’s in the most foul temper.’

‘Excuse me, sir. I must attend to him straight away.’

‘Of course, Stevens. Well, kind of you to have come out to talk to me.’

‘Please excuse me, sir. As it happened, I had a word or two more to say on the topic of – as you put it yourself – the glories of nature. If you will indulge me by listening, I would be most grateful. But I am afraid this will have to wait for another occasion.’

‘Well, I shall look forward to it, Stevens. Though I’m more of a fish man myself. I know all about fish, fresh water and salt.’

‘All living creatures will be relevant to our forthcoming discussion, sir. However, you must now please excuse me. I had no idea M. Dupont had arrived.’

I hurried back to the house to be met immediately by the first footman saying:

‘We’ve been looking all over for you, sir. The French gentleman’s arrived.’

M. Dupont was a tall, elegant gentleman with a grey beard and a monocle. He had arrived in the sort of clothes one often sees continental gentlemen wearing on their holidays, and indeed, throughout his stay, he was to maintain diligently the appearance of having come to Darlington Hall entirely for pleasure and friendship. As Mr Cardinal had indicated, M. Dupont had not arrived in a good temper; I cannot recall now all the various things that had upset him since his arrival in England a few days previously, but in particular he had obtained some painful sores on his feet while sightseeing around London and these, he feared, were growing septic. I referred his valet to Miss Kenton, but this did not prevent M. Dupont snapping his fingers at me every few hours to say:

‘Butler! I am in need of more bandages.’

His mood seemed much lifted on seeing Mr Lewis. He and the American senator greeted each other as old colleagues and they were to be seen together for much of the remainder of that day, laughing over reminiscences. In fact, one could see that Mr Lewis’s almost constant proximity to M. Dupont was proving a serious inconvenience to Lord Darlington, who was naturally keen to make close personal contact with this distinguished gentleman before the discussions began. On several occasions I witnessed his lordship make attempts to draw M. Dupont aside for some private conversation, only for Mr Lewis smilingly to impose himself upon them with some remark like: ‘Pardon me, gentlemen, but there’s something that’s been greatly puzzling me,’ so that his lordship soon found himself having to listen to some more of Mr Lewis’s jovial anecdotes. Mr Lewis apart, however, the other guests, perhaps through awe, perhaps through a sense of antagonism, kept a wary distance from M. Dupont, a fact that was conspicuous even in that generally guarded atmosphere, and which seemed to underline all the more the feeling that it was M. Dupont who somehow held the key to the outcome of the following days.

The conference began on a rainy morning during the last week of March 1923 in the somewhat unlikely setting of the drawing room – a venue chosen to accommodate the ‘off the record’ nature of many of the attendances. In fact, to my eyes, the appearance of informality had been taken to a faintly ludicrous degree. It was odd enough to see that rather feminine room crammed full with so many stern, dark-jacketed gentlemen, sometimes sitting three or four abreast upon a sofa; but such was the determination on the part of some persons to maintain the appearance that this was nothing more than a social event that they had actually gone to the lengths of having journals and newspapers open on their knees.