Suzie was not sure that she had really stripped Sabine’s basket of all its deadly contents. She had no opportunity to sort through them again, as she was set to wiping clean her own fungi and to cutting them up with the garlic. When Sabine left the scullery for a moment, she seized a handful of Sabine’s mushrooms, now sliced and prepared, and substituted a heap of her own before she heard Sabine returning.

Her final effort to save Madame Ariane came at lunch. They were to eat the mushrooms as a first course, and the girls served them to Madame Ariane and the aunts. In the kitchen Sabine handed Suzie the Judas plate.

‘You can give it to her.’

Suzie nodded and took it in her left hand. She let Sabine walk ahead of her to the dining room with the plates for Madam e Veryrines and Madame de Cazalle. Sabine put down a plate in front of each of her aunts and returned to the kitchen to fetch her own. Suzie carefully placed the dish in her right hand in front of Madame Ariane who smiled and said, ‘Thank you, Suzie.’ The other she put in her own place.

‘Bon appetit,’ said Sabine, in her sprightliest tone, patently false to Suzie’s ears. She continued to prattle, about the beauty of the forest that morning, eating with relish and darting a glance at Madame Ariane who had speared one piece of mushroom on her fork and was about to eat it.

Suzie pushed her food around her plate.

‘What’s the matter, Suzie?’ Madame de Cazalle asked. Suzie saw Sabine frowning at her.

‘Nothing, thank you,’ she replied.

‘Then eat properly.’

She took a mushroom into her mouth, bit into the springily resistant flesh and forced herself to swallow it. Did it taste odd? Was she going to die? Then another, and another. She put down her fork. ‘I’m afraid I don’t think I can finish all of them,’ she said.

Madame Ariane did not die. Nor did Suzie. Sabine did not appear to realise a trick had been played on her, insisting that it was a sign of Madame Ariane’s links with the devil that she was able to eat a whole plate of poisoned mushrooms and remain none the worse for it. She made no suggestion of repeating the attempt, as if her fury had been consumed in her plan which though unsuccessful, had been sufficient to staunch her rage.

Chapter Twenty-three

With a single-minded frenzy Sabine now dedicated herself, and Suzie, to the pursuit of the major and Madame Ariane. Suzie, whilst preferring reconnaissance to action, took part reluctantly. Sometimes she thought of what they were doing as the observation of wild animals. Sometimes she thought of it as spying on the enemy. Yet Madame Ariane was not the enemy and her identification with her was so great that she felt as if she was watching herself. She knew, although she did not tell Sabine, that Madame Ariane gave information to the major. It was obvious to Suzie that she was in the major’s power and did not do it willingly. The question that concerned her was whether Madame Ariane was being forced to give away real secrets, or whether what she told him was false and useless.