‘How’s Sabine?’ Ariane asked, embracing each member of the household warmly. Her question was answered by a Greek chorus of women’s voices.

‘She’s alive.’

‘Thank God.’

‘She’s asleep.’

‘We’ve taken a nurse, for the nights …’

‘So someone is with her all the time.’

Theo interrupted the cycle of commentary and explanation. ‘What happened?’ he asked again. There was a pause from the four women, as if each was waiting for one of the others to answer. Then they began to reply together.

‘It must have been an accident …’

‘She was found unconscious …’

‘The Baillet boys came to tell us …’

‘Old Franco had to bring her home in the cart …’

‘We called the doctor …’

‘We have to call Dr Arnoux now in St Saud …’

‘It was he who told us to call the police …’

‘But what happened?’ Again Theo’s voice cut through the recitative. Silence fell.

‘Sabine is too ill to tell us.’ It was Florence who replied.

Ariane rose. ‘I think Suzie should go to bed now. It’s been a very long day.’

‘I’ve put her in the little white room,’ said Florence, ‘so she won’t disturb Sabine.’

‘Suzie, come with me. Florence will show us what she has arranged.’ She put her hand out to Theo. ‘And I think we should go to bed, too. Well understand everything much better by daylight.’

Theo went to Sabine’s room and opened the door. A nurse was sitting at a table, reading. At the far end of the room the bed was in darkness, so he could barely distinguish his daughter’s form.

‘How is she?’ he enquired, awkwardly.

‘Asleep,’ came the reply.

In his own room the fire was lit and one lamp shone beside the bed. A moment later Ariane entered and began at once to unpack her suitcase. This immediate acceptance of a joint life at Bonnemort, which she had resisted in Paris, alone made the journey seem worthwhile.

‘Ariane, what is going on? What happened to Sabine? Why will none of them answer a direct question?’

When the straight answer came he understood why no one else would reply: because it was impossible to believe.

‘Sabine was very badly beaten.’ She came over to him and took his hand. ‘I know. It’s incredible. Florence told me and she was making no mistake. I am not sure whether the aunts have really taken it in.’

‘But why? Who did it?’

‘No one knows. No one has the least idea. The police know less than anyone, according to Florence, until Sabine is able and willing to speak. Tomorrow you can see the doctor, the nurse, Sabine, the police, and find out what you can.’

‘How can I?’

He lay awake for a long time savouring the comfort of the room in the light of the dying fire. Ariane was soon asleep beside him. The primrose silk curtains, at least fifty years old, so worn at the inner edges that they were as fragile as cloth from a tomb, were reflected in the mirror above the fireplace. The clock on the chimneypiece, doubled by the mirror, was a golden globe held up by an ebony figure. He remembered all of it from morning visits to his mother forty years ago. Yet amid the familiar he was confronted again with the inexplicable. Each time he returned, where Bonnemort should have offered the reassurance of continuity, there was instead a shock of violence. Until Ariane had spoken, he had assumed his daughters illness was an accident, or even a disease: he had interpreted Aunt Odette’s reference on the telephone to an ‘attack’ as meaning pneumonia. Why?