‘You mean Monsieur Vernhes?’

She looked at him compassionately, in the way that all the women of the household regarded him that day, with a kind of reproachful sympathy. ‘Yes,’ she said patiently, ‘Monsieur Vernhes.’

Theo rose. ‘I’ll see him. I need to speak to him.’

In the library the thin flames of the new fire leaped at the logs without sending out much heat. The two men shook hands and took their seats with the formality and caution of a diplomatic encounter between Metternich and Talleyrand. This was their third meeting, Theo calculated, and he was, at last, properly informed about whom he faced. He might not have exposed his need for knowledge in quite such a blatant way last time if he had known what he knew now. This time they were both on their guard, armed to probe for information or weakness.

‘I came to ask how Sabine was,’ Vernhes began. He saw Theo’s look of surprise and went on, ‘I heard she had been badly hurt in some accident. I taught her for two years, you know,’ he added, as if some explanation for his concern was needed.

Theo had dismissed the enquiry as an excuse for the meeting, nothing more. Vernhes must have some other, less easily declarable, reason for his appearance at Bonnemort.

‘Very well, thank you,’ he replied automatically and saw Vernhes look surprised in his turn. ‘That is, she was very severely injured, and not by an accident, but she’s progressing well.’ He did not believe in long recitals of accident and illness. Everyone in his family was always well or getting better until they actually died.

‘I am pleased to hear it.’ Vernhes persisted in the subject of Sabine. ‘I understood she could neither speak nor move and it had been decided it was too dangerous to try to take her to hospital in Racines.’

‘She’s doing very well,’ Theo repeated.

Vernhes hesitated and Theo decided that, rather than wait for him to produce the real reason for coming, he would ask his own questions.

‘Last time we met,’ he said, ‘you gave me the details of the attack on my wife in August. I wonder if you can help me with more information about the events of those days, which are rather more complicated than I realised when I arrived back from exile. This time I’m interested in the death of the SS officer who was billeted here during the period June to August. Major Udo Knecht, he was called, I believe.’

‘What do you want to know about him?’ Vernhes’ grey eyes behind their steel-framed spectacles were wary.

‘I wanted to know if you killed him.’

Vernhes replied smoothly, ‘You’re asking me to confess to murder?’

‘I wouldn’t call it a confession. There are no witnesses; no statement would have any legal force.’

‘In the heat of last summer, many actions were taken by the United Resistance, fully justified by the cruelty and illegality of the enemy, which are now being called into question by the military courts. In some cases, the forces of fascism have already regained the upper hand, and some Resistance fighters have been accused and even condemned for their actions during the liberation. And de Gaulle now commutes the sentences of traitors and criminals like Beraud, who spent the war denouncing communists, Jews and Anglo-Saxons in the newspapers.’