‘Where did this calumny come from, that changed your opinion?’ Theo demanded scathingly, indicating that he thought Vernhes had fabricated it on the instant.

‘From an excellent source, within your own family: your daughter. I’ll leave you now.’

Chapter Thirty

Theo made no attempt to see Vernhes out of the house. He sank back into his chair and closed his eyes. On his return from exile he had immediately accepted his wife’s guilt on the sole evidence of her shaven head. It had taken him months to convince himself of her innocence, and now, confronted once again with an assertion of her crime, he found that he could not stop himself from believing it. Vernhes’ words, on his daughter’s authority, carried total conviction. He could not persuade himself that the man had made up the story for his own purposes. Yet this time Theo regarded the charge in a different light. He no longer saw in it, as he had the first time, the seduction of the conqueror. He had come to understand something of the complexity of the Occupation, of Ariane’s role in passing information backwards and forwards between the Germans and the Resistance. He could imagine that she had been trapped, blackmailed, threatened, even ordered. Or had she simply consented? He did not know how he would ever find out. He was never going to achieve certainty unless she told him what happened. This she seemed unlikely to do; she had shown a marked reluctance to talk about the period when the Germans were at Bonnemort.

In dealing with Vernhes it hardly mattered what was true or false, for the story of Ariane and the major, with the shaving of her head to lend it veracity, whispered in the right places inside the Party hierarchy, circulated among the political class in Paris, would ruin him as surely as it would ruin Ariane. Vernhes meant it to be a double threat, against her and against him. What he could not understand was why Vernhes felt it necessary to threaten him. Why had he decided to make his accusation against Ariane now? There was a missing piece to this jigsaw. Perhaps the general was right. What had he said? It would be a disaster to rummage through the injustices of four years to try to put right every wrong. We must put the past behind us. Theo had not wanted to accept it then; now he saw things differently. The truth was indecipherable. Neither France nor his family could stand too much of it.

If he sat motionless, the thumping in his head was stilled. This was to condemn his wife without a hearing, to accept a calumny because it was impossible to counter it. And Henri: the stupidity and wastefulness of his death was tragic. Had it been Henri’s own fault, the result of his rashness or of his inexperience as a soldier? He hoped that it was not just his loyalty that rejected this idea. At the very least Henri and his men had been let down; perhaps they had even been betrayed, driven, like Ariane, into a trap from which there was no escape. He doubted if he would ever have evidence sufficient to accuse anyone, but he would not give up his search.