Suzie nodded, holding up a piece of the puzzle, turning it one way and then the other, trying to see what it might represent. She was wondering whether, if Sabine had understood that, she would have denounced her, in order to get rid of Madame Ariane.

‘But the hardest thing she had to do,’ Theo went on, ‘was to act as a spy for the Resistance, to tell them anything she could learn about what the SS was doing here. So she had to pretend, sometimes, to be friendly with the Germans in order to carry out her mission.’

Suzie was now watching him fixedly. Sabine appeared absorbed in the puzzle.

‘You may have seen, or heard, some things that you thought were odd, or wrong, but I want you to understand their true meaning. Things are not always what they seem. Ariane will never tell you what really happened, nor explain what she did. But I want you to know about it.’

Now that his speech was ended, Theo was at a loss. His audience was silent, without reaction. They both picked up pieces of the jigsaw and studied them carefully. He could not tell whether his words had been received as a revelation of truth, with relief, with scepticism, or with bewilderment.

‘We were spies, too,’ Suzie remarked eventually. She did not look at him, concentrating on a small red piece of jigsaw, trying to insert it in different ways, then rejecting it.

‘Suzie.’ Sabine’s voice was minatory.

‘Well, we were.’

Theo had revised his impressions of the infantile Suzie of their first meeting. She now seemed more mature than Sabine.

‘We watched everything that was going on at Bonnemort when the Germans were here.’

‘Did you realise what Henri and Madame Ariane were doing?’ Theo asked. He did not want to end these confidences prematurely by broaching the story of the major at once.

‘Henri, no,’ Suzie said. ‘I suppose we should have guessed because he was never here. But Madame Ariane, yes.’ The small red piece was at last set in its proper position. ‘We watched her with the major, but because no one explained things to us, we thought she might be a traitor.’

‘Why did you think that?’

Sabine broke in. ‘Because she let the major kiss her.’ Her tone was one of accusation and self-justification.

‘I could see,’ Suzie went on, ‘that when the major put his arm around her, she did not like it. He did it in a threatening way. I could see she was afraid, because I was afraid, too. I knew what it was like to be afraid. Sabine didn’t agree.’

‘You understand now, I hope, Sabine,’ her father said. She did not reply, moving the pieces around, in search of one particular shape.

‘But I could understand what they said, because they were speaking in German,’ Suzie went on, ‘and Sabine couldn’t. And although I didn’t always tell her …’ here she darted a glance at Sabine to see how she reacted, ‘I knew that Madame Ariane sometimes told the major things, when he asked her questions. So I was worried. I didn’t think that she would really work for the Germans. But I thought that if she was too afraid, she might give something away by mistake.’