In the dusk he did not recognise her.

‘What are you doing here so late?’ he said sharply, then, realising who she was, repeated with a new emphasis, ‘What are you doing here?’ When she did not reply he went on, ‘It’s the little Jewish girl from Bonnemort, isn’t it? What’s your name?’

‘Rahel Kahn, monsieur,’ she said politely, ‘but here they call me Suzie.’

He was holding a large key in one hand, tapping its end in the palm of the other, as if uncertain of what to do.

‘I understood you had left Bonnemort,’ he said.

‘I had, but I’ve come back.’

‘For good?’

‘No, just to visit Sabine.’

‘And she sent you to speak to me?’

‘Not exactly. She’d like to see you.’

She watched the key. He was no longer tapping, but sliding it to and fro across his palm.

‘I called at Bonnemort yesterday to ask after her.’

Suzie did not hurry to fill the long silences that were stitched together with hasty phrases.

‘She’d like to see me?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’ She waited and then spoke fast. ‘But it’s difficult at Bonnemort. The winepress, do you know it? On the path down to the lake. She could meet you there.’

She cycled home in the dusk. It had been so easy. It was going to be easy. She knew now what she was going to do.

Chapter Thirty-five

Theo and Ariane were walking round the walnut plantations in the late afternoon. They moved in silence under the cage of branches that ribbed the seductively mild blue of the sky.

Theo was thinking that he knew what had happened to Henri, could guess what had happened to Ariane, but he still didn’t know what had happened to the major. Nikola, Vernhes, Ariane; each had denied killing him. He glanced sideways at his wife, who was absorbed in thought oblivious of where she was. He wondered why he believed them and not her. They had all denied it, yet each wished to have done it. One of them must be lying and have fulfilled the wish.

Nikola could have left the survivors of his group in safety to return alone. Bonnemort would have been the obvious place for him to have come for news of Henri. But Theo had no difficulty in believing that if he enquired further, among other members of Group Rainbow, he would find Nikola’s story confirmed: that he was miles away on the night of the major’s death, camped beside a fire in the middle of the forest, or tending his wounded comrades in the barn of a friendly farmer.

Vernhes had good reason to kill, to eradicate a witness to his treachery. He had the ruthlessness and the will. He could have made his way to Bonnemort during the evening, and waited there for the major’s return to complete his plan. The case against him was plausible. But Theo could not convince himself that Vernhes had been the killer. For all his military airs during the liberation, he was a politician, not a soldier; a man who worked from behind the scenes; a puppet master, not a man of action.