After she and Sabine had seen the major and Madame Ariane rooted in one another there, the momentum of Sabine’s fury against her stepmother had become unstoppable. They established, over a week’s observation, that the winepress was the fixed rendezvous, although the day and the time varied. Sabine’s imagination quickly adapted their own experiences to the needs of her plan. The hook that had skimmed Suzie’s head was to be the weapon. They would adjust its length to the precise height necessary to hit Madame Ariane. As at the time of the mushroom episode, the details occupied Sabine obsessively. Calculations filled her school notebooks. If Madame Ariane were one metre seventy-five tall and if twelve centimetres were allowed for her hair and the top of her head, that meant that the hook of the pulley had to hang one metre sixty-three above the ground. Further calculations were made in an effort to establish at what point in its upward swing the hook would be at a point two metres inside the door. The variables became too complex and Sabine returned to simplicity: Madame Ariane’s height and the length of the rope. She stood on a box with a tape measure, while Suzie played out the rope so that the drop was exactly what was required. When the rope was securely wound round its pegs and anchored at that length, Sabine climbed up to the loft and practised throwing the hook with all her force, hearing the satisfying smack of the metal against the wooden doors opposite them. Suzie was commanded to walk into the winepress in order to estimate the timing of the launch of the rope. Finally, Sabine investigated the slaughtering equipment that was stacked against the wall waiting for the next pig-killing. She unrolled a sleeve of fabric that lay on top of the slaughter bench.

‘What’s that?’ Suzie asked fearfully, knowing the answer.

‘Knives.’

‘Knives?’

‘Yes. Just hitting her with the hook may not be enough. We shall have to stab her too.’

‘Sabine, no, no, no.’

‘Suzie, yes, yes, yes.’ Sabine advanced on her, laughing, waving a knife in each hand.

Suzie submitted to the planning and practising with a fatalistic acquiescence. She had thwarted Sabine’s intention last time; something would happen this time too. She would see a way to protect Madame Ariane and herself. For several days after the plan was ready, it seemed that there would simply be no opportunity to put it into action. They twice waited in the winepress, but no one came.

They might have missed that last night, too. The major and the Germans were not at Bonnemort in the evening, had not been there for two days, and the girls had gone to bed at the normal time, in spite of the excitement of the shooting that they had heard in the early evening. Sabine had detected Madame Ariane’s absence from her bedroom.

‘She’s not coming to bed,’ she reported. ‘She’s in her sitting room, walking up and down in the dark. She’s going to meet him tonight.’