‘The stories from the eastern front were unbelievable, according to what she heard,’ Madame de Cazalle said, not answering him directly. ‘One couldn’t understand how they could endure such hardships.’

‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ said Theo. The women looked startled, as if sympathy was due to anyone, whatever their nationality, who was forced to eat badly.

‘Ariane heard a lot, as she sat there,’ Aunt Odette remarked. ‘But she refused to eat with them.’

After dinner, Theo once again sat with the aunts in the library. Sabine came in to receive a goodnight kiss from each of them.

‘So Sabine.’ Theo would not normally have thought of letting the child decide her own future, especially after her outburst yesterday, but he could see no other way out of the impasse. ‘What do you think of going to study with Mr Vernhes?’

She didn’t look at him. ‘Whatever you think is best, Papa.’

Theo frowned. It had begun to dawn on him that his daughter was clever, subtle, manipulative.

Aunt Marguerite, less devious, said, ‘Don’t do it, Theo. She can stay with us.’

He sighed. ‘I’ll think about it. I wanted to relieve you of the burden of teaching.’

Wrapping themselves in their shawls against the cold of the corridors, the aunts set off to their rooms. Theo poured himself a brandy and wandered round peering at the book shelves. He had learned some facts today: about how Henri died, how Ariane’s head was shaved, but beyond this outline nothing was clear. Each account contradicted the previous one. Was Henri betrayed, afraid, or incompetent? Ariane, resistant or collaborator? And the SS major, her putative lover, and his murder were as indistinct as ever.

Suddenly he recognised a box wedged onto one of the bookshelves, one of the family treasures. He took it down and the casket revealed a parcel swathed in worn blue velvet. Unwrapping it, he was ten years old again, standing in that same room with his father, on leave from Algeria. His father’s brown fingers with dark silky hair on the back of his hands were sliding back the clasp and opening wide the pages.

‘It’s a Book of Hours,’ he was explaining. ‘The calendar of prayers is illustrated. Look.’

Theo was already searching for the atlas where the aunts kept the magnifying glass that his father had handed to him.

He placed the glass in position under the lamp; the tiny pictures sprang out as they had done for him as a child.

In winter a little town with its church and castle on a hill lay under light snow. Smoke rose into the cerulean blue. Hunters’ footsteps marked their track and birds flew up from the bare trees. It was Lepech Perdrissou. In autumn peasants and pigs rootled under the golden trees. From a tower a lady was setting out on horseback, dogs running behind. It was Bonnemort. The detail and realism were extraordinary. The courtly elegance of the painting, depicting an ideal world, contrasted with the factual illustration of the pigs’ hairy backs, the dog scratching its ear.