Dorchin could wait no longer. He dipped his spoon once again into the thick mess in his bowl. Theo did not move. The spareness of the story increased its horror. Only three weeks ago.

He thought of his meeting with the partisans, only an hour or so ago. There’s a lot been going on at Lepech …

Florence said, ‘Someone got the German officer.’

Micheline carried on, with no sign of vengeful pleasure, her reply as flat as the rest of her account, ‘They cut his throat and left him here.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes. Naked as a pig in front of the house. We got up in the morning and there he was. But we didn’t know what had happened to Henri then, until Petignat came up from the Gendarmerie to tell us, so we didn’t understand why they killed him.’

‘Micheline,’ he began. He should have been here three weeks ago. He should never have left. ‘And the rest of the family?’ He remained standing, prepared for the worst. Micheline pushed aside those troubles as old ones, reduced to nothing by her present grief.

‘Georges was deported to Germany. We haven’t had any news from him. Roger and Claude are in the Maquis. Claude is Florence’s intended. They were to be married last year, but…’ She couldn’t be bothered to explain the events that had produced this minor family tragedy.

Florence was holding the door open. ‘Madame is in her sitting room. I went to tell her.’

‘She’s here? I thought she must have left.’

‘No, she’s here. The children are asleep, of course. I didn’t wake them. The ladies are always up at this hour, but I haven’t told them yet. I thought you’d want to see Madame first.’

She walked with him across the courtyard, solicitously shining her torch for his footsteps, as if he did not know the way.

‘We haven’t used the house since the Germans came.’ She was gabbling now, as if the words flowed while her mind was absorbed elsewhere. ‘The family all moved into the tower and spent their days in Madame’s sitting room.’

She was opening the tower door and leading him up the stone steps. He had a strong feeling of unease. Why had Ariane not come down to meet him as soon as she heard he had arrived? He had the sense he was being ushered in to visit a prisoner.

Answering his unspoken thought, Florence said, ‘Madame was already in bed. She wanted to prepare herself.’

A glow in the fireplace, where someone had thrust some wood into the embers and the flames were reviving. No other light. His wife standing by the chimneypiece, posed to meet him. He could see her tension in the firelight that framed her silhouette. She was a tall woman, athletically built with strong shoulders, large hands and feet. She had never been beautiful, still less pretty, although she had always had the money to achieve elegance and the status of jolie laide. He saw, and his heart was touched, that she must have been hastily dressing up for him. She was wearing a peacock-blue dress, tightly belted at the waist, one he had always liked. Round her head she had wrapped a silk scarf, blue, yellow and red.