“Ah, yes. I thought we might come to that as well. Betty was very pretty,” she said. “But that wasn’t the reason. Simon was sending her to London, to Elizabeth. I thought—I thought she would be used by Elizabeth to drive a wedge. As Margaret would have been, later. An excuse to call Simon and say ‘About Betty … I should like to know what you think about her wages—her behavior—her future.’ It was such a small excuse. But it was an excuse!”

When he said nothing, she went on in a low, trembling voice. “I am not the woman you think I am, Ian Rutledge. I cannot be endowed with virtues I never possessed. I’m French, I think differently, I feel differently. I am a murderess, and I have lied to you from the start.”

He couldn’t see her face, he couldn’t watch her eyes, and the telltale hand had been withdrawn. But he knew beyond doubt that he had to accept her confession now.

He had no choice but to arrest her for two murders and let the courts decide for him whether she was guilty or not. The hat in his hand was proof enough, and if the suitcase had been burned, it didn’t matter. Confession, evidence …

“What did you do with the murder weapon?”

“It was a smooth stone from the car. I kept it there to put under a tire on a hill. I saw a lorry in France roll down a hill into a crowded wagon, full of refugees. It killed so many of them. I carry the stone to prevent such a thing from happening again. It is still in the car. If you look, you will find it below the rear seat. I daresay it still has Margaret Tarlton’s blood on it.”

He stood there, listening, hearing the ring of truth, hearing too the deep grief behind it. Hearing the ragged breathing.

Aurore knew too many of the details. She had brought him the hat, she had given him the murder weapon, she had given him what—to many women—would seem a reasonable motive for two deaths.

And yet—and yet his instinct told him she was a consummate liar, not a murdereress. He knew now who she was shielding—though not yet why. What was it she knew that drove her to this confession? What had given Simon away, in her eyes? The hat, perhaps lying forgotten in the back of the car? Coming out of the barn that afternoon to find the car was not there, where she’d left it? Simon’s insistence that she had taken Margaret to the train, when he knew she had not? How long had it taken her to put the facts together? A bit at a time? Or one terrible blow she hadn’t expected?