“You must be out of your mind,” I said. “You must be crazy. How long have you been sitting in all this?”

“I’ve only been in for about ten minutes.”

“You’re lucky you’re not dead,” I said, and strode along the corridor to Pascal’s room, and for the first time in our acquaintance beat rudely on her door. I felt pushed into noise and action by the awful sleepy languor of the house. A feeble voice answered me, and I opened the door. She was not dead, but she was lying in bed looking like wax, with sweat in beads on her yellow face.

“What on earth’s the matter?” I said, and she moaned:

“Mon dieu, je fais mal. J’ai mal de tête.”

“I should bloody well think so,” I said, forgetting in the heat of the moment about kindness to foreigners and watching in horror the broad pale mess of her usually pert features. “The house is absolutely full of gas. Whatever have you been doing?”

“I have done nothing,” she said weakly. “Nothing at all.”

“Oh, then who was it?” I said as I tried to wrench her windows open. She looked appalled by the idea: to her fresh air was deader than gas. “You might have been dead,” I went on angrily. “I can’t think what you can have been doing. The oven was on at number nine. Oh Christ, I suppose it must have been Flora. Was she playing in the kitchen while I was giving Joseph his bottle?”

“Yes, yes, she was, she must have done it,” said Pascal, and incomprehensibly started to giggle. “What a naughty girl,” she said. “Naughty little Flora, trying to kill us all.”

“Do you mean,” I said, “that you didn’t even notice? That since seven o’clock you haven’t noticed a thing?”

“I did not notice anything, no. I sit in the sitting room, and about eight o’clock I start a headache, so I go into the kitchen and have a whisky, then I feel worse, so I have another or two, and then I go to bed.”

“Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” I said, too angry to laugh, although she seemed quite ready to see the funny side of it, if only I would give her a lead. “You must be an idiot,” I said. “What if I’d stayed out all night? You’d probably all have been dead by the morning. I bet you feel bloody awful, with all that whisky on top of all that gas. I’d better go and look at the children.”

“Oh, they will be OK,” she said, lying back on her pillow with a pale and guiltless smile.