‘Let’s keep it that way. The turmoil and unrest in the factories and on the streets is already more than they can bear. It will take more time than we have to straighten out this chaos.’

‘Léon, Serriac is lucky to have you to watch over it.’

‘Hah! The American investigators will be down here like a shot, crawling all over the town like locusts to find the attacker. They also know how to look after their own.’

I felt the darkness edge forward. ‘Léon.’ It came out as a whisper. ‘Léon, what if the knife was meant for me, not Mickey? What if in the confusion and chaos the blade found the wrong target?’

He stepped away from the desk and knelt on the floor in front of my chair. ‘What if you go back to Paris today? I’ll put you on the next train.’

I leaned forward, lowered my head to his shoulder, and felt his arms wrap around my back. He held me tight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I walked into my father’s house. I say walked, but what I mean is ran. Out of my car and into the coolness of the gloomy hallway as if my heels were on fire. I’d spent more time looking in my rear-view mirror than at the road ahead on the drive back home.

From outside came the rattle and bang of hammers and shovels and the stink of ash stirred up in the humid air. Men were dismantling the incinerated remains of the stables but inside all was silent. The house felt empty. I headed straight to the dark sideboard in the living room and poured myself a healthy shot of Papa’s cognac. I drank it down in two swigs, feeling it burn its way through the ice-cold rage inside me. I was grieving for Mickey, a man I scarcely knew, and I didn’t know how to cradle the grief to me, how to rock it in my arms, because it didn’t belong to me.

I heard a noise and swung round to find Papa standing in the doorway, his usual black felt hat on his head, black shirt stretched across his bull-chest. His boots were filthy but still on his feet. More floors for Mathilde to clean up.

‘Are you all right, Eloïse?’

My father had not asked me if I was all right since Goliath had taken a chunk out of my shoulder blade with his horn when I was running from him at the age of seven. I’d sneaked into his pasture to rescue a fox cub caught in a snare but nothing ever got past that mean sharp-eyed bull. I suddenly recalled that Léon had been the one to patch me up and mop my tears. I’d forgotten that. It was a moment of failure in my father’s eyes that I had not cared to dwell on till now.