He gave me a long look from his perceptive amber eyes and we both knew why. If he underwent the operation he’d be out of action for weeks.

‘André, have the operation,’ I urged quietly. ‘I’ll do your running for you.’

He grinned at me. ‘Run and get me a glass of something, will you?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘Please. Then tell me your day.’

‘On condition.’

‘On condition of what?’

‘You have the operation.’

He laughed again, flashing his lion teeth at me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘Who? Who?’

I listened to André murmuring that one word over and over.

‘Who leaked this material from Dumoulin Air Base?’

He was holding my Minox magnifying viewfinder close to his eye and hovering over the strip of tiny negative film I’d developed.

‘What if,’ I said when he’d studied every frame in detail, ‘what if it was Mickey?’

‘Mickey the murdered airman? You mean he might be the leak?’

‘It’s possible, isn’t it? And it would explain why someone might have wanted him dead. And why he came into town.’

‘What was his work in the air force?’

‘A mechanic. His full name was Michael Ashton. Senior Master Sergeant Michael Ashton. I admit I don’t know how he’d have got hold of the detailed drawing of the airfield.’

André was intense now. Focused on work in a way I hadn’t seen before, but finally he placed the film and viewfinder down on the bedside table, picked up his wine glass and raised it to me.

‘You did well, Eloïse.’

How many times had I wanted to hear those words, but now that he said them, I felt no warm glow, no sense of success. I hadn’t done well. Mickey had died. I wanted to believe he was the Intelligence leak because it gave a reason for his murder. Clanging like a death-knell at the back of my mind was the fear that he’d died because he’d been with me at the dance last night. Just as André almost died when he was with me in Paris.

I’d sat in the bedside chair and described to him my day in Serriac. Kept it brief, and emotionless, and at the end I’d endured his scrutiny without a flicker.

‘Is that all of it?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Isn’t that enough for one day?’