M. Dupont shouted: “Présentez-vous de face, tout le monde!”

The second gendarme pushed through the group of girls. They melted away to either side as if an invisible wedge had been driven through them. The impulse communicated itself to their neighbours: the gap widened and stretched, opening out as Alleyn carried Ricky towards it. Finally Ricky, on his father’s shoulders, looked up an exaggerated perspective to where the girl stood with her back to them, her hands clasped across the nape of her neck as if to protect it from a blow. The gendarme took her by the arm, turned her, and held down the hands that now struggled to reach her face. She and Ricky looked at each other.

“Hallo, Teresa,” said Ricky.

v

Two cars drove down the Roqueville road. In the first was M. Callard and two policemen and in the second, a blue Citroën, were its owner and a third policeman. The staff of the factory had gone. M. Dupont was busy in M. Callard’s office and a fourth gendarme stood, lonely and important, in the empty hall. Troy had taken Ricky, who had begun to be very pleased with himself, to Raoul’s car. Alleyn, Raoul and Teresa sat on an ornamental garden seat in the factory grounds. Teresa wept and Raoul gave her cause to do so.

“Infamous girl,” Raoul said, “to what sink of depravity have you retired? I think of your perfidy,” he went on, “and I spit.”

He rose, retired a few paces, spat and returned. “I compare your behaviour,” he continued, “to its disadvantage with that of Herod, the Anti-Christ who slit the throats of first-born innocents. Ricky is an innocent and also, Monsieur will correct me if I speak in error, a first-born. He is, moreover, the son of Monsieur, my employer, who, as you observe, can find no words to express his loathing of the fallen woman with whom he finds himself in occupation of this contaminated piece of garden furniture.”

“Spare me,” Teresa sobbed. “I can explain myself.”

Raoul bent down in order to place his exquisite but distorted face close to hers. “Female ravisher of infants,” he apostrophized. “Trafficker in unmentionable vices. Associate of perverts.”

“You insult me,” Teresa sobbed. She rallied slightly. “You also lie like a brigand. The Holy Virgin is my witness.”

“She blushes to hear you. Answer me.” Raoul shouted and made a complicated gesture a few inches from her eyes. “Did you not steal the child? Answer!”

“Where there is no intention, there is no sin,” Teresa bawled, taking her stand on dogma. “I am as pure as the child himself. If anything, purer. They told me his papa wished me to call for him.”

“Who told you?”

“Monsieur,” said Teresa, changing colour.

“Monsieur Goat! Monsieur Filth! In a word, Monsieur Oberon.”

“It is a lie,” Teresa repeated but rather vaguely. She turned her sumptuous and tear-blubbered face to Alleyn. “I appeal to Monsieur who is an English nobleman and will not spit upon the good name of a virtuous girl. I throw myself at his feet and implore him to hear me.”

Raoul also turned to Alleyn and spread his hands out in a gesture of ineffable poignancy.

“If Monsieur pleases,” he said, making Alleyn a present of the whole situation.

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “Yes. Well now—”

He looked from one grand-opera countenance to the other. Teresa gazed at him with nerveless compliance, Raoul with grandeur and a sort of gloomy sympathy. Alleyn got up and stood over the girl.

“Now, see here, Teresa,” he began. Raoul took a respectful step backwards. “It appears that you have behaved very foolishly for a long time and you are a fortunate girl to have come out of it without involving yourself in disaster.”

“Undoubtedly,” Teresa said with a hint of complacency, “I am under the protection of Our Lady of Paysdoux for whom I have a special devotion.”

“Which you atrociously abuse,” Raoul remarked to the landscape.

“Be that as it may,” Alleyn hurriedly intervened. “It’s time you pulled yourself together and tried to make amends for all the harm you have done. I think you must know very well that your employer at the Château is a bad man. In your heart you know it, don’t you, Teresa?”

Teresa placed her hand on her classic bosom. “In my heart, Monsieur, I am troubled to suffocation in his presence. It is in my soul that I find him impure.”

“Well, wherever it is, you are perfectly correct. He is a criminal who is wanted by the police of several countries. He has made fools of many silly girls before you. You’re lucky not to be in gaol, Teresa. M. le Commissaire would undoubtedly have locked you up if I had not asked him to give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

Teresa opened her mouth and let out an appropriate wail.

“To such deplorable depths have you reduced yourself,” said Raoul, who had apparently assumed the maddening role of chorus. “And me!” he pointed out.

“However,” Alleyn went on, “we have decided to give you this chance. On condition, Teresa, that you answer truthfully any questions I ask you.”

“The Holy Virgin is my witness—” Teresa began.

“There are also other less distinguished witnesses,” said Raoul. “In effect, there is the child-thief Georges Martel with whom you conspired and who is probably your paramour.”

“It is a lie.”

“How,” Alleyn asked, “did it come about that you took Ricky from the hotel?”

“I was in Roqueville. I go to the market for the femme de charge. At one o’clock following my custom I visited the restaurant of the parents of Raoul, who is killing me with cruelty,” Teresa explained, throwing a poignant glance at her fiancé. “There is a message for me to telephone the Château. I do so. I am told to wait as Monsieur wishes to speak to me. I do so. My heart churns in my bosom because that unfortunately is the effect Monsieur has upon it: it is not a pleasurable sensation.”

“Tell that one in another place,” Raoul advised.

“I swear it. Monsieur instructs me: there is a little boy at the Hotel Royal who is the son of his dear friends, Monsieur and Madame Alleyn. He plans with Monsieur Alleyn a little trick upon Madame, a drollery, a blague. They have nounou for the child and while they are here I am to be presented by Monsieur as a nounou and I am to receive extra salary.”

“More atrocity,” said Raoul. “How much?”

“Monsieur did not specify. He said an increase. And he instructs me to go to Le Pot des Fleurs and purchase turberoses. He tells me, spelling it out, the message I am to write. I have learned a little English from the servants of English guests at the Château so I understand. The flowers are from Mademoiselle Garbel who is at present at the Château.”

“Is she, by Heaven!” Alleyn ejaculated. “Have you seen her?”

“Often, Monsieur. She is often there.”

“What does she look like?”

“Like an Englishwoman. All Englishwomen with the exception, no doubt, of Madame, the wife of Monsieur, have teeth like mares and no poitrine. So, also, Mademoiselle Garbel.”

“Go on, Teresa.”

“In order that the drollery shall succeed, I am to go to the hotel while Madame is at déjeuner. I shall have the tuberoses and if without enquiry I can ascertain the apartments of Monsieur and Madame I am to go there. If I am questioned I am to say I am the new nounou and go up to the appartements. I am to remove the little one by the service stairs. Outside Georges Martel, who is nothing to me, waits in his auto. And from that point Georges will command the proceedings!”

“And that’s what you did? No doubt you saw the number of the appartement on the luggage in the hall.”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“And then?”

“Georges drives us to 16 Rue des Violettes where the concierge tells me she will take the little boy to the appartement of Mademoiselle Garbel where his father awaits him. I am to stay in the auto in the back-street with Georges. Presently the concierge returns with the little boy. She says to Georges that the affair is in the water as the parents have seen the boy. She says that the orders are to drive at once to the factory. Georges protests: ‘Is it not to St. Céleste?’ She says: ‘No, at once, quickly to the factory.’ The little boy is angry and perhaps frightened and he shouts in French and in English that his papa and mama are not in a factory but in their hotel. But Georges uses blasphemous language and drives quickly away. And Monsieur will, I entreat, believe me when I tell him I regretted then very much everything that had happened. I was afraid. Georges would tell me nothing except to keep my mouth sewn up. So I see that I am involved in wickedness and I say several decades of the rosary and try to make amusements for the little boy who is angry and frightened and weeps for the loss of a statue bought from Marie of the Chèvre d’Argent. I think also of Raoul,” said Teresa.