Joe looked for signs of censorship but found none. A second reading impressed him with the clever wording. No militarily sensitive information, no names, no positions were given. The censor’s pencil would have hovered and found no precise target and yet the tone, truculent and mutinous throughout, was deserving of censorship. It occurred to him that perhaps even the censor by this stage in the war had been of the same mind.

Had Albert, in his despair, nipped out the back way after all, as his stepfather claimed? It was probable, Joe decided. Or had he served his spell in the front line and been rewarded with an eight-day pass? It was at about that time that the army’s grievances, increasingly loud, had been heard, Joe calculated from the little he knew about the French end-game. Pétain had replaced the failing General Nivelle in the campaign of the Chemin des Dames and conditions for the men in the field had improved. Home leave had been granted again. It was possible.

He said as much to Madame Langlois who drank in every soothing word. So absorbed had he been by the letters and the eagerness of the mother to share them with him, he had lost track of time and wondered at last what on earth Dorcas could possibly be doing.

Laughter down the corridor reassured him. She came in, pink and smiling and obviously the best of friends with what Joe took to be the youngest Langlois daughter.

‘This is Julie, Uncle Joe.’

Julie giggled and bobbed. She gave Joe a long and appreciative stare before her bright eyes flashed a message sideways at Dorcas.

‘I’ve cashed up and locked the shop, Maman,’ she said in a voice which had none of the grating hesitations of her mother’s. ‘Dorcas has been telling me all about London. Did you know she came from London? And we’re the same age! She’s sixteen too! Are all English girls so small?’

‘Oh, I’d say Dorcas was pretty much average size for her age,’ said Joe easily.

‘Uncle Joe, I hope you don’t mind but I’ve offered Julie a lift into Reims. It’s early closing today and she’s visiting her married sister. She was going to catch the bus but I said we were going straight back and could drop her off.’

‘Well, certainly. If her mother agrees. Delighted,’ said Joe.

Slightly dubiously, her mother gave her consent, commenting that such an offer would at least save the bus fare and she didn’t see how Monsieur Langlois could have any objection, and they set off with the two girls installed on the back seat whispering and laughing together.

Joe made no attempt to tune in to their conversation, pleased to hear Dorcas chatting with someone more or less her own age and relieved to be free to marshal his thoughts.

On arriving in Reims, Julie asked to be dropped off in the centre in the Place Drouet d’Erlon and, with warm exchanges of addresses and promises, she finally skipped away.

‘Nice chat, Dorcas?’ he asked as she slid over into the front passenger seat.

‘No. Rather terrible in fact, Joe. You weren’t listening, were you? Look, drive over into the Promenade, will you, park under a plane tree and I’ll tell you.’

Disturbed by her serious tone, he did as she asked.

‘I was just trying to help. I thought that woman wasn’t telling you the full truth. I thought I’d find one of the girls – in fact there’s only that Julie, the fifth and youngest, left at home – all the others got married and went off as soon as they could – and try to find out a bit more about life chez les Langlois. She didn’t know much about Albert. She was an afterthought. Born in 1910. So she was only four when Albert marched off to war. And she only saw him once or twice when he came home on leave after that.’

‘So her opinions may be misleading, you’re warning me?’

‘Yes. I think she echoes her sisters’ views and they may have been influenced by their charming father. She dismissed her half-brother as “that weedy Albert who disappeared”. But she does seem close to her mother. Julie wants to leave home as well. She’s not really here to see her sister – did you guess? She’s come to meet a young man she’s walking out with. It’s all right, Joe – her mother knows all about it. Madame Langlois is making her own plans, you see. Julie knows her mother’s up to something. She thinks that if she’s granted custody of Albert her mother will come into a lot of money from the state as well as his pension and Julie’s certain she’s planning to do a bunk. She’s going to use Albert to finance her escape from old Langlois. They’re blackmailing each other – you keep quiet about my plans and I won’t split on you . . . that sort of thing.’

‘So the worm is turning after all these years? She’s going to scoop up her son, run away and live with him on the basis of his pension? Shows a bit of spirit! I thought I’d glimpsed a certain steely resolve . . . well, tinny resolve, perhaps, in her demeanour.’

‘You didn’t quite understand, Joe.’

‘What can you mean?’

‘When you asked about the distinctive marks on his body I thought she reacted in a strange way and changed the subject. I mean . . . you might have expected: “Oh, gosh, yes – that day when the nappy pin slipped!” or something like that. I thought she was covering something up. And she was.’

For a moment she sank into dejection and uncertainty.

‘And Julie told you . . . what?’ he prompted.

‘That Albert was beaten quite badly as a child. It’s likely that he will have traces on his buttocks, isn’t it? Would he still have scars after all these years?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Joe. ‘Look, I’m speaking to Varimont this afternoon. That should tell us more. Perhaps in their search for dramatic wounds – sabre cuts and the like – little domestic marks have gone unregarded. But they would represent incontrovertible evidence all the same.’

Dorcas was hardly listening. ‘”Little domestic marks”? Joe, how can you speak so lightly?’

‘I think you mean “dispassionately”. If I let myself be moved by pain and death I would make mistakes. But this is information we must have, Dorcas. I know it’s really none of our business – it’s a French affair and let’s hang on to that.’ And, rattled by her petulant silence: ‘What on earth do you expect me to do? Tell tales to Inspector Bonnefoye? Encourage him to go out, confront Langlois, and belatedly wag a minatory finger at the wicked stepfather? “It’s come to my attention, Langlois, that you were unkind to your stepson thirty years ago.” He’d laugh at me.’

Dorcas sighed wearily.

‘Old Langlois may have failed to charm us, Joe, but you can’t dismiss him as entirely evil on the sample of behaviour we witnessed. Albert was beaten as a child, I’m certain of that, but it wasn’t his stepfather who beat him.’

Chapter Eleven

‘Not his stepfather? Can you be certain? And, if you are, then who? Who on earth could take a stick to such a little angel?’

‘The one who abused him as a child and is now planning to abuse him as a witless and helpless adult. His mother.’

Joe lapsed into a shocked silence. ‘You’re going to have to explain this surprising accusation, Dorcas.’

‘You could have interviewed Julie yourself but I don’t think you’d have got any more information out of her than you managed to extract from her mother. Madame Langlois may not have been born a wicked person but – goodness, she had a bad enough start in life! Enough to drive anyone to despair and make them unstable, I’d have thought. That’s if she’s telling us the truth, of course. But Julie, who had no reason to lie to me, told me the family stories. The ones she had from her sisters. They were not mistreated. Only Albert. But, apparently, the old man, though he used to rage and storm at the boy and made his hatred very apparent, never actually hit him. It was his mother who beat him mercilessly.’