‘You don’t think Aline would try to circumvent the truth?’

‘She wouldn’t see it like that. She thinks she’s above it. What Aline decides becomes the truth – if you see what I mean. It’s her unwavering sense of purpose that troubles me. She’s up to something we have no idea of. And if she succeeds in her schemes it will bring her into head-on collision with her son. Georges is as convinced as anyone can be that this man is not his father. And I’m not prepared to stand by and see his home and his future put at risk by one of Aline’s delusions.

‘I’ve worked – yes, worked – alongside Georges for some years now, taught him all I know that’s worth knowing. I’m proud to say in many ways I’ve stood in for his father. It can never be the same, of course, but, well, I’m not a married man, Sandilands, no children of my own so you can imagine how I feel.’ He gave Joe a manly smile. ‘Don’t go in for self-delusion myself. No time for it. I’ve examined my own motives in denying this man and I have to say that’s all I can come up with. The chance that I’d lose my paternal role in regard to Georges. Sounds feeble perhaps but it’s something I’ve required myself to face. I would be distressed to give all this up . . .’ He glanced around and then looked back directly at Joe. ‘But not so upset it would occur to me to give false statements, to try to effect a wrong outcome. Never!’

‘Tell me, Houdart – Georges has seen the patient, hasn’t he? I say, can we call the patient by his hospital name of Thibaud? Good Lord, I never thought to ask him. I just assumed that . . .’

‘He has seen him. Yes. Once. I took him in one day with his mother.’

‘I’d be interested to hear your view of the meeting.’

‘Awkward, Embarrassing even. Aline talked to the man . . . Thibaud, you say? . . .as though he were fully compos mentis. “Do you remember, darling, the day when you . . . And I simply can’t leave without telling you that . . . When you come home, of course . . .” There was a lot of that! Thibaud just stared through her. Then they brought a very unwilling Georges into the room. The lad was taken aback. I was sure at first he knew him. He knelt at the man’s feet and took hold of his hands, staring into his face.’

‘Did Thibaud respond?’

‘Not really. He put out a hand and stroked Georges’s arm once or twice. The doctor got quite excited but it wasn’t much to an onlooker.’

‘And Georges’s impression?’

‘He was very shaken but when he could get his thoughts together afterwards, he said: “It’s very like him but it’s not my father.” And he repeated it. “It’s not my father.”’

Chapter Twenty-One

Joe took off his shoes and jacket, loosened his collar and lounged on his bed, eyes closed. A moment later with a sigh of irritation he gave up his attempt at siesta and went to sit at the bureau to make notes on the morning’s events. After lunch Aline had announced that the family generally retired for an hour’s rest in the hottest part of the day in the southern tradition and Joe and Dorcas were invited to do the same.

A tap on the door had him padding across the room to answer it. ‘Dorcas! Something wrong?’

She ducked under his arm and slipped into the room. ‘Look! I’ve got Georges’s notebook!’ she said, holding up a school exercise book. ‘You’re not to let anyone know this exists. Not even his mother knows he’s still got it. He thinks she’d have got rid of it long ago.’ She put it down on the desk and pulled up a second chair for herself. ‘Good. I see you’re working. Tell me – how did the lovebirds get on in the dovecote?’ she asked innocently. ‘I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again when you disappeared in there with Queen Guinevere. Don’t you think she looks like the grieving Queen in that picture by William Morris?’

‘If you’re going to be silly, this conversation ends here,’ he said sternly.

‘Sorry, Joe. Let me try again. Did she manage to convince you that Thibaud is her husband?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes, she did present what I would regard as convincing evidence. It is indisputable and therefore I think we have to conclude that Georges is deluded. The victim of a nightmare of some sort? He seems to have led a pretty nightmarish existence in his childhood. It’s possible!’

He outlined the evidence Aline Houdart had presented, missing out the allegory of the doves so carefully constructed. He didn’t want to see Dorcas’s lip curl.

‘Well, I’d call that a bit rum!’ said Dorcas. ‘Wouldn’t you? You realize we’ve got three women who all claim an intimate acquaintance with Thibaud’s bum?’

‘Dorcas! You’d do well to leave such language to the Eton boys!’

‘Derrière then. Mireille was the first one to report a birthmark on her Dominique. “Conclusive”, you said. Then Madame Tellancourt described in accurate detail her son Thomas’s birthmarks fore and aft. “Decisive”, I remember you saying. And now here’s Madame Houdart making exactly the same claim. “Incontrovertible”, apparently. It must be straining all your powers of detection, Joe, to work out there’s something fishy going on! Now, Thibaud has got those marks just as described and it’s certain that only the one genuine claimant would have been aware of them so the other two are lying. But where do they get their information? They’re rivals. They’re hardly likely to pass it on.’

‘Keep going, Dorcas,’ said Joe. ‘You’re getting there!’

‘It was Mireille who brought it up. She gave the information before you asked the doctor to have him checked. Which makes me think . . . Who else knows about the birthmarks? Dr Varimont . . . The two orderlies. They know! And perhaps somehow the information got out of the hospital? Perhaps they sold it? They know how the competition is hotting up. The knowledge had a value.’

‘I think the information got out of the hospital down a telephone wire,’ said Joe. ‘Telephone! We need one.’

‘Georges showed me the office. They have one in there. There’s no one about. Madame Houdart is swooning away in her room and Georges and his uncle have gone to organize the gypsy grape-pickers. They turned up just before lunch about a month before they were expected. Come on!’

Joe slipped the notebook between the leaves of a Michelin atlas. ‘Good staff work, Joliffe,’ he grinned. ‘Right! To the communications dug-out! Lead on.’

To his relief, the telephone system worked efficiently and he was soon put through to Varimont in Reims. Amused, Joe heard the doctor reacting in just the same way as Dorcas: ‘Three word-perfect identifications? This is ridiculous! This is not to be believed! They’re making monkeys of us, Commander! Two, at least, possibly all three, are lying. But the question is – where do they come by this information? Ah. Ah,’ he said as he silently answered his own question. ‘An internal malfunction, obviously. Leave this to me, Sandilands. I’ll have your answer in ten minutes. What was that? Ear lobes? Good Lord, never noticed. I’ll check that myself. Ring me back in, say, half an hour and I should have something for you. Wonderful instrument, the telephone.’ And the communication was cut.

‘Gosh!’ said Dorcas who’d been listening, ear clamped to the other side of the receiver. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in their shoes! He’ll have them on a charge.’ She turned Joe’s wrist and looked at his watch. ‘Well, while we’re waiting . . .’

Joe took out the notebook and laid it on the desk. It was a school exercise book, the pages secured with a stout paperclip. A quick check of the dates showed that it had been kept sporadically between the summer of 1914 when Georges was five years old and barely able to write and Christmas 1918. His mother had clearly helped with the earlier entries but her contributions ceased when the writing became confident, the comments individual.