Her voice faltered and stopped.

I said, wondering where all this was leading: "Yes? He said?"

Her hands wrung whitely together in the little glow of the lamp. "He said there'd be plenty of money later

on… when Philippe-when Philippe-"

"Yes?"

"-was dead," said Berthe on a shivering rush of breath.

My heart had begun to beat in sharp slamming little strokes that I could feel even in my finger-tips. Berthe's eyes were on me now, filled with a sort of shrinking dread that was horrible. There was sweat along her upper lip.

I said harshly: "Go on."

"I-I'm only saying what he said. He was drunk… half- asleep. He was-“

"Yes. Go on."

"He said Monsieur de Valmy had promised him the money-"

"Yes?"

"-when Philippe died."

"Berthe!"

"Yes, miss," said Berthe simply.

Silence. I could see sweat on her forehead now. My hands were dry and ice-cold. I felt the nails scrape on the sheets as I clutched at them. The pulse knocked in my fingertips.

This was nonsense. It was nightmare. It wasn't happening. But something inside me, some part of brain or instinct listened unsurprised. This nightmare was true: I knew it already. On some hidden level I had known it for long enough. I only wondered at my own stupidity that had not recognised it before. I heard myself saying quietly: "You must finish now, Berthe. Philippe… so Philippe is going to die later on, is he? How much later

on?"

“B-Bernard said soon. He said it would have to be soon because Monsieur Hippolyte cabled early today that he was coming home. They don't know why-he must be ill or something; anyway, he's cancelling his trip and he'll be here by tomorrow night, so they'll have to do it soon, Bernard says. They've tried already, he says, but-" I said: "They?"

"The Valmys. Monsieur and Madame and Monsieur-"

"No," I said. "No."

"Yes, miss. Monsieur Raoul," said Berthe.

Of course I said: "I don't believe it." She watched me dumbly.

"I don't believe it!" My voice blazed with the words into fury. But she didn't speak. If she had broken into protestation perhaps I could have gone on fighting, but she said nothing, giving only that devastating shrug of the shoulders with which the French disclaim all knowledge and responsibility.

"Berthe. Are you sure?"

Another lift of the shoulders. "He said so? Bernard said so?"

"Yes." Then something in my face pricked her to add: "He was drunk. He was talking-"

"I know. Kind of wild. That means nothing. But this can't be true! It can't! I know that! Berthe, do you hear me? It -simply-isn't-true."

She said nothing, but looked away.

I opened my lips, then shut them again, and in my turn was silent.

I don't intend-even if I could-to describe the next few minutes. To feel something inside oneself break and die is not an experience to be re-lived at whatever merciful distance. After a while I managed, more or less coherently, to think, spurred to it by the savage reminder that Philippe was what mattered. All the rest could be sorted out, pondered, mourned over, later; now the urgent need was to think about Philippe.

I pushed back the bedclothes. Berthe said sharply: "Where are you going?"

I didn't answer. I slipped out of bed and flew to the bathroom door. Through the bathroom… across the child's darkened bedroom… Bending over the bed, I heard his breathing, light and even. It was only then, as I straightened up on a shaking wave of relief, that I knew how completely I had accepted Berthe's statement. What was it, after all? A frightened girl's version of the drunken and amorous babbling of a servant? And yet it rang so true and chimed in with so many facts that without even half a hearing it seemed I was ready to jettison the employers who had shown me kindness and the man with whom an hour ago I had been in love.

Stiffly, blindly, like a sleep-walker, I went back to my own room, leaving the connecting-doors ajar. I climbed back into bed.

"Is he all right?" Berthe's whisper met me, sharp and thin.

I nodded.

"Oh, miss, oh, miss…" She was wringing her hands again. I remember thinking with a queer detached portion of my mind that here was someone wringing her hands. One reads about it and one never sees it, and now here it was. When at length I spoke it was in a dead flat voice I didn't recognise as my own. "We'd better get this clear, I think. I don't say that I accept what Bernard says, but-well, I want to hear it… all. He says there's a plot on hand to murder Philippe. If that's so, there's no need to ask why; the gains to Monsieur and Madame and-the gains are obvious."

The words came easily. It was like a play. I was acting in a play. I didn't feel a thing-no anger or fear or unhappiness. I just spoke my lines in that dead and uninfected voice and Berthe listened and stared at me and twisted her hands together.

I said: "You say 'they've tried already'. I suppose you mean the shot in the woods and the balcony-rail?"

"Y-yes."

"So." I remembered then the white expectancy on Madame de Valmy's face as Philippe and I came up from the woods that day. And the night of the balcony-rail; she hadn't come upstairs that night to get any tablets; she had come because she couldn't stand the suspense any longer. Léon de Valmy, stationed in the hall, must have heard the crash from the forecourt. My mind leaped on from this to recollect those two interviews with my employer in the library. I said harshly: "This could be true. Oh, my dear God, Berthe, it could be true. Well, let's have it. Who fired the shot? Bernard himself?"

"No. That was Monsieur Raoul. Bernard dug the bullet out."

I forgot about its being a play. "I don't believe it!"

"Miss-"

"Did Bernard say so?"

"Yes."

"In so many words?"

"Yes."

"Then he's lying. He probably did the shooting himself and-" But here I saw her face and stopped. After a while I said fairly calmly: "I'm sorry. I did ask you to tell me just what he said, after all. And I-I'm pretty sure that what he said is true in the main. It's just that I can't quite bring myself to-to believe-"

"Yes, miss. I know."

I looked at her. "Oh, Berthe, you make me ashamed. I was so wrapped up in my own feelings that I forgot the way you'd be feeling, too. I'm sorry. We're both in the same boat, aren't we?"

She nodded wordlessly.

Somehow the knowledge steadied me. I said: "Well, look, Berthe. We've got to be tough about this for Philippe's sake, and because there isn't much time. Later on we can work it out and-and decide who's guilty and who isn't. At present I suppose we must assume they're all in it, whether or not we can believe it in our heart of hearts. And I'm pretty sure that Monsieur and Madame are guilty-in fact I know they are. I'm very much to blame for not seeing it before, but who on earth goes about suspecting an impossible outlandish thing like murder? That's something that happens in books, not among people you know. I suppose I ought to have seen it straight away, when Philippe was shot at in the woods. And Raoul…Raoul was out there; he admitted it himself, and Bernard was sent straight out, and I suppose he removed the bullet then and went back later with someone else to 'discover’ it. Yes, and I was right in thinking that Monsieur de Valmy knew I spoke French; I'd shouted it at-at the murderer in the beech-wood, and talked it to Philippe all the way home. Then the affair of the balcony-rail, Berthe-I suppose that and the swing in the barn were extras? Off-chances? Booby-traps that might work sooner or later?"

"Yes."

"And then the Cadillac's horn blasting at-perhaps at nothing -brought Philippe out to his death?" I added shakily: "Do I have to believe that, too?"