Berthe was still crouched on the bottom of my bed, her face in her hands. She was wearing the silver-netted frock, with a coat of some cheap dark material thrown round shoulders which still shook with sobs.
I said gently: "Take your time, Berthe. Shall I make you some coffee?"
She shook her head, and lifted it from her hands. Her face, usually so pretty, was pinched and white. Her cheeks were streaked with tears and her eyes looked dreadful.
I sat down beside her on the bed and put an arm round her. "Don't, my dear. What is it? Can I help? Did something happen at the dance?" I felt the shoulders move. I said on a thought: "Is it Bernard?"
She nodded, still gulping. Then I felt her square her shoulders. I withdrew my arm but stayed beside her. Presently she managed to say, with rather ragged-edged composure: "You'd better get back into bed, miss. You'll get cold like that."
"Very well." I slipped back into bed, pulled the covers round me, and looked at her. "Now tell me. What is it? Can I help?"
She didn't answer for a moment. Nor did she look at me. Her eyes went round the room as if to probe the shadows, and I saw terror flick its whiplash across her face again. She licked her lips.
I waited. She sat for a moment, twisting her hands together. Then she said fairly calmly, but in a low, hurried voice: "It is Bernard… in a way. You know I'm-I'm going to marry Bernard? Well, he took me to the dance tonight, and I wore your frock and he said I looked a princess and he started-oh, he was drinking, miss, and he got… you know-"
"I know."
"He was drunk," said Berthe, "I’ve never seen him that way before. I knew he'd taken a good bit, of course; he often does, but he never shows it. I-we went outside together." Her eyes were on her fingers, plaited whitely in her lap. Her voice thinned to a thread. "We went to my sister's house. She and her man were at the dance. It-I know it was wrong of me, but-" She stopped.
I said, feeling rather helpless and inadequate: "All right, Berthe. Skip that part. What's frightened you?"
"He was drunk," she said again, in that thin little voice. "I didn't realise at first… he seemed all right, until… he seemed all right. Then… afterwards… he started talking." She licked her lips again. "He was boasting kind of wild-like about when we were married. I'd be a princess, he said, and we'd have money, a lot of money. I'd-I'd have to marry him soon, now, he said, and we'd buy a farm and be rich, and we'd have… oh, he talked so wildly and silly that I got frightened and told him not to be a fool and where would the likes of him get money to buy a farm. And he said-"
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?"