Jules said: "The boy will not make her Madame la Comtesse de Valmy."
A longer pause. Bernard's laugh, breaking it, sounded a little strained. "The sooner you get back to that bed of yours the better, mon ami. The night air's giving you fancies. And I must get back. Ten to one the thing's over and they're both safely back in bed. I hope Monsieur gives them hell in the morning for all the trouble they've caused. Come now-"
Jules said stubbornly: "You may laugh. But I tell you that Monsieur Garcin said-"
"That old woman of a chemist? You should have better things to do than listen to village clack."
"All the same-"
Bernard said irritably: "For God's sake, Jules! You can't make every pretty girl a criminal because she makes a play for her betters. Now look, I've got to go. Which way are you bound?"
Jules sounded sulky. "Down towards Soubirous. It's wearing on for morning."
"And your trick's over? Right. I'll go down that way with you. I brought the brake up to the end of the track, so I'll run you down. You go on now while I turn the lamp down and close up."
"Okay." The stove-top clanked again as the second cigarette-butt followed the first. I heard Jules tread heavily towards the door. Beside me Philippe stirred again and muttered something in his sleep. The footsteps stopped. Jules said sharply: "What was that?"
"What?"
"I heard something. Through there, perhaps, or-"
Bernard said softly: "Open the door. Quickly." Jules obeyed. The fresh grey-morning smell pierced the blue scent of cigarettes and woodsmoke. "Nothing there." Jules' voice came as if from a distance. I imagined him out on the verandah peering round the wall.
Bernard, just below us still, laughed his short hard laugh." A mouse, friend Jules. You're seeing a tiger in every tree tonight, aren't you?" He stretched noisily and yawned. "Well I'm for bed as well, though mine'll not be as warm as yours, I'm afraid. What time does the Englishman get up here as a rule?"
"Pretty early-that is, if he's coming up here this morning. I wouldn't know."
"Ah. Well, let's be going. I hope to God the excitement's over down at Valmy. Why the hell the Master should send me up here anyway I can't imagine. Go on, mon ami. I'll turn the lamp down and close up. I'll follow you."
"I'll wait for you."
"Eh? Oh, very well… there, that's it. I suppose the stove's safe? Yes, well… I'd have thought that bed of yours would have put a bit of hurry into you, friend Jules." He was going. His voice dwindled towards the door. Beside me Philippe moved his head and his breath touched my cheek softly.
Jules' voice said, with the good temper back in it: "Ah, that bed of mine. Let me tell you, copain…"
The door shut quietly, lopping off Jules' embroidery of his favourite motif. I heard his voice faintly, fading off into the dawn-hush that held the forest. I hadn't realised how quiet it was outside. Not a bough moved; not a twig brushed the shingles. Philippe breathed softly beside me. From somewhere a woodpigeon began its hoarse roucouling.
Soon the sun would be up. It would be a lovely day. I lay back beside Philippe, shaking as if I had the fever.
The reprieve from terror had been so sudden that it had thrown me out of gear. All through that conversation I had crouched, straining every sense to interpret the two men's intentions, but with my mind spinning in a useless, formless confusion. At one moment it seemed to me that I ought to call out and disclose our presence to Jules, who was not a Valmy employee, and who would at any rate save us from any harm that Bernard might intend. At the next moment I found myself dazedly listening to Jules accusing, Bernard defending me. And what he'd had to say was odd enough: Leon de Valmy was not perturbed; it was known that I was fond of the boy; and Monsieur Raoul "could be left out of it"… Bernard, in fact, had taken some pains to suppress the very gossip that I had imagined he and Albertine had engineered. No wonder I was shaken and confused. Had I been wrong? Could I possibly have been wrong? Surely Leon de Valmy, if he were guilty, must know from my flight with Philippe that I suspected him. If he were guilty, he couldn't be unperturbed; and if he were guilty, why should Bernard defend me to Jules? And Raoul was out of it. Dear Lord, had I been wrong?
But something fretted at me still. The whole conversation had had about it a curious air of inversion, something off-key that had sounded in Bernard's defence of me and in that slow, deliberative tone he had used.
I lay there quietly, savouring our safety and the stillness of Dieudonné, while the pigeon cooed peacefully in the pine-tops outside, and the racing blood in my body slowed down to normal. Philippe stirred again and said: "Mademoiselle?" and relaxed once more into sleep. I smiled a little, thinking with another quick uprush of relief that, had he spoken so clearly before, Bernard must surely have heard him. After all, he had been standing just below us, while Jules was almost at the door…
On the thought I came upright in the darkness, dry-lipped, my heart going wild again in my breast.
Bernard must surely have heard him. Of course Bernard had heard him.
Bernard had known we were there.
So that was it. No other explanation would fit the facts and explain the curious overtones to that conversation. No wonder it had seemed off-key. No wonder I had been bogged down between friend and enemy.
Bernard had known. And it hadn't suited him to find us while Jules was there. That was why, though he'd been interrupted on his way up to the loft, he hadn't finished the search. That was why he had refused to "hear" what Jules had heard; why he had tried to get Jules to go on ahead while he stayed behind to "close up".
It also explained very effectively his playing-down of the effect of our flight at Valmy. Whatever was discovered in the morning, it was obvious that Bernard's presence in the forest would have to be explained. The simplest and safest thing to do was obviously to tell some version of the truth. With me crouched not four feet above his head he'd had to play a very careful game. I was listening, and he didn't want to flush the quarry… not before he had a chance to come back alone.
Because of course he would come back. I was out of my blankets almost before the thought touched me, and creeping soundlessly across the floor to the trap-door. For all I had heard Jules talking away down the forest path I was taking no risks of a door that closed to leave the enemy inside and waiting. I lay flat beside the trap and slowly, slowly, eased it up till the tiniest crack showed between it and the floor. I peered through as best I could. Some light through the badly-fitting shutters showed an empty room.
I flew back to Philippe's side, but as I put out a hand to shake him awake I checked myself. I knelt beside him, my hands clutched tightly together, and shut my eyes. I could not wake the child on this wave of shaking terror. I must take control again. I must. I gave myself twenty seconds, counting them steadily.
He would come back. He would take Jules home in the shooting-brake, let himself be seen starting for Valmy, and then he would come back. He would be as quick as he could, because the night was wearing on for morning, and the night and the day were all they had.
I didn't take the thought further; I didn't want it put into words. I left it formless, a beat of fear through my body. How they would get away with it I couldn't-wouldn't-imagine, but in my present state of mind and in that dark hole at the top of the lonely forest anything seemed possible. I knelt there and made myself count steadily on through perhaps the worst twenty seconds of my life, while the terror, pressing closer, blew itself up into fantasy… the Demon King watching us from behind that bright window a mile away, hunting us down from his wheel-chair by some ghastly kind of radar that tracked us through the forest… I whipped the mad thought aside but the image persisted; Léon de Valmy, like a deformed and giant shadow, reaching out for us wherever we happened to be. Why had I thought I could get the better of him? Nobody ever had, except one.