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success.
    ‘Now,’ Janvier said, ‘you’re a lawyer. You’ve got to draw things up in their proper form. How much money is there?’
    ‘Three hundred thousand francs. I can’t tell you exactly.’
    ‘And this place you were talking about? St Jean.’
    ‘Six acres and a house.’
    ‘Freehold?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And where do you live in Paris? Have you got a house there?’
    ‘Only a flat. I don’t own that.’
    ‘The furniture?’
    ‘No—books only.’
    ‘Sit down,’ Janvier said. ‘You make me out—what’s it called?—a deed of gift.’
    ‘Yes. But I want paper.’
    ‘You can have my pad,’ Lenôtre said.
    Chavel sat beside Janvier and began to write: ‘I Jean-Louis Chavel, lawyer, of Rue Miromesnil 119, Paris, and St Jean de Brinac … all stocks and shares, money to my account at … all furniture, movables … the freehold property at St Jean de Brinac …’ He said, ‘It will need two witnesses,’ and Lenôtre immediately from force of habit offered himself, coming forward as it were from the outer office just as though his employer had rung a bell and called him in.
    ‘Not you,’ Janvier said rudely. ‘I want living men as witnesses.’
    ‘Would you perhaps?’ Chavel asked the mayor as humbly as if it were he who were the clerk.
    ‘This is a very odd document,’ the mayor said. ‘I don’t know that a man in my position ought to sign …’
    ‘Then I will,’ Pierre said and splashed his signature below Chavel’s.
    The mayor said, ‘Better have someone reliable. That man would sign anything for a drink,’ and he squeezed his own signature in the space above Pierre’s. As he bent they could hear the great watch in his pocket ticking out the short time left before dark.
    ‘And now, the will,’ Janvier said. ‘You put it down—everything I’ve got to my mother and sister in equal shares.’
    Chavel said, ‘That’s simple: it only needs a few lines.’
    ‘No, no,’ Janvier said, ‘put it down again there … the stocks and shares and money in the bank, the freehold property … they’ll want something to show the neighbours at home what sort of a man I am.’ When it was finished Krogh and the greengrocer signed. ‘You keep the documents,’ Janvier told the mayor. ‘The Germans may let you send them off when they’ve finished with me. Otherwise you’ve got to keep them till the war ends …’ He coughed, leaning back with an air of exhaustion against the wall. He said, ‘I’m a rich man. I always knew I’d be rich.’
    The light moved steadily away from the cell; it rolled up like a carpet from one end to the other. The dusk eliminated Janvier while the clerk sitting by Voisin could still find light enough to write by. A grim peace descended, the hysteria was over and there was no more to be said. The watch and the alarm clock marched out of step towards night, and sometimes Janvier coughed. When it was quite dark Janvier said, ‘Chavel.’ It was as if he were calling a servant and Chavel obeyed. Janvier said, ‘Tell me about my house.’
    ‘It’s about two miles out of the village.’
    ‘How many rooms?’
    ‘There is the living-room, my study, the drawing-room, five bedrooms, the office where I interview people on business, of course bathroom, kitchen … the servants’ room.’
    ‘Tell me about the kitchen.’
    ‘I don’t know much about the kitchen. It’s a large one, stone paved. My housekeeper was always satisfied.’
    ‘Where’s she?’
    ‘There’s no one there. When the war came I shut the house up. I was lucky. The Germans never hit on it.’
    ‘And the garden?’
    ‘There’s a little terrace above a lawn: the grounds slope and you can see all the way to the river, and beyond that St Jean …’
    ‘Did you grow plenty of vegetables?’
    ‘Yes, and fruit trees: apple, plum, walnut. And a glass-house.’ He continued as much to himself as to Janvier: ‘You don’t see the house when you enter the garden. There’s a wooden gate and a