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unpaved way he had once wheeled Murchison in a barrow in order to bury him—temporarily. Also through this lane an occasional farmer still drove a small tractor toward the main streets of Villeperce, or appeared out of nowhere with a barrow full of horse manure or tied-up kindling. The lane belonged to no one.
    Tom went on to his well-tended plot of herbs near the greenhouse. He had taken a long pair of scissors from the greenhouse, and now he snipped some rucola, and one parsley frond.
    Belle Ombre looked as handsome from its back garden as from the front: two rounded corners with bay windows on the ground floor and the second floor, or first floor as the Europeans said. Its pinkish tan stone looked as impregnable as the walls of a castle, though Belle Ombre was softened by a Virginia creeper’s reddish leaves, flowering bushes, and a few large pots of plants near its walls. It occurred to Tom that he must get in touch with Henri the Giant before they left. Henri had no telephone, but Georges and Marie could give him messages. He lived with his mother in a house in a court behind the main street in Villeperce. Henri was not bright or quick, but was possessed of unusual strength.
    Well, Henri had the height, too, six feet four at least, one meter ninety-three, as Tom figured. Tom realized that he had been thinking of Henri fending off a real assault on Belle Ombre. Ridiculous! What kind of assault, anyway? And from whom?
    What did David Pritchard do all day, Tom wondered as he walked back toward the three French windows. Did Pritchard really drive to Fontainebleau every morning? And return when? And what did the rather dainty, pixielike Janice or Janis do all day to amuse herself? Did she paint? Write?
    Should he drop in on them (unless of course he could get their telephone number), bringing a handful of dahlias and peonies, by way of being neighborly? At once the thought lost its appeal. They’d be boring. He himself would be a snoop for trying it.
    No, he’d stay put, Tom decided. He’d read more about Morocco, Tangier, and wherever else Heloise wanted to go, get his cameras in order, prepare Belle Ombre for at least two weeks without a master and mistress.
    So Tom did just that, bought a pair of dark blue Bermuda shorts in Fontainebleau and a couple of drip-dry white shirts with long sleeves, as neither Tom nor Heloise liked shirts with short sleeves. Heloise sometimes had lunch with her parents up in Chantilly, drove up alone as she always did in the Mercedes, and used part of the morning and afternoon for shopping, Tom supposed, as she returned with at least six plastic bags with shops’ names on them. Tom almost never went to the once-a-week lunch at the Plissots, as lunches bored him, and Tom knew that Jacques, Heloise’s father, merely tolerated him, and was aware that some of Tom’s affairs were shady. Well, whose weren’t, Tom often thought. Wasn’t Plissot himself covering up in the income-tax department? Heloise had let it drop (not that she cared) one time that her father had a numbered account in Luxembourg. So had Tom, and the money in it was derived from the Derwatt Art Supply Inc., and even from Derwatt sales and resales of paintings and drawings in London—less and less activity here, of course, as Bernard Tufts, the forger of Derwatts for at least five years, had died years ago, a suicide.
    At any rate, who was quite clean?
    Did Jacques Plissot mistrust him because he didn’t know all about him, Tom wondered. One thing nice about Plissot, he didn’t seem to be nudging Heloise, nor did Heloise’s mother, Arlene, to produce a child so that they could be grandparents. Tom had of course brought up this delicate subject with Heloise and in private: Heloise wasn’t keen on having a child. She wasn’t firmly set against it, it seemed, just didn’t crave one. And now years had gone by. Tom did not mind. He had no parents to make ecstatic by the announcement of the blessed event: his parents had