No argument would move her in such a case.
The only thing was to get at them herself and burn them.
She would never have a moment’s peace till then.
Then the police might come and no incriminating evidence could be discovered.
With frenzied anxiety she set her mind to think where Madame Berger would have been most likely to put them.
She did not often go into the pavilion, for Madame Berger did the room herself, but she had in her mind’s eye a pretty clear picture of it, and in her thought now she examined minutely every piece of furniture and every likely place of concealment.
She determined to take the first opportunity to make a search.
The opportunity presented itself sooner than she could have foreseen.
That very afternoon, after the meagre lunch which the two women had eaten in silence, Lydia was sitting in the parlour, sewing.
She could not read, but she had to do something to calm the frightful disquietude that gnawed at her heartstrings.
She heard Madame Berger come into the house and supposed she was going into the kitchen, but the door was opened.
“If Robert comes back tell him I shall be in soon after five.”
To Lydia’s profound astonishment, she saw that her mother-in-law was dressed in all her best.
She wore her black dress of flowered silk and a black satin toque and she had a silver fox round her neck.
“Are you going out?” Lydia cried.
“Yes, it’s the last day of la generale.
She would think it very ill-mannered of me if I did not put in an appearance.
Both she and the general had a great affection for my poor husband.”
Lydia understood.
She saw that in view of what might happen Madame Berger was determined that on that day of all others she must behave as she naturally would.
To omit a social duty might be ascribed to fear that her son was implicated in the murder of the bookmaker.
To fulfil it, on the other hand, was proof that the possibility had never entered her head.
She was a woman of indomitable courage.
Beside her, Lydia could only feel herself weak and womanish.
As soon as she was gone Lydia bolted the front door so that no one could come in without ringing and crossed the tiny garden.
She gave it a cursory glance; there was a patch of weedy grass surrounded by a gravel walk, and in the middle of the grass a bed in which chrysanthemums had been planted to flower in the autumn.
She had a conviction that her mother-in-law was more likely to have hidden the notes in her own apartment than there.
The pavilion consisted of one largish room with a closet adjoining which Madame Berger had made into her dressing-room.
The larger room was furnished with a highly carved bedroom suite in mahogany, a sofa, an armchair and a rosewood desk.
On the walls were enlarged photographs of herself and her deceased husband, a photograph of his grave, under which hung his medals and his Legion of Honour, and photographs of Robert at various ages.
Lydia considered where a woman of that sort would naturally hide something.
She had doubtless a place that she always used, since for years she had had to keep her money where Robert could not find it.
She was too cunning to choose such an obvious hiding-place as the bed, a secret drawer in the writing-desk, or the slits in the armchair and the sofa.
There was no fireplace in the room, but a gas stove with an iron pipe.
Lydia looked at it.
She saw no possibility of concealing anything there; besides, in winter it was used, and Lydia thought her mother-in-law the sort of woman who, having found a safe place, would stick to it.
She stared about her with perplexity.
Because she could think of nothing better to do she unmade the bed and took the pillow out of its slip.
She looked at it carefully and felt it over.
The mattress was covered with a material so hard that she felt sure Madame Berger could not have cut one of the seams and re-sewn it.
If she had used the same hiding-place for a long period it must be one that she could get at conveniently and such that, if she wanted to take money out, she could quickly efface all trace of her action.
For form’s sake Lydia looked through the chest of drawers and the writing-desk.
Nothing was locked and everything was carefully arranged.
She looked into the wardrobe.
Her mind had been working busily all the time.
She had heard innumerable stories of how the Russians hid things, money and jewels, so that they might save them from the Bolsheviks.
She had heard stories of extreme ingenuity that had been of no avail and of others in which by some miracle discovery had been averted.
She remembered one of a woman who had been searched in the train between Moscow and Leningrad.
She had been stripped to the skin, but she had sewn a diamond necklace in the hem of her fur-coat, and though it had been carefully examined the diamonds were overlooked.
Madame Berger had a fur-coat too, an old astrakhan that she had had for years, and this was in the wardrobe.