SPOILERS!!!
This long chapter in the novel about the Second World War is quite sad. The characters in the book are all part of the resistance. Charlie, who was left with a limp after some training in the army, is one of the main agents. He links with Max Le Sourd through his father. Despite being in his seventies, Thomas is also part of the group as well as the Delou brothers. And Louise becomes an agent, passing information which she gathers from her Nazi clients.
Luc is the counterpoint as he starts collaborating with a Gestapo officer, Schmid. When it is clear that Germany is to lose the war, Luc worries that he may suffer the consequences of being a collaborator. In all appearances Louise is also a collaborator, and she is also afraid for her son, Esmé. She kept refusing Charlie's request to let his father and motehr-in-law to know about their son, but as her position becomes more dangerous, she goes to see Marie and leave Esmé with her and Roland. Louise even tells her that she is the daughter of Corinne Petit and Marc.
Luc fears what is going to happen to him at the end of the war, so he goes to find Louise because he wants to know if she has a escape route. Louise tells him that he has no escape route, and if she knew, she wouldn't tell him. So Luc becomes angry. In the living room that Luc and Louise talk she has the paintings of Corinne, her birth mother, which she bought from the dealer, Jacob, and when Luc notices the name, she realises that this is the name that one secret agent uses. This is the woman Schmid wants to find, and Luc goes to tell him.
Schmid knows Louise as he is a client of her establishment, so he sets a trap for her. With the help of a colonel, they make her believe that a very important Gestapo officer is to attend an opera. It is a trap to catch her, and Louise passes the information to Charlie and Max. Luc knows about the trap, and he is worried about his brother, and he even tells him that if he needs a hideout, he can go to the tunnel where they left the murdered woman as it is stocked with food.
Max, Charlie, Thomas and the Dalou brothers wait outside the theatre. Schmid has disguised a prisoner as the Gestapo officer, and when they are leaving, the Resistance opens fire, and the man passing himself off as the Gestapo officer cries that it is a trap. In the shootout Charlie is hit, and Max and Thomas carry him to Luc's house, and Luc is reluctant to let them go inside. Max and Thomas setttle Charlie in the tunnel, which is where he dies. Louise is arrested and tortured but she won't tell a thing. And she commits suicide, stabbing herself in the neck.
Thomas comes to the conclusion that Luc is a traitor, and it was him who informed the Gestapo. He goes to see him, telling him that they need to burn Charlie's body. They go to the tunnel, and there Thomas shoots his brother, killing him.
Thomas and Max take Charlie's body to the cemetery, and after the liberation they go to see Marie and Roland, and they inform him about Charlie and Louise's deaths.
The last chapter in the book happens in 1968. Claire is now divorced and has remarried. She has returned to France from time to time. Her mother is now dead, and Esme, who is the heir to both Roland and Marc, tells her that she needs to find a pierre-de-terre to have an excuse to come to Paris now. She hesitates, but her husband, Philip, tells her to do it. So it is what she does in Paris, trying to find a place to her old country.
I really loved the book as I learnt a lot about the history of France through all these characters.
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