‘And la Maman, she was unpleasant, tyrannical, disagreeable and decidedly better dead than alive? That also—hein?’ ‘When you put it like that—’ Sarah paused, flushed, went on: ‘One shouldn’t, I agree, take that into consideration.’ ‘But all the same—one does! That is, you do, mademoiselle! I—do not! To me it is all the same. The victim may be one of the good God’s saints—or, on the contrary—a monster of infamy. It moves me not. The fact is the same. A life—taken! I say it always—I do not approve of murder.’
