Returning to the Dubois house from the lavoir, the narrator (posing as Sadie) is intercepted on the gravel road by an older man in a white Citroën panel truck. He introduces himself as Robert, Lucien's uncle by marriage, claiming his wife Agathe sent him to check on her. Robert is overweight, ill-looking, with bulging eyes and a phlegmy laugh, and behaves with prying, faintly leering friendliness.

Robert probes Sadie's identity, noting that no one in the family has met her, that his daughter found almost nothing about her online, and that she has changed the locks on the house. He then reveals the most dangerous detail: an email was sent to Agathe's unused account claiming that Sadie is not who she says she is. He has kept it from Agathe, ostensibly to protect her heart condition, and uses it to intimidate the narrator.

The narrator recalls Lucien's account of Agathe marrying beneath her station, and her own research showing that Robert lives off Agathe and has taken out a substantial life-insurance policy on her after her heart diagnosis. She gets into his passenger seat and calmly turns the threat around: she names the insurance carrier, the amount, and the date of the policy, signaling she knows he is positioning himself to profit from his wife's death.

She offers a deal in a deliberately girlish voice: if Robert stays away and tells Agathe everything is fine, she will say nothing. Once Lucien arrives, the couple will be invited to dinner. Robert, frightened and deflated, accepts the trade. The narrator's cover is preserved, but the chapter establishes that someone outside the family knows her true identity and has been emailing about her.