“You can tell me for a start why you don’t reckon Father Simeon spent much time in the priest-hole. You can tell me why you’re so interested in Simeon, not to mention Liam Molloy and Francis Tyrwhitt. In fact, you might like to give a rather fuller account of yourself than the carefully weighted and meticulously filleted version you offered in your letter and your interview.”

Wow. While he’d been fantasizing about this young woman’s body, she’d been taking notes and doing close analysis.

“I see,” he said, keeping it light. “You want full confession. And in return…?”

“You get absolution, of course.”

He sipped his sherry thoughtfully. It was tempting. There was an intimacy in the confessional which could lead to… what?

He opened his mouth to speak, not yet knowing what he was going to say.

He was prevented from finding out by the sound of footsteps approaching on the flagged floor outside, then the door burst open.

“There you are, Mr. Madero,” said Gerald Woollass. “Enjoying your lunch?”

He sounded angry, and it occurred to Madero that somehow his lustful thoughts about Frek were visible, and he felt himself flushing even as his rational mind told him this was absurd. But there was definitely something bothering the man.

“Yes, very much,” he said.

“Good. And your researches, how are they going?”

“I’ve made a good start.”

“Yes, I know that. A very good start. But you made that yesterday in Kendal, didn’t you, Mr. Madero?”

“Father, what’s going on?” inquired Frek.

“You may well ask. I’ve just attended a committee meeting in Kendal, Mr. Madero. It’s a Catholic educational charity aimed at helping disadvantaged youngsters and inculcating the virtues of piety, application, and a love of the truth. Worthy aims which I had assumed you would approve of, Mr. Madero. Until I got to chatting with our chairman after the meeting. His name is Joe Tenderley. Ring a bell? Tenderley, Gray, Groyne and Southwell. And you know what he told me? He said that his junior partner had turned up late for a meeting yesterday with the excuse he’d been detained by a visiting historian desperate to learn everything that could be dug up about Father Simeon Woollass. Now I knew it couldn’t be you, Mr. Madero, having been assured only a couple of hours earlier that you knew next to nothing about Father Simeon and had only the most peripheral of interests in him. But it’s a strange coincidence, isn’t it?”

The savage sarcasm left no room for denial.

“Mr. Woollass, I’m sorry,” said Madero, conscious of Frek’s speculative gaze. “I should have mentioned I’d spoken with Southwell, but believe me, my interest in Father Simeon is incidental rather than central to my interest in your family. Let me explain…”

“Explain?” exploded Woollass. “You mean you have a backup story ready? What is it, I wonder? I know! You’re really a promotor iustitiae specially appointed by the Holy Father himself to investigate the case of Father Simeon!”

“Of course not. What I’m trying to do…”

“Save your breath. I opened my family’s records to you, Madero. I had doubts from the start, and I was right. Please collect your things from the study and leave. My daughter will accompany you to make sure you remove only what you arrived with.”

“Father!” protested Frek.

“Just do it,” commanded Woollass.

He turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen.

Madero looked at the woman and waited for her to speak.

She said, “I suppose technically you ought to take the trifle.”

“I can explain…”

“I’m sure you can. But never complain, never explain is a wise saying. Come.”

She rose and made for the door. Together they went up the stairs and into the study. Here he carefully sorted out his notes, laying them to one side of the desk with the journals and household records. On the other side he set his laptop and briefcase.

“Perhaps you would like to check,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” she said.

“I doubt if your father would think it silly,” he said. “Besides, if I may, I should like to use your bathroom before I go.”

“Of course. Corridor on the left, the second door on the right.”

He went out. Would she check that he wasn’t taking anything he shouldn’t? Her decision, and at least he had given her the chance.

The left turn took him into a short corridor with two doors on either side.

Just as he made the turn he froze in mid-stride as the second door on the right opened and a figure draped in cardinal red came out. He recognized Dunstan Woollass’s dressing gown but it wasn’t the old man wearing it.

It was Mrs. Collipepper.

She turned down the corridor without glancing in his direction. He watched her move away, registering the oil-pump shift of her heavy buttocks beneath the scarlet silk.

His mind was trying to sort out unvenereal reasons why she should be wearing the garment as she pushed open a door at the end of the corridor and slipped out of sight.

The door clicked shut and he resumed his advance to the bathroom. But he’d only taken a couple of steps when he saw the tail of red silk caught in the bedroom door. The dressing gown, made for a much taller figure than the woman’s, had become trapped. Even as he looked, the door opened again, releasing a blast of warm air. Mrs. Collipepper, stark naked now, stooped to pull the rest of the gown inside. Over her shoulders, Madero glimpsed a four-poster bed with a venerable white-haired head resting on the pillow. The source of the heat was a deep fireplace in which a dome of coals and logs glowed red.

As the housekeeper straightened up, her gaze rose to meet his own. Her face showed no reaction. He lowered his eyes in confusion. She had breasts to match her buttocks with dark nipple-aureoles the size of saucers. He raised his eyes again and mouthed, “Sorry.” Gently she closed the door.

In the bathroom he found his penis slightly engorged and had to wait a moment before he could pee.

As he stood there, a line flashed into his mind from Shakespeare whose works his mother had insisted he should read to balance Cervantes and Calderón.

Who’d have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?

Frek was waiting on the landing. Silently she handed him his briefcase. As they went downstairs, he wondered if she knew about her grandfather and the housekeeper. Of course she must know! Indeed, probably the whole village knew. It was well said that in the countryside a secret is something everyone knows but no one talks about.

Was it an active relationship? he wondered. Or was Mrs. Collipepper merely an Abishag to old King David?

Mig put the prurient speculation out of his mind as Frek opened the front door.

He stood there a moment, taking in the view. The sky was cloudless, the sun warm, the air so clear that he could pick out detail of rock and stream on the hills rising on the far side of the valley. The range of color was tremendous – vegetation all shades of green shot with patches of umber verging on orange where some plant was dying off; rocks black, gray and ochrous; water white falling, dark blue standing; and the land itself, pieced and plotted in the valley, rising to the horizon in pleats and folds like some rich material painted by one of the Old Masters.

“‘The world lay all before them, where to choose their dwelling place, and Providence their guide,’” he said.

His mother’s poetic patriotism had even overcome her religious prejudices.

“That’s more or less what the Norsemen thought when they set out. Many of them chose Cumbria,” said Frek. “Where will Providence guide you now, Mr. Madero?”

“Only as far as the Stranger House initially,” he said.

He stepped across the threshold and turned to face her. His left leg took this opportunity to remind him it wasn’t yet ready for complex maneuvers. He staggered a little and winced as he forced himself to put his full weight on it.