“Did your friend take the ring?” he said in a level voice.

“No, no, I swear she didn’t.”

He squeezed harder. “Then who? You? You were on your own with the skeletons for long enough. Dr Tanner told me that.”

“Why would I take it? It’s worth nothing to me.”

“Why are you so sure Dr Tanner didn’t take it?”

“She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t,” she cried. “Lots of other people went in. Any of them could have taken it. Dr Brayling, the police-”. Shelagh abruptly stopped.

“As you say, the police,” he said. She held her breath. “Any one of them could have taken the ring. Yves Biau, for example.”

Shelagh froze. She could hear the rise and fall of his breathing, calm and unhurried. He knew.

“The ring wasn’t there.”

He sighed. “Did Biau give the ring to you? To give to your friend?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” she managed to say.

He hit her again, this time with his fist, not the flat of his hand. Blood spurted from her nose and poured down her chin.

“What I don’t understand,” he was saying, as if nothing had happened, “is why he didn’t give you the book as well, Dr O’Donnell.”

“He gave me nothing,” she choked.

“Dr Brayling says you left the site house on Monday night carrying a bag.”

“He’s lying.”

“Who are you working for?” he said softly, gently. “This will stop. If your friend isn’t involved, there’s no reason for her to be harmed.”

“She’s not,” she whimpered. “Alice doesn’t know…”

Shelagh flinched as he placed his hand on her throat, stroking her at first in a parody of affection. Then he started to squeeze, harder and harder, until it felt like an iron collar tightening around her neck. She thrashed from side to side, trying to get some air, but he was too strong.

“Were you and Biau both working for her?” he said.

Just as she could feel herself starting to lose consciousness, he released her. She felt him fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, undoing them one by one.

What are you doing?“ she whispered, then flinched at his cold, clinical touch on her skin.

“No one’s looking for you.” There was a click, then Shelagh smelled lighter fuel. “No one’s going to come.”

“Please don’t hurt me…”

You and Biau were working together?“

She nodded.

“For Madame de l’Oradore?”

She nodded again. “Her son,” she managed to say. “Francois-Baptiste. I only talked to him…”

She could feel the flame close to her skin.

“And what about the book?”

“I couldn’t find it. Yves neither.”

She sensed him react, then he pulled his hand back.

“So why did Biau go to Foix? You know he went to Dr Tanner’s hotel?”

Shelagh tried to shake her head, but it sent a new wave of pain shuddering through her body.

“He passed something to her.”

“It wasn’t the book,” she managed to say.

Before she could choke out the rest of the sentence, the door opened and she heard muffled voices in the corridor, then the combination of the smell of aftershave and sweat.

“How were you supposed to get the book to Madame de l’Oradore?”

“Francois-Baptiste.” It hurt to speak. “Meet him at the Pic de – I had a number to ring.” She recoiled at the touch of his hand on her breast.

“Please don’t-”

“You see how much easier it is when you cooperate? Now, in a moment, you’re going to make that call for me.”

Shelagh tried to shake her head in terror. “If they find out I’ve told you, they’ll kill me.”

“And I will kill you and Mademoiselle Tanner if you don’t,” he said calmly. “It’s your choice.”

Shelagh had no way of knowing if he had Alice. If she was safe or here too.

“He is expecting you to call when you have the book, yes?”

She no longer had the courage to lie. She nodded. They are more concerned with a small disc, the size of the ring, than the ring itself.“

With horror, Shelagh realised she’d told him the one thing he hadn’t known.

“What’s the disc for?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

Shelagh heard herself screaming as the flame licked her skin.

“What – is – it – for?” he said. There was no emotion in his voice. She was freezing cold. There was a dreadful smell of burning flesh, sweet and sickly.

She could no longer distinguish one word from another as the pain started to carry her away. She was drifting, falling. She felt her neck giving way.

“We’re losing her. Get the hood off.”

The material was dragged off, catching on the cuts and split skin.

“Fits inside the ring…”

Her voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. “Like a key. To the labyrinth…”

“Who else knows about this?” he was shouting at her, but she knew he couldn’t reach her now. Her chin dropped down on to her chest. He jerked her head back. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but the other flickered open. All she could see was a mass of blurred faces, moving in and out of her line of vision. “She doesn’t realise…”

Who?“ he said. ”Madame de l’Oradore? Jeanne Giraud?“

“Alice,” she whispered.

Alice arrived in Chartres late in the afternoon. She found a hotel, then bought a map and went straight to the address she’d been given by directory enquiries. Alice looked up in surprise at the elegant town house, with its gleaming brass knocker and letter box and elegant plants in the window boxes, and the tubs framing the steps. Alice couldn’t imagine Shelagh staying here.

2›What the hell are you going to say if someone answers? 2›

Alice took a deep breath, then walked up the steps and rang the bell. There was no answer. She waited, took a pace back and looked up at the windows, then tried again. She dialled the number. Seconds later, she could hear a phone ringing inside.

At least it was the right place.

It was an anticlimax but, if she was honest, a relief also. The confrontation, if that’s what was coming, could wait.

The square in front of the cathedral was thronging with tourists, all clutching cameras, and tour guides holding flags or colourful umbrellas held high. Orderly Germans, self-conscious English, glamorous Italians, quiet Japanese, enthusiastic Americans. All the children looked bored.

At some point during the long drive north, she’d stopped thinking she would learn anything from the labyrinth in Chartres. It seemed so obviously connected – the cave at the Pic de Soularac, to Grace, to her personally – too obvious. Part of her felt like she’d been set up to follow a false trail.

Still, Alice bought a ticket and joined an English-language tour, scheduled to start outside in five minutes. Their guide was an efficient, middle-aged woman with a superior manner and clipped voice.

“To the modern eye, cathedrals are grey, soaring structures of devotion and faith. However, in medieval times, they were very colourful, ratherthan like Hindu shrines in India or Thailand. The statues and tympana that adorned the great portals, in Chartres as elsewhere, were tricked out in polychrome.” The guide pointed up at the outside with her umbrella. “Look closely and you can still see fragments of pink, blue and yellow clinging to the cracks in the statues.”

All around Alice, people were nodding obediently.

“In 1194,” the woman continued, “a fire destroyed most of the city of Chartres as well as the cathedral itself. At first it was believed that the cathedral’s holiest relic, the sancta camisia – the robe supposedly worn by Mary at the birth of Christ – had been destroyed. But after three days the relic was discovered, having been hidden by the monks in the crypt. This was seen as a miracle, a sign that the cathedral should be rebuilt. The current edifice was finished in 1223 and in 1260 consecrated as the Cathedral Church of the Assumption of Our Lady, the first cathedral in France to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary.”