They entered carefully and waited for the door to swing shut behind them.

The cool beauty of the space was unchanged at first sight and Nathan stood still absorbing it, enchanted. But Joe was looking for details. ‘Look here! Poor child! He must have been terrified out of his wits but he showed some style! Little soldier indeed! He made himself a bivouac.’ He bent and examined the rough nest behind the door. ‘Look—here’s his bed.’ A base of kneeling cushions had been assembled to form a mattress and an old velvet curtain had served as blanket. An inch of yellow fluid in the bottom of a nearby glass flower vase told its tale of night-time emergency. A discarded clog had been put to use to bang on the door and accounted for the dull thuds that had alerted them. Sick at heart, Joe thought of the child hammering through the night, the sounds masked by the infernal wind.

‘Deserves a medal!’ Nathan commented. ‘But listen—if someone was here, he’s not here any longer, would you say? Impressive place! Fourteenth-century?’

‘Probably earlier. Twelfth, according to the guidebook. But with fourteenth-century additions and improvements. The Counts of Provence worshipped here when they were being entertained at the castle. It’s said that the father of Eleanor of Aquitaine attended mass here. William of Touraine, gallant knight, poet and—they say—the first troubadour.’ Joe’s response was mechanical, all his thoughts centring on Marius and his ordeal, eager to be done with this inspection and go and get the boy’s story from him.

‘Can we take a look at Sir Hugues now?’ Nathan asked, making his way over to the monument.

They stood in stricken silence staring at the table-top tomb.

There they were, two figures lying side by side, the lord and his lady.

The figure on the right, the armoured knight, his feet resting on the crouching lion, remained as impressive as at Joe’s first sighting, but it was the pallid beauty of the figure at his side which seized and held the men’s attention. Her delicate hands were peacefully folded below her breast, her slippered feet rested once again on her greyhound. The knight had lain here in this quiet place carved in white stone for over six hundred years. His lady was of flesh and blood and was newly dead.

The peaceful couple were framed by a canopy of sunlit stone. Hugues de Silmont lay in plate armour, gauntleted hands resting on his chest, helmeted head encircled by a jewelled wreath. At his left hip, on a richly sculpted baldric, was carved a slender dagger of Spanish design with an ornate gilded hilt. A misericord. His features were serene; as the sunlight slid across his face, he seemed almost to smile.

At first sight his lady appeared no less serene. Closed eyes, a dreaming face, her pallor a match for his alabaster. Her long fair hair had been arranged to frame her face before spilling in waves over the edge of the tomb. The white dress she was wearing had been carefully draped and folded.

The two onlookers could not take their eyes from the head of the dagger, sunk very slightly to the left and, very precisely, into the heart. The dagger at the knight’s side and the dagger in the woman’s heart were identical.

Chapter Seventeen

Joe could feel his companion’s shock through the hands that grasped his arm for support. After a few minutes of rigid stillness, Nathan’s whole body began to tremble but he could not take his eyes away.

It was Nathan who spoke first. ‘What is this? Some kind of sick joke? It’s not real … Joe!’ He turned an anguished face on him. ‘Are you in on this? Is she dead or is she acting? Tell her—okay, okay! I’m sorry! And I’m knocked for six! She can get up now …’

Joe’s pained silence swept away his attempt at self-delusion.

Joe placed a restraining hand on Nathan’s shoulder and stepped forward himself towards the tomb. He went swiftly through the familiar gestures to establish that the girl was indeed lifeless and shook his head.

Nathan groaned. ‘She is dead, isn’t she? Do you see it? That dagger? Isn’t that …?’ A quivering finger pointed to the dagger in the woman’s breast and moved on to point at the stone dagger in the knight’s belt.

In a calming policeman’s voice, Joe answered: ‘You’re right. It’s the same thing. The carved one is a representation of a vicious stabbing blade, designed to penetrate plate armour with a short underhand stroke. A misericord. The word means compassion, pity. Such blades were often used on the battlefield to put dying soldiers out of their misery. What kind of sick trickery is this? The carved dagger and the wrought metal one in the heart are identical!’

‘Sick is right,’ Nathan murmured. ‘She’s on display. Some bugger’s left her here to be … viewed. Joe, we’re being used! We’re an invited audience. We’ve been set up to witness this horror.’

Nathan whirled about, hearing a sound Joe had not detected. His gaze searched the gloomy corners of the chapel, his slight frame crouched and hunted. ‘He’s here! Where’s the devil hiding? Listen! He’s in here with us, isn’t he? Watching.’

His rising panic was catching. Joe spoke steadily to calm him. ‘I don’t think so. That creak you just heard? Would have been the woodwork expanding or righting itself after last night’s buffeting. I think the murderer’s long gone. They do sometimes return to the scene—that’s true, in my experience—but I don’t know of one who’s waited several hours by the body expressly to enjoy the dismay and horror of the poor sods who discovered it. And she’s been dead for some hours. We’d be looking at a seriously aberrant piece of behaviour. But, then, nothing surprises me any more.’

‘Sheesh! How can you keep so calm? Face to face with a dead body like this? Someone you know?’

‘I’m not calm! I’m as distressed as you are. I’m revolted and angry. It’s just that it’s my job to stare at corpses and make them talk back to me. And, if you’ll be silent and use your keen eye for detail, Nat, she’ll start talking to you as well. She would want us to hear what she has to say. Think of this as the last thing we can do for her.’

In an attempt to dampen the photographer’s spiralling panic, Joe began to involve him in the scene by shooting a series of questions at him. ‘Look at the wound. Focus on it. That’s the idea! Do you see much blood? Come on! Answer me!’

Nathan focused on the spots of dried blood surrounding the blade. ‘No. I’d have expected a gush, a trail … Heart wound—you’d expect a fountain … There’s no more than a spot or two or five. All around the blade. Like a speared rose. And it’s dark brown. She bled some time ago?’

‘Right … “On her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I’ the bottom of a cowslip,”’ murmured Joe. ‘That’s the sleeping Imogen in Cymbeline. But this poor girl is beyond sleeping.’

‘You can stand here, quoting bloody Shakespeare at a time like this?’ Nathan’s voice was strangled.

‘I find myself responding to the killer’s imperative—as you do. It’s a scripted craziness. An Elizabethan melodrama we’re being offered. Perhaps if we follow him in his descent to hell, we’ll catch sight of his ugly features.

‘Look again. What’s he telling us? The wound was placed with precision, would you say? Nathan?’

‘Anyone would. I’m sure I’ve never seen a heart wound before, not even a knife wound of any kind, but it does look sort of … meant … placed.’

‘Expertly done, I think,’ Joe confirmed. ‘And what do you make of the hair, spread out like that? And the careful draping of the dress?’

‘Lord knows! It’s crazy! I can only say again—sickness.’

‘Not crazy. I believe it’s very deliberate. Have you seen this white dress before?’