‘You touched a nerve, I think, with your appeal to the public?’

Varimont sighed and raised eyebrows to the ceiling. ‘Opened up a hornets’ nest might be more apt,’ he said. ‘Can I say I regret taking such action, I wonder?’

‘Not if you find this poor man a loving home, monsieur,’ said Dorcas. ‘If you can do that, it surely will have been worth the effort. I think it’s a noble and worthwhile thing that you are doing.’

Varimont was startled by the interruption but charmed by the sentiment. Joe was surprised too, by the ease with which Dorcas had spoken in perfectly acceptable French.

‘Mademoiselle has a slight accent of the Midi, I detect?’ said Varimont.

‘My mother is from the south, monsieur. My father is English but we always spend our summers in Provence,’ Dorcas explained.

‘The nightmare,’ Joe picked up hurriedly. ‘Has it been repeated?’

‘Yes. Once more. After the first explosion I did wonder whether to administer a barbiturate. Calm him down. But my second thought was to let it flow on and camp outside his door to catch any recurrence from the start.’

‘And did our man have anything further to add?’

‘Look here – we could go on calling him “our man . . . this poor chap”, we could even refer to him as G27 which is the number on his door, or we could call him – as I do – Thibaud.’

‘Thibaud?’

‘One of the first Counts of Champage. Very popular name hereabouts. Also the name of my great-uncle whom he much resembles.’

‘Perfect,’ said Joe. ‘Tell me what Thibaud had to say for himself.’

‘The same short scenario played and replayed. I was able to write down the words – excuse the spelling!’ He inclined his head to Dorcas, drawing her into the discussion. ‘We do not all have a facility for languages.’ He handed over a sheet from his folder and continued to talk as Joe read it.

‘His dream was accompanied by actions as well as words. He sat up on his bed with a shout of alarm then leapt up and strode about the room, gesticulating madly, quarrelling you’d say, with someone he could see very clearly but who was invisible to me, watching from the door. Then he sank to his knees and screamed out in English: “For God’s sake, man! Don’t do this! Forgive me! Forgive me!” The effect was very disturbing – very . . . theatrical. Does what I’ve written make sense?’

‘Certainly does,’ said Joe. ‘This is an Englishman begging for his life.’

‘With some success,’ said Dorcas thoughtfully, ‘as he’s still with us.’

Varimont was silent for a moment then said hesitantly, ‘Yes, you’d say so. Begging for his life. But, Commander, the odd thing is that his subsequent actions belied the words. He pleaded for mercy with those words, in perfect English as far as I am any judge, but then he acted out a quite extraordinary scene.’

The doctor got to his feet and moved to the centre of the room. The short, fastidious, suited figure should have produced the comical effect of a Charlie Chaplin movie as he launched into his mime but Joe and Dorcas watched in growing horror as the meaning of his gestures became clear.

Eyes rolling in a pantomime of rage, Varimont lifted his right foot and kicked out viciously at something (or someone) unseen three feet above the ground. With a snarl, he reached across his body and drew a sword from its scabbard with his right hand, then, holding it up in front of his face with a two-handed grip on the hilt in a hideous semblance of a priestly gesture, he plunged it downwards again and again.

Chapter Six

As they made their way along darkening corridors, following the fast-moving figure of the doctor, Joe was aware of Dorcas scurrying along at his heels, staying much closer than she would normally have done. The architecture would have detained him in other circumstances, its massive Gothic arches and stone-flagged corridors demanding attention. An ancient monastic building of some sort, he would have guessed, which, by being incorporated at a later date into the structure of the town’s defences, seemed to have survived the bombardment. Though not entirely unscathed. Distantly, he heard the hammering and shouting of a building team at work on repairs and found he was reassured by the sounds of ordinary life going on in this disconcerting place.

Varimont turned a corner and walked down a narrower corridor, pausing finally in sepulchral gloom in front of a stout oak door. Before he could insert his key in the lock Joe commented: ‘Formidable defences. You must reassure me, Varimont, that your Thibaud presents no danger to visitors.’

‘Oh, none at all. These precautions are for his protection. Be reassured, Commander . . . mademoiselle. When he is not suffering a nightmare, he is calm itself. He sits, sometimes stands, looking into an internal distance. He has a slight reaction to some of his visitors. Some he obviously likes and he expresses this by reaching out to touch their arm, very briefly. Do not be alarmed should he do this, mademoiselle. It is a sign perhaps of his returning humanity.’

‘What does he do if he takes a dislike to someone?’ Dorcas thought it prudent to ask.

‘Rather embarrassing, I’m afraid! He climbs into his bed, pulls the blanket over his head and goes to sleep. Come and meet him.’

The tall slender man was sitting on his bed, under the single window, hunched and quiet. Not presented in hospital pyjamas but duly ‘spruced up’, Joe thought, in a white shirt and pressed trousers. The late afternoon sun caught his head, lighting hair that must once have been blond but was now streaked with grey. He was facing away from them and made no response to their entry or Varimont’s cheerful bellow: ‘Hello there, Thibaud old chap! And how are you doing today? Look here – I’ve brought you some visitors.’

There were chairs in the sparsely furnished room but they didn’t sit. There were brightly coloured posters on the grey walls but the visitors paid no more attention to the scenes of the Châteaux of the Loire than did the occupant of the room. They trooped in and stood awkwardly in front of the patient in a line watching him. Joe had once had to escort a terrified young lady from the cinema, passing in front of a row of people absorbed by the last reel of The Phantom of the Opera. Their faces had shown much the same expression as the one he was now studying with attention. The man’s focus was elsewhere and someone passing through his field of vision was a momentary annoyance, no more. The doctor chattered on, behaving as though his patient perfectly understood him. In the middle of a sentence and out of joint with the doctor’s speech, the man suddenly reached out and stroked his arm twice. At once, Varimont responded with the same gesture. Treating this as the establishment of some kind of communication, he drew Joe forward and introduced him.

Thibaud stared through him, his startling blue eyes expressionless, and made no movement. He must at one time have been an exceptionally handsome man, Joe thought. Even the distortion of the jaw, the pallor and the thinness of the flesh could not quite quench an impression of nobility. Joe spoke a few hearty and meaningless sentences and then floundered, running into the quicksand of indifference. Picking up Joe’s hesitation, Varimont then introduced Dorcas.

To both men’s surprise, she stepped forward without hesitating to stand directly in front of him. She made no attempt to speak. She put out a hand and gently stroked his cheek in greeting. Then she reached into her pocket and produced a rose-pink biscuit, one of the biscuits they bake in Reims to nibble with their champagne, Joe noticed. She must have brought it with her from the cake shop, he thought, as there had been no such confection on offer in the director’s office.