Joe’s first instinct was to tell the assembled company to, for God’s sake, run for a doctor. He stepped forward anxiously at the sight of the grey-faced old man, alarmed by his rasping efforts to breathe. In spite of the warm weather he was swathed in rugs and shawls and the remains of a meal in jugs and bowls stood on a table at his elbow.

As the others, a man and two women, showed no immediate signs of panic, Joe calmed himself and addressed the old man. ‘Sir. Commander Sandilands of the London police and also with Interpol. How do you do?’

The younger man answered and took the card from Joe’s outstretched hand. ‘I’m Victor, Monsieur Tellancourt’s son. This is my sister Isabelle and this is Clothilde, the wife of my older brother Thomas whom I understand you have seen in Reims. We’d be obliged if you could direct your questions through me. As you see, my father is in poor health and not able to sustain a conversation. Though he will understand all that you have to say, I’m sure.’ The tone was perfectly polite though there was no warmth.

Joe wondered if he’d heard correctly. A wife? Clothilde? This was the first mention of a wife, surely? He remembered that the official claimants of the unknown soldier were named as Victor and Isabelle Tellancourt. Recognizably brother and sister and both in their mid-thirties they stood together, dark of hair and complexion like their father. The wife of Thomas – or Thibaud – was a brown-haired woman dressed in widow’s black, small and quenched. She did not attempt to return Joe’s greeting.

For form’s sake, Joe went through his rehearsed questions receiving exactly the answers he anticipated from Victor with occasional interjections from Isabelle. They knew their father’s answers by heart but he confirmed each statement with a nod and followed the conversation with alert eyes. Their certainty that the patient was their brother was unshakable, their eagerness for a quick solution in their favour compelling. With slightly excessive nostalgia, they recounted stories of Thomas’s young days, they produced letters he had written from the front and the inevitable portrait photograph. Joe took the much-handled sepia study and said into the expectant silence: ‘Ah yes. A fantassin – would that be the word?’ Joe could conjure up the colourful figure from his memory. The handsome young man was wearing the high-collared tunic of an infantryman under the blue greatcoat, the capote with its two front hems buttoned back like a butterfly’s wings showing puttees and shining laced shoes. He was wearing the soldier’s round blue helmet, an unflattering piece of headgear which hid his hair, and the lower half of his face was almost swamped by a flamboyant moustache. A poilu. Impossible on this evidence, Joe thought, to rule the man in or out in the struggle for Thibaud.

‘An infantryman? Your son fought his war on foot, then, not on horseback?’

His comment was received by puzzlement all round and the reply came from Victor: ‘Of course he did. The cavalry? Thomas? He was a farm boy like the rest of us. A peasant! From St Céré not St Cyr!’ Victor laughed at his joke. ‘Couldn’t stand horses. Had too much to do with them on the farm. He could handle them all right – rode like a Cossack but always said they were the stupidest animals ever invented. No, he was nothing special. A trench rat. Swept up for cannon fodder like the rest of us. Declared missing, presumed dead, at Verdun. They never sent us his name tag. But it seems they presumed wrong, doesn’t it? Taken prisoner and now returned to his home town.’

Joe turned to the silent wife, standing apart from the rest and looking through the window. ‘An emotional moment for you, madame. To envisage the possibility of one’s husband being restored after so long and in such a battered condition . . .’ he murmured.

‘Well, of course it’s emotional,’ snapped Victor. ‘But she’ll cope. She was always a good wife to Thomas. Devoted. She’ll go on caring for him. What’s more natural?’

It was becoming clear to Joe that the tension he felt in the room had its source in the woman whose voice he had not yet heard and he sensed a mystery. He nodded his agreement and turned his attention from the widow, taking the brother and sister down paths they were more keen to follow and noting down officiously points which they deemed important. Finally he snapped shut his notebook with a satisfied smile and began to thank the old man and his son and daughter warmly for their help and clarification.

Relief swept through the room. Victor hurried to the door, finding the small boy playing skittles in the corridor, and sent him to whistle up the Commander’s transport back into the village.

‘One last thing,’ said Joe without emphasis, ‘and perhaps Madame could enlighten me . . .’ He bowed to the widow. ‘If you wouldn’t mind strolling back to the gate with me there’s a couple of questions better directed at a wife . . . I’m sure you understand, old chap,’ he finished with a conspiratorial glance at Victor who gaped and looked from one to the other with suspicion. Unexpectedly, the widow came at once to his aid, nodding and slipping out of the room ahead of him.

He followed her swift steps down the corridor away from the front door and in some surprise turned at her beckoning finger and climbed a set of back stairs. Two flights of increasingly narrow treads and threadbare carpet took them to the attic floor of the house. The sun streamed through a side window glinting off dust motes and, distantly, a dove cooed and was answered. It was uncomfortably hot up here under the eaves and Joe was feeling more uneasy by the minute. She stopped in front of a door: a door of solid oak and, unusually for this neglected house, freshly installed. There was a bolt on the outside. The widow wrapped a fold of her skirt over it to muffle the sound and pulled it back. With a gesture she invited him to step inside, listening intently the while. For noises of pursuit, perhaps? Her nervousness was catching.

His instinct for self-preservation made him insist that she enter the room first. He had no intention of being discovered, a mummified corpse locked in a French attic a hundred years from now. Standing in the open doorway, one hand on the latch, Joe looked inside and he understood.

Chapter Fourteen

Bare, white-painted walls, a metal-framed bed with a thin mattress and one chair, it was more stark than the hospital room in Reims. Heavy bars fitted across the one small window.

She began to speak hurriedly. A rehearsed speech. Not a word was wasted. ‘That man’s not Thomas! They’re claiming him for the money – heaven knows they need it! The state would pay it to me, I think, but . . . well, you’ve seen them! They’d take it all in payment for my board and lodging over the years. But look at this!’ She waved a hand around the room and her pretty face melted for a moment into pity. ‘They’ll keep him prisoner here.’ The expression changed to one of petulance as she rushed on: ‘And guess who’ll be expected to care for him? Me! I’ll be running up and down those stairs with slop bowls until one of us drops dead. I’ll be just as much a prisoner as he is. I’m no nurse, monsieur, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after some lunatic who’s not even my husband.’ She seized Joe’s hands, needing to make a physical link with him before she confided her next secret. The torrent continued: ‘I’m a widow. I have official confirmation. I can show you my papers. A widow. I may marry again.’

‘You have someone in mind?’ he asked with equal brevity.

‘There’s a man in the village. Not a Tellancourt!’ She almost smiled. ‘He’s elderly but kind. He owns the pharmacy. We could make each other happy. You must understand that this man in Reims is not my husband!’