The manservant of the previous evening hurried down the corridor. ‘Mademoiselle is not in her room, monsieur. She went out riding at six this morning with Monsieur Georges.’

‘She did what? Riding? Good Lord! But what on earth would she have been wearing?’ was Joe’s disconnected thought.

With no sign that he found the question strange, the man replied: ‘Jodhpurs, sir, a shirt and a pair of riding boots which the young lady had in her luggage. She lacked only a hat but we were able to supply this item from stock.’ And, responding to Joe’s discomfiture: ‘They expressed their intention of returning in good time for breakfast. At all events, sir, breakfast is a meal young Master Georges would always be prompt to attend. And it is a very informal occasion you will find. They suggest you join them. If you will come with me?’

The two young cavaliers were already settled at the long table in a beamed breakfast room towards the back of the house and halfway through their meal when Joe arrived. They were still wearing their riding gear and their only concession to civility was to have removed their boots and lined them up by the door. Georges rose politely to his feet and greeted him, stepping over in his socks to the buffet to bring him coffee in a large silver pot.

‘We’ve got the place to ourselves,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Maman never comes down for breakfast – she has it in her room and appears at about ten. She’s expecting to see you then, by the way, to show you the estate and tell you her side of the story. If she hasn’t already.’

‘And your uncle Charles?’

‘He’s left to go and finish some work in the vignoble. It’s coming up to the time of the vendange and the next few days are crucial. Conferences every morning with every hoary old expert in the vicinity! Milk with that? There’s croissants if you’d like them? Boiled eggs? Ham? Baguettes? Butter from the farm? Cook’s strawberry jam?’

‘All of that in any order,’ said Joe and, sniffing and looking around, ‘What’s that disgusting smell? Smells like wet . . . oh, hello, Bruno, old man! I say, is he allowed under the table in his present state?’

‘Don’t try to move him! He got a bit wet rolling about in one of the seven springs. Joe, you must go and look at the stables,’ Dorcas said and, turning to Georges, ‘Joe’s a top-hole rider! Why don’t you offer him a ride on Taranis?’ she suggested slyly.

‘I think I’d need to know what his name meant first,’ said Joe warily.

‘Gaulish God of Thunder, sir,’ said Georges. ‘And your reservations are well founded. We never offer him to guests,’ he added reprovingly with a forgiving grin for Dorcas. ‘But I would like to snatch a few words with you myself, if you wouldn’t mind . . . Dorcas thinks I should speak to you, sir. I mean, don’t let me put you off your breakfast or anything and I haven’t much to say, I suppose . . .’ He began to run out of steam and shuffled his large feet in embarrassment.

‘Rubbish!’ said Dorcas. ‘You’ve got important things to say and Joe’s a good listener. That’s what he’s come all this way for – to listen. Go on, you’re to tell him, Georges!’

Georges was pleased to be so encouraged but something was still holding him back.

‘Not the easiest thing in the world – taking up a stance opposite to that of your mother,’ said Joe. His slight smile and sudden inward focus suggested a personal understanding of Georges’s dilemma. ‘But let me tell you I don’t find it at all unusual or shocking or even disloyal. I’ve met three families in the course of this case and none of them have been in agreement over the identity of the patient in Reims. Everyone involved has his or her own genuinely held opinion or evidence to put forward and I’m working with the French police to collect and evaluate it. It’s important that I hear your views. You are, after all, likely to be significantly affected by the outcome, aren’t you? Pivotal, I’d say.’

The boy nodded miserably. His good humour had faded and his young face, suddenly serious and drawn, gave a foretaste of the handsome man he would become. Still he debated with himself, unable to speak.

‘Look, I’ll come clean,’ said Joe encouraging. ‘I have no authority in France. I’m just here to find out whether the gentleman in question may be English and to help Inspector Bonnefoye where I can in an advisory capacity. Sir Douglas . . .’ The boy brightened and nodded at the mention of his name. The Brigadier was obviously a welcome and respected guest. ‘Sir Douglas sent me to offer a hand. We just want to arrive at the truth. If you disagree with your mother’s interpretation of the situation you’re quite entitled to your view. Believe me – I’ve heard many discordant views so far.’

He spoke at last, slowly. ‘The word “discordant” is hardly up to the job . . . say rather, disloyal . . . destructive.’ He looked at Joe steadily over the table. ‘What I have to say will destroy for ever my relationship with my mother – whom I love very much – and more than that, it could destroy her. Ruin her life. And what is the evidence of a boy who was seven years old at the time worth? I’ve gone over and over what I saw. Every day I have lived with it. I can’t any longer believe in what I know. In the evidence of my own senses.’

Joe was becoming alarmed by the boy’s tension, his staring eyes, his hands, clenched and tugging at the tablecloth, and wished he could undo what he’d started. The dog, disturbed, gave a warning growl to the room at large, not quite knowing at whom to direct his unease. But Georges was pressing on, unstoppable now.

‘It’s been growing in me like a canker all these years. I don’t think I can pretend any longer that I don’t know. I’ll crack up if I don’t tell someone and yet I know I risk infecting everyone around me with the filth that will burst out . . . Sir, will you help me? Will you listen and promise to take no action against anyone I may involve? I could have got this terribly wrong, you see . . .’

Joe opened his mouth to deliver a formal and clear police warning. ‘Anything you say, young man, will be taken down . . .’

But he caught Dorcas’s pleading expression and, bewitched – he could only later excuse himself on grounds of bewitchment – heard himself instead giving the asked-for, impossible and thoroughly unprofessional assurances.

‘I know that man they’re keeping in Reims is not my father,’ whispered Georges. ‘He can’t be my father because . . . my father, Clovis Houdart, is dead. But he wasn’t killed in battle, sir. I was there when he was murdered. Nearly ten years ago.’

Chapter Seventeen

Joe wondered if, over the hundreds of miles of land and sea that separated them, Brigadier Redmayne on his Scottish grouse moor was troubled by the curse he sent winging his way. That mosquito now settling on his left cheek – would Sir Douglas ever attribute the sharp sting to Joe’s summoning up of a stab of silent invective?

Dorcas was speechless. Joe guessed that the intimacy of the young pair had not progressed as far as this startling admission and could feel that she too was taken aback.

Joe replied calmly. ‘Have you never spoken of this to your uncle?’

Georges shook his head. ‘To no one.’

‘What a burden to carry by yourself all these years, my poor old chap!’ said Joe. ‘But, you say it yourself, you were only seven years old at the time of this terrible event – if indeed it ever occurred – and I agree, a seven-year-old is quite likely through simple inexperience to put a wrong interpretation on scenes he’s witnessed. Why don’t we all look at it again with adult eyes and see if we can make sense of it?’

Georges looked at him more hopefully.