‘And I thought I’d start in the kitchens. No. No need to escort me! I’m sure I can pick out the cook.’

‘The cook?’ De Pacy swallowed his surprise to mutter: ‘You want to start with the cook? Not as straightforward as you might imagine. Our chef de cuisine does not welcome incursions by the guests. In fact they are expressly for-bidden from passing through the red baize door.’

‘Then you must introduce me as an employee. I have just undertaken a commission for you, I think? With permission to rove about, did we agree?’

‘Ah! A test! And I’ve stumbled at the first fence! At least let me take you in … the staff, after all, stand on some ceremony … even though Scotland Yard may have abandoned all decorum.’

He smiled as he got to his feet.

Followed by the mystified eyes of the gathering, they made their way through the swinging door covered in red baize and studded with brass-headed nails, along a short stone corridor and round a corner into a cavernous and apparently deserted kitchen. Joe passed a range the size of a Rolls-Royce rusting in neglect under a stone arch. He noted a row of brass taps dripping into a mottled sink which would have been quite large enough to wash a medium-sized corpse in. A dresser which had once been of the finest oak leaned goutily to one side, its matchboard backing seamed with the vertical cracking associated with wet rot.

‘This is the old kitchen,’ said Guy de Pacy. ‘We don’t use it any more.’

‘I’m quite seriously glad of that,’ said Joe and followed him into the further depths.

They passed below an archway into a stone-flagged, large, square space full of activity, the clashing of copper pans, laughter, exclamations and light.

‘This is the new kitchen,’ Guy announced unnecessarily. ‘Our chef de cuisine moved in two years ago and insisted on dismantling the—er, Victorian, would you say?—facilities you have just passed and restoring the original and larger medieval space to its former grandeur. With certain modern additions, of course.’

‘The refrigerator?’ Joe asked, all admiration for the gleaming monster at the far end of the room. ‘You’re wired for …?’

‘Yes. The lord installed a generator some years ago and we enjoy a reasonably effective electrical system. Our cook spent some time in the kitchens of the Splendide in Paris during the war years when it was easier for women to take up employment and she came away with notions of grandeur. And some fabulous receipts for iced-cream desserts. I must order up one of Madame Dalbert’s soufflés glacés aux framboises as your reward before you leave! You’ll be impressed. And there she is.’

A small dark woman, well rounded and much girt about with grey pinnies and the black skirts of a widow, was shrieking in what to Joe was a foreign language at a youth struggling to roll out a sheet of pastry. He watched as she snatched the rolling pin from the boy’s hands, gave him a playful crack over the knuckles and demonstrated a lighter touch, wiry brown hands and wrists moving in practised gestures. The boy began again and she cooed and patted his head.

She came over to greet them and Joe realized that she had been aware of their intrusion from the moment they set foot in the room. She had chosen her own time to acknowledge their presence, marking out her territory and standing confidently within it. He would be respectful of the borders.

He reached for her floury hand and held it for a moment, smiling and listening to de Pacy’s introduction.

‘Well, there you are. Madame Dalbert, Commander Sandilands of Scotland Yard who has asked to speak to you, I’ll leave you to … er … get acquainted.’ De Pacy bowed and made for the door.

The woman took a step backwards, snatching away her hand on learning who he was, and Joe knew he’d made a clumsy mistake in coming here. There was no retreating so he advanced.

‘First things first, madame,’ said Joe briskly in French, eyeing the hostile face in front of him, ‘in fact: two things. The compliments of an ignorant Englishman on French cooking. The main dish at luncheon was a countryman’s dream! Honest meat from the terroir, simply cooked to perfection with local herbs. I so enjoyed it!’

‘Faites simple! Faites toujours simple, monsieur,’ she said. Her voice was low and strongly accented with the rugged Languedoc accent. ‘Escoffier knew what he was talking about. And your second comment?’ She was uneasy in his presence, already glancing sideways at the young pastry chef, eager to be released to her duties.

‘The tarte Tatin. There was something besides apples in there … a trace of something red … it enlivened the blandness of the apples and spiked the flavour of what can be a rather dull dish …?’

She smiled and looked at him directly for the first time, her interest caught at last. ‘I wondered whether anyone would notice. It’s hard to tell sometimes. You have a spark of inspiration, try out a dish and your only clue that it’s a success is the clean plates at the end of the meal. And that’s not always a good indicator …’ Her sombre features lit up with a sudden flare of humour—or scorn. ‘You English are taught from the nursery always to clear up your plates. Whatever the slop they contain. Rice pudding! Oat por-ridge! Pouah! … Figs. It was figs. The first ones are just ready. They go well with the apples and a drop or two of fig liqueur helps.’

‘It certainly did.’ Joe began to make distancing movements and they parted company. Before he turned the corner, he caught her voice calling after him with a certain bold sarcasm: ‘Let me know when you’re leaving us and I’ll prepare a soufflé glacé, monsieur!’

He bowed. ‘It will sweeten a bitter moment, madame.’

He enjoyed the gust of girlish laughter that followed him down the dank corridor back to the hall.

De Pacy had waited for him by the baize door. ‘How did you get on with the dragon of the castle?’ he wanted to know.

‘Dragon? I thought Madame Dalbert was perfectly charming. We exchanged recipes and planned menus. That sort of thing.’

De Pacy gave him a sideways look and changed the subject. ‘And next? Let me guess. You’d like me to look the other way while you sneak into the chapel to have a good poke about in the debris?’

‘If that’s an offer—how could I resist?’ said Joe.

He walked off shoulder to shoulder with the steward back across the hall, amused to find they were unconsciously keeping step. They were followed by the speculative eyes and approving smiles of the guests who’d stayed behind to lounge at ease and chatter. Here were two decisive men in their prime, striding out together smiling and clearly already doing a lot of agreeing. The frisson which had interrupted their country idyll would soon be soothed away. This pair would stand no nonsense.

‘Young Padraic gave a stirring account of the unpleasantness but he was assessing the scene with the eyes, ears and nose of a Celtic troubadour rather than a London policeman,’ Joe commented.

De Pacy nodded. ‘Whereas you’ll sniff the air, not so much to detect the decaying glamour of centuries, as to pick out the … um …’

‘… sweat, blood and hair oil of the last over-excited individual present at the scene,’ Joe finished for him. ‘At the Yard, they call me The Nose,’ he joked. ‘But however keen the old hooter, I’m afraid it’s too late by days to detect anything so ephemeral as scent. But there may be other clues. People sometimes leave behind the strangest things in the heat of the moment. False teeth—still clamped around a beef sandwich … a whalebone corset redolent of Nuit d’Amour perfume … I’ve even had a hotel door key with its name and number on it … They leave traces of their presence quite unwittingly.’

‘Wittingly too—if that’s a word,’ said de Pacy, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t want to anticipate your enquiry, Sandilands, but when I visited the scene I became aware of something that had clearly escaped the attention of the young Irish Romantic. Left behind intentionally, I do believe, by our hammer-wielding iconoclast.’ He gave Joe a sharp look. ‘You may find that nose of yours a mixed blessing!’ he said with a bark of laughter. ‘But I’m sure you’ll see it and interpret the message. Well-travelled and well-educated man of the world that you are. And the Latin should be no problem.’