‘Which leaves him with a certain resentment against women,’ said Joe. ‘Unfaithful, diseased and dangerous creatures!’

‘The anger and bitterness grow over the years like the tumours. And now he’s reached the third stage and his diseased brain is no longer capable of exercising restraint or reason. He sees the statue of the ancient whore as the seed bed of vice and his own illness as destruction visited on him by an unclean woman. I think the arrival of Estelle with her incredible looks and her licentious reputation burst the boil of his venom. She was fated to pay the price. The moment she stepped over the drawbridge she—’

Joe was anxious to discourage Jane’s doom-laden tone. He detected a trace of lip-smacking jubilation and, though he could understand, he could not sympathize.

‘Which was exactly when? Her arrival?’ he interrupted brusquely.

‘Let me think … I was already here. My six months’ secondment started in May. It would have been at the beginning of June. She came down with Nathan the photographer.’ Jane’s eyes narrowed. ‘I remember clearly the effect she had on the men that first day.’ She fell silent and let her remark hang in the air between them. She had taken her reprimand and this was her riposte: if Joe wanted to hear gossip, he was going to have to ask nicely.

‘Any man in particular seem smitten?’ he enquired because he needed to know. He was reluctant to hear an account seen through the prism of Jane Makepeace’s critical faculty but it would be interesting to compare her version with the one he already had from Orlando.

‘You want individual profiles—a barometer of lust? Let me see. Freddie was an obvious victim from the first moment. The mercury rose to danger level in seconds. Storm warnings hoisted. She treated him kindly, I think. He was her devoted swain, you could say. Poor chap! He was much ragged for it. Derek and Ernest were sat on hard by each other’s respective wife. Bubbling under, I’d say. Petrovsky? There was a blip from him until he discovered that she despised him and his level fell. Such a man thrives only on adulation. And his hands were rather full at the time, anyway. Nathan Jacoby watched all these fools manoeuvring from the sidelines, cynical and indulgent. But concerned. Definitely concerned. Your friend Orlando? Now, there’s a lovely man!’ she said surprisingly. ‘A pacifist and a reformer. And a fine artist. Far too good for her. He registered a certain warm interest and I thought at one point they might make a go of it. Wouldn’t have blamed her for trying—he’s easy and funny. Perfect man to spend a summer with.’

Joe hid a smile. He wondered whether he should warn Orlando that he had a secret admirer.

‘And the Frenchmen? You’re saving them till last?’

‘I appreciate a crescendo. Guy de Pacy … Handsome, competent, stand-offish Guy. He was amused, I’d say, by the reactions of the other men. But she was the type who would go for the unattainable. He was much too old for her. Too experienced. Too choosy. She tried hard—to everyone’s embarrassment. It didn’t take long for her to get the message and she stopped pursuing him. Very abruptly. One day she was all over him, the next she was glowering from the other end of the table. Something emphatic happened to make her change her mind.’

Jane seemed genuinely puzzled and not fishing for a reply from him. Could it be that this modern, so well-informed young woman had no knowledge of the possibility of male inversion? He decided not to raise the subject.

‘This message that Estelle got? Any idea of what it consisted?’

‘Lord no! I’m on good terms with Guy but he doesn’t confide. He’s not approachable in that way—you must have noticed. Not a gossip. But it might not have been Guy who spoke to her. Had you thought of that?’

‘Not Guy?’

‘The Lord Silmont. If he noticed her interest, he would have taken steps to discourage it.’

‘Steps?’

‘Yes. Here my theory begins to crumble.’ Jane frowned and looked to Joe for help, her confident assertions suddenly faltering.

‘Because he could just have sent her away, couldn’t he? A hanger-on, a potential trouble-maker, a girl who represented everything he despised, why wasn’t she on the next train back to Paris?’ Joe wondered.

‘You’re right. Young, unconnected and foreign, you could add. He’s unpredictable. I’ve seen him dismiss a servant for squinting at him. But he kept Estelle on.’

‘Could he have been fascinated himself?’

Jane nodded slowly. ‘Not obviously so. His visits to the dining room didn’t increase with her arrival. He didn’t seek her company. But when they were in the same room he watched her. Hardly a word exchanged but he was always … conscious of her, I’d say.’

‘Jealous of Guy?’

‘Probably. Well, you would be, wouldn’t you? Younger man, attractive, healthy, and being besieged by the girl you’ve a fancy of some sort for yourself? Yes. It could have been the lord who warned her off. Another reason for him to want to get rid of her permanently. Had it occurred to you, Joe, that the table-top tomb looks very like an altar? He could have cleared the stone strumpet away to make space for a flesh and blood victim. Sacrificing her symbolically—all in the throes of his diseased urges, of course.’

They had come around full circle. ‘But I told you, Jane, he could not have stuck the dagger in Estelle yesterday.’

‘You haven’t quite got there, have you?’ she said, annoyingly. ‘Well, I leave you to work it out for yourself. I don’t intend to put ideas into your head. I have no concrete evidence to present yet to back up my suspicions but I’ll let you have it the moment I uncover it.’

Joe very much doubted that she had. Miss Makepeace, he thought, had shot her bolt, exhausted her evidence. But he was mistaken.

‘I’ll leave you with another thought,’ she said, as one turning in the saddle to fire off a last Parthian arrow. ‘You only ask me about her relationships with the men in the party. She was not popular with the women in the dorm, you know. They’re mostly quite open-minded—as females go—but when they’re cooped up together! Well! They can behave no better than schoolboys … or hens … The most awful bullies! They choose one of their number to be the sacrificial one, the poor specimen all agree to peck at. They chose Estelle. She was easy to despise and a threat. Cecily, in particular, could get into a froth of rage at the mention of her name. There was bad blood between those two. Cecily tormented her. The second night Estelle was with us, I caught the appalling Cecily making an apple-pie bed to trap her. Reverting to schoolgirl behaviour.’

‘What did you do, Jane?’ Joe asked, trying not to smile.

‘It’s not funny, Commander! Girls, even hard-boiled ones like Estelle, can be psychologically damaged by such evidence of rejection by their peers, you know … I told her if she didn’t undo it at once and be nice, someone might think of putting a snake in hers.’

‘That was telling her,’ said Joe.

‘If it was, she wasn’t listening. Cecily did it anyway as soon as my back was turned.’

Joe swallowed uneasily. ‘And …?’

‘There’s a nest of adders on the fringes of the woodland.’ Jane grinned. ‘We’ve had no trouble with Cecily since.’

‘I sincerely hope the snake suffered no psychological damage,’ said Joe faintly. ‘An enforced appearance in Cecily’s bed could leave its mark on man or beast.’ He instantly regretted his startled aside.

Jane considered him through narrowed eyes. ‘I say again, Commander—it’s not funny.’ She waggled a finger at him in joking reprimand. ‘Interview over, I think.’

She began to collect up the teacups in a marked manner and added: ‘But I was forgetting—when it comes to gathering information, Joe, you hardly need to listen to me. You’re on the inside of the bend! Estelle’s cold lips may yet whisper into your attentive ear. I’m sure you’ll listen to her.’