Jacquemin would not appreciate a second female corpse appearing on his patch, Joe judged, so he decided to put off strangling Jane Makepeace for the moment. Really, he’d rather listen to the dead Estelle than the very much alive and unfortunately named Miss Makepeace.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Avignon, Friday

Estelle was a silent sheeted figure, conveying nothing when Joe was shown into the room of the institut médico-légal where her body lay on a channelled marble slab. The pathologist had accepted the handwritten note of introduction from Jacquemin with a surprised and slightly amused lift of the eyebrow.

The hand he extended to Joe was rough and warm, the eyes friendly, as he introduced himself. Lemaître was an ex-army doctor, middle-aged, confident and direct. The perfect antidote to his gloomy and dripping surroundings.

‘Ah! The Entente Cordiale at work at last,’ he said. ‘I wondered if we would ever see such a thing.’

‘Well, it’s not much of an entente and I would hardly call it cordiale,’ said Joe with a rueful grin.

‘No. We Frenchmen are fond of the sea. We particularly appreciate the bit that separates us from Albion.’ The doctor returned his grin. ‘And I’ve worked with Commissaire Jacquemin,’ he added and was content not to embroider on his comment.

‘First things first.’ The doctor took a bulky paper bag from a locker and handed it to Joe. ‘The Commissaire asked us to return to you everything we found on her body for his further inspection instead of putting it into storage here. You’ll find everything in there. All the items found were removed, catalogued and put away by my assistant before the autopsy. He’s meticulous. They’ve been finger-printed, combed and swabbed, as appropriate. Make what you will of it.’

He drew the sheet down to uncover Estelle’s face. ‘Well, here she is. All done. I’ve even got the report typed out. I had my secretary come in at six this morning. I had the impression that there was some urgency?’

‘There may be danger of a repeat performance,’ said Joe.

‘Ah? The English crime? Multiple slayings? Slaughter on the streets? I wouldn’t be so sure. Your bloke is no Jack the Ripper! I’ve never seen a neater, more effective wound. If anyone back there needs to know—she didn’t suffer. Was probably hardly aware of what was happening to her. What you haven’t got here is a maniacal sex-driven disembowelling and mutilation. But tell me, detective—served up on an altar tomb top? How can that have come about?’

‘We have some theories which I won’t expound in case what you have to tell me subsequently makes them sound ridiculous,’ said Joe. ‘You go first! And perhaps we could well start with how she got there. Was she was stabbed in the place and position in which she was discovered?’

‘No doubt about that. The blood had sunk down and found its level.’ He delicately turned the sheet down further and pointed. ‘Gravitational discoloration. You see the dark blue tide line? The lividity shows the body had not been moved after death. She died where you found her. And the estimated time of death Jacquemin gave me is as exact as is possible to give. He rightly calculated that she died in the late afternoon or early evening of the day before. I was informed of the ambient temperature of the chapel and took that into consideration. It’s all in my report. Calculations and all. Do I need to mouth the usual caveats?’

‘No. Not at all. Bodies cool in the same way in London. At annoyingly variable rates.’ Joe smiled. ‘And the wound itself? Anything of interest?’

‘As I say—neat. Strong wrist on him, whoever it was. Though perhaps I should stress the precision? We should remember that her flesh offered little resistance—rather a skinny girl—and the nightdress she was wearing was old and fragile. The blade, being some eight inches long, wasn’t engaged to the hilt. Just the right length of steel used. All the same—we have a transfixing wound. In the region of the right ventricle. Death within seconds, possibly hastened by cardiac tamponade.

‘But now you’re here you can tell me: on which side of what we will call “her husband” was she lying?’

Joe explained that she was on the warrior’s right side and that the girl’s right lay next to the aisle of the chapel. He demonstrated.

‘I see. Then we can add—precise right wrist. I’m assuming the killer stood in the aisle and leaned over her prone body—up to you to find out why she kept still and let him—and dealt the blow like this.’ The doctor mimed. He transferred an imaginary dagger to his left hand and tried again. ‘Awkward. Unnatural. And you’d expect a corresponding change in the orientation of the blade. East—west instead of north—south. A left-hander could have approached from behind, I suppose …’ He changed position and repeated the killing stroke over Estelle’s head. ‘It seems very unnatural to me. But then, sticking a blade into a lovely girl like this from any angle seems unnatural to me.’

‘Could the blow have been delivered two-handedly, like this?’ Joe asked.

‘Yes. Entirely possible. The handle is quite long and stout, you see, with a good grip on it. To allow for use by a gauntleted hand. But I was assuming that your bloke would need to keep one hand free to control the victim and stab with the other. Why would the girl just lie there and watch a blade descending on her? She’d have rolled away. She’d have tried to defend herself. You noticed there were no scratches or cuts on her hands and arms?’

He took the murder weapon from a tray under the table and handed it to Joe. ‘Take it. It’s clean. The print chaps have finished with it. Nothing apparent—rubbed clean, they say. It’s not as old as you might have thought, by the way. These things came into use in the 1300s but this is a copy. Probably Italian work, 1600 or so.’

‘Yes, it falls naturally and comfortably into one’s hand,’ said Joe. ‘Excellent quality.’

‘Had to be. Those things were in the hands of butchers. Battlefield executioners who’d spend hours despatching the enemy wounded. Delivering the coup de grâce.’ The pathologist smiled. ‘But I’m not telling you anything you haven’t worked out for yourself yet, am I? Never mind. I’ll plough on with the reassuring thought that I have at least one surprise for you …

‘Death came within seconds. The aorta was penetrated with precision. Sketches and copious Latin references of the report, you’ll find. Whoever it was seems to have had all the time in the world to focus on his spot and line up his blade. He knew what he was about … He had a knowledge of anatomy and a certain strength of arm. That’s as much as I can say.’

From the cause of death the doctor moved on to general comments on the state of the body. He confirmed that toxicology tests had revealed the victim to have no traces of drugs or poisons in her system.

‘No cocaine?’

‘That’s right. None. She was fit and healthy and completely compos mentis at the time of her death. And you will need to know that there was no trace of sexual attack. There had been sexual activity some hours before, we can assume the previous night, but nothing unnatural. No sign of violence.’

Joe sensed they were coming to the end of the interview. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘Yes. It occurred to me there was something else I perhaps ought to look at …’

Joe smiled to hear the casual warning. Pathologists, in his experience, liked to do this. The few words added as an ‘oh, by the way,’ at the end of a discussion so often shredded his theories or set him off on a completely different tack.

‘She was pregnant. Ah! That you didn’t know! Yes. Undetectable to the eye of the general public, but there was a foetus. Two months … nine weeks … thereabouts.’