‘But how to persuade Estelle to make a victim of herself? Nothing easier. She is happy once more and in high good spirits. Her sense of fun leads her to agree to playing a silly joke on Cecily. “Imagine the scene—when she gets back home and Daddy has the film developed! What a souvenir! What a laugh!” You borrow the camera and arrange to meet Estelle at the chapel. But you gild the lily. You plan to have a fall-back position if things go wrong. The lord is to take the blame but he is a man with influence. You can’t be perfectly certain that he won’t come up with some defence you hadn’t anticipated. So Cecily is a reserve suspect.

‘A wise precaution, it must have seemed! Things did go wrong for you at first. It was your bad luck to find the crime being investigated by two competing detectives, one, at least, the star in his force’s firmament. But worse—the lord was inconveniently and unexpectedly away from the scene at the moment of the murder. And then the diligent police discover for themselves the contents of Cecily’s camera. You had decided these officers, since you’d been landed with them, could be of great use to you. A little nudge here, a dig of the spur there, and you’d have them moving wherever you wanted them to go. You didn’t have much respect for their detective abilities but you feared the possibilities of the new forensic sciences and took precautions. Fingerprints were …’ He paused and went on, ‘mostly … rubbed away. Pity. It is fingerprints we rely on for a conviction. More reliable than a confession, we find in England. Were you aware—I think you must have been—that a single print is enough to clinch a case? Juries adore them! They take the weight of responsibility from their shoulders. A scientifically arrived at conclusion is always more acceptable than a moral judgement to twelve good men and true. Circumstantial evidence, deduction, are as nothing compared with the cold scientific condemnation of a single print.’

He broke off tantalizingly, leaving Jane Makepeace to wonder exactly where she had carelessly left a print.

‘The trousers you wore for their convenience in scrambling about in the moat were—just in case—stashed away amongst Estelle’s skirts, ready to be packed off and sent abroad unremarked. But …’ Deep in thought, Joe strolled to the window and flung it open, fanning his face.

Jacquemin reached down and produced the black trousers. He handed them to Joe. Jane’s eyes followed them but still she did not break her silence.

Joe now faced playing his two last cards.

‘You slid down a south-facing slope to get the incriminating shots you wanted. Leaving fragments of earth and plant matter on the fabric. These have been studied under the microscope in the laboratory and identified.’

‘Oh, really! I’ve heard enough! One: those are not my trousers. And two: Cecily who owns them is always crawling around in the undergrowth. Ask her where she’s been lately.’

‘I can tell you exactly where the trousers went on their last outing. There’s a tiny Provençal plant growing on the south side of the moat where we found boot scrapes. It is very rare. Thymus pseudolanuginosus. Are you familiar with it? It is vestiges of this plant that we were able to comb from your trousers,’ he lied convincingly.

Jane Makepeace was convinced. But unimpressed. ‘I think you cannot have heard me clearly. Those are Cecily’s trousers. She wears the uncouth garments all the time. You must have noticed.’

Such was her bored confidence that Joe was silent for a moment. He picked up the trousers, examining them once again. He looked up to see Dorcas mouthing a number at him, and went straight back on the attack. ‘Miss Somerset’s waist size is a generous thirty inches, I’m told. These are twenty-four inches. Exactly the same as yours. In any case, not difficult—merely time-consuming—to check sales receipts from Harrods.’

A slight flicker of emotion across her face told him that she understood the seriousness of her position but she still refused him the satisfaction of a comment.

A car screeched noisily up to the window and a door slammed. At an annoyed glance from Jacquemin, Joe got up and closed the window again. They listened as feet pounded down the corridor. There was a rap on the door and Martineau came straight in.

‘Yes, Lieutenant?’ Jacquemin greeted him.

‘It’s here, sir. They’ve just driven it over from Avignon. Urgent, the sergeant said.’

He handed over an envelope to the Commissaire.

‘Ah! At last!’ Jacquemin exchanged meaningful glances with Joe and slit open the envelope. ‘From the laboratory.’ He studied a sheet of paper with an expressionless face, stared at Jane Makepeace for a moment and passed the sheet to Joe, ensuring that Miss Makepeace caught a clear glimpse of the police letterhead.

‘Now what have we?’ Joe began to mutter. He summarized for his audience: ‘The fingerprints lifted from the enclosed object were clear. Photographs reveal, apart from smudged prints—possibly those of the owner—one thumb and one first finger. The thumb provides fifteen distinct points of agreement with that of one of the people whose prints were sent in from the château. Fifteen! Remind me, Jacquemin, how many you require in France for a conviction. Twelve, you say. Will you show Miss Makepeace the object on which her fingerprints were so clearly evident?’

Jacquemin opened the smaller envelope and placed the lens cap on the desk.

‘You gave it to Estelle to hold. She still had it clutched in her dead hand on the pathologist’s slab. I told you the dead could speak, Jane.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

Joe held his breath. If this was not Jane Makepeace’s breaking point, she didn’t have one.

The room fell silent, all eyes turned on her.

Pale with stress or anger, she rose to her feet and, ignoring Joe, spoke to Jacquemin in clear French. ‘This cap is the bit that comes at the front of the camera that Cecily’s so proud of. She didn’t exactly pass it around for the appreciation of the crowd—she is rather possessive and secretive about it. But I managed to get my hands on it on one occasion. If you’ve developed the film, you’ll have noticed a picture of a group of us posing in the courtyard. I’m on the front row. Cecily asked me to hold the lens cap for her while she took the photograph … she didn’t want to put it down on the gravel … always treading on it, she said. You can ask any one of the others who were there at the time. They’ll tell you. Of course my prints are on that thing! I’m always the one who gets asked to hold things, find things, sort things out! And now I’m being expected to bear the responsibility for this nonsense? Not on your life, Commissaire!’

Enjoying Jacquemin’s consternation, she drew herself up to her full height and with the cool, amused expression of a Greek Kore added: ‘And now I’m leaving to go about my lawful business. I suggest you get on with yours.’

Joe and Jacquemin looked at each other, unable to conceal a flash of dismay. Each understood that the case against her was so weak as to be laughed out of court in France or in England. Jacquemin had been right—a confession was essential. It was clear that nothing less would bring her to justice. It was equally clear that she would never deliver one.

‘No! Make her stay, Joe!’ A shrieking, stamping Fury dashed forward and blocked her path. Dorcas delivered to her face a torrent of cursing in Romany, as far as Joe could follow a word. ‘You’re a murdering, hard-hearted witch! And why,’ she turned to Joe, ‘do you keep saying she took one life? Doesn’t Estelle’s baby count for anything? Two!’ she yelled at Jane. ‘They were brought in as an offering—like a cat’s kill in the night. “There, see what a loving cat I’ve been. Blood on the carpet? You should be grateful. I did it for you … Pat my head and tell me how clever I am …” She can’t just walk out of here … Joe? Commissaire?’