Something had struck the major so powerfully that he had immediately fallen to the ground, thrown backwards by the force of the blow. Had she been waiting here in the dark, ready to strike? It seemed an unnatural, difficult method of attack. From Petignat’s description the blow had landed in the centre of the forehead, and it was hard to imagine how she would have achieved such an angle, or such force. She would have had to be above him.

He climbed the ladder to the loft, crawling on hands and knees, as the rock roof sloped inwards towards the darkness of the rear of the cave. Ariane was inscrutable, a silhouette in the doorway. Looking down at her, he saw what had been invisible from ground level: a pulley wheel fixed into the rock in the centre of the roof. The rope threaded through it was secured to a beam of the loft and the free end was looped back and caught in the same place. It must originally have had some use in lifting baskets of grapes, or barrels of wine during the processing of the grapes. Later it would have hauled hay into the loft, and hoisted the dead pigs vertical to be butchered.

He suddenly saw what its most recent purpose had been. It must have been that hook that had hit the major in the forehead, as Petignat had described. No wonder he hadn’t seen it coming. It would have swooped at him from above eye level. Theo loosened the rope and called to Ariane to stand clear. He let go of the hook; it swung straight at the door. The pendulum swung his thoughts on a new arc.

Could it have been an accident? A man hated by a whole community, killed by a random blow? If the hook-end of the rope was loose, lying on the edge of the loft, could the opening of the door by chance have caused it to fall free the whole of its length, just sufficient to catch the major on the top of his head? It did not seem very likely, but it had to be considered as a possibility if Ariane was speaking the truth: that he was already lying concussed or dead when she found him. But whatever had happened at that moment, nothing so far explained the cut throat. That could not have been an accident.

He wondered if he would succeed in peeling back any more layers of Ariane’s confession, or whether it was even wise to try. He was now more doubtful that she had killed the major. The story that she told rang true for the very reason that it explained nothing. If you were going to fabricate a story, it would at least be one that fitted the facts. This tale of finding him dead but uninjured was too implausible to be anything except the truth. But not the whole truth. The gaps in her story, the killing itself, the slashing of the throat, the fountain of blood that must have pulsed out of his neck, his dying cry must be too horrible for her to recall. She had probably told him as much as she could bear and he could not expect any more.