“After stabbing Nicolas and throwing him down at Harald’s feet, like a dead dog, Burckhardt piously closed his father’s tomb. What I can’t get out of my mind is a suspicion that Nicolas wasn’t dead when the stone was lowered. If you remember the position of the body…Well, enough of that. It certainly wouldn’t have worried Burckhardt. Having disposed of one traitor, he went after his wife. He would have killed her too, if it hadn’t been for the nurse, who thought he was delirious. She testified to his insane strength and mentioned that his dagger was not at his belt. But Burckhardt was half dead from arsenic poisoning. They wrestled him back into bed, and Konstanze finished him off in the next cup of gruel.

“Maybe he had time, before he died, to whisper an accusation to a servant or priest. Maybe not; she would have watched him closely, and arsenic doesn’t leave a man particularly coherent. In any case, the bishop got suspicious. He disliked Konstanze anyhow. So she got her just deserts, by an ironic miscarriage of justice—though I think the punishment was worse than the crime.”

“Death by arsenic poisoning is exceedingly painful,” said Blankenhagen.

“I know. But the count had helped torture Riemenschneider and had bashed in the skulls of a lot of miserable peasants who were only trying to get their rights…I guess they were all rotten.”

“So we figured,” Tony said sweepingly, “that the shrine had to be in the countess’s room. The count had the whole castle at his disposal, but she was limited to her own room.”

“We,” I said. “Yes.”

“One more thing,” Tony said, ignoring me. “I don’t think anyone else caught this. Remember Irma’s cry at the séance—‘das Feuer’? That was the result of Schmidt’s hypnotic talents and the Gräfin’s gruesome stories; but what I didn’t think of until later was that Konstanze didn’t know German. She was a Spaniard, and she and Burckhardt probably communicated by means of the Latin spoken by the noble classes in those days. So if she had given a last frantic scream, as she may well have done, it would have been in Latin or Spanish. In other words—no ghost.”

“Obviously,” I said.

“Sooo clever,” murmured Irma.

“That’s about it,” I said briskly. “No more questions?”

“Only my heart’s gratitude,” said Irma mistily. “Now I go to see that we have a celebration dinner. I cook it with my own hands, and we dine together, yes? And a bottle of Sekt.”

“Sekt,” I said glumly. Sekt is German champagne. It is terrible stuff.

Irma departed, to cook her way into somebody’s heart. I wondered whose heart she was aiming for.

I looked from one man to the other. Neither of them moved.

“Well,” I said.

“I want to talk to you,” said Tony to me, glaring at Blankenhagen.

“And so do I,” said the doctor, staying put.

“Go ahead,” I said.