She left the room, closing the door quietly. There was a silence. Rowland put down the port.

“If you laugh, Max,” he said. “If you so much as smile, I warn you…”

“Did I laugh? Smile? Did I say one single word?”

“Wipe that goddamn smug expression off your face, Max.” Rowland sank his head in his hands. “What happened?” he said in irritable tones. “What the fuck happened? When did it happen? I blame the port, Max. I should never have touched it. Up until then it was going so well.”

Upstairs, Lindsay fairly skipped into her room. She sauntered along to the bathroom in bra and underpants. She washed joyfully and sang a few songs. She nipped back to bed, shivering with cold, pulled the eiderdown up around her shoulders, angled the bedside light, and opened Rowland’s green file. For a while she found it hard to concentrate. Rowland’s maddening face kept swimming between her and the pages. She considered his astonishing hair and eyes; she dwelt on the sublime moment when she had wiped the conceit and arrogance off that extraordinary face with those few well-chosen words.

Once or twice she thought she heard sounds from Gini’s room next door. She thought she heard movement, and then, becoming more alert, thought she heard sounds of weeping. But she couldn’t be sure, and these sixteenth-century walls were thick. She listened intently, then decided she must have been mistaken; she could hear only silence now.

She returned, with better concentration, to the file, and read for an hour. When she was still only halfway through, a memory came back to her, and she felt a small pulse of excitement. There was one very obvious and central gap in the story of Maria Cazarès and Jean Lazare—it might, just might, be a gap that she could fill.

Downstairs, Max was tiring—it was past one in the morning—and Rowland was sunk in gloom.

“If you’re working out ways to grovel,” Max said, rising, “you can do it alone. I’ll give the dogs a quick run, then I’m off to bed.”

“I’ll come with you.” Rowland hauled himself from the chair.

They donned overcoats and boots and set off with the dogs on a circuit of the orchard. Rowland’s hearing was keen. After only a few yards he stopped and listened.

“What’s that noise?”

“What noise? I can’t hear a damn thing. Just the wind. Come on, Rowland, it’s bloody cold.”

“Listen.” Rowland did not move. “Music. I can hear music. It’s coming from up there in the hills.”

Max listened, and after a while he heard it too, distant but just discernible, a weird pulsing whooping sound.

“Probably a party,” he said. “A late-night party. What the hell? Come on, Rowland, for God’s sake. I’m freezing.”

“A party?” Rowland still did not move. “Max, there’s no village up there. There’s not even a house. There’s nothing, just fields, trees, the odd barn.”

“Well, maybe it’s an outdoor party. Who cares?”

“In January? In sub-zero temperatures? Max, come on.”