“We did,” the prisoner replied. “Taped into his left armpit, he had a small light-case-cum-wallet. An étui is probably what he’d asked for at Asprey’s when he kitted himself out in London. It was of the softest calfskin, but it can’t have been comfortable even so in that hot, dry country. He was half French, half English, I was later to find out when I had time to do a little research. An employee, but also a relative of one of the Company’s directors. I never did find out whether Louis Duvallon was out and about on the Company’s business or making a well-funded break for freedom on his own account. I rather suspect the latter. It must have been excruciatingly tedious for a sophisticated chap like Louis to have been cut off from the world for six months with no sign of relief, bombed, shot at, starved by a rabble of discontented peasants. He can’t have been enjoying Uncle Cecil’s hospitality all that much, either.”

“Can you be certain that he was a lone rider? Risky thing to do, wasn’t it? Taking off through enemy territory like that all by oneself?”

“Yes. Indeed. That’s what made me think he was engaged in clandestine, possibly criminal activity. But the suspicion was strong among us that he was not a single swallow. Just in case his friends turned up enquiring, I decided to keep his body available for a day or two before burial. There was a sort of outhouse on the cool southern side of the cabin. With a big stone slab for butchering and keeping bush meat, I assumed. We laid him out there in a rudimentary coffin we cobbled together from a pile of planks left over from the building.”

“You buried him out on the Modder?”