Nicholas stepped quietly forward, but I put up a hand to restrain him. I said softly, ‘Mistress Slanning.’ Strange, even in that extremity, I could not allow myself the presumption of calling her by her first name.

I would not have thought her body could have tensed any further but it did, becoming quite rigid. Then, slowly, she turned her head to look at me. Those blue eyes, so like her brother’s, were wild and staring. Her brows drew together in a frown.

‘Master Shardlake?’ she said in a quiet, puzzled voice. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I came to speak to Vowell. To tell him your brother is dead.’ I moved my right hand a little. ‘Mistress Slanning, please let me have that knife.’ She did not reply; her breath came in short pants, as though she were trying to hold it in, to stop breathing. ‘Please,’ I implored. ‘I wish only to help you.’

‘Why would you help me? I tried to destroy you, and Edward and that lawyer Coleswyn. I called you heretics. As you are.’ Her grip on the knife tightened, and she lifted the blade slightly.

‘I think you were not yourself. Please, mistress, give me the knife.’ I took half a step forward, stretching out my hand.

She slowly lifted the knife towards her throat.

‘No!’ Nicholas cried out, with such force and passion that Isabel paused, the blade almost at her neck, where the arteries pulsed under the wrinkled white skin.

‘It’s not worth it!’ he said passionately. ‘Whatever you did, madam, whatever your family did, it’s not worth that!’

She stared at him for a moment. Then she lowered the knife, but held it pointing outwards. I raised my arm to protect myself, fearing she would attack: Isabel was a thin, ageing woman, but desperation gives strength to the weakest. But it was not us she attacked; instead she turned round again and thrust the knife into her beloved picture, stabbing at it with long, powerful slashes, so hard that a piece of plaster broke off beside the crack in the wall that the experts had noticed. She went on and on, making desperate grunting sounds, as more of the paint and plaster crumbled. Then her hand slipped and the knife gashed her other arm, blood spurting through the fabric of her dress. She winced at the unexpected pain and dropped the knife. Clutching her arm, Isabel crumpled in a heap on the floor, and began to cry. She lay there, sobbing desperately with the grief and guilt of a lifetime.