“But don’t you think it’s pretty unlikely that she knows about this medieval couple? Isn’t that the kind of thing only history buffs would know about?”

“I don’t know. It is an unusual name, Heloise. She must get asked about it all the time. I mean, like, I went to school with this chick called Isolde, and people were always bringing up Tristan when they heard her name.”

Schäfer stared at her blankly from across the desk.

“Isolde,” Augustin repeated. “You know, like Tristan and Isolde.”

Still nothing.

“For Christ’s sake,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Tristan and Isolde, like Abélard and Héloïse, are a famous pair of lovers from the Middle Ages.”

“This may come as a shock to you,” Schäfer said, “but that was before my time. I don’t know any of these fools you’re talking about.”

“My point is just that Heloise must have heard about her namesake. She must know the story. At some point or other in her life, someone must have mentioned it to her.”

Schäfer pulled out his phone. “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

It startled Heloise when her phone rang.

She had shared a bottle of white wine with Martin while she told him about Anna Kiel, even though the doctors had advised her not to mix alcohol with the painkillers she had brought home from the hospital. They had dozed off on the sofa, intertwined and exhausted, and Heloise had fallen into a coma-like sleep. The light-colored silk pillow she had been lying on was wet with saliva, and her head felt heavy.

She pulled her phone out of the crack between the sofa cushions.

“Hello?” She spoke softly so as not to wake Martin.

“Hi! Sorry, did I wake you?” Schäfer asked.

“No. Well, a little.”

“How are you doing?”

“A little groggy, sore throat.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that, but it’ll pass soon. I promise you.”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know … What’s up?”

“We were just looking at the case and trying to find some sort of red thread, something that connects you and Anna Kiel, right?”

“Okay?”

Heloise suddenly remembered Anna’s phone call earlier in the day.

“You don’t happen to have a bachelor’s degree in history, do you?” Schäfer asked.

Heloise could hear him turning pages. “No, undergrad business major and a master’s in communication and journalism. Why?” She sat up on the sofa and started rubbing one of her eyes.

“Does Abélard and Héloïse mean anything to you?”

Heloise’s hand stopped midmotion, and she stared with her one free eye at the candle’s bluish-yellow flame, which was still burning on the coffee table in front of her.

A pain spread through her chest, as if Schäfer had just branded her with his words.

“Abélard and Héloïse?” Heloise repeated.