The professor flapped his coat like the wings of a bird as he stood back and looked up at the church. Underneath the coat, he was still wearing the baggy pinstripe suit. ‘You see, the sarcophagus dates from a time before the practice of shutting up a corpse in a box and burying it. At that time, there was the charnel house and the sarcophagus. A charnel house was known as the “dead place”, or the “place of the dead”.’

Fry stirred for the first time at the mention of the phrase, and Robertson saw that he’d finally got her interest.

‘It was your mention of the dead place that put the idea of a sarcophagus into my mind,’ he explained. ‘But I wasn’t aware at the time of the significance. There could be other interpretations, of course.’

‘What happened in this dead place, Professor?’ asked Fry.

‘A corpse was left exposed to the air until decay had done its work, the flesh had dried and the bones were clean enough for disposal. Periodically, a priest would enter the charnel house to check if the corpse was ready.’

‘Ready?’

‘Our ancestors considered decomposition a perfectly natural stage of the body’s evolution,’ said Robertson. ‘It marked the passage from earthbound spirit to a soul free to ascend to Heaven. They thought it was only the flesh that kept the soul trapped in the body. The soul had to be released to achieve real death. Looked at in that way, decomposition was a positive development. I imagine they might have wanted to observe this process taking place, much as we watch our children growing up.’

As they walked back down the flagged path through the churchyard, Cooper heard the professor muttering to himself. He caught the sound of a familiar phrase and realized the historian was quoting Shakespeare. Hamlet, if he wasn’t mistaken.

‘“Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.”’

Robertson caught Cooper’s eye and smiled.

‘Appropriate, I think. More so than “dust to dust” and all that. Trust the Bard. He always had the right phrase for the occasion.’

‘But that word – sarcophagus,’ said Cooper. ‘Where does it come from?’

‘It’s derived from the Greek. A compound of two words – sark and phagos. We doctors do so love our Latin and Greek.’

Cooper looked at the professor and raised his eyebrows to indicate that he was none the wiser. Robertson beamed with satisfaction and allowed himself a small dramatic pause before he explained.

‘Loosely translated,’ he said, ‘the name means “flesh eater”.’

Before either of the detectives could react, Robertson began to amble around the flagged paths, casting backwards and forwards as if trying to pick up a scent.