She’d seen many a trail go cold, frustrated by her inability to know whether some letter or document was still in existence. Then she remembered Professor Devlin, with his dining table crafted by Lovell. Lovell, who according to Devlin was an amateur woodworker … She sifted through the papers again, sure that there was nothing in them mentioning this hobby. Either Devlin had some book, some evidence she’d failed so far to find, or else he was myth-making. This, too, she saw all the time: people who ‘just knew’ that the antique in their possession had once belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie or Sir Walter Scott. If it turned out she only had Devlin’s word for it that Lovell had worked with wood, then the whole notion that he had left the coffins on Arthur’s Seat would begin to crumble. She sat back, annoyed with herself. All this time, she’d been working on an assumption that could turn out to be false. Lovell had left Edinburgh in 1832; the boys had stumbled on the cave containing the coffins in June 1836. Could they have gone undetected for so long?

She lifted something from the desk-top. It was a Polaroid she’d taken in Surgeons’ Hall – the portrait of Lovell. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered the ravages of Africa. His skin was pale and smooth, his face youthful. She had pencilled the artist’s name on the back. She got up and left her room again, opened the door to her boss’s office and switched on his light. He had a shelf of thick reference books, and she found the one she needed, turned to the painter’s name, J. Scott Jauncey. ‘Active in Edinburgh 1825–35,’ she read, ‘chiefly landscapes, but some portraiture.’ After which he’d taken himself to Europe for many years before settling in Hove. So Lovell had sat for the portrait during his early years in Edinburgh, before his own travels. She wondered if such a thing was the luxury it seemed, to be afforded only by the well-off. Then she thought of Reverend Kirkpatrick … maybe the portrait had been at his request, something to be sent west to the Ayrshire parish, to remind the minister of his charge.

Again, there might be a clue buried deep within Surgeons’ Hall, some record of the portrait’s history prior to its arrival there.

‘Monday,’ she said out loud. It could wait till Monday. She had the weekend to look forward to … and a Lou Reed concert to survive.

Switching off her boss’s light, she heard another noise, much closer. The door to the outer office swung open and the lights all came on. Jean took half a step back, then saw it was just the cleaner.

‘You gave me a fright,’ she said, putting a hand to her chest.

The cleaner just smiled and put a bin-bag down, heading back into the hallway to fetch her vacuum cleaner.

‘Mind if I get started?’ she asked.