Arthur had left for Oakhangar Hall that morning and had rung her to say that Sam Appleyard, Johnny’s step-father, had finally got back from the Antarctic and that the police were coming over to brief him on the investigation. Lizzie had felt a huge burst of joy just to hear Arthur’s voice and then she had felt horribly guilty that in the middle of so much grief and uncertainty she felt so happy.

She took a deep breath of the wood smoke–scented air, wrapped an old tartan rug more closely around her legs and opened up her tablet, typing in the name Amy Robsart. She’d had some vague idea that in the absence of any other clues to Johnny’s disappearance, the more she could learn about Amy, the more it might help. First, she looked for a portrait, and found some suitably melodramatic ones painted by the Pre-Raphaelites that showed Amy’s prone body tumbled at the bottom of the Cumnor stair. That was not what she wanted, though. Searching again she found a little miniature that historians had identified as possibly Amy Robsart. It was pretty and innocent-looking with the sitter recorded as aged eighteen years, her bodice adorned with a brooch that combined a spray of oak leaves and some yellow flowers.

Lizzie’s first thought was that she looked remarkably like Amelia had done when they’d all attended a medieval banquet as part of some event organised by Dudley’s management years ago. It was uncanny.

She turned to the written articles. There were hundreds, thousands, of entries listed. The mysterious circumstances of Amy’s death had clearly fascinated people for centuries. Lizzie deliberately chose a modern interpretation of events to try to counterbalance the blatant prejudice she had read in Hugh Tighe’s nineteenth-century version.

Amy Robsart, she discovered, had died on 8th September 1560. Her body was found at the foot of a staircase at Cumnor Place. Amy had been living there as the guest of one of her husband’s friends whilst her husband of ten years, Robert Dudley, had been up to various high jinks with the Queen back in Windsor. The circumstances had not initially been considered suspicious; in fact, the implication was that it might have been suicide rather than murder. The servants said that Amy had been in a strange mood that morning, very insistent that they all go to the fair in Abingdon and leave her alone. When some of them refused because it was unseemly on a Sunday, she became angry with them. There were also plenty of acquaintances ready to come forward to say how unhappy Amy had been, that she had been ill and depressed, that she was suffering as a result of Robert’s neglect because his only interest was spending time with the Queen.

Lizzie winced. Guilt pricked her. She and Dudley might not have had exactly the same sort of relationship as Elizabeth and Robert but there were sufficient similarities to make her feel very uncomfortable.

She read on. On the other hand, the author of the article reported austerely, there are historians who have pointed out that Amy’s letters were cheerful and positive, that she had bought some new clothes and that she seemed excited about something.