“You’re talking with the benefit of hindsight, Elizabeth,” Avery pointed out. “We know now that Amy’s death forever ruined Robert Dudley’s chances of marrying the Queen but that might not have been apparent to him at the time. He was dazzled by ambition and drunk on the life he was living. Nothing and no one was going to get in the way of him achieving all that he wanted. He lived in a bubble far removed from reality, I think, and that sort of existence warps your reality.”

“Just like being a celebrity,” Lizzie agreed, with a grimace. “What happened after Amy’s death?”

“She was buried at St Mary’s Church in Oxford,” Avery said. “It was a lavish funeral but Robert Dudley didn’t attend.”

“That looks bad,” Lizzie said.

“It wasn’t unusual in the Tudor period,” Avery said, “and perhaps it was fortuitous because when the vicar gave his sermon, he referred to Amy being ‘so pitifully murdered’ which he then tried to pass off as a slip of the tongue.”

“Oh God,” Lizzie said, “how awkward.”

“Amy’s tomb is long gone,” Avery said. Her blue eyes were distant. “It was dismantled in the late eighteenth century leaving only a plaque in the choir to commemorate her death.”

“It feels as though they were trying to tidy her away,” Lizzie said, “as though it had never happened.”

“Certainly, I think Robert Dudley wished he could forget about it,” Avery said drily. “It haunted him forever after. When Amy’s half-brother John Appleyard expressed concerns that her death had never been properly explained and that he was sure it was murder he was imprisoned and questioned by the Privy Council. He very quickly changed his mind.”

“That sounds like intimidation,” Lizzie said. A thought occurred to her. “What did Arthur Robsart have to say about Amy’s death?” she asked.

“He never expressed any doubt over the legitimacy of the inquest’s findings,” Avery said, “so one can only assume that he believed that it was an accident. Whether Arthur liked his brother-in-law or not was a different matter, I imagine, but Arthur Robsart always was...” she paused “...discreet.”

“So Johnny was the one who stirred up trouble then as now,” Lizzie said thoughtfully. “The parallels seem endless.”

“But the pattern is always different,” Avery said. “Each time it happens it changes.”

Despite the warmth of the early autumn sun, Lizzie shivered. “You mentioned before that there was a repeating pattern. Have other people died?”

“Three times, to my knowledge, Elizabeth dear,” Avery said. “There was an Amyas Latimer who was a clerk in holy orders in Oxford in the seventeenth century. The details are vague because it was a delicate case under the civil and ecclesiastical laws of the time but it seems he was involved in a love triangle with two of his fellow scholars—both male. He died in a fall down the tower stair in the Church of St Mary by Amy’s tomb. It was ruled to be an accident but there were questions raised of both suicide and murder. It was quite a scandal at the time despite the attempts of the authorities to hush it up.”