Moira was sitting up in bed when Nell and Penny arrived at the doctor’s house. Eleni, the doctor’s wife, had lent her a fetching bed jacket with lacy arms, not the sort of garment they normally associated with Moira.

‘You look like a Jane Austen heroine,’ Nell teased her.

‘These people are so kind!’ said Moira. ‘I keep offering to join you lot in the hotel but they won’t hear of it. Apparently this bug was really lethal. He says I’ve got to stay in bed or anyway on a sofa for a week! They have agreed at least to let me pay them. And thank God the doctor has a wonderful library stuffed with history books, especially about this island.’

‘Really?’ Nell was genuinely surprised that any books had been written about tiny Kyri. The island was so small and inconspicuous that it was hard to imagine it had much history. What had Takis’s son called it? ‘A dot in the ocean, full of goats and relatives.’

‘The archaeologists have dug up loads of shards of Minoan pottery, but that’s not the fun bit.’

‘Oh?’ Nell’s interest was beginning to wane.

‘Pirates!’ Moira sounded as if she’d won the lottery. ‘There’s so much been done on classical civilization, but hardly anyone knows about the French Corsairs who ruled this coast. Pirates were masters of the sea here for two hundred years! They used to rob the Turks and hide their booty in the caves.’

‘It all sounds wonderfully Johnny Depp,’ Nell nodded, recalling that Takis had mentioned pirates too.

‘Listen to this!’ Moira picked up an ancient-looking tome and read aloud: ‘“The island of Kyri was for many years the pirates’ place of rendezvous, where they spent in terrible debaucheries the booty they robbed from the Turks – to the great advantage of the ladies, who are none of the coyest nor the ugliest . . .”’

‘Translation, please,’ interrupted Penny.

‘It means,’ supplied Nell, laughing, ‘the local girls were both good-looking and up for it!’

‘And listen to this,’ Moira added enthusiastically. ‘“The ladies of Kyri had no other employment than making love or cotton stockings . . .” Don’t you adore that? Which would you choose? To make love or cotton stockings? I know which I’d do!’

‘Make cotton stockings, obviously,’ Penny teased.

‘And the best thing of all, a real mystery –’ Moira was getting so excited, they thought she’d have a relapse – ‘was the statue!’

‘What statue was that?’ asked Penny.

‘One of the pirates, Olivier de Menton, found this incredible statue of a reclining Venus. She was lying on a day bed, holding the apple she’d been handed by Paris – the one that started the Trojan War.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Nell replied hastily.

‘De Menton told the French king about the statue, and was offered a pardon if he brought it to Paris.’

‘And?’