‘I’ll see. I don’t believe he kept a diary, but our rubricator will have a list of correspondence.’

On the top of the harpsichord was a framed portrait, a hololith of Aen Froigre, smiling.

I picked it up and studied it.

‘The last portrait of him,’ she said. ‘Taken at the fete. My last connection with him.’

‘Where did he die?’

‘The Folly,’ said Lady Froigre. ‘He died in the Folly.’

The woods were damp and dark. Boughs creaked in the late afternoon wind, and odd birdsong thrilled from the shadows.

The Folly was a stone drum capped by a slate needle. Inside, it was bare and terribly musty. Sand doves fluttered up in the roof spaces. Cobwebs glazed the bare windows.

‘This is where I found him,’ said a voice from behind me.

I turned. Rinton Froigre stooped in under the doorframe. He was a well-made boy of twenty-five, with his mother’s lush red hair. His eyes had a curious, hooded aspect.

‘Rinton.’

‘Sir,’ he bowed slightly.

‘Was he dead when you found him?’

‘No, inquisitor. He was laughing and talking. He liked to come up here. He loved the Folly. I came up to thank him for the fete that he had thrown in my honour. We were talking together when suddenly he went into convulsions. Just minutes later, before I could summon help, he was dead.’

I didn’t know Rinton Froigre well, though his service record was very respectable, and I knew his father had been proud of him. Aen had never mentioned any animosity from his son, but in any noble house there is always the spectre of succession to consider. Rinton had been alone with his father at the time of death. He was a seasoned soldier, undoubtedly no stranger to the act of killing.

I kept an open mind – literally. Even without any invasive mental probing, it is possible for a psionic of my ability to sense surface thoughts. There was no flavour of deceit about Rinton’s person, though I could feel carefully contained loss, and the tingle of trepidation. Small wonder, I considered. Uncommon are the citizens of the Imperium who do not register anxiety at being quizzed by an inquisitor of the Holy Ordos.

There was no point pressing him now. Rinton’s story might easily be put to the test with an auto-seance, during which psychometric techniques would simply reveal the truth of his father’s last moments to me.

Rinton walked me back to the Hall, and left me to my ponderings in Aen’s study. It was as he had left it, I was told.