The couple look at one another and smile. “Listen to us prattling on. Can you forgive us, Mr. Blythe?”

“Call me Harry. Please. And there’s nothing to forgive.”

“Ralph says that you’re taking photographs?”

“I’m working as an agent for a photographer. I’m here to take photographs of graves on behalf of bereaved families.”

“Oh, dear.” Cassie wrinkles her nose. “What a sad task. And you called in to see your brother en route?”

“I can’t help but think of them as I photograph other families’ graves.”

“Them?”

“I lost two brothers. My other brother, Francis, doesn’t have a grave. I don’t know where he is.”

“You poor boy. You must give your brother’s details to Ralph. He has contacts. He can pull strings, make things happen, find things out.”

“Absolutely,” says Ralph, his hand again on Harry’s shoulder. “Write it all down for me and I’ll do my best. If he’s findable, I’ll find him. But come on, for this evening at least, let me seize you away from graves and my wife’s interrogations. I’ll give you the interior tour.”

HARRY WALKS AROUND the room. The ceiling, rising to new beams, is high, and the walls are white plaster. It looks like a room in which monks, or knights, ought to be lined up along a table. There is a huge fireplace at the far end of it, broad enough to roast an ox. Logs smolder white in the grate. Either side of the fireplace there are arrangements of teasels in old army-issue rum jars. He has a strange taste in his mouth when he looks at the jars. Their furniture, which is somewhat threadbare and diminished by the proportions of the room, is mostly clustered around the fire. Harry smells woodsmoke and new plaster.

“Is the house very old?”

“Thirteenth century, or thereabouts, as far as we can tell. It appears on some military maps as Brokenback Barn, but according to locals it was once some kind of convent. Poor old house. Imagine standing quietly in a field for seven hundred years just to have the twentieth century hurl explosives at you. It was full of rusted barbed wire and water bottles and horse bones, and you don’t want to know what they’d done in the cellar. This is interesting, though.” He walks Harry toward an area of the wall that hasn’t been skimmed smooth with new plaster. “Names, you see? And dates and regiments. We know who has been here. It’s like they all signed the guest register.”

Harry puts his hand to the plaster. There are regimental numbers and insignia and monograms and initials. There are place-names and nicknames and crudely carved faces.

“Good God,” he says.