As soon as he left, Bea remembered Dan, shocked that she could have forgotten him, and filled with sudden panic, as if she had been dragged from a deep dark place of comfort, guilty in the face of reality. She drove to Chateau L’Orée des Vignes, playing the radio loudly, to block out her thoughts. The calm that she had felt talking to Vincent had gone. She walked from the car, around the outsized giant of a chateau, to the front. Her father had said he’d wait for her in the lobby but he was standing on the forecourt, with the view behind him, in his sunglasses, looking out for her.

‘Dad – they’re –’ She stopped.

‘What?’

She wanted to unburden herself of the shock, and share it, but she remembered it would shock him, too.

‘What is it?’ he said, when he saw her expression.

‘Shall we go inside?’

‘Tell me now,’ he said.

An SUV pulled up very near them and a liveried valet hurried down the steps towards it. All four doors opened and they heard a family, loudly talking.

‘Over here,’ said Bea. She walked away from the people getting out of the car and her father followed.

She paused, and waited, until she had his attention. She left a silence so he could prepare himself.

‘They’re calling it murder,’ she said.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I am telling you.’

He took off his dark glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes. Behind them the noisy family went up the steps. They could hear their rolling cases bumping on the stone.

‘When?’ said Griff. He meant when did she find out.

‘One of the gendarmes just said it, just –’ She stopped. ‘Like I knew already. While they were looking in Alex’s room. But we didn’t know, did we?’

‘I suspected.’

‘They said they were investigating a murder,’ she said. ‘And then when Capitaine Vincent came, we talked about it.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said – I don’t know. Nothing. There isn’t any detail, or anything. I think they just want to find out everything they can from us.’

‘From us? What kind of thing?’

‘How we get on – as a family?’

‘Are they still searching Paligny, now?’

‘No, they left.’

‘Where did they look?’

‘In his room.’

‘What were they looking for?’

‘They didn’t say. They took a notebook of Alex’s and his computer. But they didn’t look for fingerprints or anything. I don’t know what they were looking for.’

He walked away from her. She watched his back. She saw him take deep breaths and then nod, as if he were listening to himself say something, and responding.

‘Is Philip Roche still here?’ she asked.

‘No. He’s gone to Paris.’

‘You shouldn’t have been so rude to him.’

‘He can do whatever he does from his office,’ said Griff. ‘We’ve got Arun.’