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have asked for. Without a word he turned and began to run up the path to the church.
    â€˜Oy! Stop!’ I called after him. ‘Mr. Hartest, you shouldn’t go in there! Not until the police arrive!’
    He stopped and waited for me to catch up with him. ‘Now listen! It’s my church and if some clown’s dumped a body in there, I’ve a right to know about it. If you’re scared, you can wait outside.’ He paused for a moment, looked at me speculatively and went on, ‘On second thoughts, you’re right. I’d be a fool to go blundering around in a crime scene without a witness so you’ll have to be it. Come on!’
    He tucked my arm firmly under his, partially as support but more, I believed, to stop me running off again, pushed open the door and marched me into the church. We set off to walk up the aisle, the strangest couple to undertake this walk together in the thousand years of its existence, I thought: middle-aged farmer, boots treading grass and earth up the smooth red wilton and me, a Lego figure in the firm’s green overalls and white plastic hard hat.
    â€˜The table tomb,’ I whispered. ‘She’s laid out on the tomb. East end, south transept.’
    He stood to gaze down at the scene which had held me spellbound moments before. I watched him closely. There was no mistaking his shock. He made the sign of the cross and went on looking, drinking in every detail. The shock melted into an expression of great sadness, sadness which burned away the irritation between us. It was clear the girl was known to him, possibly even well known.
    â€˜My God,’ he muttered and again, shaking his head, ‘My God!’
    â€˜Do you know her? Family?’ I asked diffidently.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, very nearly family. Let me present . . .’ he gestured to the figures on the tomb, ‘on the right, my ancestor, Sir John Hartest, first Baron Brancaster, and on the left, the mortal remains of the future Lady Brancaster, my son’s fiancée. At least—she
was
the future Lady B. Not any more, it seems.’
    I didn’t know what to say. Polite phrases of condolence would have been out of place but he looked at me questioningly, expecting some sort of response.
    â€˜She’s—she was—beautiful,’ I said hesitantly. ‘I think, no I’m sure, I’ve seen her somewhere before.’
    â€˜You’d have had to have been living on Mars not to recognise her!’ he said surprisingly. ‘This is Taro Tyler. She’s staying with us.’
    â€˜Taro Tyler! Oh, yes, how stupid of me not to have seen it! It’s just that . . . with her eyes closed . . . those wonderful green eyes . . . she’s not so recognisable perhaps.’
    Those remarkable eyes now growing milky under their stiffening lids—I’d seen them smiling out from the side of every bus in London, working their magic in countless up-market TV ads.
    â€˜Thank you. It’s tactful of you to mention the eyes.’
    Was there irony in what he said? I didn’t doubt it and it made me angry. Her eyes, lovely though they were, had received less publicity than her famous breasts. Every man in the country knew their size and had run lustful eyes over them in the tabloid press. It shocked me that, however obliquely, he should be calling up the memory as we gazed in fascinated revulsion at the rust-fringed puncture in that glorious, money-spinning bosom.
    â€˜On her left breast
    A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
    I, the bottom of a cowslip
,’ he murmured but he wasn’t really talking to me.
    â€˜Why do you suppose there’s so little blood?’ I whispered, my eyes drawn to the red-brown patch encircling the dagger blade. ‘There’s just the merest trickle. Wouldn’t you have expected a gush?’
    â€˜Not necessarily—with a heart wound. It’s been expertly done. The dagger