‘My lord, I have told you everything I know.’ I felt my gut constrict. If he chose not to believe me, I had no doubt that he would be prepared to use torture. His casual reference to Francis Throckmorton had been a less than subtle reminder that, in his eyes, I still owed him an unpaid debt. I would not have been surprised to learn that there was a room with the necessary instruments somewhere in this house, and he was right to suppose that no one would come looking for me. But behind the rapid wingbeats of fear in my head, I registered something else. Guise believed I had begun investigating Paul’s death the day after my visit to the King. Meaning he did not know that I had been to Paul’s rooms the same afternoon he was killed. Meaning, then, that Joseph and the dwarf could not have been sent by Guise that day, or they would have told him straight away that they had surprised a third party there, and by now he would have put two and two together and guessed that it was me. But if Guise knew nothing of that visit, then it seemed he must be telling the truth, at least as far as Joseph was concerned, and that Joseph and the dwarf had been searching for whatever they hoped to find at someone else’s behest. I looked at the glass in my hand. So the Duchess of Montpensier had a dwarf who served her, and she was also related to Joseph.
‘But why was he naked?’ Guise said suddenly, addressing the room, as if this question had been needling him all along. I breathed out; it appeared that, for now, he had decided not to push me any further.
‘Changing his clothes in order to escape?’ I offered.
‘Or he’d been fucking,’ Paget remarked, from his place by the hearth. I noticed Guise frown at the crude expression; for all his soldierly manner and his reputation with women, the Duke liked to present himself as pious in matters of decency, as a contrast to the dissolution of Henri’s court.
‘What makes you say so?’ he asked.
‘The garrotte.’ Paget held out his palms as if it were obvious. ‘It’s not easy to take a tall man by surprise with a ligature around his neck, if he’s standing. He would have struggled. If, on the other hand, he’d been lying down and willingly allowed it, he might not have realised it was no longer a game until it was too late.’
The Duke’s brow knotted. ‘Game? What are you talking about?’
Paget cleared his throat discreetly. ‘Some gentlemen, I understand, find pleasure is enhanced by a simulation of choking during the act of love.’
Guise looked faintly appalled. ‘Do they? Is that what people do in England?’
‘I don’t believe it’s exclusive to any one region. I’m sure it goes on in Italy, for instance – does it not, Bruno?’
‘Everything goes on in Italy,’ Guise said darkly, giving me a look.
‘I cannot be held responsible for all of it,’ I said. Guise harrumphed and I saw Paget suppress a smile. In that moment he almost felt like an ally.
‘Sounds like the sort of thing the Valois would get up to,’ Guise said, with evident disgust. I guessed his own dealings with women did not allow for much variety or imagination in the bedchamber. On your back, straight in and out, as God intended. I thought of the trace of ejaculate I had seen on Joseph’s skin. Had he gone there to meet his mistress and instead walked into his murderer? Were they one and the same?
I turned to Paget. ‘Didn’t you tell me the old neighbour downstairs saw someone going up to the room?’
He nodded. ‘Three people, she says. The first around noon in a friar’s habit, the second, shortly after – she says she could make out only a dark cloak and hat. According to her, the friar left again an hour or so later, but she didn’t see the second person leave, though she heard nothing. The third, we must suppose, was you, Bruno.’ He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. ‘Though I have to say I would not rely too heavily on that woman’s testimony. It’s pitch-dark in that hallway and her eyes are failing, though she can see the glint of a coin readily enough.’
‘She didn’t see the second person because they had put on the friar’s habit,’ I said, animated again despite myself. ‘And she didn’t hear anything because the original friar – Joseph – was already dead.’
The Duke’s stare burned into me. He appeared to be calculating. ‘You will find this person in the cloak and hat for me. But be discreet about it. My sister had a family connection with de Chartres – I do not want her honour compromised.’
I blinked at him, taken aback. ‘Me?’
He inclined his head. ‘I am assured by various sources that among your dubious talents is the ability to find out a murderer, especially one who thinks he is clever enough to have hidden his tracks. I need to know who killed these men and why. If, as I have suspected from the beginning, it is someone at the Louvre, my reach is limited. There are doors there closed to me and anyone known to be connected with me. Whereas you…’
‘You are mistaken, my lord. The doors of the Louvre are firmly closed to me too – I am banished from court.’
‘Officially, perhaps. But Henri trusts you. You have Corbinelli’s ear. You could learn much that is hidden from me, if you were to apply yourself.’
‘You want me to spy on my friends for you?’
He let
