The next morning, the cloister had been swept and sanded, as if a particularly fussy housemaid had taken it into her head to scrub the whole place. Pale sun pushed, half–hearted, through the low cloud. It seemed a different world from the echoing damp of the night before.

“Light changes men,” Lomas said quietly to Makepeace, as they waited by the verger’s desk. “Let’s see what it does to their memories.”

They had arranged it with the Dean—a “practical review of movements,” as Lomas phrased it, designed to “satisfy all concerned that no innocent man would be wrongly suspected.” The Dean, cornered into cooperation, had sent round notes. One by one, the figures Lomas cared about most drifted into the cloister as if summoned for a fitting.

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