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later. What was this contusion?”
    “A bruise on the back of her head,” Dr. Lucy said. “Inflicted before she died.”
    “Are you sure?” Luke said.
    “It had started to heal—the blood was beginning to clot—never mind. But she was definitely hit on the head before she died. It could have been something floating, or it could have been more deliberate. It’s not for me to tell. But it looks to me like she might have been hit over the head, then strung up to die.”
    “You think it was murder?”
    “I’d be very surprised if it was suicide.” She smiled. “Just like one of those puzzles, eh?”
    Luke thanked her and shut the door behind her, then he turned to me.
    “Guess I was wrong about suicide,” he said, “Although don’t tell anyone—Sophie? Soph? You okay?”
    He tilted my chin up to him and peered anxiously at me. “You’re not having a relapse, are you? Algae in the liver or something?”
    I shook my head. “I just remembered,” I said, and my voice sounded very weak.
    “Remembered what?”
    “What happened. On Saturday night. I didn’t hit my head. Someone hit it for me.”

Chapter Five
    The castle at Tintagel was no more than a few walls and rocks, half ready to tumble into the sea. You could walk right to the edge of the cliff—not a sharp, sheer corner like in films, but a gradual fading away into concave rock. Too close and you’d die.
    Maybe all those cliff top walks with Dad and Norma Jean are behind my fear of heights. I don’t know. I was standing well away from the edge.
    I’d been here before, when I was quite small, but it had been raining then and we’d not bothered to go up to the actual English Heritage site. But today I’d blackmailed Luke: take me there, or I won’t tell you what happened in the cave.
    He looked sulky, but eventually, after insisting I was to be allowed nowhere near anything that controlled anything in the car, he agreed. I took him to Pengenna’s Cornish pasty shop for lunch, and we sat on a bench overlooking the cove, eating the best pasties in the world.
    “Well?” Luke said, not trying very hard to hide his impatience.
    “Well, what?”
    “You know what. What happened on Saturday night?”
    I took a leisurely bite of my pasty. You have to be careful with a Cornish pasty, or the pastry breaks away and the vegetables (for I had not, of course, ordered a traditional pasty) fall all over the floor.
    “I went down to the cave,” I said. “With a torch and good walking boots and Norma Jean.”
    “Surely you didn’t take her for safety reasons?”
    “Well, she could probably lick an intruder to death. Choke them with blonde hair. I took her for company, Luke; it’s less scary with someone as silly as her around.”
    “Of course.”
    I took another bite. Luke narrowed his eyes at me. “Sophie…”
    “All right, okay. I was in the cave, I think I was looking at the hooks on the ceiling. There’s a row of them, going right back. I was going to follow them, I think I’d reached maybe the third or fourth one—I couldn’t see how many there really were, because it really was black in the back of that cave. And I thought I heard someone behind me, but I guessed it was Norma so I ignored it. She was nosing around a dead crab or something gross. I didn’t look too clearly. And then…” I tried to remember. “There was a shadow, and you know how you know when there’s someone there? I—I think I turned around, and then…”
    I tried to remember, I really did, but nothing came. My mind was blank.
    “There was someone there,” I said, staring hard at the sea, seeing nothing. “Something hit my head, I don’t remember…”
    Luke touched my hand, and I looked round at him. I’d almost forgotten he was there.
    “What do you remember?” he asked, quietly.
    “I—there was someone there, and… I remember…something hit my head.” I touched the bruise under my hair. It had hurt that morning when I was shampooing, but I’d ignored