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sister, that is if you do not require the corpse further for your investigation. The sooner it is done, the better.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
    Fidelma did not answer but, bracing herself, she drew back the cloth from the body.
    No matter how many times Fidelma encountered death, and violent death was no stranger td her, she always felt an abhorrence at the savagery of it. She always tried to look at corpses as an abstract, tried not to think of them as once living, sentient beings who had loved, laughed and enjoyed life. She compressed her lips firmly and forced herself to look down at the white rotting flesh.
    ‘As you will see, sister,’ the abbess pointed out unnecessarily, ‘the head has been hacked off. Thus we have no means of identifying the unfortunate.’

    Fidelma’s eyes had immediately gone to the wound above the heart.
    ‘Stabbed first,’ she said, half to herself. ‘The slight bruising shows that the wound was not made after death. Stabbed in the heart and then decapitated afterwards.’
    Abbess Draigen watched the young dálaigh with an impassive expression.
    Fidelma forced herself to examine the severed flesh around the neck. Then she pulled back and looked at the body as a whole.
    ‘A young woman. Scarcely beyond the age of choice. I would hazard that she was no more than eighteen. Perhaps younger.’
    Her eye caught a discolouration of the flesh around the right ankle. She frowned and examined it more closely.
    ‘Was this where she was tied to the well rope?’ she demanded.
    Abbess Draigen shook her head.
    ‘The sisters who found the corpse said it was hanging by the left ankle and tied with rope.’
    Fidelma turned her attention to the left ankle and saw faint marks and indentations on it. Indeed, such marks looked more consistent with rope burn and there was no bruising, showing that the rope had undoubtedly been placed after death. She turned her attention back to the right ankle again. No, this mark had been made during life. And it did not look as though a rope or cord had made such a mark. It was a regular circle around the leg, a band of discolouration of two inches in depth. The skin had clearly been marked while it was still living flesh.
    She turned her attention to the feet. The soles were padded with hardened skin and there were innumerable cuts and sores on them showing that the owner, in life, had not led a pampered existence and probably had not worn shoes much. The toenails were unkempt and several of them were cracked and broken. And curiously, under the nails, there were dirt
deposits. There had been an attempt to clean the body but this dirt seemed ingrained and was curiously red in texture, like a deep red clay that permeated into the very skin of the toes themselves.
    ‘I presume that the body has been washed since it was removed from the well?’ Fidelma asked, glancing up.
    ‘Of course.’ The abbess seemed irritated by the question. It was the custom to wash the body of the dead while waiting burial.
    Fidelma made no further comment but turned her attention to the legs and the torso. These could tell her nothing except that, in life, the girl had a well-proportioned body and limbs. She next turned her attention to the hands. Fidelma controlled her surprise for the hands did not seem to balance the image of the feet. They were soft, without callouses, the fingernails were clean and manicured. She saw that the right hand had a strange blue stain on it covering the side of the little finger and the edge of the hand. The stain also occurred on the thumb and forefinger. She examined the other hand but there was no such identical staining there. The hands were not the hands of someone accustomed to manual work. Yet this seemed to contrast totally with the feet.
    ‘I was told that the corpse was clutching some items. Where are they?’ Fidelma inquired after a while.
    The abbess shifted her weight from one foot to another.
    ‘When the sisters washed the body