With just two Cork witnesses present from a list of 22, the dissemination of evidence at the Ian Bailey murder trial resembled an attempt to flesh out the personality of a guilty man, in the absence of a direct link to the crime, writes Michael Clifford in Paris.

They do things differently in France.

Sophie Toscan du Plantier told a friend that a “weird” man in west Cork who had an interest in poetry wanted to meet her in the days before her death, the Ian Bailey murder trial heard today.