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portrait of an imperious man in breeches and knee boots glared down from above the fireplace. The hairs on her arms rose, as if the temperature had dropped a degree or two when she walked in. Not damp like the pantry, more … chill. Wrapping her arms around herself, Helen rubbed at them in a futile attempt to warm up. Then she checked the windows. They were all shut. She pulled the curtains anyway, drab and heavy with dust. Anything to obscure the gloom outside.
    The house seemed endless. Big rooms giving on to smaller rooms giving on to staircases, which in their turn gave on to a hidden underworld of servants’ pantries and store cupboards that Helen decided to ignore, bolting the door firmly top and bottom when she returned to ground level. Upstairs were bedrooms; her own, chosen late the previous night by default, no better or worse than any of the others. It was huge, its ceiling so bowed she feared it might fall in at any moment. As she paced its floor, her boots squeaked on utilitarian grey-blue carpet, at odds with the rest of the bedroom furniture, an assortment of hideous hand-me-downs from elderly relatives who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
    With the light fading, Helen flicked the switch and a bulb flickered to half-life, barely concealed by a too-small panelled lampshade. In the darkening window, her reflection watched her make her inventory; black eyes sunk in a pale face that seemed to hover against the gloom, until she snuffed it out with the flimsy curtains. An old dark wood chest of drawers stood in one corner, two careless coffee rings interlocking on its surface. A wardrobe with a bevelled oval mirror between its double doors almost matched the chest of drawers, but not quite. Against the end wall sat the bed, little more than a single, in which she’d woken that morning.
    Above it hung a portrait of a boy of about seven with blond ringlets and velvet knickerbockers, standing on a windswept moor with a long, low outcrop of rock behind him. The boy was smiling, a beam so full that Helen almost looked over her shoulder to see who he was looking at.
    Visiting the servants’ floor above just long enough to confirm it was empty, Helen locked the door that led to it and every other bedroom door that had a bolt or a key. The more of the house she could shut down, the less daunted she’d feel.
    At the end of the corridor, she stopped on the threshold of a smaller drawing room, its windows overlooking the forecourt. The room was tiny by comparison, its furniture relatively sparse, just a sagging armchair and rotting sofa made almost decent by a huge Indian throw. A threadbare Turkish rug hid most of the carpet. Over the fireplace was another painting of the same boy, a year or two older, in knee boots, his smile replaced by a scowl. In spite of the painting, the room felt, if not good, then calm. Wandering back out on to the landing, Helen decided not to lock it.
    Satisfied the house was secure, she returned to the kitchen and set about unpacking her shopping. What had she been thinking, buying so much stuff? She’d gone intending to stock up on store-cupboard essentials: coffee, tea, milk, bread. A bottle of vodka. Now this. She’d even bought running kit from the sports shop next to the supermarket. That, at least, might be useful.
    It was only as she lifted the last two bags from their soggy resting place on the hall floor that she noticed what was left of a note. It lay where her feet must have trampled it when she came in. The pale blue writing paper was good quality; the sort intended for proper letters; the kind that came with matching envelopes, and an unheeded lesson in the art of thank-you letters from a well-meaning relative. This sheet, though, had been folded in half, edges aligned. The words Mademoiselle Graham barely legible in unfamiliar handwriting. Biro, not ink. Just as well, given how soggy the paper was.
    Eyeing the letter, Helen felt the knot in her stomach tighten again. Nobody in