‘Damn you!’ he hissed. ‘I always knew you couldn’t be trusted. You were the one, weren’t you? You told Effie about Crook Street. You made this happen. Didn’t you?’ His voice cracked and the tick beneath his eye intensified, pulling his features into a gargoyle’s rictus.

I shook my collar free of his grasp. ‘Dear boy, I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,’ I told him mildly. ‘I came because Marta asked me to come. She trusts me. If you don’t, you can deal with the matter on your own.’

Henry glared at me, breathing heavily. ‘Damn you,’ he said. ‘Why did it have to be you? If you breathe as much as a word about any of this…’

‘Oh, I’m likely to, aren’t I?’ I said with sarcasm. ‘There’s plenty at stake for me too, you know. I’ll see that it comes off all right-besides, we can give each other alibis. Nothing strange about a successful painter spending an evening with his patron, is there? That makes us both safe.’ I ran my hands through my wet hair and manufactured a hurt expression. ‘Henry,’ I added, ‘I thought we were friends?’

The glare went from his eyes and he nodded slowly. ‘I’m a little…overwrought,’ he said gruffly. ‘Of course, I should never have thought that of you. A friend of Marta’s…’ He shook my hand awkwardly. ‘You took me by surprise, that’s all,’ he explained, finding his stride again, ‘Come into the parlour.’

I followed him warily, keeping up the hurt look beneath my smile.

‘Brandy?’ he asked, pouring himself a generous glassful.

‘Keeps out the cold,’ I said cheerily, tipping my glass to him.

We drank in silence for a time.

‘So,’ I said at last, ‘where are the servants?’

‘I sent Tabby to see her sister in Clapham. Christmas visit, you know. Effie’s maid is in bed with a toothache.’

‘Very lucky,’ I remarked. ‘Almost providential, you might say.’

Henry shuddered. ‘I am aware of what you must think,’ he said rather stiffly. ‘The situation…is desperate in the extreme.’ He swallowed convulsively. ‘As well as quite…repugnant to me.’

‘Of course,’ I said silkily.

His glance towards me was sharp and nervous, like a bird’s. ‘I…’ He hesitated, no doubt aware, as I was, of the farcical aspect of the situation. These civilized drawing-room manners!

‘Believe me, I do understand,’ I said, knowing that if I did not speak he might remain frozen with his glass in one hand and the meaningless, apologetic smile on his face for the rest of the evening. ‘I have been aware of the…problems you have had from poor Mrs Chester.’

‘Yes.’ He nodded emphatically. ‘She was ill, poor thing, terribly ill. Dr Russell-author of several books on disorders of the mind-examined her, you know. She is quite mad. Incurable. I would have had to send her away to an institution, poor Effie; and think of the scandal!’

‘Any breath of scandal would ruin your career at this stage,’ I agreed earnestly, ‘especially now that your Scheherazade has met with such critical acclaim. I hear Ruskin is thinking about an article on her.’

‘Really?’ But his attention was only momentarily diverted. ‘So you see…’ he continued, ‘why the kindest course of action…the quickest and…’ The tic resurfaced for an instant and I saw him pull out his chloral bottle and shake half a dozen grains into the palm of his hand in an easy, practised gesture. He caught my glance and swallowed the grains almost furtively, with a mouthful of brandy.

‘Chloral,’ he said in a low, apologetic tone. ‘My friend, Dr Russell, recommended it. For my nerves, you know. It’s tasteless…odourless.’ He hesitated. ‘She wouldn’t…suffer,’ he said painfully. ‘It was so…easy. She just went to sleep.’ A long pause, then he repeated the words, wonderingly, as if mesmerized by their resonance. ‘She went to sleep. On Christmas Eve. Do you know that poem? I did a painting of that…’ He drifted blankly for seconds, mouth open, almost serene but for the merciless tugging of the muscle beneath his eye.

‘There is no better time,’ I said briskly, looking at my watch. ‘It is Christmas Eve; no-one will question our being out late at night. If we’re seen carrying a body, people will assume it is some friend of ours who couldn’t take his drink and it’s cold enough for us to wear mufflers and hats and cloaks without attracting attention. Best of all, it’s going to snow all night and so our footprints in the cemetery will be completely hidden. There is no better time, Henry.’

A beat of silence. I saw him nod, accepting the truth of what I had said. ‘Right,’ I said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Where’s Effie?’

He flinched, as if jerked by invisible strings. ‘In…her room.’ I was amused to read more embarrassment than guilt in his face. ‘Asleep. I-I put it in her chocolate.’

‘Good.’ I kept my voice neutral. ‘And what will you tell the servants in the morning, when they realize she’s missing?’

Henry smiled, his mouth thin. ‘I’ll tell Tabby that Effie has gone to see her mother for Christmas Eve. I’ll say I want to surprise her and I’ll tell Tabby to make the house beautiful for Christmas. We’ll want everything: holly, mistletoe, tinsel, the biggest tree she can find…Keep her busy. As for myself, I’ll go to London and buy Effie her Christmas present as if nothing had happened.’ His smile was almost serene. ‘Something nice. I’ll put it under the tree and I’ll ask Tabby to cook a special meal for us both-something Effie really likes-’ He broke off, frowning as if a sudden memory had disturbed his train of thought. ‘Chocolate. She likes chocolate…’ He paused again, his eyelid pulled by invisible wires, then with an effort continued: ‘Chocolate cake, or something,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll wait. After a while, I’ll begin to get restless and I’ll send a messenger to her mother’s house to find out whether she has been delayed. The messenger will return to say she never arrived there. Then I’ll call for the police and report her missing.’

For a moment, as I met his unflinching, triumphant gaze, I felt something almost like admiration. I wondered whether I would have been so cool in a similar circumstance. Not that I haven’t done the dirty deed a few times in my life, but I never poisoned a woman in cold blood-which isn’t to say that I never wanted to! As I looked at Henry Chester with his white face and that frozen, pitiless look in his eyes I wondered whether I hadn’t misjudged the man. For the first time he seemed truly alive, a man in control of his fate. A man who looked his guilt in the eye with a thin bitter smile and said: ‘Right. Let’s go. I am what I am.’

Imagine a snowflake floating down a deep well. Imagine a flake of soot falling from the dim London sky. Imagine that for a moment.

Through layers of darkness I floated; I danced through dangerous landscapes. I saw a knight with a bunch of fluttering pennants salute a lady in a tower of brass; I saw a herd of white horses; I saw the lyre-bird, his tail like a comet…My dark sister took me by the hand and we followed dreaming tides on the shores of strange seas; and she told me the story of a girl who slept for a hundred years, while around her everything and everybody grew old and died. But the girl had a lover who refused to forget her; he kept guard over her frozen sleep and waited and waited, he loved her so. Every day he would sit beside her and talk to her and tell her about his love. Every day he brushed her hair and kept the dust and the cobwebs from her face and waited. And, as time passed, he grew old and infirm; his servants, thinking he was mad, deserted him and went away. But still he waited. Until one day as he was sitting in the last rays of the autumn sun, almost blind and crippled with age and hardship, he thought he saw her move and open her eyes and wake. And he died of joy with his beautiful love in his arms and her name on his dying breath.