“Shall I see to the room, Auntie?” She asked.

“Please. Get Eddie for the luggage. And do apologise to that American couple if they’re wandering about wondering what all the uproar is, will you?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas poured three healthy drinks as the girl left the room once again. “Ah, but they came here for atmosphere, and by God, I can dish it up in spades!” She laughed uproariously and threw down her drink in a single gulp. “I cultivate colour,” Mrs. Burton-Thomas admitted gleefully, pouring herself another. “Give them a bit of the old eccentric and you’ll make every guidebook from Frommer to Ronay.”

The woman’s appearance served as complete verification of this last statement. She was a combination of stately home and gothic horror: imposingly tall, with a man’s broad shoulders, she moved with a loose-limbed indifference to the priceless furniture with which the room was filled. She had the hands of a labourer, the ankles of a dancer, and the face of an aging Valkyrie. Her eyes were blue, deep-sunken above cheekbones jutting across her face. She had a hook-shaped nose that with the passage of years had grown more pronounced, so that now, in the uncertain light of the room, it seemed to be casting a shadow upon her entire upper lip. She looked about sixty-five years old, but age to Mrs. Burton-Thomas was obviously a very relative matter.

“Well,” she was looking them over, “hungry at all?” You did miss dinner by about…” a glance cast towards the grandfather clock ticking sonorously against a far wall, “two hours.”

“Hungry, my love?” St. James asked Deborah. His eyes, Deborah saw, were alive with amusement.

“Ah…no, not a bit.” She turned to Mrs. Burton-Thomas. “You’ve others staying here then?”

“Just one American couple. You’ll see them at breakfast. You know the sort. Polyester and showy gold chains. God-awful diamond ring on the man’s little finger. Kept me howlingly entertained last night with a discourse on dentistry. Wanted me to have my teeth sealed, it seems. The very latest thing.” Mrs. Burton-Thomas shuddered and downed another drink. “Bit Egyptian-sounding. Something for posterity, you know. Or was it to prevent cavities?” She shrugged with grand indifference. “Haven’t the slightest. What is this fi xation Americans all have with their teeth, I ask you? All straight and shiny. Well, God! Crooked teeth give a face a bit of dash, I say.” She poked ineffectually at the fi re, sending a shower of sparks out onto the rug, then stomped on these with terrific energy. “Well, delighted you’re here, is all I can say. Not that Grandpapa isn’t still doing fl ip-fl ops in the grave at my opening the place up to the tourist trade. But it was that or the bleeding National Trust.” She winked at them over the rim of her glass. “And pardon me for saying so, but this sort of life is ever so roaringly more amusing.”

There was a clearing of the throat from the direction of the doorway, where a boy stood awkwardly in plaid flannel pyjamas, an antique smoking jacket several sizes too large belted clumsily round his slender waist. It gave his appearance an anachronistic panache. He carried a pair of crutches in his hands.

“What is it, Eddie?” Mrs. Burton-Thomas asked impatiently. “You’ve done the luggage, haven’t you?”

“These’re in the boot, Auntie,” he responded. “Shall I do ’em as well?”

“Of course, you ninny!” He turned and scurried from her sight. She shook her head darkly. “I’m a martyr to my family. An absolute religious martyr. Well, come now, little ones, let me show you to your room. You must be dropping with fatigue. No, no, bring the brandy with you.”

They followed her back through the dining room to the stone hall and from there through another doorway that took them to the stairway. Polished, uncarpeted oak stairs led to the upper regions of the house, swathed in deep shadows. “Baronial stairway,” Mrs. BurtonThomas informed them, slapping her hand on its thick wood railing. “Don’t even make these dandies anymore. Come, it’s just this way.”

In the upper hall she led them down a dimly lit corridor in which ancestral portraits battled with three Flemish tapestries. Mrs. Burton-Thomas nodded moodily towards the latter. “Simply must move them. God knows they’ve been hanging there since 1822, but no one could ever convince Great-grandmama that these things look better from a bit of a distance. Tradition. You understand. I battle it everywhere. Here we are, little ones.” She threw open a door. “I shall leave you here. All the mod cons. But you’ll find them, no doubt.” With that she was gone, dressing gown fl apping round her ankles, slippers slapping comfortingly upon the fl oor.

A tumble of coals upon the hearth welcomed them into the bedroom. It was, Deborah thought as she entered, the most beautiful room she had ever seen. Oak panelled, with the beguiling faces of two Gainsborough women smiling down from either end, it embraced them with centuries’ old welcome and grace. Small table lamps with rose shades put forth a diffused radiance that burnished the mahogany of the enormous four-poster. A looming wardrobe cast an elongated shadow against one wall, and a dressing table held an array of crystal atomisers and silver-backed brushes. At one of the windows stood a cabriole-legged table on which an arrangement of lilies had been placed. Deborah walked to this and touched her fingers to the fluted edge of one ivory fl ower.

“There’s a card,” she said, pulled it off and read it. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned to her husband. He had gone to the hearth and lowered himself into an overstuffed chair that sat to one side of it. He was watching her as he so often did, with that familiar reserve, the only communication coming from his eyes. “Thank you, Simon,” she whispered. She tucked the card back into the flowers, swallowed an emotion she couldn’t define, and forced herself to speak lightly. “How did you ever fi nd this place?”

“Do you like it?” he asked in answer.

“You couldn’t possibly have chosen anything more wonderful. And you know it, don’t you?”

He didn’t reply. A knock at the door, and he looked at her, a smile dancing round the corners of his mouth, his expression plainly saying: What’s next? “Come in,” he called.

It was the girl, Danny, a pile of blankets in her arms. “Sorry. Forgot these. There’s an eiderdown already, but Auntie thinks the world’s as cold as herself.” She walked into the room with an air of friendly proprietorship. “Eddie get your things in?” she asked, opening the wardrobe and plopping the blankets unceremoniously inside. “He’s just a bit thick, you know. Got to excuse him.” She studied herself in the wavy mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, fingered a few wandering hairs just a bit more out of place than they’d been before, and caught them watching her. “Now you’d best beware of the baby’s cry,” she pronounced solemnly. It was as if she’d spoken exactly on cue. The hounds would surely howl next.

“The baby’s cry? Have the Americans a child with them?” Deborah asked.

Danny’s dark eyes widened. She looked from woman to man. “You don’t know? Has no one ever told you?”

Deborah saw from the girl’s behaviour that they were soon to be enlightened, for Danny wiped her hands prefatorily down the sides of her dress, glanced from one end of the room to the other for unwanted listeners, and walked to the window. In spite of the cold, she unfastened the latch and swung it open. “Has no one told you about that?” she asked dramatically, gesturing out into the night.

There was nothing for it but to see what “that” was. Deborah and St. James joined Danny at the window, where, in the distance, the skeletal walls of a ruined building rose through the fog.

“Keldale Abbey,” Danny intoned and settled right in next to the fire for a confi dential chat. “That’s where the cry of the baby comes from, not from here.”