My time and energies were entirely consumed by Lawrence and by our forthcoming marriage, preparations for our new home and so forth. All that is perfectly usual of course. I was not an unusual young woman, you know. Two things happened in the weeks before our marriage. I received an anonymous letter. Anonymous? It was unsigned and I did not know who had sent it. Not then. It was full of poison. Poison against me, against Lawrence, bitter, vindictive poison. It contained a threat, too, to destroy our future. To bring about pain and shock and devastating loss. I was terrified by it. I had never known hatred in my happy young life and here it was, directed at me, hatred and the desire – no, more, the determination to harm. For several days I kept the letter locked in a drawer of my writing desk. It seemed to sear through the wood. I seemed to smell it, to feel the hatred that emanated from it, every time I went near, so that in the end I tore it into shreds and burned it in the hearth. After that I tried to put it out of my mind.

We were to be married the following month and naturally wedding presents began to arrive at my parents’ house – silver, china and so forth – and I was happily occupied in unpacking and looking at it all, and in writing little notes of thanks. And one day – I remember it very clearly – along with some handsome antique tables and a footstool, a picture arrived. There was a card with it, on which was written the name of the painter, and a date, 1797. There was also a message To the Bride and Bridegroom. Let what is begun be completed in the same hand as the malign letter.

I hated the picture from the moment I first saw it. Partly, of course, that was because it came from someone unknown, the same someone who had sent me the letter and who wished us harm. But it was more than that. I did not know much about art but I had grown up among delightful pictures which had come down through my family on my mother’s side, charming English pastoral scenes and paintings of families with horses and dogs, still-life oils of flowers and fruit, innocent, happy things which pleased me. This was a dark, sinister painting in my eyes. If I had known the words ‘corrupt’ and ‘decadent’ then I would have used them to describe it. As I looked at the faces of those people, at the eyes behind the masks and the strange smiles, the suggestions of figures in windows, figures in shadows, I shuddered. I felt uneasy, I felt afraid.

But when Lawrence saw the picture he had nothing but praise for it. He found it interesting. When he asked me who had sent it I lied. I said that I had mislaid the card, muddled it with others in so much unwrapping. I could certainly not have expressed to him any of my feelings about the picture – they were so odd, even to me, so unlike anything I had ever experienced. I could not have found the right words for them and, in any case, I would have been afraid of being ridiculed. Two secrets. Not a good way to begin a marriage, you may feel. But what else should I have done?

I had had so little experience of the world and of different kinds of people. I had led a happy and a sheltered upbringing. So it was not until a day or two before our wedding that I understood who had sent both the anonymous letter and the picture, and then only when I chanced to see an envelope addressed to Lawrence in the same handwriting. I asked him who had sent it and he told me, of course, that it was from the young woman he might have married. I remember his tone of voice, as if he were holding something back from me, as if he were trying not to make anything of the letter. It was just some snippet of information he had asked for many months before, he said, and changed the subject. I was not worried that he had any feelings for her. I was worried because I knew at once that he, too, had received a letter full of hatred and ill-will, that he wanted to protect me and keep it from me, that the woman was the sender of the picture. I did not ask him. I did not need to ask him. But once all of these things fell into place, I was more than ever afraid. Yet of what I was afraid – how could I know? I disliked the picture – it repelled me, made me shudder. But it was just a picture. We could hang it in some distant corner of our house, or even leave it wrapped and put it away.

Our wedding was a happy occasion, of course. Everyone was happy – our families, our friends. We were happy. Only one person in the world was not but naturally she did not attend and on that day no one could have been further from our thoughts.

I did as best I could to put the incidents and the painting out of my mind and we began our married life. Six weeks after the wedding, Lawrence’s father, the Earl of Hawdon, died very suddenly. Lawrence was the eldest son and I found myself, not yet even twenty-one years old, the mistress of this large house and with a husband thrust into the running of a huge estate. We had taken a short honeymoon on the south coast and planned a longer tour the following spring. Now, perhaps we would never undertake it.

I have said that my father-in-law died suddenly – quite suddenly and unexpectedly. He had been in the best of health – he was an energetic man, and he was found dead at his desk one evening after dinner. A stroke. Of course we believed the medical men. One must. What reason was there to doubt them? I have now to tell you something which I expect you to disbelieve. At first, that is to say, you will disbelieve it. I would ask you to go across to the bureau in the far corner of this room and look at the framed photograph which stands there.

I crossed the long, silent room, leaving the Countess, a tiny, wraithlike figure hunched into her chair in the circle of lamplight, and entering the shadows. But there was a lamp on the bureau, which I switched on. As I did so, I caught my breath.

I saw a photograph in a plain silver frame. It was of a man in middle age, sitting at this same desk and half turning to the camera. His hands rested on the blotter which was in front of me now. He had a high forehead, a thick head of hair, a full mouth, heavy lids. It was a good face, a strong, resolute face of character, and a handsome one too. But I was trans-fixed by the face because I knew it. I had seen it before, many times. I was familiar with it.

I had lived with that face.

I looked back to the old woman sitting once again with her head back, eyes closed, a husk.

But she said, her voice making me start, ‘So now you see.’

My throat was dry and I had to clear it a couple of times before I could answer her, and even when I did so, my own voice sounded strange and unfamiliar.

‘I see but I scarcely know what it is that I do see.’

But I did know. Even as I spoke, of course I knew. I had known the instant I set eyes on the photograph. And yet ... I did not understand.

I returned to my chair opposite the old woman.

‘Please refill your glass.’

I did so thankfully. After I had downed my whisky and poured a second, I said, ‘Now, I confess I do not understand but I can only suppose this is some hoax ... the painting cannot be of its date, of course, there is some trick, some faking? I hope you will explain.’

I had spoken in a falsely amused and over-loud tone and as the words dropped into the silent space between us, I felt foolish. Whatever the explanation, it was not a matter for jest.

The Countess looked at me with disdain.

‘There is no question of either a hoax or a mistake. But you know it.’

‘I know it.’

Silence. I wondered how this great house could be so silent. In my experience old houses are never so, they speak, they have movements and soft voices and odd footfalls, they have a life of their own, but this house had none.

Nothing happened immediately. My father-in-law was dead and we were thrown into the usual business which surrounds a death – and my husband found himself pitched into a wholly new life with all its responsibilities. We had not even moved into the small house at the far side of the estate which was to have been our married home, and now we found ourselves forced to take over this house instead. We had barely unpacked our wedding presents and there was no place for most of them here. It was a week after we had moved in. Lawrence and his mother of course were shocked and still in deep mourning. I was sad but I had known my father-in-law so little. I wandered about this great place like a lost soul, trying to get to know each room, to find a role for myself, to keep out of everyone’s way. It was on these wanderings that I finally came upon the Venetian picture. It had been put with some other items into one of the small sitting rooms on the first floor – a room that I think was rarely used. It smelled of damp and had an empty, purposeless air. The curtains hung heavy, the furniture seemed ill-chosen.