Stephen yawned. It was Roydon who asked: ‘Why?’

She detached the stub of her cigarette from its long holder, and threw it into the fire. ‘I can’t put it into words. If I said it was evil, you’d laugh.’

‘No, I shouldn’t,’ he said earnestly. ‘I believe profoundly in the influence of human passions on their surroundings. You’re tremendously psychic: I’ve always felt that about you.’

‘Oh, Willoughby, don’t!’ implored Valerie, instantly distracted from her tête-à-tête with Joseph. ‘You make me feel absolutely ghastly! I keep thinking there’s something just behind me all the time.’

‘Nonsense, young people, nonsense!’ said Joseph robustly. ‘No ghosts at Lexham Manor, I assure you!’

‘Oh – ghosts!’ said Paula, with a disdainful shrug.

‘I often think,’ offered Maud, ‘that when one gets fanciful it’s because one’s liver is out of order.’

Paula looked so revolted by this excellent suggestion that Mathilda, to avert an explosion, said hastily that it must be time for tea. Joseph at once backed her up, and began to shoo everyone out of the room, adjuring them to go and ‘wash and brush up.’ He himself, he said, had one or two finishing touches to make to the decorations, and he would ask Valerie if she would just hold a few oddments for him.

The oddments consisted of two streamers, a large paper bell, a sprig of mistletoe, a hammer, and a tin of drawing-pins. Valerie was by this time bored with Christmas decorations, and she received the oddments rather sulkily, saying: ‘Haven’t we hung up enough things, don’t you think?’

‘It’s just the staircase,’ Joseph explained. ‘It looks very bare. I meant to do it before lunch, but Fate intervened.’

‘It’s a pity Fate didn’t make a better job of it,’ said Stephen, preparing to follow Mathilda out of the room.

Joseph shook a playful fist at him, and once more picked up the step-ladder. ‘Stephen thinks me a dreadful old vandal,’ he told Valerie. ‘I’m afraid period-stuff makes very little appeal to me. You’ll say I’m a simple-minded old fellow, I expect, but I’m not a bit ashamed of it, not a bit! I like things to be cheerful and comfortable, and it doesn’t matter a bit to me whether a staircase was built in Cromwell’s time or Victoria’s.’

‘I suppose the whole house is pretty old, isn’t it?’ said Valerie, looking with faint interest at the staircase.

‘Yes, quite a show-piece in its way,’ replied Joseph, mounting the four shallow stairs which led to the first half-landing, and trying to erect the steps on it. ‘Now, this is going to be tricky. I thought if I could reach that chandelier we could hang the bell from it.’

‘Mr Herriard must be awfully rich, I should think,’ said Valerie, pursuing her own train of thought.

‘Awfully!’ said Joseph, twinkling down at her.

‘I wonder –’ She broke off, colouring a little.

Joseph was silent for a moment; then he said: ‘Well, my dear, perhaps I know what you wonder; and though one doesn’t like to talk of such things, I have been meaning all day to have a little chat with you.’