‘That’s lovely, Uncle.’ Julie patted his shoulder. She lowered her voice again. ‘Most days, he can’t tell you what he had for breakfast, but he can go on for hours about things that happened ninety odd years ago.’

The old man turned to face Lou. She shifted uncomfortably.

‘Go on,’ Julie said. ‘He wants to talk to you. He’s harmless.’

Lou knelt beside the wheelchair. With a huge effort, the man raised his head and leant in so close that Lou could see the wiry, feral hair growing in and on his nose. ‘You remember that last party, don’t you? The Christmas Ball the year before the Great War. Every guest bedroom full, every fire lit, maids and footmen rushing around. I should have been asleep in the kitchen maid’s room, but I slipped out to watch the arrival of the guests through the banisters.’ He smiled as though peering through the banisters again. But as he rubbed his finger across his dry lips, his smile turned to a frown.

‘The life went out of this house when Captain Mandeville died. He would have made the best master Hill House had ever seen. He was the first we lost to that war but not the last. Including my own, dear father.’

His voice caught in his throat, and a wheeze rattled in his chest. Julie stepped forward, but he held up his hand, determined to finish.

‘Master Edward could never hope to fill his brother’s shoes. Wasn’t cut from the same cloth. His bad eyes saved him from the draft. Sensitive he was, bookish. But all that book learning didn’t help him manage the estate’s finances. It’s not my place to question, but did he have to marry his sister off like that? Miss Charlotte was an angel.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘An accident, the police said. I say she threw herself down those stairs at Caxton Hall. Couldn’t stand to bear a child to that brute of a cousin. He killed that poor girl as surely as if he’d pushed her with his own hands. But you know better than most what George Caxton was capable of.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lou said. ‘But I think you’ve confused me with somebody else.’

The old man lowered his voice still further. ‘One out, one in. It’s the way it’s always been. It’s the way it always will be.’

‘I’m sorry, I really don’t understand.’

He smiled again and nodded. ‘No, but you will. You will.’ With that, the old man sat back, his chin sank to his chest, and the spark in his eyes disappeared, like a candle snuffed out.

‘Pay him no mind,’ Julie said, fussing over his blanket as Lou got to her feet. ‘He gets confused.’ She reminded her uncle that he needed to save his energy for the carol concert at his home that evening. She spoke to him as though he were a child, not the lucid man Lou had just talked to.

Julie handed the torch to Lou. ‘Keep it. You’ll need it if you want to have a nosey. It was lovely to meet you, but we’d better be getting back. Matron doesn’t like it if the residents are late for dinner. Will you be ok on your own?’