The stairs led up to a narrow landing with a faded strip of carpet across the floor. There was a single door. Tony hesitated, but George marched up to the door and turned the knob. His face changed.

“Lawrence. Look at this.”

“What’s the matter?”

George grabbed his hand and directed the flashlight beam onto the doorknob. Below it was a large keyhole, with the shaft of an iron key projecting from it. Tony gaped; but I didn’t need George’s comment to get the point.

“Door’s locked. From the outside. Either this is not Irma’s room—or that wasn’t Irma we saw walking tonight.”

Four

“MAY I ASK WHAT YOU ARE DOING AT MY niece’s door at one o’clock in the morning?”

The cold, incisive voice came from the darkness of the stairs above us. Tony jumped. The flashlight beam splashed and scattered against the stone arch and then steadied, showing the form of a woman.

She was rather tall, though nowhere near my height. Her hair was snowy white—a beautiful shade that owed its tint to art rather than nature. Her figure was still slender, and her face retained the traces of considerable beauty. Her makeup and her handsome silk dressing gown were immaculate. She had fought time with some success, but the signs of battle were visible; the keen blue eyes were set in folds of waxy, crumpled flesh, and her neck had the petrified scrawniness older women get when they diet too strenuously. I would have known who she was even without the reference to her niece. She looked the way a dowager countess ought to look.

“Good evening, Gräfin,” George said calmly. “So this is your niece’s room. Did you lock her in? And, if so, when?”

He had gall. I have a considerable amount myself, but I wouldn’t have dared to ask that question. To my amazement, the old lady answered it.

“I locked her in at eleven o’clock, as I do every night. What has happened?”

“We saw someone in the Great Hall just now,” George said. “It looked like your niece.”

“I see.” The light was bad, so I wasn’t sure; but I rather thought she was smiling. “Let me show you that it cannot have been Irma whom you saw.”

She unlocked the door and flung it open. When modest Tony hesitated, she took the flashlight from him and turned it on the bed.

Irma lay curled up under a thin sheet, her cheek pillowed on her hand. She stirred and muttered as the light reached her eyes. Then she sat bolt upright.

“Wake up, Irma,” said the Gräfin. “It is I.”