Giles really should have known better. You don’t get to be Matriarch of the Droods just by inheriting it. Martha taught unarmed combat for thirty years, and only gave up because she finally found someone better at it than she was.

Giles wasn’t stupid. Once it became clear he couldn’t hope to beat her, or even hold his own, he surrendered. Martha immediately stepped back and allowed him to rise painfully to his feet.

“I take your point, Matriarch,” said Giles, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m impressed.”

“You should be,” Martha said coldly. “I do hope we don’t have to do this again. And Giles, if you were entertaining any ambitions, you could never hope to lead us. You’re not family.”

She turned her back on him, dismissing him, and he was smart enough to accept it. He yelled at everyone watching to get back to their training, and they did. Martha retrieved her shooting stick and looked at me consideringly.

“I defeated three sisters to claim my position as Matriarch. You run things because I allow it. Don’t you ever forget that, Eddie.”

“Of course, Grandmother,” I said, and she strode off back to the Hall. I watched her go, and when I was sure she was out of earshot I said, “There are more ways of fighting and winning than just throwing people around, Grandmother.”

“I heard that!” she said, not looking back.

“Yes, Grandmother.”

The organised mayhem resumed, with Giles barking his orders perhaps just a little more loudly than before, but I felt I’d earned myself a rest. I raided the abandoned picnic hamper for some caviar and toast, and wandered off to find a little peace and quiet. I ended up back in the old chapel again. Quiet and peaceful, and still no sign of the ghost Jacob. I was beginning to worry about that. He was up to something. I sat down in his great cracked leather chair and fished the Merlin Glass out of my pocket. Using the thing to see what was going on around me, and find out things I wasn’t supposed to know, was becoming just a bit addictive. But they were always things I needed to know, for the good of the family, so . . . I commanded the Glass to show me the present, and reveal what Molly was doing. I wanted to trust her, to believe in her instincts and self-control, but she wasn’t just Molly any more. There was something else inside her now, something alive, and enemy. I had to be sure of her. For all our sakes.