He could not refuse her. She was Miss Rachaela. And Anna was not there to countermand the order.

She waited until lunch-time, in the kitchen.

When the tray was ready with cold, supermarket chicken and salad, biscuits and cheese, the glass of wine, she followed Michael, as she had followed him before.

They went via the Salome annexe, down the stair and along the passage, to the door.

‘If you will wait, Miss Rachaela, I shall tell him—’

‘No. I’m coming in with you.’

Michael did not argue.

She went after him, into the tower and up the steps.

The room, burning from its window, tawny, gold, amber, was empty.

Michael put down the tray on a table.

‘I’ll stay,’ Rachaela said, firmly.

Michael left her in possession.

Half an hour passed in the golden syrup of the room.

She examined books in a bookcase, there was nothing she recognized. No music stood on the piano. There were no ornaments in the room. On the mantelpiece the clock whirled backwards. Overhead the beams were like old toffee, sticky with webs, and with hooks in them for vanished lamps.

Rachaela left the upper room and walked down the stairs to the two closed doors beneath. She knocked and tried one, and found a white bathroom with a seahorse window. Hesitating, she knocked and tried the other door. It opened on a small bedroom, very dark, for the window showed a tower in a storm, like something from the tarot pack. The bed was ordinary, without posts. Adamus lay on it, looking at her.

‘You know why I’m here,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Of course you do. Because of Ruth.’

‘Why because of Ruth.’ It was too flat to be a question.

‘Adamus, I have to take her to London, to some hospital.’

‘Why?’

‘She’s deranged. I must get her help.’

‘Again, why? They’ll care for her and keep her locked away. What more do you think your doctors will do for her?’

‘There’s a chance she can be—cured—’

‘No chance at all.’

Rachaela said, ‘I treated her like a sort of monster, so maybe it’s my fault if she is one.’

‘Don’t you think,’ he said, ‘that we’re all monsters.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. ‘If I say that the Scarabae drove Ruth to do what she did, I suppose you’ll disagree.’

‘I don’t care why she did it,’ he said.

‘I’m surprised you take it so hard. You spend no time with them.’

‘Rachaela,’ he said, ‘she took a steel knitting needle and hammered it through Anna’s breast. After she had practised on Alice, Dorian and Peter.’

‘Yes, I know. Which is why I say she needs help. They’ve locked her in the attic as if this were some old ‘B’ horror movie.’

‘Instead of a nice hygienic padded cell. Do you think,’ he said, ‘that Ruth would let you put her into some institution?’