An archway gave on to a drawing room, a chamber of immense size and filled by lovely sullen furniture, and by the fine lace draperies of dust. The Scarabae lived in a desert of dust, clearing areas as they must, for here and there a table shone like a black pool.

A fire filled the centre of a white marble fireplace whose icy ends were pillars and heraldic shields.

No one was in the room, it was full of waiting.

Rachaela felt the room receive her, closing over her head. The sea sounded louder.

One of them at least was insane—the mysterious galloper, bearer of dead mice. It had been a man’s voice, high-pitched, eldritch, but male. Could it be Mr Stephan who had ridden by?

A sound. Michael the servant of the Scarabae entered with a silver tray. Bottles and decanters glinted on the tray. He set it down on one of the dustless pools of tables. Rachaela was reminded of an expensive advert. Through the arch of the doorway now should come two elegant and well-dressed people.

‘May I serve you with something, Miss Rachaela?’

Rachaela asked for wine and a glass was filled. The crystal was exquisite, the wine transparent.

Rachaela drank gratefully and the liquor leapt into her brain. An electric awareness made her turn.

Through some other door, or out of thin air, two figures had evolved.

They stood side by side.

They were very old, thin as twine, one female and one masculine, and at the borderline of age where the sexes blend, these two had sustained their genders. The woman’s hair was the grey of gunmetal and piled up on her head, held with yellowish pearl pins. Her old dark dress, like something found on hangers in the wealthy clothes markets of the city, hung to her ankles. Her shoes had been in the mode a hundred years before, and were again. A sequin winked, another. She was sprinkled in a sugar of tiny blinks.

The man wore an antique dinner jacket and drained black trousers. His shirt was starched. His hair was thick and white, his eyebrows like iron shavings.

Both their narrow sets of hands were ringed.

Two elderly dolls they stood across the room in the fire and candlelight and their eyes glittered sharply. The eyes of clever rats, not mice.

‘It’s Rachaela,’ said the old man, in a clear desiccated voice and an impeccable actor’s accent, vacant of any hint of anywhere, even the country that surrounded them. He did not sound like the galloper.

‘It is,’ said the old woman. ‘It is.’

And they did not move, forward or away. They were so old the absurd flutterings of youth no longer motivated or disturbed them.

Rachaela said, ‘You must be Miss Anna and Mr Stephan.’

‘Anna and Stephan,’ said the woman. She smiled and her face moved like the sea, a wave, layers of pleated skin. Her smile was only a mask.