‘He has to come to you,’ he panted, ‘or you go to him. It’s a pattern, unavoidable. And so you want to go to him, break in on his mystery.’

‘He watched me asleep,’ said Rachaela.

‘Unforgivable,’ said Camillo. Then, ‘I’ll show you the way into the tower. Any of them could have done it, but they love a game. Cheta or Maria or Michael would have taken you.’

‘I dreamed you have a key,’ she said.

‘A young woman dreams of me. I’m flattered.’

They went back up the treacherous steps. Rachaela slipped and saw the cliff and the sea whirl. She completed the climb nearly on all fours, in terror.

But Camillo did not fear death, darted straight up and did not slip once.

They went back into the house by the side door Camillo had used on leaving. It led via a passage into the morning room where Peter and Dorian breakfasted, and now sat post-luncheon, both slumbering in chairs before a fire. In sleep they looked dead. Camillo paid them no attention. The morning-room window showed a queen picking green grapes in a vineyard—Jezebel?

Camillo did not take her back to the attic. He took her as far as the annexe with the Salome, and there pointed down the descending narrow stair.

‘Leads to a corridor, which ends in a door. Open the door and go into Adamus’s tower. Knock first.’

‘He didn’t knock when he spied on me.’

‘Don’t knock then.’ Camillo hopped upstairs.

Rachaela hesitated and then went down.

The corridor was unlit save by the stairwell, a pink sauterne Salome light.

She passed shut doors, webby, which she did not want to open. The corridor bent round, and the light faded into a depressing eerie darkness. The ultimate door appeared, as in the dream straight ahead.

Rachaela reached it. She listened. The piano still played, something of Brahms, it seemed to her, a piano concerto without the orchestra.

She was not ready.

She turned away and hurried back into the light.

Rachaela put on her pale blue dress and a brooch of twisted silver she had once found lying in the rain outside the flats.

She went down to the drawing room and stood by the white fireplace, waiting for Anna and Stephan. She was used to eating with them by now in the evenings. They did not come.

Michael entered belatedly with the tray of bottles and decanters.

‘Where’s Anna?’

‘I don’t know, Miss Rachaela.’

Just as they had been unexpectedly at the cheeping lunch, now they would not appear.

Rachaela dined alone on a fish casserole and gooseberry tart.

The fire cracked and flared in little spurts as heavy rain came down the chimney.

After dinner Rachaela found her way back to the unlit morning room. No one was there, the hearth black.