She came up into the hall and found eight Scarabae standing in a group, quite motionless: Eric, she thought, Peter and Dorian, Unice, Livia, Miranda, George and Jack.

Something was happening. What?

There was an omission of light where the coloured windows shone into the chequered floor. At first she could not make it out. Then she saw it was an old man in a mossy jacket lying face down, his thin old limbs in a bundle, his hands like screwed-up paper.

Miranda turned to Rachaela. She said slowly, ‘He just fell down.’

‘I saw it,’ said Unice. ‘He came down the stairs and fell over. Just like that.’

‘He’s ill,’ said Rachaela, nonplussed. Their fragility of cast iron was after all flawed.

‘No, not ill,’ said Jack across the hall. ‘He’s quite dead. I felt him.’

‘We’re sure,’ said Miranda, ‘quite sure.’

This is the way,’ said Livia.

‘All at once,’ said Miranda.

‘But—’ said Rachaela.

‘It happens like that, with us,’ said George. He put his hand on the shoulder of Jack. ‘Better fetch Carlo.’

‘He’s in the conservatory,’ said Rachaela. ‘Shall I—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Miranda, ‘you go, my dear.’

Rachaela turned in a daze and left them all there, standing like models of shocked old people, with calm withered faces and dense black eyes.

In the conservatory Carlo moved among the ferns like an ape with a mister-spray.

‘Carlo. Sylvian’s fallen in the hall.’

Carlo put down the mister and came without a word. His face was expressionless. She followed him back into the hall.

Three more had arrived and poised on the stairs, Anita, Sasha and Alice. The same faces. Even as Rachaela looked, another one, Miriam, appeared on the landing above. Up the passage from the kitchen came Cheta with an apron over her dark dress, and Michael and Maria like an echo.

Without a sound or cry, they knew and gathered.

Carlo went to Sylvian and picked him up at once.

It would be useless to warn them of care. They spumed medicine, doctors, any reasonable treatment. Sylvian was dead, according to them. And probably they were correct. Rachaela remembered his neat wire hands in the library, ruling through the books. Had the books of the north wall then been spared?

Carlo mounted the stairs. The Scarabae went unhurriedly after him in a procession.

Rachaela followed, daunted.

Down a right-hand corridor, Carlo negotiated a door, presumably that of Sylvian’s bedroom. Sylvian was borne in, the rest trooped after. They made no noise apart from a faint shuffling of their garments, slippers and shoes.

Sylvian was placed on a bed. The window reared above it, some sort of battle, horses and plumes on a cochineal sky. The room was winey from the light, and there Sylvian lay on the big, grey four-poster bed, his shoes on the coverlet and carven head on the pillows. Carlo arranged his hands in relaxation at his sides.