The double doors opened and two men entered. The taller, with straggly shoulder-length brown hair, was about thirty years of age. He wore a thick grey pullover over dark-blue corduroy trousers tucked into black zip-up boots. The other, more chunky in build, was a few years older. He wore a red-and-black-check woollen shirt and fawn trousers. His grey hair, like Pollard’s, was cut short back and sides. Both men were dirty and cobwebbed; both carried four oil-lamps each, unlit. They halted, eyed Carol speculatively.

‘Where’s everyone?’ Even as he spoke, Carol saw the grey-haired man check her left hand.

‘Doing various jobs,’ Bourne replied. ‘How did you get on?’

‘No luck. That generator needs stripping and cleaning. Probably new wiring. It’s as damp as the bottom of a duck pond down there.’ He set down his burden of lamps. ‘Damn’ cold, too.’

The chunky man spoke in a cockney accent.

‘Bit of luck, though. Found these. And two drums of paraffin.’

Bourne nodded.

‘Well, you’d better get cleaned up. There’s more food on the way. By the way. This is Mrs Wilson. She and her husband will be staying the night here. Refugees from the storm.’ To Carol he added: ‘Cliff Swanson and Sergeant Ted Smith.’

The dining-room door opened to readmit Paul and Hunt. Each carried a travelling case; each man’s hair was wind-blown, with snow scattered thickly over their hair and clothes. They dropped the cases, brushed themselves down before the fire.

During the next hour Carol and Paul’s dream-like state took greater and greater hold upon them. The hot food and drink, the jumbled highly emotional events of the day, the fierce cold and strain of the latter part of their journey, the disorientation and incomprehension they felt in this grubby house with its diverse group of occupants all conspired to dull their senses.

People came and went – usually in pairs, Carol noted almost obsessively; oil-lamps were taken to be filled and shared out; conversations were elliptic, short and difficult to grasp; dishes were cleared away. Meredith wrote industriously at the table in the bay-window area. Finally he got up and distributed sheets of paper to everyone, including the Wilsons. When they looked at these they found they held duplicated diagrams of the ground and first floors of the house. They saw that the bedrooms were numbered one to seven in Roman numerals, the bathrooms one to three. Even the furniture had been included and labelled. Underneath the first-floor plan there had been added in ink a list of names with bedroom numbers attached.