The long, dove-grey drawing room was dotted with comfortable sofas. There were bowls of hothouse flowers on fragile inlaid tables and a great many photographs in silver frames. Most of them, Helen saw, were of horses and dogs. Over the fireplace was a fine painting of a horse that she suspected must be a Stubbs. The windows with their heavy swags of curtains looked out over the frosty park.

The Countess of Montcalm was sitting beside the fire with an open book on her lap. She was quietly dressed in grey country tweeds, but her face was immaculately made up. She had fair hair, greying now, pale blue eyes and a small, firm mouth. Helen thought that she looked like a rare china doll, the showpiece of some collection.

The countess looked sharply at her, then shook her hand so perfunctorily that their fingers barely touched. Helen recognised at once that their hostess was completely uninterested in her. It was, in a way, a relief. She subsided into a corner of one of the sofas and let Tom make the running.

‘Shall I fix you another of my martinis, Lady Montcalm?’

‘Definitely not, Tom. Do you know, I had to go and lie down after yesterday lunchtime? I’ll have just the smallest sherry. Would you be an angel, to save bringing Maitland back again?’

She spoke with the upper-class inflection of the thirties debutante. Tom moved efficiently at the laden silver tray on one of the tables. As he handed Helen her drink, there was the faintest trace of a wink.

‘I’m sorry we are such a small party,’ Lady Montcalm said to Helen as they moved into the dining room. ‘My elder son won’t be back until tomorrow night, and Oliver insists on hunting at every opportunity.’ She sighed faintly. ‘But he’s been so impossible this Christmas that it’s a relief to see him doing something with enthusiasm.’

Tom’s black eyebrows drew together in a frown.

After the formal little lunch, Tom and Helen gratefully put on their coats and escaped for a walk across the park. They set out at a diagonal from the house, the short grass crunching with half-melted ice beneath their feet. ‘What did she mean,’ Helen asked at last, ‘about Oliver being impossible?’

Tom stopped. They both turned round to look at the fantastic façade of Montcalm. Blank windows stared impenetrably back at them.

‘I think he hates it,’ Tom said. ‘You know what Oliver’s like. He’s almost obsessive about being free to do what he likes. That’s hardly possible here. He’s expected to behave in a certain way by everyone from his old man to Maitland’s underlings. As far as I can tell, he just about manages to contain his boredom and irritation by anaesthetising himself with whisky. And worse. The only time he smiles is when he’s been snorting coke.’