‘Sai, what are you doing?’ Adila bustled over to her. ‘Everyone is asking for you! Someone from The Times wants to see you, and there is a charming young man who says he is a pianist, and our friends from the Society for Psychical Research who – ’

‘Adi, give me a moment – I’ll be in soon.’ Jelly, experiencing a carousel of disquiet, waved her sister back into the party. She leaned against the wall, trying to stay calm.

In the drawing room the chatter quietened and the baron took the floor, reading out an extract of the book. Jelly had just read those same words. They were the last in the volume.

‘“The actual purpose of sending these messages is not the widening of intellectual knowledge; rather it is an inspiration, an awakening to a life which carries within itself the solution of our most urgent problems… ”’ The messengers, declared the baron, wished to reach not a small elite, but a grand multitude of people: all those whose souls craved the answers they could find nowhere else.

Our most urgent problems? In the short months between Erik penning his book and publishing it, world events had been threatening to overtake them all. Everywhere she went, even backstage after her concerts, the preoccupation of all conversation had become the likelihood of war with Germany, Chamberlain notwithstanding. Alec thought it only a matter of time. The government was talking about building air-raid shelters. Yet in this tranquil green-gold evening, the city seemed ripe with vitality and contentment… How could that be? What would they do? Where could they go? What would happen to their friends in Mainz? What of Ulli? He was only 35; if there was a war, with conscription… And why did Erik think his spirit messages could help? No earlier generation had had any idea how to handle war. Why should the spirits of those generations hold the answers now?

‘Jelly! You’re still there!’ Adila was marching towards her, trailing in her wake a young man who sported slicked-back hair, shiny shoes and a buff-coloured trenchcoat, which he had not bothered to hand to the cloakroom. ‘Here she is,’ Adila declared. ‘This is my sister, Jelly d’Arányi.’ She walked up to Jelly and gave her a kiss.

‘Miss d’Arányi? Lionel Hartshaw from the News of the World.’ The young man held out a hand, which Jelly, briefly paralysed on the stairs upon hearing the paper’s name, reached up to take and shake. ‘Nice to meet you. I wonder, do you have a moment?’

‘Of course.’ Jelly rose and waited.

The reporter pulled from his briefcase a notebook, a pencil and the latest issue of The Listener. This he spread out in front of Jelly. A photo. A headline: FINDING A LOST SCHUMANN CONCERTO: A recent discovery based on ‘spirit messages’. Quotations from Erik’s book. And a name, Rollo Myers. ‘Oh yes – he phoned me… ’