In Jelly’s room, above the studio extension, a music stand perched between a silver-gilded writing table in the corner and antique wardrobes crammed with concert gowns, cloaks, coats, hats and a rickety tower of Chinese silk boxes containing ostrich-feather fans – mostly broken now – that she and Adila had collected as girls. While Jelly emptied the suitcase in her usual post-tour routine and chattered with Maria, Adila’s new maid, she fought to regain her equilibrium.

It was a normal weekday, normal as can be. Adila’s husband Alec was at his chambers in the Inner Temple. The house’s sounds were pattering about in their usual sequences of cleaning and, as far as possible, tidying; a piano tuner had arrived to attend to the Bechstein in the music room; and from the window she spotted her sister and niece in their hats and coats making their way up the road, Caesar on his leash padding beside them. Everything was normal. Soon she’d forget about Eastbourne, the Southerns and that smallest yet most uncomfortable of coincidences.

Chapter 2

Even if Jelly did not forget, she allowed her incoming tide of concerts, practising and travel on slow trains and wave-buffeted ferries to submerge the incident. Until, that is, she and Adila found themselves at odds over a party that Baron Erik Palmstierna was holding at his Swedish ambassadorial residence on Portland Place. There’d be dignitaries galore and members of the Society for Psychical Research, too – occasionally one and the same.

‘I don’t think I can go,’ Jelly told Adila. ‘I have too much work to do.’

‘I may have to stay home and work as well,’ said Alec. The women of the house sometimes forgot how demanding his job was, so discreet was he about it.

‘Fine,’ said Adila, ‘then don’t go. But I shall be there to support Erik.’

‘I hope he hasn’t asked you to play, Adi?’

‘Darling, he has not, but of course I shall play if they want me to. A little Bach, perhaps.’ Nothing would deflect her. ‘It would be quite wrong not to go.’

‘Yes, given the amount of time you spend with him,’ said Jelly. The comment was as barbed as she was capable of being.

‘It will be worthwhile soon, even to you,’ Adila growled.

‘But these drives… what are you doing?’ Jelly said, then regretted it, lest her sister misinterpret this as a different kind of suspicion. Perhaps part of it was. At the notion that Adila might ever part company with Alec, Jelly’s slippery surfaces began to tip under her feet.

‘We talk about the questions we should ask,’ said Adila. ‘Then we go back to the glass and we ask them. You’re welcome to join us. But no, you don’t believe in it… so don’t be a Caesar in the manger.’