A single noise in the silence: a bird calling from a tree, in prayer to its dead partner.

The first drops of rain.

Warm on his skin, his neck, the back of his hand.

He looked up.

Someone was standing at a window on the third floor of the house, a woman, looking down into the garden, staring at Hobbes. She made a gesture, a wave of the hand. But he couldn’t make out her face. Was it Latimer or the girl from next door?

He went back inside. The two women were talking in the living room. Neither turned to look at him.

He took the stairs, one flight and then the next.

Vacated rooms, one after another.

No one. No one there. His footsteps echoed. And yet around every corner he could hear noises: scrapings, whisperings, fingernails against glass.

His mind filled the emptiness with imagined life, with ghosts.

A shadow moved.

And stopped.

And moved again.

But there was no one there to cast it.

The corridors were empty.

Now and then he knocked on a wall, hoping to hear a hollow sound, evidence of the hidden room Kepple had mentioned. But all the walls were solid brick, and sturdily built. Perhaps he could find the original building plans of Bridlemere, the layout of the walls and floors, and thereby locate a secret door …

Now he found himself on the third floor, in one of the rear bedrooms. He stood at the window, looking down into the back garden.

A woman was standing on the lawn, looking up at him.

She wore the dress, the blue and yellow dress, the only dress possible.

The two people stared at each other across God knew what kind of threshold.

The rain fell between them as a curtain of grey.

The figure in the garden shivered, and almost broke apart. A phantom.

And Detective Inspector Hobbes knew then: the house had taken possession of him. The spirits of the family, the occupants. If he made his way back downstairs and peered out through the back door, the garden would be empty; and if he walked across the lawn and looked up at the third-floor window, the same woman would be there, looking down at him, waving, and so it would go on, this dance between them, always, always …

Her face obscured.

Contamination of Evidence

As they walked out of the house, Hobbes asked Latimer to drive. He handed her the keys.

‘Why? What’s up? You not feeling too good?’

‘I’m fine. Just a bit …’

‘What? Knackered?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Overdoing it, Guv. Bound to happen.’

‘OK. That’ll do, Sergeant.’

‘Actually,’ she glanced at him over the roof of the car, ‘you look terrible, if I’m being honest.’

‘For your honesty, thank you.’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You really are. What is it? Delirium tremens?’

‘Christ. Will you please shut up?’ It was said with a laugh but, still, he meant it.

‘Not until I find out what the trouble is.’