Another corridor, each one leading off another. The higher the floor, the more maze-like the house was: a lot of additions to rooms and walls, some of the work professional, but more often quite homemade-looking.

A fly moved on the wall. Was it the same one he’d seen on the hand of the dead body, biding its time? Hobbes took a book from a nearby shelf and smashed it down on the insect. He muttered to himself, ‘Humans one, decay nil.’

But, of course, decay was never out of action for long.

One room had a small raised platform, and it took him a moment to work out what it was: a stage. The family must have put on plays and sketches here. The costumes, the laughter and words of encouragement, children with wooden swords and papier-mâché crowns on cotton-wool wigs.

The next flight of stairs, the last. He noticed that a stair-lift had been installed to reach this final floor. He pictured Graves slowly rising upwards, his eyes gazing at the portraits of his wife on the staircase wall.

More bedrooms, more storage cupboards. An old Singer sewing-machine in one room. There was a pile of yellowing manuscripts stacked in the corner. Hobbes looked at the top two: playscripts, both written by Leonard Graves. And even more framed playbills on the walls. A lot of mirrors on this level, in all shapes and sizes, ornate, simple, cracked and dirty or polished, and one or two smashed completely, only jagged shards of glass remaining in the frames. Hobbes couldn’t escape his own image as he walked along.

An attic door in the roof. A set of stepladders leaned against the wall, and the inspector was sorely tempted, especially when he saw that the door was padlocked. What was kept up there, hidden from whose hands and eyes? But he backed away. He had to keep in mind that no crime had been committed.

But, my God, this place spooked him.

So many dresses, each set out as though for a woman to step into, to wear for a romantic date, or a night on the town. He counted them as he found them, in one room after another, keeping tally. Thirteen, all told. Was the number chosen deliberately, he wondered, an omen of ill luck? Most were laid out on the floor, a few others held on hangers, or on hooks in the wall, the scarf and stockings draped over the shoulders, the shoes placed neatly on the floor beneath. Sometimes just the dress alone. And they all looked to be from different periods of time, years apart even, given the condition they were in, the amount of dust, the state of the blood or its substitute.

Thirteen ghosts. Thirteen wounds in the cloth, thirteen splashes of red.

In an otherwise empty room, he found the wardrobe that Caroline Travis had referred to: another ten or so dresses of the same design and size hanging on a rail. More scarves, more shoes, but these secondary items were of differing designs and colours. No, it was the dress that was important, that had to be the same each time, the exact same. The dress was the totem. It was a strange word to use, but he could think of no other. The dress was a metaphor. But for what? Which event, or which person?