The air was thick with the perfume: it was a ghastly smell.

He thanked her for her time and headed for the door.

‘Do you have to go, Inspector?’

‘I do.’ He spoke curtly.

‘I see.’ Her mood changed, settling into melancholy. And loneliness. But she had one last piece of stagecraft. ‘I might have a photograph …’

It made Hobbes turn back. ‘Of whom?’

‘Why, Adeline, of course. Yes, I’m sure I do, somewhere …’

He came to her. ‘I would like to see that.’

‘In the cupboard, the right-hand side, I think.’

He went over to a small cupboard next to the bed. Inside were books and cardboard files, and among them a photograph album. He drew this out and handed it to her. Quickly she flipped through the pages.

‘Now, let me see … Where would it be …?’

Hobbes registered the flicker of images as the pages went by, sepia, black-and-white. The history of the family in her hands. He couldn’t help but think of Glenda and their own wedding album, and how he’d—

‘Oh … oh dear!’ Mary Estelle made a gesture of surprise.

‘What is it?’ Hobbes moved closer, braving the perfume.

‘It’s been removed, do you see?’

He looked at the double-page spread and saw that one photograph had gone. She moved on a few pages, and Hobbes saw several other empty spaces where photographs had been removed from their brackets.

‘They’re all missing, the pictures of Adeline.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you think somebody stole them? How wicked that would be.’

He couldn’t answer freely. The photographs might never have existed: Adeline remained a ghost, neither alive nor dead, real and unreal at the same time.

Hobbes stood up straight. He rubbed at his eyes with finger and thumb.

Mary Estelle sighed. ‘I’m so very sorry, Inspector. I really thought I might be of help to you.’

‘Never mind. But I would like a photograph of Camilla, and one of your family all together. Would that be possible?’

‘Let me see … Yes, I think we all look presentable in this one. And here is Camilla alone. Hmm. An intriguing face, don’t you think? Not exactly pretty.’

‘Thank you for these.’

‘Of course, Rosamund possessed a greater beauty. That was her downfall.’

‘Mary Estelle?’

‘Yes?’

‘Tell me, does the phrase night flesh mean anything to you?’

‘Heavens.’ Her voice was weary now, and she looked tired: her eyes were closing. ‘It’s an age since I’ve heard those words. My mother used to say such things to me … and her mother before her, I imagine.’

‘Your children picked it up from you?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. I wrote it down for them.’

‘As a lesson?’

‘In my novel. Did I tell you that I wrote a novel?’

Hobbes answered carefully: ‘Yes, I think so.’

‘I put my whole being into that work.’

‘And what does it mean, the night flesh?’

She made a last effort at wakefulness: ‘It’s madness. Possession. To be taken over by something beyond one’s self.’ She shuddered at the memory.