“The truth is, I knew your dad well,” Jenny continues. “That old mermonkey must have dispensed dozens of books to him over the years. In fact, it’s probably down to Peter that it’s still working at all.”

“Really?” says Violet.

Jenny gives a rueful smile. “The mermonkey used to break down a lot, so I took to getting in new parts to mend the mechanism. Peter put a stop to that. He said I had to fix the original part, no matter how twisted the lever or how worn the gear. He once even stopped me from changing its tatty old hat for a new one. He said the magic wouldn’t work if I changed a single thing. So he patched that old hat up himself, and it’s still there to this day. And so is the magic.”

Jenny gets to her feet and walks over to the shop counter, behind which are hundreds of cuttings, postcards and pictures. She pulls something off the wall, and comes back to hand it to Violet.

“Your father often stayed here for weeks at a time,” says Jenny. “There are spare rooms upstairs, and I’m happy to put people up, especially if they’ve come a long way to consult the mermonkey. Peter was here a great deal at one time, because of his work.”

I lean over and see that Violet is holding a photograph. It shows a scholarly-looking black man with large glasses and a close-cropped beard. He looks serious but somehow playful at the same time, as if he was snapped just at the moment he was about to break into a smile.

Violet is staring at the photo with bright eyes. It doesn’t look like she can speak right now.

“You can keep the photo, of course,” says Jenny.

Then I spoil the moment by making a rude slurping noise with my cocoa. “When you say his work,” I blurt out quickly, “you mean his writing?”

Jenny nods. “Peter Parma was a brilliant folklorist, who loved our old legends. One legend in particular.”

“The malamander,” Violet says. She opens her book and slips the photo inside.

“I don’t think anyone in the world knew more about that story than Peter,” Jenny says. “He was obsessed with it, by the end.”

“I’ve met another writer who calls himself that.” Violet brushes the last of the sand from the cover of her book. “An expert on the malamander, I mean. And that’s Sebastian Eels.”

Jenny pokes the fire.

“He knew my dad too, didn’t he?” Violet says.

Jenny stares at the poker in her hand for a moment. Then she shoves it onto the wood scuttle.

“Oh yes,” she says. “They knew each other all right.”

THE MONSTER HUNT

“YOUR DAD BELIEVED that the malamander is real,” says Jenny, warming her hands on her mug and staring into the fire. “Sebastian Eels did not. That’s really where the trouble began.”