“Then we’ll just say we found it.” Vi gives me a beaming smile. “And you can return it to him, Herbie. That’s your job, after all.”

Through the cellar window, I see that it’s snowing – properly snowing this time, with great fat flakes that fall like marshmallows. I’ve got my burner fired up, and it’s nice not to have to go out just yet but to sit instead in the warm glow and chat with Violet about mysteries and magic. And, for the first time in a long time, not feel quite so alone.

“Anyway, I haven’t exactly had any of my wishes come true,” says Vi, looking sadly at her rock-hard croissant. “Have you?”

I glance at her again but decide to say nothing.

Once breakfast is finished, I straighten my uniform and pop my Lost-and-Founder’s cap on, managing not to ping the elastic this time.

“I need to work, Vi. Lost things were handed in yesterday, and I’ve got to look busy in front of old Mollusc or I’ll be for the chop. You should stay down here where it’s safe, and give the whole strange business a good thinking over. I’ll be back around lunchtime and we can talk then.”

But when I get up to my cubbyhole, I find that old Mollusc is already there. He leers in over my desk, twitching his horrible moustache. “Who were you talking to, Lemon?”

I say the bad word again, only inside my head this time.

“Just to myself, sir,” I say. “Sometimes it’s the only way I can get an intelligent conversation round here.”

The hotel manager glares at me, his mouth pursed like a cat’s bum. Then he jerks open a tape measure and lays it across the opening to my Lost-and-Foundery.

“Pah! Too small,” he mutters. “I had plans to fit a toothbrush dispenser in here, but it looks like I’ll just get it boarded up after all. With you and the rest of the rubbish still inside.”

“Have you lost something, sir?” I say. “Your marbles, perhaps?”

“I am about to lose something, yes.” Mr Mollusc grins, and snaps the tape measure shut. “For good. You’re out, Herbert Lemon. Fired!”

And with that, he drops a letter onto the desk in front of me and stalks off, chuckling to himself.

I look at the letter. He can’t fire me – only Lady Kraken can do that. And as Lady Kraken says herself, there has always been a Lost-and-Founder at the Grand Nautilus Hotel. But I can see Lady K’s spidery writing on the envelope. I go to tear it open and find it’s been peeled open already. Mr Mollusc has read it.

I pull the note out and read it myself.

Herbert Lemon,

I know what you did last night. I am extremely disappointed in you. Come to my rooms immediately.

Lady Kraken