I nodded. There was too much to take in. I wanted to ask why they should wait on me, and who was Mr Fortescue but she led me across the shadowy hall, her heels clicking on the polished wooden floor, silent on the bright rugs, and opened a door at the front of the house and gestured that I was to go in.

‘I’ll bring you some coffee,’ she said, and shut the door behind her.

The room was a parlour, the walls lined with a silk so pale as to be almost cream, but pink in the darker corners. The window-seat, scattered with cushions of a deep rose colour, ran around the inside of the tower at the corner of the room and overlooked the terrace, the rose garden and the drive in its circular sweep. The carpet, set square on the polished floorboards in the main part of the room, was cream with a pattern of pink roses at the border. The half-circular turret part of the room had its own circular rug in deep cherry. There was a harpsichord on the wall beside the fireplace, and a number of occasional tables standing beside comfortable rose-cushioned chairs. In the middle of all this pinkness was the man who hated gin traps, with his brown cap clutched in his big hands.

We smiled at each other in mutual understanding of each other’s discomfort.

‘It’s a lady’s room really,’ he said. ‘It’s the parlour.’

‘A bit pink,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘It’ud suit some.’

He paused and looked at me, as awkward as himself in my hand-me-down boots and my plain riding breeches and my too-big jacket.

‘We could go into the dining room,’ he suggested.

I nodded and he led the way across the hall and through handsome double doors into a dining room dominated by a massive mahogany table which would seat, I thought, sixteen people. On one side was a huge sideboard gleaming with silver, on another a table set with chafing dishes. The man who hated gin traps pulled out a chair for me at the head of the table and sat by my side.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait the main business until Mr Fortescue comes and I’m pledged to tell you nothing till he arrives. He’s the trustee for this estate. He came down from his London offices when I sent word that you had come here. He’ll be in to take coffee with us in a moment.’

‘Who is he?’ I asked. I was nervous, but the man who hated gin traps gestured to me to sit in one of the high-backed chairs and I gained confidence from his ease.

‘He’s the trustee of the estate,’ he said. ‘The executor of the will. He’s a straight man. You can trust him.’