“You realise,” Hanna said as they lined up in the corridor outside the colonel’s room, “that if we bang unexpectedly on his door, there’s a good chance he’ll shoot us through it?”

Sir Richard pulled himself up very tall and straight. “Oh, I’m sure he … Actually, that’s rather a good point. One moment.” Inching towards the door, he reached out gingerly and, standing as far to one side as he could manage, rapped on it.

“Not done yet,” came the colonel’s voice from inside. “You can have the tray in about an hour.”

“It’s me,” Sir Richard replied. “And everybody else for that matter. We’re trying to make sure you’re all right, old chap, and, well, are you all right, old chap?”

There was a pause, which, if Liza was overestimating the colonel’s paranoia to a degree that was itself probably a little paranoid, she suspected he was using to work out if this whole setup was part of an elaborate charade to murder him. “Perfectly fine, old boy. Curtains closed, holed up with a pistol, plenty of cover, and clear lines of sight. Suggest you do the same if you want to last until the snow melts.”

“That does seem like a rather good idea,” Sir Richard admitted.

Hanna let her head fall against the wall. “It’s a terrible idea. We can’t all hole up in our rooms like doomsday preppers. All it’ll take is one unexpected cleaning visit and somebody will be filling some poor maid with lead.”

“Rather the maid than me,” said the colonel, sounding only a little muffled from wherever he was bunkered. “Besides, I’ve told Burgh the situation, and there’s a system. The staff know to put my meal trays on the floor, knock once, say who they are, then open the door slowly with their hands in the air, shove the food through, close the door again, and—”

“Is this still the same system?” asked Hanna. “Because it sounds like you’re making a lot of hard work for some people whose job descriptions definitely didn’t involve dealing with old men waving guns at them.”

From inside the room, there came a sound that roughly approximated to “harrumph.” “These are desperate times, Miss Blaine. And desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Desperate measures that mostly cause problems for people who aren’t you?”

“People who aren’t me,” said the colonel, “aren’t really my concern at the moment. Now if you’ll take my advice, you’ll all head back to your respective quarters, shove the bed against the door, stick your back to a corner, and wait it out.”

A sudden and alarming thought seemed to strike the professor. “I say, where are you going to the toilet?”