She watched him for a minute then came in, closed the kitchen door and opened the door to the scullery. On the brick floor and leaning against the whitewashed walls were all her brushes and pails, including the chimney brushes. But the chimneys did not need cleaning because there were no fires to fill them with soot. The beds were all stripped, the linen clean, folded, put away in the dark of the cupboards. She lifted the carpet beater from the wall. Dust fell even in an empty house; sunlight excited it. She would carry cushions and rugs outside, some spot that caught the breeze, and she would thrash them. She held up the beater, swished it through the air, much as she had seen John Lacroix swish his sword (a book of drill in his other hand), then she quit the scullery, passed through the kitchen and had stepped into the hall when she saw, through the narrow window beside the front door, a man’s narrow face, very close to the glass, staring in at her. She stopped dead. Stood under the clock with the beater in her hand.

The face disappeared. There was a knock at the door, quite soft. It was a knock intended only for her and she suffered a moment of confusion, as if some outrageous knowledge had moved through her, but so swiftly she could not recognise it or say what it had been. She leaned the beater beside the clock, smoothed her apron and went to the door. When she opened it she saw that there were two of them, both in coats and hats, coats too long and heavy for a day like this. The one at the front was shorter, paler. The other hung back.

“Hello, Auntie,” said the shorter man. He stepped past her into the hall.

She did not think to say anything, not even when, with the three of them inside, he glanced towards the lane then shut the door. For a moment they all stood in silence. She had the impression the men were listening. Then the shorter one asked her where the kitchen was.

“Why?” she said.

“Why not?” he said, and though his answer answered nothing she led them there. She might have refused but she didn’t. It was like a game in which only they made moves.

In the kitchen the shorter man told her to sit down by the fire. Then he asked the other man to leave them alone and have a wander about the house. She didn’t want the other man to go. She fixed her eyes on him, concentrated on him, and at first it seemed he might not go. But the shorter man repeated himself—“Have a wander about”—and after a shrug, the taller one left.

Perhaps he wasn’t taller. Just different. If the shorter man’s legs were straighter would he be as tall as the other? She wasted whole seconds on this.