“So good of you,” she muttered. “Bit of a shock, isn’t it? Don’t know what I’ll do without her, actually. Grown used to having her around.”

I assisted her into her room and over to her bed.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep again,” she said. “I must make arrangements somehow to have her body taken home. She wouldn’t want to be buried on foreign soil. She hated it abroad, poor thing. She only came with me out of extreme devotion. I should never have expected it of her . . . it was wrong of me.” And she rooted around for a handkerchief, which she pressed to her face.

“Do you want me to stay with you?” I asked.

“No, I’d rather be alone, thank you,” she said stiffly.

“Send one of the servants for me if you need me, then,” I said.

She nodded. As I reached the door she said in a flat voice, “She sensed it, didn’t she? The moment we arrived she called it a house of death. But she never realized it was her own death that she was sensing.”

I closed the door behind me and hurried back through the halls to my room. Again Darcy was nowhere to be seen. I slipped into the bed, still warm with his presence, and lay there, thinking how comfortable and secure it had felt to lie in his arms. Then an image swam into my mind of Siegfried lying in bed beside me. No! I wanted to yell. I just wanted to be away from this horrible place and to feel safe again. Because something had struck me on the way back through the hallways. If Miss Deer-Harte had been killed because she had spotted the murderer and could identify him, then I was also in similar danger.

I lay awake, staring at the dark canopy of the bed over me, trying to make sense of things.