The hall of the main house smelled of floor polish; a wood fire burned beneath the stone chimney breast and a table was set with crystal decanters. A dozen people stood about, talking and drinking from small glasses.

A young woman detached herself from a group and came over to Anton, her hand extended.

‘Herr Heideck? We corresponded. I’m Martha. Is your room all right?’

‘Yes. It’s … it’s charming. Very comfortable.’

‘We’ll have dinner in a few moments and I’ve put you at our table, with the two doctors who run the place and a couple of others I hope you’ll find interesting.’

‘They don’t mind my being here?’

‘No. We have no secrets. I’ve told them all to say whatever they like to you.’

‘That’s … That’s very helpful. You can tell them in return that I’m only on duty when I have a notebook in my hand. Nothing else will be quoted. Though I might store it in here.’ He tapped the side of his head.

‘That’s perfectly all right. Would you like some schnapps? Or we have whisky from Scotland. It was a tradition started by my father. I don’t think he ever drank it, but he wanted there to be some part of Britain here in Eastern Europe.’

‘Thank you. I’d be happy to try some.’

‘Well?’ said Martha, when he had drunk from the proffered glass.

‘It’s … good. Very good,’ said Anton, though he found the taste unpleasant – as if he had licked the sole of his boots after a mountain hike.

‘I knew you’d like it. Men always do.’

A combination of the whisky and the wine that followed did nothing to alter his sense of having wandered into a place of strange unease. At his table sat the two superintendents, doctors Bernthaler and Andritsch, both near the end of their careers, the former of Swiss descent, he guessed, ascetic, drinking only half a glass of Moselle, the latter ursine, with a thick beard that retained a streak of black amongst the grey. Anton could picture Andritsch as a barber surgeon or a country doctor cheering up his patients on a village round, but not as a reader of the mind.

He turned to listen to a woman on his left, a widow whose husband had been a famous industrialist in Vienna. She talked as if paid not to stop, her tireless exposition containing no space in which he might have made a contribution; once when she paused momentarily for breath, he did squeeze in a question, but she closed her eyes and carried on as though he hadn’t spoken. She must be a patient, he thought, too wounded to risk allowing the thoughts of others to brush against her nerves.

At the half-dozen other tables in the room sat some of the richer and less seriously ill residents, justifying the high price of their treatment by working their way through five courses and refilling their glasses from the decanters. The scene reminded Anton of one of the staider cafés near the Burgtheater, the Landtmann perhaps, though the mood was broken when a small woman in a seat near the window began to sob so loudly that she had to be escorted from the room by the man sitting next to her. Bernthaler pushed back his chair and followed them into the hall.