‘Jerame.’ She wagged her finger at him as if he were a naughty boy caught scrumping apples. ‘I took you for… but no matter.’

‘Who did you take me for?’ he asked, a little disconcerted.

‘One of the Mayor’s minions, snooping around.’

Jerame followed her into the lamplit office; every surface was cluttered with open books and ledgers.

‘To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ She swept up an armful of folders from a chair and patted it for him to sit down. ‘I’d offer you some tea…’

He waved a hand in polite refusal; the tea leaves, he suspected, might be coated with the same dust that lay on the books and exhibits.

‘I rather expected to find Orial here.’

‘Orial? Whatever gave you that notion?’

‘I see I was mistaken.’ Jerame was a little perplexed. ‘She gave me to understand she was helping you.’

‘Oh, she’s often in here,’ Jolaine said vaguely. She let the folders drop in a heap.

‘I came to invite you both to the Rooms. Would you care to take a dish of tea with me?’

Jolaine hesitated.

‘Well, maybe for a half-hour – no longer! I have important work to complete.’

Jerame waited as she crammed notebooks into an old canvas bag and drew down the blinds, double-locking the back door. She seemed to be taking very elaborate precautions to protect the contents of the Museum.

‘You wait for me outside. I must extinguish all the lights and it’s easy to miss one’s step in the dark. Go on, go on.’ She shooed Jerame out.

Certes, she had become even more eccentric in her old age.

Jolaine Tradescar, his mother’s bluestocking aunt, had always been a source of pride and exasperation to her family. And yet it was she who had proved the greatest comfort at the time of Iridial’s death, her bluntness of manner a relief after all the polite, anguished whisperings. The disarray in the Museum perplexed him; her mental faculties seemed in no way diminished by age – so why had she neglected her duties as Antiquarian? And if Orial had been helping, why was everything so cluttered, so dusty?

The last light within was extinguished and Jolaine came out on to the steps. Jerame saw her glance all around as she double-locked the door, as if making sure there was no one suspicious lurking in the shadows. Even as he escorted her away from the Museum, she still glanced furtively around, clutching her canvas bag to her tightly.