‘Evil!’ Daphne shrills, raising her skinny fist. She catches my eye. ‘You tell him, Jacqueline. And give my best to the other ladies at the tennis club.’

Captain Singh turns to look at me. He makes a proper little bow, clicking his heels together. Then he says, ‘So this is the dastard who killed that poor musician, is it? Let’s see if the rogue likes a taste of his own so-called medicine. Stand back, everybody.’

‘I didn’t kill anyone!’ Bernard protests. ‘You’re all mad. I want to wake up now. I want to wake up.’

‘Oh no,’ Daphne says. ‘Don’t let him wake up. I’ll take it from here.’

And the dream changes. Bernard is in his bed, which is in the middle of the gravel entranceway to a stately home – or is it one of those leafy public schools? I seem to remember that Bernard grew up in the Home Counties and was independently educated. Well, vintage Bentleys and Rolls-Royces are parked here so that the whole dream now has an element of an Agatha Christie production to it in my eyes – I’ve only ever seen a Bentley on a screen.

The corpses and I stand around Bernard’s bed on the grass under a starless black sky. Bernard’s lying rigid in the bed, eyes open, not moving.

‘I’ll do it,’ Daphne says. ‘It’s my mission. Stand aside, Captain Singh.’

Daphne bends over Bernard and rolls him onto his side. She rubs the middle of his back almost tenderly. Then I notice that there’s a panel in his back with an ornate brass key sticking out of it. Daphne turns the key and the panel opens like a little door. Daphne has become tiny, and she climbs inside the panel and shuts the door behind her.

‘You can’t wake up, son,’ Captain Singh informs Bernard. ‘But now you can move. How do you like that? Go on, then. Let’s make it a fair fight. You may move freely.’

Bernard sits up in bed. He throws the covers off mechanically, then shuffles across the lawn, casting frightened backward glances over his shoulder. Captain Singh hobbles after him, leaning on his cane, trailed by other dead people.

‘You may wish to run,’ advises Captain Singh. ‘Are you confused? Go on, see if you can get away from us. You may find this challenging.’

Bernard is making odd hand gestures in the air. He wags his finger, pointing at nothing repeatedly like he’s trying to type on a screen that isn’t there. What is he doing?

‘We don’t do this for amusement, do we, Daphne?’ the captain says. ‘We do it to put a stop to the killing. It can’t go on like this. The Agency has to crack down.’