If they were searching, they must know to look in a cellar. Painfully, I got to my feet. Staying close to the wall, I edged my way towards the glimmer of light that seemed to come and go. Perhaps this was an optical trick, or the sun disappearing behind a cloud.

Gertrude and Eliot must still be here, otherwise Sykes would have come to find me.

Fear was in abeyance, but in the hope of attracting attention, I screamed. This had its disadvantage. If Gertrude and Eliot were still in the house, they might come and finish me off.

Greed had brought them to this, greed and a sense of entitlement. They were not very good at murder. The attack on me was clumsy. If I died, an amateur could solve the crime. A detective from a sixpenny novel would solve it.

As a reward to myself for this thought, I screamed again.

That would be my pattern. Scream, take a long pause, and scream again. Save my voice, save my throat, save my sanity.

Edging my way round, I knew I was coming closer to the half window that, when I lay on the stone-cold floor, seemed distant as a star. And then suddenly I was there. At windowsill level was a large sink. With the hand of my good arm, I steadied myself. Doing so shot darts of pain through my wrist.

Screams of pain are often quiet. I indulged in one of the hair-raising kind.

It was my reward to see a pair of men’s black shoes. The shoes stopped. I screamed again, wishing I had found something long enough to hit the window, to break it. Above the shoes were black trouser turn-ups, the calves of legs. The person bobbed down, knees in my direction. Lastly came a face. The face jutted forward, close to the glass. I saw him. He saw me. Raynor.

Part of his plan was to appear benign, in his look, benign and concerned.

He shouted something that I could not hear.

He would have been the one to put the body on the train, and now it was my turn. He had come to finish me off.

I blinked, and he was gone.

Now that I was at the sink, I realised that I had a burning thirst. I turned on the tap and put my head under it, gulping water into my mouth, letting it run onto my temples, and then down my neck which was horrible. The idle thought came to me that perhaps icy water running down one’s neck in a freezing cellar might make death seem perfectly acceptable.

I heard nothing more, and in those moments of nothingness, wondered whether there might be a side door, another way out, a place where the coal came in. If there were such a place, I might find it by touch before Raynor got to me. And where was Sykes?