Her elegant clothes weren’t new. The dressing gown was fraying, its sleeve ends whipped with thread that didn’t quite match. There was a hole in the quilting somewhere, because now and then she shed a down feather or two, like a molting chicken. It wasn’t just thrifty wartime mending—her clothes had been made over. I did the same thing to Mummy’s clothes to make them fit me, which is why I noticed. Elisabeth Lind’s expensive dressing gown was hemmed and tucked because it used to belong to a taller woman—to someone else.

She wasn’t as wealthy as she seemed. I felt like I’d won a round of poker. I knew more about her than she knew about me.

“Ah, Louisa, I’m sorry to disturb you so late! Could you help me? I can’t make my gas fire come on.”

“Oh—” I glanced at Jane, already in bed.

Jane put her book aside and pulled herself up in curiosity. “What’s the matter, darling?”

“I’m going to light the fire for Miss Lind,” I told her.

“Of course,” Jane agreed. “It’s very cold tonight.”

I snatched up my own silk dressing gown—Mummy’s, that is, also not new—and followed Miss Lind down the dark passage.

No one had stayed in Room Number Four since Felix Baer, though Robert Ethan had poked about in it. There was plenty of credit on the meter. Miss Lind watched politely while I showed her how to turn on the gas.

“You’re a keen reader,” she said irrelevantly.

I drew in a sharp breath and stared at her, startled. She’d been noticing things about me, too.

“Well, I am,” I said. “How do you know?”

She laughed at my expression. “I saw the books in your room.”

“Jane has books,” I said warily.

“Swallows and Amazons? National Velvet? Those aren’t hers. She’s over eighty. You’re in your teens.”

“You’re Swiss,” I said. “Those are English books.”

She shrugged. “I went to school with English girls. We swapped. Reading English books is how I learned English. And listening to the BBC, of course!”

She did sound like she’d learned English by listening to the BBC, posh as posh.

She knelt beside me on the hearth. “Let me try the fire now,” she said. She turned off the gas tap and the fire went out. She turned it back on, struck a match carefully, and lit it again.

“Have you read any Greek myths?” she asked. “Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable? Or Lamb’s version of Homer’s Odyssey, perhaps?”

How much did she know about our “Odysseus”—and was she wondering the same thing about me? If so, she was being cautious about it.

I thought I should be cautious too. She could go straight to Cromwell with anything I said.