“A Governess, you don’t say!” the valet exclaimed. “Well, I dare say you’ve had to keep secrets for them you looks after. That’s what I’ve got to do and I’ve got to see that nobody else blabs on them either.”

Carina was longing to ask what the secret was, but she knew that she could not stoop to questioning another person’s servant about his Master’s private affairs.

She gave the man on the floor a searching glance.

His face was puffy with drink and there were great pouches under his eyes. His hair – and there was not very much of it – was completely white and stuck out from his head as if it had been cut by an inexperienced hand. His clothes, which were expensive, were shabby and stained with food and drink.

“And now you had best be gettin’ upstairs,” the valet said. “We don’t want some nosy parker to start a-missin’ you and wonderin’ where you’ve got to.”

“No one will do that,” Carina replied reassuringly. “And if they do, I have already promised you that I will not say where I have been.”

She turned towards the stairs and climbed up the narrow twisting staircase that must have been built four hundred years earlier.

She wondered what stories it could tell and what fears and hopes people must have had who had crept here to perhaps save themselves from death or worse as they lay concealed behind the secret panel.

She reached the top of the staircase and stood aside as the valet pushed past her to open the door in the panelling.

She knew he was watching her face and deliberately she turned away from his scrutiny and said lightly,

“I think your patient will be quite all right now.”

“I’m real grateful to you, that I am,” the valet said warmly.

He stood for a moment not moving in the darkness and Carina knew that he was listening. Very cautiously he opened the door a few inches, peeped through it and then threw it open wider.

“Bye, bye,” he whispered, “and remember, you’ve never been here.”

“I have given you my promise,” Carina answered. “Good luck!”

“I’ll need it,” he replied, still in a very low whisper.

Carina stepped on to the stairs and the panel was back in its place.

It was impossible to see where it had been. The elaborate fold and flowers of the carved panelling defied any scrutiny, however experienced, to detect a hinge or the outline of a door.

She stood for a moment looking at it and as she did so something attracted her attention below.

She looked downstairs and thought that she had a glimpse of a man. He was little more than a movement, a shadow that seemed to scuttle out of sight. Yet although she could not be sure, Carina was almost certain that she had seen him before.