“He had an elder brother?” Carina asked in surprise.

Mrs. Barnstaple nodded.

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Giles was five years older and her Ladyship really doted on him. She went a little queer after they told us he was dead. She had always thought of nothing but The Castle and the pride of the family, but now it’s become a kind of obsession with her. Sometimes – ” Mrs. Barnstaple’s voice dropped, “ – I think she is a little deranged about it all.”

“Oh – ” Carina did not really know what to say.

“That’s why she can never stand for his Lordship losing money at cards. She does not look upon it as his money, it belongs to the family. Everything here belongs to the family, the name must be carried on. Sometimes she has talked to me for hours of what it means to be a Lynche and of their place in history.”

Mrs. Barnstaple paused and then added,

“You would think at times that she was talking about the Royal Family or even setting the Lynches up as some kind of Gods to be worshipped by lesser folk like us.”

Carina said nothing because she felt that there was nothing she could say, except perhaps to ask Mrs. Barnstaple not to burden her with these confidences.

But the housekeeper had really got going now that she had a listener.

“You see, her Ladyship was a Lynche too,” she said, “a second cousin of his Lordship.”

“Did Mr. Giles, or whatever you called him, come into the title after his father was dead?” Carina enquired.

“Oh no,” Mrs. Barnstaple answered. “Mr. Giles was abroad when he was killed. I don’t know how it happened, I never heard exactly. It was an accident, so her Ladyship said.”

Mrs. Barnstaple sighed reminiscently.

“When his Lordship died two months later,” she went on, “a terrible shock it was to her, you can understand that. It was then that her Ladyship took to her bed and said she was not coming down again. Not that it makes much difference as she knows everything that goes on.”

“How does she know everything?” Carina enquired.

“It’s not only what she is told,” Mrs. Barnstaple said. “We all do our share of telling her things. She would sack us all tomorrow if she thought that we were keeping anything from her.”

Mrs. Barnstaple looked over her shoulder, although there was no one there.

“It’s almost as if she had an instinct for knowing what we don’t tell her,” she continued in a low voice. “I’ve often gone up to her bedroom to relate something I thought she ought to know and, as I’ve gone into the room she has asked me a question that has shown me that she guessed what I was about to tell her.”

Carina shivered.

“It sounds uncanny to me,” she said.