“Oh, really, I don’t know,” Mrs. Barnstaple said hurriedly. “Some says one thing and some says another, but ghosts there are and there’s no need denying it, so his Lordship has given orders that this part of the house is not to be used. The Tudor Wing, they call it.”

“How very strange,” Carina said and meant it, because she was thinking of the way she had seen the valet disappear into the wall. And yet she could have sworn that he was no ghost.

There was something about the way he was walking, the manner in which he carried the tray, the smudge on the sleeve of his shirt that she could remember noticing, which made him seem very much flesh and blood and nothing disembodied from some ethereal plane.

“Have you ever seen a ghost, Mrs. Barnstaple?” Carina enquired.

“No, indeed,” Mrs. Barnstaple said almost angrily. “I don’t hold with such nonsense. As I said to his Lordship, there’s so much talk that it would be a good thing if the wing was closed up and no one need go in it. I’ll do the dusting myself.”

“But who saw the ghosts?” Carina asked.

She felt instinctively it was a question that Mrs. Barnstaple would not want to answer.

There was a distinct pause before the housekeeper replied,

“There’s things that are best left unmentioned, Miss Warner.”

It was a definite rebuke, but Carina was not annoyed.

Instead, as they reached a familiar part of The Castle and she found herself climbing the staircase to the nursery, she said,

“Thank you for rescuing me. I had only come to look for some hot water and I still have not found it.”

Mrs. Barnstaple made a tut-tutting sound with her mouth as if in exasperation with herself.

“I’ll send a housemaid up straightaway with a can,” she said. “Goodnight, Miss Warner.”

She moved away before Carina could thank her.

As Carina went back into the nursery, she found herself wondering curiously what all this mystery was about.

Why should Mrs. Barnstaple be so upset to find her on the stairs? Why should she be so reluctant to talk about the ghosts if there were none? And if nobody went there except Mrs. Barnstaple to dust, why was Lord Lynche on the stairs and apparently as surprised and upset at seeing her as the housekeeper had been?

‘I bet they are hiding something,’ she thought irrepressively.

And then, because she guessed that the hot water would be upstairs far quicker than she could have fetched it, she busied herself with getting a basin and towels ready.

It was almost midnight before she had finished washing her hair and she knelt in front of the fire, the coals glowing red and inviting.