She would not go to the library. That was too redolent with the memories of Sir Percy, but she had noticed a small room next to the morning room, which she guessed must have been a study at one time. There were books there in a big Chippendale glass-fronted bookcase and she was sure that no one would mind if she borrowed one.

She looked at Dipa and tiptoed across the nursery, shutting the door behind her.

As she went downstairs, she decided to avoid the grand staircase at all costs and find her way to the study by one of the other staircases.

She turned away from the Dowager’s room and then, inevitably, lost her way in the labyrinth of passages and found herself once more in the Tudor Wing.

‘I really am an idiot,’ Carina told herself, exasperated at her inability to find her way.

She stood irresolutely at the top of the oak-panelled staircase. Should she go down it or should she go back and make herself be more sensible?

‘I always seem to be thinking of something else,’ she thought. ‘That is what the real trouble is.’

She looked down the staircase.

The sunshine was streaming through one of the small diamond-paned windows and, although it cast a trellised shadow on the stairs, there was certainly no sign of a ghost.

‘I just don’t believe in ghosts,’ Carina told herself. ‘I really must have been imagining things that first day.’

Even as she decided to wend her way back, something happened that made her catch her breath and stand rigid, as if she had been turned to stone.

A man appeared through the wall – literally through the wall – and started to run hurriedly up the stairs towards her.

‘He is there – he is really there!’ Carina told herself in a kind of panic.

And then the man, who was wearing the same striped waistcoat that she had seen him in before, looked up and saw her.

His expression was contorted with a kind of terror and his eyes stared.

Carina wanted to turn and run away in sheer fright, but her feet were rooted to the ground and she could not move.

Then he spoke and she knew that he was no ghost.

“Here! Here – come quick!” he said. “I think I’ve killed him!”

Chapter 9

Carina stared in absolute amazement at the man.

He was shaking all over, his face very pale save for a livid spot on his cheekbone.

“Come, come quickly!” he cried.

She thought that he hardly realised who he was speaking to, he was just aware that she was another human being to help him in his distress.

Without waiting for her reply he turned and ran down the stairs.

Carina saw that there was a gap in the panelling at a spot halfway down the flight of stairs.

A secret door had swung inwards, into this the valet plunged and she followed after him.