Instinctively she pushed the open panel back behind her, heard it click into place and then she followed the man down a long flight of narrow twisting stairs.

It was practically dark save for a light ahead. There was a banister and she clung to it, realising that each step of the stairs was thickly carpeted so that their footsteps made no sound.

The man disappeared out of sight and a moment later Carina found herself in the strangest room that she had ever seen.

It was small and an unusual shape and at the first quick glance she guessed that it was a Priest’s hole built underneath the stairs and between two other rooms so that there was no possibility of it being discovered.

But Carina had little time to look around her.

The valet was kneeling by the figure of a man stretched out on the floor and, as Carina approached, he turned his white face and muttered in tones of anguish,

“I know he be dead. I didn’t mean to do him in. I tried to push him away and he tumbled over.”

“Let me look,” Carina suggested quietly.

The valet scrambled to his feet to let her pass and she saw that the man who was lying on the floor had blood pouring from his forehead. He had white hair and his face was red and blotched.

As she looked at him, Carina was aware of the pungent smell of spirits that pervaded not only the room but the staircase and which she had subconsciously noticed while she was making the descent.

Now she knew it for what it was. Brandy.

“Get me some towels and some warm water as quickly as you can,” Carina said over her shoulder.

“He be dead. I know he be dead,” the valet muttered in a tone of hysteria which made Carina say sharply,

“Do as you are told!”

And he went off automatically.

Then she put out her hand and touched the wounded man’s hands, his forehead where it was free of blood, and lastly, his heart.

He was alive, there was no doubt of that. The heartbeat was steady, but he had been knocked unconscious by falling heavily and no doubt drunkenly against the edge of the table.

With difficulty because he was a heavy man, Carina turned him on his back.

A moment later the valet, whimpering with fright and contrition, put a china bowl and a clean linen towel beside her.

Preoccupied as she was with staunching the blood from the deep cut on the man’s forehead, Carina could not help noticing that the linen towel bore the entwined ‘L’ surmounted by a coronet that decorated the towels she had used in her bedroom since she had arrived at The Castle.

She was thankful to see that the cut was not as deep as she had at first feared. It was a nasty jagged wound, but it would heal.