It was a 1912 reprint of Meric Casaubon’s A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr John Dee and Some Spirits. And, yes, at the bottom Russell House Press. A second edition – obviously Casaubon had been popular amongst British wizards.

I was willing to bet real money that Jonathan Wild’s last ledger had once languished in one of these boxes. The Mary Engine too, not to mention the genuine wizard’s staff and the bloody tedious Victor Bartholomew book. Which begged the question why the Bartholomew had ended up on eBay and not the Casaubon. From a magical perspective they were both about as useful, although as cures for insomnia the Bartholomew had a slight edge.

Because the Casaubon was a second edition?

Carefully I checked the other books in the box. All of them were either second editions from the 1920s or the 30s or had significant damage to their covers or their interior pages. I was pleased to see that even back in the glory days of the Folly people left their mugs of tea on their magical textbooks.

At the bottom of the box I found part of a map that had been ripped down its centrefold – a 1:40,000 scale depiction of a place called Ootacamund, which turned out on later research to be a British Hill Station in Tamil Nadu. A Hill Station being a place where colonial administrators and the like could use altitude to avoid the oppressive Indian summer heat, since the sensible solution, i.e. abandoning colonialism and moving back to Surrey, obviously never occurred to them.

I considered checking one of the other boxes, but my mystic powers of precognition bestowed a vision upon me of a full forensic search with noddy suits and fingerprint powder and people taking their sunglasses off in a dramatic fashion.

I did stop on my way out to examine the lock a bit more carefully. Again I felt the razor strop of the Faceless Man’s signum and it was definitely centred on the point where the bolt was sheared right through.

A hypothesis was forming in my mind. If County Gard belonged to the Faceless Man, then The Chestnut Tree did too. Perhaps it was even an asset inherited from his predecessor, which meant that, possibly, this was his storeroom – these had been his things.

Which had been looted by Christina Chorley and Reynard Fossman.

Did they know who they’d stolen from?

He was bound to be a bit miffed . . . I’ve only met him a couple of times, but he didn’t seem the type to take that sort of thing with a light and forgiving heart. Which might explain why Aiden Burghley’s face got laminated to a tree and what the fucker had been doing in Phoebe Beaumont-Jones’ basement . . . looking for accomplices?

Presuming he wasn’t her dad.