I shook my head in frustration. How was I ever going to prove that Belinda didn’t do this? I realized then that I was trapped in a bathroom in a potentially dangerous house. I looked around and there was a white-painted door, blending in nicely to the white-paneled wall. I opened it and found myself back on the corridor, right next to the room Mrs. Mannering had given to Rose’s mother. How convenient. Not so far to drag a body after all, but still a goodish way. I went back to Belinda’s room and started to pack up her clothes. Then I opened the wardrobe and saw Jonquil’s evening dress hanging there. I’d have to put that back, plus the one that had been lent to me. I certainly had no wish to keep it now, after what had happened. I finished packing Belinda’s things, retrieved both the dresses and crossed the balcony to the forbidden hallway without Mrs. Mannering appearing in that uncanny way behind me.

This side of the house felt so much colder. Was it just that no fires were lit here, that the wind came directly off the Atlantic, or was it something else? I found myself glancing back down the shadowy hallway. Then I opened the door and stepped into the bright light of . . . drat. I’d made the same mistake again. This was the nursery. The bedroom was next door. I stood examining it with pleasure. The rocking horse so like the one that still resided in the nursery at Castle Rannoch. All those wonderful dolls. Again I found myself picturing a nursery like this at Eynsleigh, a sweet little person, with Darcy’s dark curly hair, asleep in that cot. If only. . . . Then I frowned. Something was different. The dolls were now sitting on the doll bed in the corner and the soft toys in the crib. Surely they had all been together . . . in the red cart. The red cart was no longer here.

I was breathing rather fast. It had been a sturdy replica of a farm cart, big enough to transport a child. In fact there among the photographs on the mantelpiece was a snapshot of an adorable, curly-haired Jonquil riding in the wagon with a small friend, being towed by an older boy. It had rubber wheels. Was it possible it was big enough to transport a dead man along a hallway? His legs would have dragged along the floor, of course, but I thought it could have been done. Why else would it now be missing?