The figure was at the bedside, looking down on her. She could discern nothing but a white formless shape; the eyes looking into hers might be merciless, but all she could make out was a black slit. She heard words, quietly spoken but she could make no sense of them. With an effort she raised her head from the pillow and tried to croak out a protest. Immediately time was suspended, and in her vortex of terror she was aware only of smell, the faintest smell of starched linen. Out of the darkness, leaning over her, was her father’s face. Not as she had remembered him for over thirty years, but the face she had briefly known in early childhood, young, happy, bending over her bed. She lifted her arm to touch the dressing but the arm was too weighty and fell back. She tried to speak, to move. She wanted to say, “Look at me, I’ve got rid of it.” Her limbs felt encased in iron, but now she managed, trembling, to lift her right hand and touched the dressing over the scar.

She knew that this was death, and with the knowledge came an unsought peace, a letting go. And then the strong hand, skinless and inhuman, closed round her throat, forcing her head back against the pillows, and the apparition flung its weight forward. She wouldn’t shut her eyes in the face of death, nor did she struggle. The darkness of the room closed in on her and became the final blackness in which all feeling ceased.

16

At twelve minutes past seven, in the kitchen, Kimberley was becoming anxious. She had been told by Sister Holland that Miss Gradwyn had asked for her early-morning tea tray to be brought up at seven o’clock. That was earlier than the first morning she had been at the Manor, but seven o’clock was the time Sister had told Kim to be ready to make it, and she had set the tray by six-forty-five and placed the teapot on top of the Aga to warm.

And now it was twelve minutes after seven, and no ring. Kim knew that Dean needed her help with the breakfast, which was proving unexpectedly aggravating. Mr. Chandler-Powell had asked for his to be served in his apartment, which was unusual, and Miss Cressett, who usually prepared what she wanted in her own small kitchen and rarely ate a cooked breakfast, had rung to say that she would join the household in the dining room at seven-thirty and had been unusually fussy about the required crispness of the bacon and the freshness of the egg—as if, thought Kim, any egg served at the Manor would be other than free-range and fresh, and Miss Cressett knew that as well as she. An added irritation was the non-appearance of Sharon, whose duty it was to lay the breakfast table and turn on the hotplates. Kim was reluctant to go upstairs and rouse her, in case Miss Gradwyn rang her bell.