When Lionel Stephens went into his bedroom he found a young man there, lighting his fire. This was John Siddons, a footman of the house. Lionel did not often travel with his own valet – he had brought a loader, who looked after his dog – but knew that at Nettleby where he often stayed one of the younger male staff would be deputed to look after him. John had fulfilled this function several times before; he found it more interesting than his usual duties.

‘I’m sorry, sir. If I’d known you wanted to be in here I could have lit the fire earlier.’

‘That’s all right. I’ve got some papers to go through and it’s nice and quiet up here.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t be very warm, sir.’

‘I’ll be all right. That fire will get going soon. This house is nothing like as cold as my own, I can tell you.’

‘That’s better,’ said John as the coal began to glow with a livelier heat. ‘I’ll come back later then to put out your clothes.’

He gathered up Lionel’s discarded shooting clothes, scooped up a pair of shoes to clean, and went out – whistling under his breath, which made Lionel smile.

Still smiling, he walked over to the writing table, sat down and opened a notebook which lay there.

‘I wonder why,’ he read,

‘Though I turn everywhere to find

Some relief

There still should lie

Your lightest word on my mind

Like a grief.’

He groaned, tore out the page and threw it into the wastepaper basket.

He turned to a file of papers and began to read through them quickly, making occasional notes in the notebook. The case was a rather complicated one of commercial fraud. Unravelling it would be a good exercise.

He did unravel it, but had time as well to let his thoughts wander. When John came back an hour later to put out Lionel’s evening clothes he found the room empty, though the fire was burning well. The wastepaper basket was overflowing with crumpled pages torn from the notebook. John took Lionel’s dinner jacket from the cupboard and laid it out on the bed. He found the appropriate shirt in the chest of drawers and choosing cufflinks and studs from the leather stud box on the dressing table – he hesitated between the rolled gold and the amethyst and chose the latter – he inserted them into the shirt ready to be fixed in place, laid out the tie, socks and shoes, with a last minute rub on his sleeve for the latter, and picked up the untidy wastepaper basket before leaving. Mr Stephens had evidently had trouble with his work. John glanced at the top sheet of paper. ‘…you, don’t you see, you I should be fighting for, wanting to die for…’ Unexpected. He might just have a proper look at that in a minute in the safety of the boiler room.