It was a cramped and low-ceilinged place, squeezed awkwardly into a circular interior that defied rooms and corridors or anything really that demanded corners and right angles as their foundation. Some attempt had been made to compartmentalise the place, and Eleanor was led along a short and dimly lit passage by the young orderly, who walked on tiptoe and who ducked his head and twitched his hands, and whether the man’s chronic and unceasing nervousness was due to an unease of the dead or of the living, or by the cramped conditions in which he worked, could only be guessed.

‘This is Mr Erasmus,’ said the orderly, handing her over and darting gratefully away.

Mr Erasmus, who appeared to have been awaiting her arrival, stood by a closed door, his hand on the doorhandle. All that Eleanor understood of this man was the old-fashioned mutton-chop whiskers he sported and the waistcoat he wore. It had mother-of-pearl buttons on it. He did not speak and so she was forced to look into his face. It was the face of a man much younger than his whiskers suggested. His face showed no expression and she could not guess at his intent, though his silence, the lack of an expression in his eyes, somehow implied a great deal if one could but grasp it.

Mr Erasmus indicated then with a movement of his hand that she should follow. It was a gesture both perfunctory and kindly: a man who dealt daily with tragedy. Or that was how Eleanor interpreted it. Perhaps it was just a gesture.

He opened the door and a smell seeped out. It had been there in a more subtle form from the instant she had crossed the threshold, though she had barely acknowledged it. Now it shouted its presence. A sweet, cloying odour not at all what one thought death must smell like, not decaying or foetid or rank at all. And unforgettable, though she did not understand this until later.

The room was tiled on floor and walls like a bathroom in a good hotel and yet it was nothing at all like a good hotel. The air was markedly cooler than the outside temperature. In the centre of the room was a table upon which a body was laid, covered by a sheet.

The man, Mr Erasmus, stood unmoving beside Eleanor. He waited for a moment then pulled the sheet aside with a tight little flourish as might a sombre magician who has tired a little of his profession but has no other means by which to make a living.

‘This is her?’ he said after a time, and when he had waited long enough for Eleanor to speak.

‘Yes. Alice Nimrod. Our maid.’