Would one know if another pair of hands had gone through one’s most intimate things, if another pair of eyes had viewed one’s most private secrets? Eleanor felt soiled by it and a wish to wash her hands came over her, very intensely.

Her eyes went to the books on the bureau—a small Bible, not new but not well thumbed either, and three or four volumes of poetry and a book on modern painting by Mr Ruskin. Was this the normal sort of fare for a woman such as Miss Verity Trent? She did not know. The only thing left in the room was the trunk by the wall, a great old sea trunk complete with leather straps and some previous owner’s initials stamped on it. It was unlocked and she kneeled and lifted the lid to find nothing more than empty boxes and tissue paper. But, no, for right at the bottom, and wrapped in tissue so that one had to be careful not to tear it, were two photographs in cheap frames. One was a family group—an elderly man, a tradesman heavily bewhiskered in Sunday best, and his wife, petite with her hair piled high and ill at ease in a new gown, and their daughter, sixteen or thereabouts, with a clear smiling face made stiff and formal by the arduous photographic process. The second photograph was a young couple. It was the same girl, a few years older, now with a young man, bowler-hatted and suited, a drooping moustache, a waistcoat and a stiff white collar—a bank clerk, perhaps, or a draper or a draftsman. He was proud, though, it was there in his eyes, and perhaps this was because of the fine-looking young woman on his arm. And she was fine looking, unsmiling but serene, her chin lifted high, defiant almost in her gaze at the photographer, her composure evident even as her face was locked in the agony of a long exposure, frozen in that moment for all time.

Eleanor stepped back. It was her, Miss Trent, in both photographs, but who was the bowler-hatted young man?

And for the first time she thought, Is this the wrong woman? Have I come to the wrong flat? And then she thought, But why are these things put away in the bottom of a trunk and not on display on the mantel? These people were dead, then, or they were something to be hidden away. Or perhaps both. She carefully wrapped them again and placed them at the bottom of the trunk and replaced the tissue paper and empty boxes and closed the lid. She stood up. She looked around the room. Was this the wrong woman? She did not know. She felt keenly the precariousness of her position.