“Oh!” Lucy said. She realized she was feeling slightly taken aback.

“I hope you don’t feel too disappointed not to be the only one to see her,” Cleo said acutely.

“No.” Lucy swallowed her feelings. If Catherine had really reached out for help before, it was all the more important to try to connect with her. “What happened?” she asked.

“It’s in here.” Sam passed her a slim volume.

“Myths and legends of Berkshire,” Lucy read, looking at the lurid cover of a shrieking specter that looked straight from Halloween central casting. “Not your usual stock, surely?”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Sam said. “I’ve stuck the bookmark in the place—see what you think.”

Lucy opened up the book at the page indicated and set the bookmark to one side. “A curious tale of haunting and lost treasure comes from the village of Knightstone near Lambourn,” she read. “One very hot summer in a year soon after the war—” she checked the publication date of the book, which was 1953 “—that’s the Second World War presumably—a woman reported meeting a lady dressed in old-fashioned clothes who was crying amongst the trees of the orchard above the valley. When she enquired kindly as to the cause of her grief the woman said she was mourning her lost treasure and was riven with guilt and misery that she could never find it or return it to where it belonged. She said that her name was Catherine and her husband was master of the manor of Knightstone, and then with much weeping and wailing she vanished through the trees, never to be seen again...” She put the book down. “Crikey. That’s rather melodramatic.”

“Read on,” Sam said.

“Further to the sad case,” Lucy read, “that same summer, strange marks and shadows were observed in the fields nearby and the local populace armed themselves with spades and shovels in an attempt to find Lady Catherine’s lost treasure. But though they dug for days they found nothing but a few gold coins. One laborer, Isaac Redfern, swore never to give up the hunt.”

Lucy put the book down quietly on the table. “Well,” Cleo said, after a moment, “that sounds like your standard ghost stroke lost treasure story, doesn’t it? It’s a thirdhand report of something that I would have said was totally made up if it wasn’t for the fact that you had met Catherine yourself.”

“I haven’t met her,” Lucy said. “I haven’t had a conversation with her like the woman did in this story. It’s more that I am her, or that I can see into her mind.” She gave a little shiver. “I wonder who she was, the lady who enquired kindly as to what was wrong with Catherine.”

“Whoever she was,” Cleo said, “she’s surely dead by now. This must have been about 1946 or so.”

“That’s another thing,” Lucy said. She was remembering the newspaper cutting Finn had found in the book. “Those strange marks and shadows that were seen on the ground were picked up on aerial photography. It must have been the same year. Finn was interested in them because he thought they might be evidence of the lost garden. It’s going to be a bit disappointing if he finds they were all ruined by locals digging for treasure.”