“I’m good,” Lucy said. “Enjoying being lazy.” She felt a rush of pleasure. “It’s lovely to talk to you, Aunt Verity. Better than emailing. How’s your schedule going?”

“Well,” Verity said succinctly. “I’m in Kalgoorlie for a conference next week and after that I’m heading to Mount Isa before coming home. Will you still be at Knightstone in September, do you think?”

“I’m not sure,” Lucy said evasively, and Verity laughed.

“You don’t want to talk about it. I get that. I can only imagine how tough this is for you. Well, I won’t tell you what to do, but if you want to chat anytime, leave me a message and I’ll call you.”

“Thank you, Aunt Verity,” Lucy said, feeling deeply grateful that Verity understood. “I’ll do that.”

“Good.” Verity, always brisk, had seen no need to labor the point. “I hope you’ve got everything you need? I couldn’t believe it when you emailed to say that Finn needed to stay in the cottage because Geoffrey is too neurotic to go inside the barn.”

“Dogs can be very sensitive.” Lucy found herself defending the Labrador. “And to be fair to Geoffrey I did experience some odd events at the barn when first I was here.” She thought that Verity, supremely practical, might dismiss this out of hand, but to her surprise, her aunt picked up on it.

“What happened?” Verity asked. “What did you experience?”

“Well amongst other things, I thought I saw the ghost of a woman,” Lucy said, feeling foolish even as she admitted the least peculiar of her experiences. “Though that wasn’t in the barn but in the orchards. She was wearing a Tudor-style gown and her name was Catherine. And then the same woman invaded my dreams a couple of times; it was very vivid, almost like being possessed.” Unnerved by Verity’s silence at the other end of the phone, she added: “But I’m putting it all down to exhaustion and my medication rather than anything else.”

“Hmm,” Verity said, after a moment. “It’s an odd coincidence, but Knightstone was once the property of Robert Catesby, and his wife was called Catherine.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Lucy felt winded and slightly scared. She’d only just managed to rationalize away the whole experience and here was Verity telling her that she might not be imagining it after all. “I mean I know you’ve always thought there was a connection between the cottage and the Gunpowder Plot, but is there any evidence?”

“It was the last thing that Charlie MacIntyre discovered before he was killed,” Verity said. “He was working on the documentary history behind the garden project and found some charters relating to the granting of the Knightstone estate to Robert Catesby in 1599 or thereabouts. The details are in the paperwork Finn has now.”

“I think Finn prefers to concentrate on the practical side of the work at the moment,” Lucy said, thinking of the way that Finn was out at all hours and in all weathers, concentrating fiercely on the project on the ground as a way, perhaps, to deal with his grief.