The door of the heritage center shut with a sharp snap and Lucy jumped and turned around, but there was no one there. A long, cold shiver ran down her neck. She felt as though she was being watched. It was an acutely disturbing sensation. Yet at the same time she was aware of hearing the murmur of Gabriel’s voice, as he and the other visitors chatted to Marilynne upstairs. It was as though she was caught between two parallel worlds, one completely normal whilst the other was full of unseen shadows and threats...

A smothering sense of panic rose in Lucy, but she fought it back, drawing in a deep breath and fixing her gaze on the display cabinet in front of her whilst she tried to calm down. She told herself that there was nothing wrong. She was tired after her walk and being out in the sun. It was natural she should feel a little off-kilter...

“Our toy collection is very special.” It was Gabriel’s voice.

Lucy jumped for real as he popped up beside her. Evidently, he had left the other visitors upstairs and come to check up on her. She realized that he was referring to the items in the display case and focused properly on it. Toys that must have belonged to earlier generations of Knightstone children were laid out under the glass: a rattle, a carved wooden soldier with the paint of his uniform almost worn away, a spinning top, hoops, playing cards, a battered doll that had quite the most evil grin she had seen, and disjointed puppets on dusty strings. She couldn’t for the life of her see what was so special about this rather sad collection of objects but Gabriel sounded quite smug.

“The Lancings, who owned Gunpowder Cottage before your aunt bought it, found the toys in a box in the loft and donated them to the history society, as it was then,” Gabriel said. “Some of these items date back to the seventeenth century, if not before. That—” he pointed to the rattle “—was probably for a Tudor baby. It’s made of gold with little ivory balls inside.”

“An expensive gift for a baby,” Lucy said. “I expect he or she probably only wanted to chew on it.” She pointed to the painting of Knightstone Manor. “That’s a picture of Gunpowder Cottage when it was a manor house, isn’t it?” she said. “I noticed that Henry Lancing was named as owning the estate.”

“The Lancings owned the manor estate from 1662 until they sold it to your aunt,” Gabriel said precisely. “They demolished most of the old house in the mid-eighteenth century, soon after the picture was painted. Henry Lancing lost a lot of his money in bad business speculations and the house fell into dereliction as a result. A smaller cottage was far easier for the family to renovate and maintain.”

“It’s interesting to see what it looked like originally,” Lucy said. “What was it—Tudor? Medieval?”

“A bit of both probably.” Gabriel sounded slightly bored as though the history of domestic architecture was nowhere near as interesting to him as the Knights Hospitaller. “There are very few records pertaining to the house; it was quite unremarkable as far as we know.”