“I asked them the last time I was here. Saturdays, they said. I’m going to make some wholemeal bread. Shall we pass by the House of Usher on the way? I’m crazy to see it.”

—

As we approach the vicarage I notice that the daylight seems oddly bright through the trees ahead of us. Sky is appearing where it shouldn’t. By the time I pull in between the gate posts, all is shockingly clear.

“Oh, no, Tom. You’ve missed it.”

The back of the house has finally been taken down. Nothing remains except a low mountain range, a series of foothills really, of broken brickwork and timbers, mangled piping, and pulverized glass and ceramic. A roaring digger is at work, scooping the debris into a waiting skip, and a couple of mattock-wielding men are levering up the planking of the floors. Gone is the pitched silhouette, always so dark against the sky. Long shadows will no longer frown over the lawn. All in all, it’s a substantial improvement to the local area.

We get out of the car and make our way toward the site. “Look, Dad!” says Tom, raising his voice over the digger. “Your bath is in the garden.”

So it is, lying in solitary state, tapless, under the first few white blossoms of the cherry tree.

“Wouldn’t it be jolly, to have a bath under a cherry tree.”

I glance back at the men with mattocks. One of them has moved toward the kitchen. The range has long gone, vanished from the scene one night over Christmas. Everyone was mystified. Well, claiming to be mystified. Whoever stole it had a job of work, anyway, manhandling that tonnage of iron in the small hours. I notice that the lad working in the kitchen is using a sledgehammer, not a mattock. As I watch, he brings it down onto the clay tiles with a crack.

The hounds. I’ve forgotten all about the hounds.

With a cry of alarm, I dash over to him. “Stop! Stop!” I scramble over heaps of rubble, my feet sliding in my haste. “The tiles!” I’m shouting against the three-liter diesel engine of the excavator. “You can’t smash the tiles!”

The young man, startled, lets the hammer drop by his feet. The digger driver, equally put out, responds to my frantic arm-waving with a soundless volley of invective. Tom is hurrying over, followed by an older man, clearly director of works. I recognize Stan Rail.

“They’re breaking up the floor!” I call to Mr. Rail. “But I’ve got to get the tiles out!”

The excavator’s bucket swings past our heads and I can’t help ducking. This building could still kill me if it had a mind. The boss makes a slicing gesture along his neck and the driver kills the engine.

“They’re medieval,” I plead in the merciful quiet. “I can’t let them be destroyed.”