‘I thought I might go and see a friend in Preston,’ said Gina. ‘Would you like me to post your letter?’

‘Yes, please, dear.’

Edith had spent a long time writing to Mrs Thwaite’s sister, Mrs Hillier. It wasn’t a lengthy letter, but it had taken some care to get the wording right.

Gina had learned from Ellen, who’d learned it from Mrs Mason, who’d very quickly managed to extract it from Lucas Hillier, that Mrs Thwaite had not really wanted to retire at all. She’d cut off all communication with the Hall and asked Mrs Hillier never to contact the Stellions again either.

‘Seems like she’d been thrown out and she thought she’d been hard done by,’ Ellen told Gina. ‘It doesn’t sound like Mrs Stellion, does it, to do something so unkind? I wonder if there was some misunderstanding.’

‘Mebbe,’ said Gina. ‘P’raps Mrs Thwaite was embarrassed about the gin Mum and me found.’

‘What gin?’

Gina told her the official gin-discovery story as Dora knew it, and Ellen was taken aback.

‘I never had her down for a thief. Well, if Mum found it and reckons it was stolen, I’d believe her, wouldn’t you?’

‘We both thought the same. Mum hid it in the cleaning cupboard and after a bit I sort of added it to the tray in the sitting room and no one noticed, so at least Mr and Mrs S got their gin back – or what was left of it. Who knows how much she’d drunk over the years? Anyway, I reckon Mrs Thwaite must have known she was rumbled. She was quite a bitter old woman, I found out when I came to work here, and just the kind to take umbrage.’

‘Mm … difficult. Have a word with Mum. She’ll mebbe know what you should say to Mrs S.’

So Gina had done so, although already she knew it didn’t really matter what she said so long as Edith was satisfied she was doing the right thing: her letter was not destined to reach Mrs Hillier. It was Gina’s ultimate revenge on the former housekeeper that even in death she should be regarded as an outcast from the Hall.

Gina pulled the boxes James had sent from London out from under her bed and opened them with a pair of kitchen scissors.

‘See, I didn’t even have a nose through them,’ she said.

James laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put it past you to have a look and then seal them up again,’ he said, ‘but it’s all the same to me. I know exactly what’s there.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Gina. ‘At least give me sight of them before we show Bella.’

She rummaged in the crumpled newspapers and extracted a pretty little silver box, then a second with a different pattern on the lid, and finally a necklace of red stones.