‘I wanted to put all that behind me and now you’re bringing it up again,’Gina said, her face contorted. ‘It’s so unfair!’ She started to cry, making a lot of noise and flapping her hands dramatically, and Tom led her into the kitchen before she became hysterical.

‘Ellen, do you know what she’s on about?’ Dora was angry and upset.

‘Yes, it’s just that Uncle Tom and I found a silly old book of spells among Gina’s things in her room at the Hall. We told you about the exercise book, but not about this book. We were sure she’d been trying them out. You know Mrs Travers foresaw Gina’s future in her crystal ball at the fête and warned her off messing with magic spells – not because she could really do them, but because she might do herself harm believing in such nonsense and it might lead her down the wrong path. Gina can’t possibly have killed Dad – he died of a stroke in the asylum – and she can’t have killed Mrs Thwaite either. Didn’t Mrs Thwaite have a heart attack? Gina was nothing to do with that.’

‘What had Gina got against Mrs Thwaite, anyway?’ asked Dora, at a loss.

‘I don’t know, Mum. You’ll have to ask her.’

‘But she did laugh when I told her that Mrs Thwaite had died,’ Dora remembered. ‘I was so ashamed, but I just thought it was Gina being heartless.’

‘That’s all it could have been, Mum,’ said Ellen patiently. ‘She wanted Mrs Thwaite’s job at the Hall, and somehow she got it, and then the old lady died and Gina must have thought it was to do with some stupid spell she cast.’

‘Why does everyone seem to know so much more about this than me, her own mother?’ asked Dora. ‘Even Betty, from what you say.’

‘Uncle Tom and I know because we found the book and I took it to Mrs Travers. I didn’t want to worry you, and I reckon she didn’t either. The spells aren’t real, just Gina’s imagination after reading the daft book. I took it to Mr Shepherd, too, and he said it was just lies and the book was a fancy way of getting people to part with their money.’

‘And now the silly girl thinks she’s got magical powers. Betty told us she’d warned Gina about that at the fête. But I can’t even say it without thinking it’s madness.’

Dora and Ellen looked at each other, both thinking the same awful thought: Philip had been declared mad and locked up, and they’d never seen him again.