‘La chambre – room – for the boy – is the first and for your nanny and the baby is second.’ Then she spoke in French again. Cleo translated when she had finished.

‘Madame says that we have been given the honeymoon suite and it has a wonderful view. She’s going to sort some snacks out for us now,’ Cleo said, but with a slight frown.

‘Madame – Monique – can you let me have the Wi-Fi code?’ Roy called after the woman.

She turned and gave him a strange look. ‘The Wi-Fi is not working. You are on vacances – holiday – why you need Wi-Fi?’

She had a point, Roy agreed, privately. But all the same, he didn’t like being out of touch with his team.

Leaving Cleo with Noah, he hurried back out to the car, through the rain which had started falling again, to fetch the rest of the luggage they would need for tonight. Then, followed by Bruno with his rucksack, and Kaitlynn holding her bag, they went up the grand staircase, past the stuffed stag at the top, and turned left onto the landing.

‘Is that stag real?’ Bruno asked.

‘It was,’ Cleo said.

‘Cool!’

The entire landing wall was lined with more animal heads, mostly stags and boars, all on plinths and mounted high up. They struggled along it, as they had been told, until they reached the first room on the right, which was for Bruno.

The boy opened the door and peered into the gloom. Roy, behind him, reached across and found the light switch.

One of the bulbs in the round, wooden chandelier blinked on and off with a crackling sound, then stayed on. Despite the size of this mansion, the room was tiny, a single brass bed almost filling it. It was covered in a worn, candlewick spread. Just beyond the foot of the bed was a plastic shower curtain.

‘Urrr!’ Bruno exclaimed, looking up at a spider hanging from the lampshade.

Roy and Cleo exchanged a glance.

‘Surely they have a bigger room than this?’ she said, grimly.

Roy stepped forward and pulled aside the shower curtain, to reveal a quaint toilet, shower stall and a washbasin. He’d seen bigger prison cells than this room.

‘Where’s the television?’ asked Bruno. ‘And what is the Wi-Fi code?’

‘First thing tomorrow,’ Cleo said, ‘we’re out of here.’

Kaitlynn and Jack’s room was bigger, with the cot they had requested. Leaving the nanny to sort Noah out, and not letting Cleo carry anything heavy, Roy lugged their bags along the corridor. He reached the bottom of a very narrow, very steep spiral stone staircase. It was almost dangerously steep, he thought.