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weird woman who appeared to him in his dreams at night, hissing dark threats.
    “He’s snooping around,” Charles said instead. “I just know he is. Why was he alone in the house in the first place?”
    “He was copying the map!”
    “I know that, but … oh, never mind.”
    Leaving Sebastian alone, he went back to his own room to brood.
    On the lawn beneath him the outside security light had clicked on, and flooded the snowy garden. Charles leant closer to the glass until his breath misted it, and peered down. Far below he could see two tiny figures, wrapped up in coats and boots, making their way under the trees. What were they talking about, he wondered? He watched until they disappeared, swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.
    “Will we ever be able to get out of here, do you think?” Samuel said, kicking at the nearest snowdrift.
    “It might take a while. Unless the Council can be bothered to send up a snowplough, and that doesn’t seem very likely.”
    They stood under the trees in the dark, the white snow beneath them barred with shadows.
    “Mum’s pestered them on the phone every day,” she went on, “but they say they have other priorities.”
    “So that’s it,” Samuel said. “We’re stuck!”
    “I thought you said it would be a good thing,” she reminded him.
    “That was before I realized this place was haunted.”
    “Mum wouldn’t like to hear you say that. She always insists there is no ghost at Dunadd.”
    “Does she?”
    Fiona nodded. “I heard her once at a dinner party. There was this awkward silence afterwards. None of the guests knew what to say. I remember it really well. I felt sorry for the person who said it – she gave them a right ticking off. Mum can do that, without really saying very much at all. She can make you feel
this
big.” She held up her hand, and closed the gap between finger and thumb.
    The pair of them were silent for a moment, thinking about the guests at the dinner party, and Fiona’s mother getting cross with whoever had been foolish enough to enquire about “the ghost story.” Samuel could imagine it, could picture the scene in the dining room of Dunadd House, the guests all sitting round the huge mahogany table, fire and candlelight flickering on the wooden panels behind them. Granny Hughesserving everyone with a quiet disgruntled subservience, using the best silver, which usually sat untouched on the sideboard, polished religiously every other day by Mr Hughes.
    “There must be more we could find out about this Weeping Woman,” Samuel insisted, glancing across at the dark mass of the house, one or two lights winking in the windows. It threw a massive shadow forward onto the snow. In the big bay window of the drawing room they could see the Christmas tree glittering in the dark.
    “Maybe something in the library will tell us more,” he added.
    Fiona gave him a sharp look. “Not possible. Mum doesn’t like us going in there without her permission. It makes her nervous. You know that.”
    “There must be a way,” he murmured. “What about at night?”
    “You realize you’ll be evicted from the cottage, if Mum catches you at it?”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s why I need your help.”
    She rolled her eyes. “What have I done to deserve this?”
    They looked at each other in the dark as if they had just struck a bargain.
    “We can be partners in crime,” he whispered.
     
    While Samuel and Fiona were making their plans, Charles was alone with his own worries. That night, after dark, he took up his torch and crept down the winding stone staircase of the tower to the first-floor landing below. He pushed open the door of the drawing room, sensing rather than seeing the shadows retreat before him. This dark house held no secretsfor him, it was his home.
    Or did it?
    Charles crossed the drawing room and made his way to the forbidden library at the far end. He had seen and heard Fiona and Samuel snooping about in there the other day.