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mistress?”
    â€œNow that I could understand. But no. Word is he’s got the hots for the Marchesa Vannoni herself. Shoots high, our Monty.”
    â€œMy, my,” marvelled Sydney. “She must be all of — what, fifty, fifty-five?”
    â€œShe’s in good nick — built like a brick olive press. Still, she’s not your typical Hollywood producer bait, I grant you. Ah, at bloody last.”
    They had arrived at the main entrance to the manor, which stood open. On each of the lofty stone pillars that supported the gate stood the heraldic beast that had once been part of the crest of the old island family who had lived in the house — a greyhound-like creature with impossibly long legs. To the right, a short distance away from the gate, was what looked like the gatekeeper’s lodge — a two-storey building of unusual construction, with a pointed roof and an upper storey jutting out over the lower. The car continued up the drive toward the manor, which hove into view, giving the first-time visitor a shock — of pleasure, amusement, or aesthetic anguish, depending on the arrival’s sensibilities.
    The original structure of the Manoir Ste. Madeleine dated from the seventeenth century, to which had been added an elegant Georgian extension. The crowning eccentricity was the new entrance hall, built around the middle of the eighteenth century by a seigneur who had obviously paid a visit to the châteaux of the Loire valley and come back enamoured of towers and turrets. On each side of the central doorway the turrets hung out over the main walls like stone torpedoes, with a slender tower just visible behind the pointed roof. It was surrounded by well-maintained parkland, presently covered with the trailers of the film people, with a coach house close to the main building.
    â€œThank God we’re here. I’ve got to take a leak.”
    They had come to a halt in the courtyard behind the manor alongside a vintage Mercedes, a Bugatti, and a handful of army vehicles of various kinds dating from the 1940s.
    â€œWhere is everyone?” wondered Sydney, as she got out of the car. “It’s like the Marie Celeste .”
    The usually busy courtyard was deserted. There was a complete absence of drivers, film people of every stripe, even the security guards who generally milled and shouted around the area, which was not being used for the film.
    â€œShut up, woman,” enjoined her superstitious husband, hustling for one of the portable toilets set up in a discreet corner of the yard. “They’re probably all on the other side of the building. You go on — I’m making a pit stop.”
    Sydney made her way around the side of the manor house. To one side of her she could just see the grass-covered hump near the ornamental lake that concealed the entrance to the command bunker. One of the senior German officers had lived in the manor during the occupation, and it was on his orders that work had started on what was intended to be an elaborate complex of underground rooms and tunnels. The only sound was the squawking of the ducks that lived on the lake and the crowing of a rooster somewhere. There was still no sign of life, and the sensation of separation from reality she had experienced since their arrival hit her so powerfully that she felt vertiginous.
    Gil had roared with laughter when he first saw the Manoir Ste. Madeleine.
    â€œDear God, it’s pure kitsch — if kitsch can be pure. Any moment now and Sneezy, Grumpy, and Doc will come waddling round that corner, singing their corny little hearts out.”
    It was not how she saw it. Pure Castle of Otranto more like. More Transylvania than Ruritania. Any moment now and Nosferatu might come, swooping round the corner.
    Perhaps it was the subject matter of Gil’s novel that made Sydney so aware of the island’s traumatic past — the bunker looming in the midst of the manor’s verdant