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the garden at the side. It had a cavernous marble fireplace and a chandelier that was cocooned in spiders’ webs. There was a rumpled, threadbare carpet in the middle of the floor, but the only furniture was a dilapidated chaise-longue and a small card-table.
    Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the room and opened the folding doors that led to the dining-room. Against the far wall stood a sideboard with a mirror behind it. John and Lucy approached it and looked at themselves. “I don’t look as scared as I feel,” said Lucy.
    They were just about to leave the room, however,when John caught a flicker of a shadow in the mirror behind him. He swung around, with the hairs on the back of his head fizzing with fright.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” said Lucy. “John – what’s the matter?”
    â€œI think I saw somebody.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, you saw somebody? Don’t play games!”
    â€œI’m not! I promise you, I looked in the mirror and I saw somebody crossing the sitting-room behind us.”

6
    He hurried across the sitting-room and back into the hallway. He looked left, and right, and then he looked up the stairs. Lucy followed him.
    â€œI think we’d better leave,” she said. “If there’s somebody here, they could be anybody. A tramp or a squatter or somebody like that. They could be violent.”
    â€œBut I can’t understand why I didn’t hear them. They didn’t make any noise at all.”
    â€œJohn, I think this is a really bad idea and I think it’s time we went.”
    But John ignored her. His heart was beating fast and he was excited as well as scared. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and called out, “Hello! Can you hear me? Is anybody there? We’re looking for Mr Rogers!”
    His voice echoed around the house, going from room to empty room and finding no reply. He turned back to Lucy and said, “Let’s try upstairs. If they’ve got Mr Rogers tied up anywhere, that’s where he’ll probably be.”
    â€œDo we have to?” she said.
    â€œSupposing he’s there, all tied up, or injured, and we just walk away and leave him because we’re scared?”
    John started to climb the stairs, and then Lucy reluctantly followed him. They reached the galleried landing and peered back down to the hallway floor which looked like a chessboard. John said, “I’ll check all the bedrooms on this side, you take the other side.”
    â€œWhat shall I do if I find anything? Will a scream be all right?”
    John took the west side of the house. The first door he opened was a large airing cupboard, stacked with yellowing sheets and pillowcases. The next was a bathroom, with a huge green bath. The tap must have been dripping for years because the bottom was filled with a dark, rusty stain, as if somebody had been murdered in it.
    He pushed the door open a little wider and stepped inside. There was a shower cubicle behind the door, with frosted glass doors. Through the frosting he was sure that he could make out a dark, hunched shape. He looked at the washbasin and sawhis reflection in the discoloured mirror on the wall. His eyes were wide and he looked extremely pale.
    He approached the shower cubicle cautiously and tried to see what was inside it. It looked as if it were reddish-brown, and bent over, the size of a large child. Behind him, the tap kept up its monotonous dripping.
Plick – plack – plick – plack
.
    He didn’t know whether he dared to open the shower cubicle or not. Whatever was inside it, it wasn’t Mr Rogers – unless it was
part
of Mr Rogers. His heart was racing so fast that it was almost tripping itself up, and his mouth had gone dry.
    Perhaps he ought to go and find Lucy. But then what would Lucy think of him, if he was too scared to open up the shower himself?
    He reached out and took hold of the cubicle doorhandle. He tried to open