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one seems to know! I can’t imagine why anyone should want it. My friend said it was in a very bad condition – the spine was evidently broken.”
    “But you’re in no doubt it was your book?”
    “It is distinctive,” Fischer said, nodding. “A black binding, an inscription inside in German, and my grandfather’s signature dated 1722 – the year before his
death. I was asking Mr Patterson if he knew of it.”
    Alyson’s gaze settled on me; he raised an enquiring eyebrow. I stopped playing. “I’ve not seen it but I do have friends who might be worth asking.”
    “Then you’ll oblige me by asking,” Alyson said. “You don’t know our Mr Pattinson well yet, Mr Fischer, but he has quite a reputation for solving mysteries. Now, do
come and meet my friend, Ridley.”
    He bore Fischer off across the room. ‘Our Mr Pattinson’ indeed. You’d think Alyson had lived in the area all his life!
    His wife swept by again. “Play, Mr Patterson,” she said. “That’s what you’re here for.”
    I played, while the ladies gossiped and the gentlemen talked about hunting. The severe-faced man plumped himself down beside Esther; she closed her book and greeted him with a look of cool
politeness. I played on, until I spotted Heron making his way through the party with an assurance that cleared his path without his needing to ask. He presented me with a folded note.
    “A letter for you, Patterson. Sent by messenger from Newcastle.” He turned away, took two dishes of tea from a passing gentleman and handed one to me before sipping at the other
himself. An heroic gesture; Heron loathes tea.
    The note was warm from Heron’s hand and was addressed to me in Hugh’s writing. I broke open the seal.
    There’s the very devil to pay here, Hugh had written without preamble. Bedwalters is refusing to leave Nell’s room. Mrs McDonald wants to turn him out and install
     another girl in the room but he’s bringing down all the force on the law on her and saying nothing can be done until Nell’s spirit disembodies. And Mrs Bedwalters has descended on
     the house not once but twice to tell her husband to come home but he’s adamant he will not. He’s saying he will never go home, that he will live there, with Nell, permanently
     – he’s even offered Mrs McDonald rent. (Which she is inclined to accept.) I can’t keep going down there to stop the arguments, Charles! What will it do to my reputation to be
     seen in a place like that? For God’s sake, come back. Or at least write to Bedwalters and persuade him to go home.
    Yr Obed t Serv t
    Hugh Demsey
    Hugh didn’t care to be seen in such a house but he didn’t seem bothered about my reputation. He wasn’t thinking sensibly – how could I leave here within hours of
arriving? Especially when I wanted permission to go back to town when Nell’s spirit disembodied. I could write to Bedwalters, certainly, but I hardly thought a note from me would persuade
him.
    “Trouble?” Heron asked. I gave him the note. He read it, considered, gave it back. “The man has more courage than I gave him credit for.”
    That made me pause. He was right; Bedwalters’s behaviour was courageous – I’d not seen it in that light before. To throw away respectability, home, reputation for the
sake of love – I’d not realised I was staring at Esther until I met her gaze. Still icy.
    My situation with Esther was entirely different, I told myself. Poor Nell had had no reputation to lose; she could not have been damaged by Bedwalters’s devotion. Esther stood to lose a
great deal by any selfishness on my part.
    “What will you do?” Heron asked.
    I went upstairs to write a letter, not sure if that last question of Heron’s had been about Bedwalters or Esther.
    Of course, there was no notepaper or ink in my room, so I went downstairs again to find the library, where considerate hosts usually keep such things. I got lost, inevitably,
and was on the verge of calling out for a servant,