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of the hall, beyond the bear and the suit of armour, a massive stone staircase ascended to the first floor of the house. On both sides of the hall were large double doors, open wide.
    Choosing the doorway on the right-hand side, Angelawalked straight into an Aladdin’s cave of relics. The room ran the entire length of that part of the house and had probably originally been intended as a formal reception room. There were two tall windows at the far end; half a dozen others along the right-hand wall looked out of the front of the building towards the gravelled car park. The long wall opposite them was dominated by a huge fireplace. You could burn an entire tree in it which, Angela reflected, you’d probably need to do in the winter if you wanted to keep the temperature of the room much above freezing. On either side of the fireplace, built-in bookcases extended in both directions, the shelves lined with leather-bound volumes. Just cataloguing those would be at least a week’s work for somebody. But it wasn’t the elegant proportions of the room or the books or the faded decoration, or even the fireplace, that caught her eye. It was the floor.
    Almost the entire surface of the scuffed parquet was covered with boxes and bags and chests, a haphazard collection of containers, interspersed with occasional bronze and marble sculptures and other, unrecognizable, objects covered in white dust sheets or plastic sheeting.
    ‘Good God,’ Angela muttered to herself. ‘If every room’s like this, it’ll take months, not weeks, to sort out.’
    ‘Ah, there you are, Angela.’ Richard Mayhew’s voice boomed out from behind her, stating the obvious. A large – in all respects – and florid-faced man who specialized in objects made from silver and gold, he seemed incapable ofever speaking in anything less than a slightly moderated shout.
    ‘Richard,’ she said, shaking his hand. She pointed at the chaotic mass of containers in the room. ‘Are all the rooms as full as this?’
    Mayhew shook his head. ‘No, not at all. This is the biggest room in the house, and it looks as if somebody – presumably the executors – decided to leave the furniture in situ, but bring almost everything else in here and the room on the opposite side of the hall. Personally, I’d have preferred to do it room by room, but there you are. Needs must, and all that.’
    He looked round. ‘Now, we’ll be making a start in here first thing tomorrow morning. The other chaps are checking the rest of the house, making sure that we know what else there is to be assessed. The good news for you is that there’s a very large kitchen, and almost all of the china and ceramics we’ve found so far are already in there. I don’t think it’ll take you all that long to check them over. In the meantime, let me introduce you to the other chaps and give you the guided tour. It’s a fascinating old house with some very interesting features.’
    He led the way back into the hall and across to the foot of the staircase.
    ‘What the devil happened here?’ Angela asked, stopping short when she saw a missing banister halfway up the staircase.
    Mayhew coughed, and turned an alarming shade ofpuce. ‘That is where the old man . . . er, died,’ he said. ‘Apparently he was found hanging from that piece of banister. Terrible business.’
    Angela noticed a large brown stain on the flagstones near her feet, and looked away. There had obviously been a lot of blood. She decided it was time to change the subject.
    ‘Roger told me about the multiple wills Wendell-Carfax made.’
    Mayhew smiled and relaxed a little. ‘Mischievous old sod. He was the last of the line, you know. Never married, no children. Just a few cousins who’re now all busily fighting each other over their share of the inheritance.’
    He led the way up to a wide corridor on the first floor, spacious bedrooms opening up on both sides of it. ‘As you’ve probably guessed, Oliver was a quite a character,