“I’m a bloody fool to stand here,” Narton said aloud. All those layers of blood, you can never wash them away.

His ears were unnaturally sharp. He heard the chink of harness from the farm buildings. A dog began to bark, though whether in the house or the yard he couldn’t tell. The barn would be empty, though.

Empty of the living. Crowded with the dead.

At that moment an idea drifted into his mind, settled in the silt at the bottom, sprouted, put out roots and flowered. All that in an instant. Sometimes, he thought, all a man has is his folly. No wonder he clings to it.

Lydia cooked Welsh rarebit for supper, following the detailed instructions Mrs. Renton had provided. She had bought a bottle of pale ale to add to the cheese topping as it melted in the saucepan but Captain Ingleby-Lewis chanced to find it before she could use it. She cleared two thirds of the great scarred dining table and served the meal on matching plates, one slightly chipped.

It was the first time that she and her father had eaten in such a relatively formal way and in the soft light this end of the room looked almost like a normal room in a normal house. Her father complimented her on the rarebit. Though he had been drinking beer steadily since lunchtime, he appeared to have reached an equilibrium that left him, at least for the time being, amiable and reasonably alert.

“Well, this is cozy, eh?” he said, lining up fork and knife exactly at half past six on his plate. “You’re full of unexpected talents, my dear.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you get on at that lawyer fellow’s?”

“It’s rather boring work.”

“I can’t imagine how those chaps manage it. Sitting in an office all day and shuffling bits of paper around. It’d drive me mad.” He stroked his moustache approvingly. “Fact is, God didn’t create me to be a desk wallah.”

“Father, there’s something I wanted to ask you.” Father still sounded strange in her ears. “About those hearts.”

“Eh? What?”

“The ones Mr. Serridge was sent in the post. There have been two since I’ve been here. Have there been others?”

“Perhaps,” Captain Ingleby-Lewis admitted cautiously. “Can’t really say.”

“When did they start?”

“I don’t know.” He looked up at the ceiling. “A month or two ago?”

“But why should anyone do that sort of thing?”

Ingleby-Lewis gave way to a fit of coughing. When it had finished, he lit a cigarette. “Some crackpot, my dear. The world’s full of them. Take my advice: best thing to do is put it out of your mind.”

“But it’s not that easy. Is there-is there something about Mr. Serridge I should know?”

“Perfectly decent fellow,” said Ingleby-Lewis. “Known him for years. Not a gentleman, of course, but can’t blame him for that. If you ask me, people talk a lot of rot about that sort of thing. Damn it, I shall have to pop out for some cigarettes.”

At that moment there came a tap on the door.

“Come in,” cried Ingleby-Lewis, and struggled to his feet.

The door opened, revealing Malcolm Fimberry on the threshold with a bottle of wine cradled in his arms.

“I say,” he squeaked. “Sorry to disturb you. I-I thought I might open some wine and I wondered if I could borrow a corkscrew.”

“Wine, eh?” Ingleby-Lewis sprang toward him. “Nothing simpler, old man. Come and sit down. Lydia, my dear, would you find Mr. Fimberry a corkscrew in the kitchen?”

“If you would like to join me in a glass,” Fimberry suggested, “I’d be more than pleased.”

“How very kind.” Ingleby-Lewis patted him on the shoulder and removed the bottle from his grasp. “Three glasses as well then, please, Lydia. Ah, a Beaujolais, I see. How very wise. You’re quite right of course-solitary drinking is not something one should encourage. Besides, life holds few finer pleasures than a glass of wine with friends.”

When Lydia returned with three unmatched glasses and a corkscrew, she found her father and Mr. Fimberry sitting on either side of the fireplace and smoking Mr. Fimberry’s cigarettes. Her father took the corkscrew and removed the cork with a skill born of long experience. He poured a stream of wine into the nearest glass.

“None for me, thank you,” Lydia said.

“Nonsense,” Ingleby-Lewis said. “Just a sip. Do you good. Warm you up.” He turned to Fimberry. “My daughter feels the cold, you know. Especially at night.” He measured a thimbleful into the smallest of the glasses and handed it ceremoniously to Lydia. He gave another glass to Fimberry and the largest one to himself. He raised his own glass to the light. “A fine color. Your good health.” He swallowed a third of the contents.

“I hear you have a position at Shires and Trimble in Rosington Place, Mrs. Langstone,” Fimberry said, leaning toward her. “That must be interesting. Working for a solicitor, I mean.”

“It’s early days yet,” Lydia said grimly.

“You’re just opposite the chapel, of course. In fact, as far as I can work out from an eighteenth-century plan of the palace, the house where Shires and Trimble are must be built over part of the Almoner’s lodging. Remarkable to think of the people who must have walked about here in their time. Good Queen Bess, Sir Thomas More, Richard the Third, John of Gaunt, all those splendid prelates of the Church. Why, we walk on history in this part of London. And that’s why we need Mr. Howlett to guard our gates and keep order. In legal terms, Rosington Place, Bleeding Heart Square and their environs form the Rosington Liberty, and hence in many respects they still fall under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rosington.”

“Very true,” Ingleby-Lewis said. “A spot more? No?” He refilled his own glass. “You must know the place like the back of your hand.”

Mr. Fimberry simpered, his eyes huge behind his pince-nez. “Oh, there are some fascinating stories associated with it, no doubt about that. After the Reformation, the Catholic dead were sometimes secretly interred beneath the chapel, in the days when the palace was rented to the Spanish ambassador. It is said that the bodies were brought here to Bleeding Heart Square, and then transferred to the chapel in Rosington Palace. They were secretly buried at midnight, to the accompaniment of solemn masses, beneath the undercroft floor.”

“Extraordinary yarn,” Ingleby-Lewis said, his eyes straying again toward the bottle.

“Nobody really knows if the story is true,” Fimberry went on. “There are those who claim that the funeral processions still walk on certain nights of the year, with a line of recusants carrying the corpses from Bleeding Heart Square to Rosington Chapel. Others say they have heard singing from the chapel when it is empty. And some people believe that the bodies lie beneath the square itself. There are many ghosts, you know.” He glanced sideways at Lydia and gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Though I can find no historical trace of the one that people claim to have seen most often.”

“Ghosts, eh?” Ingleby-Lewis said. “Claptrap, if you ask me. If I ever come across a ghost I’m going to put my arm right through him.”

“A little more wine, Mrs. Langstone?” Fimberry seized the bottle and gestured toward Lydia’s untouched glass.

“No, thank you.”

“Thank you, obliged to you,” Ingleby-Lewis said, holding out his empty glass.

“Which ghost is that?” Lydia said quietly.

“The ghost of the lady who lost her heart.” Fimberry swallowed the rest of his wine and gave himself another glass. His face was now pinker than ever and covered with a sheen of perspiration. He took off his pince-nez and rubbed the lenses on his handkerchief. “A tragic story. The legend goes that there was a dance, a great ball at the Spanish ambassador’s. Royalty came. There was dancing and drinking and gambling far into the night.”

“Good as a play, eh?” Ingleby-Lewis said contentedly, stretching out his legs in shiny, neatly creased trousers.