“Tinned beef” was a code word meaning that Father needed to borrow money for train and taxi fare. I had discovered this by listening at the door of Father’s study. It was a fact I wished I didn’t know.

“Of course,” Dogger said. “Excuse me for a moment.”

And he vanished in the way he does.

“You’ll have to lay down some tarpaulings on that floor,” Mrs. Mullet told McNulty. “ ‘Par-key,’ they calls it: cherry wood, mahogany, walnut, birch—six different kinds of oak is in it. Can’t ’ave workmen tramplin’ all over the likes of that, can I?”

“Believe you me, Mrs.…”

“Mullet,” said Mrs. Mullet. “With an ‘M.’ ”

“Mrs. Mullet. My name’s McNulty—also with an ‘M,’ by the way. Patrick McNulty. I can assure you that our crew at Ilium Films are hired for their fussy natures. In fact, I can confide in you—knowing it will go no further—that we’ve just come from shooting a scene inside a certain royal residence without one word of complaint from You-Know-Who.”

Mrs. M’s eyes widened.

“You mean—”

“Exactly,” McNulty said, putting a forefinger to his lips. “You’re a very shrewd woman, Mrs. Mullet. I can see that.”

She gave a flimsy smile, like the Mona Lisa, and I knew that her loyalty was bought. Whatever else he was, Patrick McNulty was as slick as nose oil.

Now Dogger was back, his face bland and capable, giving away nothing. I followed as he led the way upstairs and into the west wing.

“The room at the south end of the corridor is Miss Harriet’s boudoir. It is strictly private, and is not to be entered upon any account.”

He said this as if Harriet had just stepped out for a couple of hours to pay a social call in the county, or to ride with the Halstead-Thicket Hounds. He did not tell McNulty that my mother had been dead for ten years, and that her rooms had been preserved by Father as a shrine where no one, or so he thought, could hear him weeping.