The crew members were going about their work in a well-rehearsed ballet, lifting, shifting, unloading rope-handled shipping boxes: always a pair of hands in the right place at the right time. It was easy to see that they had done this many times before.

I warmed my hands over the welcoming flame of a Bunsen burner, then brought a beaker of milk to a bubbling boil and stirred in a good dollop of Ovaltine. At this time of year, no refrigerator was required to keep milk chilled: I simply kept the bottle on a shelf, alphabetically, between the manganese and the morphine, the latter bottle neatly labeled in Uncle Tarquin’s spidery handwriting.

Uncle Tar had been given the gate under mysterious circumstances just before taking a double first at Oxford. His father, by way of compensation, had built the remarkable chemistry laboratory at Buckshaw in which Uncle Tar had spent, by choice, the remainder of his days, conducting what was said to be top-secret research. Among his papers I had discovered several letters that suggested he had been both friend and advisor to the young Winston Churchill.

As I sipped at the Ovaltine, I shifted my gaze to the painting that hung above the mantelpiece: a beautiful young woman with two girls and a baby. The girls were my sisters, Ophelia and Daphne. I was the baby. The woman, of course, was my mother, Harriet.

Harriet had secretly commissioned the work as a gift for Father just before setting out on what was to become her final journey. The painting had lain for ten years, almost forgotten, in an artist’s studio in Malden Fenwick, until I had discovered it there and brought it home.

I’d made happy plans to hang the portrait in the drawing room: to stage a surprise unveiling for Father and my sisters. But my scheme was thwarted. Father had caught me smuggling the bulky painting into the house, taken it away from me, and removed it to his study.