‘Operator, get me the police!’ urged the gaunt figure in an intense whisper, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the lead dangling down from the phone ended in a frayed mass of severed wires. Studiously ignoring everyone else, Belinda Scott sat draped over the piano whose strings and mechanism had long been removed. As Dorothy reached the door, Purvey looked up from the pages of his engagement diary for 1951 and smiled at her. ‘Thank you once again so very much for letting me impose on your hospitality like this,’ he said. ‘I do hope I’m not being too much of a nuisance.’

Rosemary glanced at the clock, which still read ten past four. She turned towards the window, attracted by a sound outside. Owing to the plastic sheeting which had been taped over the glass to improve the insulation and reduce draughts, it was impossible to see anything outside and the lounge was never aired. On hot days, and in winter when the storage heaters were turned on, the residual stench of flesh and food and urine, always pervasive, became quite overpowering. She could still hear the noise which had drawn her attention in the first place. Then she had thought it might be a fly trapped between the glass and the plastic film, but now it sounded more like a distant growling interspersed with cries which might almost have been human.

Rosemary got up and raised the lower right-hand corner of the plastic, where the tape had come loose from the frame. Through the triangle of grimy glass she could see part of the overgrown lawn at the front of the house and the double row of copper beeches which marked the line of the driveway, but there was no clue as to the cause of the strange sounds, which had now ceased.