Someone paused at the foot of the stairs, and in quick alarm he darted along the hall and into an open door.

He was in the neat bedroom of Winona, shortbreathed, made doubly nervous by boards that had creaked under his tread.

He stood listening.

They were in the parlour, a babble of voices coming up to him; excited voices, but not funeral voices.

His eyes roved the chamber of Winona, where everything was precisely in its place.