The last Earl of Wynherne lay dead on the study floor. His daughter sat at the desk reading a document, her fists against her temples. Her jaws were clenched. Tears could come later. There was no time for them now. The dull pain behind her eyes heightened the impenetrability of the legal phrasing on the paper in front of her. She reached for a jug and poured water into a tumbler. The spout chattered against the glass rim. Droplets splashed on to the oak desktop. The safety lid on a brown medicine bottle nearly defeated her trembling hands, but at last it clicked over the catch and spun free. She swallowed a couple of pills, checked her watch and glanced at the window while trying to refasten the lid.

There was a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, next to the window. One of the drawers was ajar, and they were all too stiff to slide open by accident. The medicine bottle slipped from her fingers, the lid tumbled off and pills spilled across the desk. She ran over, tugged open the drawer and clicked the folders across the rails, searching for anything missing or out of place amongst her well-ordered files. At last she found it: a crumpled letter poking up near the back as though it had been stuffed there in haste. She eased it out of the drawer and studied it, at first puzzled, but then she gave a cry of alarm.

A cattle grid rattled in the distance. For a moment she stared transfixed at the letter, then she snatched the legal document from the desk, darted into the hall, slammed the bolt across the front door, shot upstairs and tipped the contents of a cash box and jewellery case into a bag. A car came up the gravel drive, stones pinging on metal. She pressed herself against the wall next to the open window of her bedroom. Footsteps crunched over to the house. The latch jiggled downstairs, and someone hammered on the knocker. She glanced at a pair of scissors on the dresser.