‘They don’t spend much on heating, do they?’ Beryl said with a shiver as we walked along the freezing corridor.

To access the Green Saloon we had to cross the Marble Room. A large room filled with fine French furniture, precious carpets from the Middle East and stuffed full with priceless works of art. It gave the impression of unrivaled luxury, but once again I had the distinct impression that the house was stalked by a frightening loneliness.

A footman—not the one from earlier—held open a set of tall double doors and ushered us into the Green Saloon. It was another opulent room with more works of art and expensive antiques, but it was much warmer here. A waiter stepped forward and asked us what we wanted to drink. Beryl ordered a glass of white wine and I asked for an American size double measure of Jack Daniel’s. The British idea of a double is laughable.

‘Right away, sir,’ he said and disappeared.

There were about twelve to fifteen people milling around, talking in small groups, but at our entrance almost everyone stopped talking, and was either openly or surreptitiously sizing us up. Maybe I’d had more whiskey than I had intended, but all the men appeared to have been dressed by the same tailor.

Almost immediately my gaze tangled with Olivia’s. She was conversing with a middle-aged couple, but she threw a shy smile in my direction. I nodded and looked away, and my eyes fell upon our hostess. Lady Swanson was standing by the super-large marble fireplace listening attentively to a tall, balding man. As I watched she broke away and came toward us, smiling as if seeing us was a dream come true.

‘Hello, how terribly sweet of you to come all the way from London,’ she trilled.

‘It was kind of you to ask us, Lady Swanson.’ I nodded toward Beryl. ‘This is Beryl Baker, my assistant.’

She smiled charmingly. ‘But of course, I remember you.’

‘You have such a beautiful home,’ Beryl gushed.

‘Yes,’ she said with a little laugh, ‘we rather like it, but it can be frightfully dreary down here, you know. No proper restaurants or theaters and freezing pipes all winter.’

‘I wouldn’t mind. It’s so beautiful,’ Beryl said. Her little face was quite red with excitement. ‘Oh, and thank you so much for inviting me.’

‘Not at all. I’m delighted to have you both here.’ Lady Swanson leaned forward, her eyes sparkling as if she was excluding the rest of the room, and sharing an intimate secret that only Beryl and I were privy to. She was a socially expert individual of the highest order, obviously. ‘Was there a lot of Friday traffic on the roads?’

‘No. It was fine,’ I said, hiding my amusement.

Beryl was still nodding vigorously in agreement when I cast my eye out for the waiter. He was walking toward me with a straight back and a tray with a glass of wine and my whiskey placed on a napkin square.

Beryl and I accepted our drinks and Lady Swanson said, ‘You must let me introduce you to my husband.’

We followed her toward a large, gilded grandfather clock where a rotund, balding, florid-faced man was standing stiffly next to a stout woman with a pink face, fat, heavily bejeweled hands, and a snooty tilt to her nose. Her lipstick had bled into the leathery creases around her mouth.

‘Darling,’ Lady Swanson said, ‘this is Dr. Kane, the hypnotherapist I was telling you about. The one that’s treating Vivi.’ She turned to me. ‘Dr. Marlow Kane, my husband, Lord William Elliot Swanson.’

So that was little Olivia’s nickname—Vivi. Totally unsuitable.

‘Ah,’ he said, his bushy gray eyebrows raised, as he took my hand and pumped it heartily. I could imagine him in a waxed jacket, gun in hand, whistling for his dogs.

‘Hello,’ I said, and listened while Lady Swanson introduced the woman with the greasy lipstick. She had a double-barreled last name that I did not bother to remember. She looked at me vaguely—a subtle method of telling me I belonged to an inferior class.

‘And this is Beryl Baker, his assistant,’ Lady Swanson said. With that piece of information the woman’s eyes completely glassed over.

At that point the butler caught Lady Swanson’s eye. She nodded and excused herself. Lord Swanson nodded blankly at Beryl and turned to me. ‘Did you have much trouble getting here?’

I sighed inwardly. ‘No. It was fine.’

‘No traffic? Don’t people leave London like lemmings at the weekend?’ he boomed.

‘Not this weekend.’

‘Jolly good.’

And with that the conversation was apparently over. He smiled at us in an expansive if dim way, and nodded us away.

I steered Beryl away. Olivia’s father was dull and not particularly bright, but his birthright as the male heir of the Swanson fortune meant that he was deferred to so sycophantically that he had no idea how uninteresting and stupid he really was. All these people who bowed and behaved as if the sun shone out of his ass were happy to go along with the illusion of his greatness because it kept their importance in the scheme of things secure.

We were drifting toward the tall, mullioned windows when a familiar voice said, ‘Hello. So glad you could make it.’

We turned around to face Olivia. She was wearing a velvet black dress with a high neckline and black lace sleeves. Her glossy hair was up in some sort of chignon that made me imagine taking it down and twisting it around my fist as I rammed into her.

‘Hi,’ Beryl grinned.

‘I see you’ve met Daddy,’ she said softly, her silvery eyes straying from me to Beryl.

‘Yes. He seems…very nice,’ Beryl said.

Olivia’s expression said that she did not believe Beryl thought any such thing, but all she said was, ‘I’d like you both to meet my siblings.’

First was her sister, Lady Daphne.

She had inherited her mother’s beautiful eyes and she had very good skin. Otherwise she was, unfortunately, the spitting image of her father. She was only nineteen, but incredibly, she had already cultivated the critical, calculating hauteur of a dowager. Her voice was a sarcastic, assessing drawl and her cold gaze dismissed and traveled away from us even as she said, ‘How do you do?’

An awkward silence ensued as soon as the introductions were done. Olivia quickly herded us away and introduced us to a sleek man standing next to a painting of a dour ancestor, his eyes glazed with boredom. He was wearing a double-breasted, navy wool pinstripe suit, the pocket square, stuffed not folded, and the tie a different pattern but still working together perfectly. The tie knot was a gentleman’s knot, small, tight, four-in-hand with a dimple. Obviously a polo playing, champagne guzzling city boy.

Beryl said something quietly in Olivia’s ear and both ladies excused themselves. I presumed they were on their way to the powder room. My eyes nearly swiveled around to turn and watch her go.

‘So you’re the hypnotist?’ Jacobi Gough Swanson drawled, eyeing me curiously over the rim of his champagne glass.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Mummy seems to think you’re rather wonderful.’

‘It’s not certain that will be her deathbed opinion yet.’

‘I have no doubt you’ll do very well,’ he said suavely, but some quickly hidden expression in his eyes made me wonder if Olivia had a secret enemy in him.

‘I don’t suppose you hunt?’ he asked.

‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ But not foxes, I added in my head.

His lips twitched unpleasantly. ‘Good. You can join us tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, but we’ll be leaving right after breakfast.’

‘Perhaps next time.’

‘Sure, why not.’

‘So what’s it like being a hypnotist?’ There was a smug chuckle in his voice.

‘Not much different from selling hundred-year Mexican government bonds denominated in euros, or ten-year Swiss bonds at negative yields, I suppose,’ I said quietly.

His eyes narrowed. I had just pulled his superiority rug out from under his feet.

‘Does that mean it’s not going well with Olivia?’ he asked coldly.

I looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Olivia’s case is complicated. Not that I am at liberty to discuss it with you.’

He appeared suddenly amused. ‘Is that code for my sister’s bonkers?’

So he was jealous of his stepsister. ‘No. It could be code for don’t believe all you are told.’

He widened his eyes sarcastically. ‘What fun! A mystery.’

I refused to be baited. I smiled coldly. I knew his type. He was an unpleasant, selfish, spoilt brat, and I didn’t like him, so it was weird that it was he who should then give me the biggest clue of all to solving the mystery that was Olivia.

‘Do you think she’s making it all up?’ he asked.

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Well, it’s a bit careless to lose one’s memory twice in one’s lifetime, wouldn’t you say?’

I frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Didn’t anybody tell you?’ he sneered triumphantly. ‘The first time my sister lost her memory was when she was five years old.’

Alarm was crawling in my belly. ‘Under what circumstances?’

‘She fell down the stairs, hit her head, and completely trashed five years worth of memories. Had to start from scratch. Of course, I know only the barest facts. I was only three.’ He delivered his speech with an aloof, deadpan expression, his mouth hardly moving, keeping his upper lip very stiff.

I stared at him, shocked. Why had no one told me?

‘Are you familiar with the effects of closed head injuries?’ he asked cordially, as if he was asking if I had read the weather report for tomorrow.

I nodded curtly. Depression, personality changes and psychiatric issues.