3
The front doors were opened by an invisible hand. ‘There’s a camera,’ Max said. ‘They can operate the door from the staff office upstairs.’ We stepped through into an immense stone hall like the nave of a church. I looked up: the ceilings were painted with horses, an elephant, ancient soldiers with push-broom helmets. Hannibal crossing the Alps? A tiny woman approached out of the gloom.
‘Miss Comstock?’ she said as she got closer. She was gray-haired and tidy, not in uniform, slightly out of breath. ‘Your sister said you would be coming. It’s lovely to meet you. I’m Mrs Woods, the house manager since three years back.’ She had stopped fifteen feet away, next to a wooden statue on a plinth of Saint George treading on the neck of the dragon. The figure towered above her, luridly painted
