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with my own present, and I knew I had come to the end of my journey sideways in time. A great peace overcame me. Tears blurred my eyes, for I knew I was free at last with the blood washed from my hands, free of the prison I had built for myself in another time and in another world far away across the sea.
    The sense of having come home was overpowering. ‘This is what I’ve always wanted,’ my voice said. ‘This is what I’ve always been trying to find.’ I turned. Shewas there. We looked at one another for a long moment, and then she smiled.
    ‘Welcome to
my
world, Paul,’ said Dinah Slade.

Chapter Four

    [1]
    ‘What about your entourage?’
    ‘They can wait.’
    We went upstairs. Her room faced the Broad, and from the window one could see beyond the trees which fringed the water to the Brograve Level and the sandhills of Waxham. After drawing the drapes I turned to find her waiting for me in the four-poster bed.
    Awaking later, I went back to the window and lifted the corner of the drape. The sun was still high in the sky although it was early evening, and the birds were still skimming languidly over the mirrored surface of the Broad. Yet the light had changed. The reeds were darker, the water a deeper blue and far away beyond the sandhills I could imagine a golden sheen beginning to form on the restless waves of the North Sea.
    I dressed. The girl was sound asleep, her long lashes motionless against her cheeks. After watching her for a moment I went downstairs to the hall.
    O’Reilly was waiting for me. He was sitting neatly in an armchair by the door and reading a guide-book on the Norfolk Broads.
    ‘Is everything in order?’
    ‘Yes, sir. We have our accommodation in the west wing. It’s rather primitive by American standards,’ said O’Reilly fastidiously, ‘but I’m sure we’ll manage. I’ve arranged for us to take our meals at the village inn. There are no servants here except for one old woman who appears to be deaf, hostile and a mental defective.’
    ‘Ah, that must be Mrs Oakes.’ I was remembering Dinah’s report. Twenty years ago when there had still been money in the family six in-help, three daily maids, two grooms, two gardeners and a gamekeeper had been employed at Mallingham Hall, but nowadays the head gardener and the housekeeper, Mr and Mrs Oakes, had the servants’ quarters to themselves. Mrs Oakes had looked after Dinah when she had returned to Mallingham after her mother’s death, and still regarded herself as responsible for running the house. Her husband, who had a Boer War pension, still assumed responsibility for the garden. Neither had been paid since Dinah’s father had died. An old marshman who lived in a hut on the edge of the Broad kept out trespassers, guarded the wild-life and fished the waters to prevent overpopulation among the trout, bream and tench.
    The house was dusty and down-at-heel. Most of the first editions hadlong since been sold from the library; most of the antique furniture had also gone to pay for Harry Slade’s extravagance. The rooms were furnished in a hodge-podge of styles; the walls needed a coat of paint; the evidence of mice was everywhere. I had learnt that there was one bathroom, one water closet, no telephone, no electricity and no gas. It was not a large house, a mere five bedrooms in each wing of the medieval H, and the galleried hall was bigger than either wing. The kitchens were primitive, the stables little better than ruins, the glasshouses broken and overgrown. There was no yacht in the boathouse, only a sailing dinghy, and a sole pony occupied the stall next to the Victorian trap. Beyond the stables the fifteen-foot walls enclosed an area of three acres, most of which was grass. I was shown a paddock for the pony, a rectangle which could be marked as a tennis court, and the croquet lawn below the back terrace. Once the Manor of Mallingham had embraced an area of several hundred acres including the church, the village and all the