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‘See?’ the Doctor said.

I had assumed it was an unfortunate figure of speech, like his mention of a hundred years. But Simpson went on: ‘I see him leaving the room even now. Down the corridor. Towards the stairs. His tread is heavy, purposeful.’

Again, my feeling was that he was seeing all this in his imagination, in his mind’s eye. But even so, we all turned and looked up at the window.

The window was now empty.

Harries was on his way down through the house. He was coming after us. How had Simpson known? Was it an informed guess?

‘There is more to everything than meets the eye,’ Simpson was saying. ‘He is already at the half-landing.’ Then, quieter, ‘Away my little friend, away. Look to the others in the drawing room. And bring me your eyes.’

I do not know if I was more surprised at the way the delirium had transformed his character, the way the sarcastic façade of the butler had dropped away, or at his strange words. The Doctor, I saw, was frowning. He too, I was sure, felt the incongruity of it all.

‘What’s he talking about?’ Kreiner demanded of the Doctor. ‘How does he know? How can he “see"?’

The Doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t –’ he began. Then suddenly he snapped his fingers, like a pistol shot. ‘Of course. The rats.’

‘What?’ Were they both overtaken with delirium?

‘Optic implants. Some sort of nano-cam with a direct linkage to his visual cortex. That’s how he kept tabs on everyone. Especially us.’

The words made no sense to me, but I felt a shiver of fear nonetheless as I remembered the rats’ eyes glinting at me in the darkness. Had Simpson released them from their cage for some reason? Had they really, and not merely in my imaginings, been watching me?

But, mercifully perhaps, before I had time to allow my imagination to roam more freely, Simpson gave a final gurgling choke of noise. His head jerked to one side allowing a last rivulet of crimson to splash from his empty eyes into the stained snow.

‘Come on.’ The Doctor was on his feet again, his whole body almost shaking with energy and impatience. ‘Harries is coming. We can’t hang around here.’

‘Neither can we get very far,’ I pointed out. ‘Miss Seymour –’

‘Miss Seymour can return to the house. She’ll be safe there.’

‘Are you sure?’ Kreiner demanded.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Harries will be after us. He doesn’t know where we’re going, but he’ll need to stop us anyway.’

‘Can’t she just let us in?’ Kreiner asked. The strain was showing on his face. I wondered who he meant. Surely he couldn’t want Catherine Harries to open the doors for us.

The Doctor sighed in answer. ‘If she could, I’m sure she would have done by now,’ he said brusquely. ‘Aren’t you?’ They both looked at Susan, as if for an answer.

‘I’m not sure I can make it to the house,’ she said. Her face was ashen grey as she tried a few steps. She collapsed almost at once in the snow, her legs folding up under her so that her dress billowed out around her.

‘Fitz, go with her,’ the Doctor said. ‘Look after her.’ He lowered his voice, perhaps so that Susan should not hear. ‘She can die just like you and me,’ he said. ‘And if that happens…’

‘I’ll go,’ I offered immediately. The thought of bearing the responsibility for Susan’s being injured or even killed probably affected me more than Kreiner.

‘No, I need you,’ the Doctor snapped back. Then he smiled suddenly, almost infectiously. ‘Local knowledge.’

I wasn’t sure whether this would be a help or not, but there was hardly time to argue. So I kept my peace as the Doctor quickly described to Kreiner and Susan how to climb through the chimney. ‘Let Compassion go first,’ he finished, ‘and you can give her a push if she gets stuck or her ankle gives out.’ It seemed both strange timing and manners to assign a nickname to Miss Seymour. But again, I held my tongue and Susan seemed to accept the name without comment or surprise. Silently I prayed that there was enough time for them to return to the house unseen.

We ran. Or at least the Doctor sprinted ahead of me while I tried to catch my breath.