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Robert half closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

'Very well, Father,.' he said, getting to his feet.

'Good night.'

'Good night, darling,.' said his mother.

'Good night, Robert,.' said Dr Trewain.

'Good night, sir,.' said Robert with a little bow, before turning and leaving the room.

Robert climbed the stairs. He did not care about their silly secrets. The tedious history of this house was of no concern to him. He heard his mother apologising for him and he smiled to himself. What did he care what they thought about him. What did he care what they thought about anything?

On Sunday morning Reverend Sackville conducted his first sermon, which went well - Mrs Sackville noticed out of the corner of her eye that there were many appreciative nods and murmurs when the service came to an end. Dr Trewain shook the vicar warmly by the hand and congratulated him as they stood in the sunshine outside the church porch.

Robert stood nearby and stifled a yawn. He peered up at the wall above their heads at a row of lichen-encrusted gargoyles, each one more grotesque than the last. One of them, a strange grinning creature near the tower, seemed oddly familiar.

'Where have you been?' asked Robert's mother when he walked into the drawing room the following day.

'In the garden, Mother,.' he said. 'Do you know where there's a hammer?'

'A hammer?' said his mother with a laugh.

'Yes,.' said Robert matter-of-factly. 'And some nails.'

'No,.' she said with another laugh. 'I'm afraid I do not, darling. Why on earth do you ask?'

'I need them, Mother,.' said Robert, frowning.

'Well, perhaps Mr Fenner will know . . .'

But Robert was already walking out of the door.

Mrs Sackville sighed and returned to the book she was reading but realised she was no longer in the mood. She had a sudden craving for the excellent port Dr Trewain had brought, but was terrified that a servant might find her drinking alone at eleven o'clock in the morning.

She found the constraints of being a vicar's wife every bit as frustrating as Robert found those of being a vicar's son. She loved her husband dearly and he was very supportive of her views on female emancipation, but she hungered for more.

Mrs Sackville had been surprised at how affected she had been by Dr Trewain's revelation about the history of the house. She had been expecting him to recount some ancient scandal or impropriety and had been completely unprepared for what was actually related.

She was a rational woman at heart and ordinarily the tale of the late Reverend Benchley's obsession with a previous, sixteenth-century vicar, who supposedly dabbled in sorcery, would have intrigued rather than disturbed her. She had often toyed with the notion of writing a study of English folk tales and this would have made an excellent subject. But disturbed her it had. There was something about this house that allowed the idea of someone conjuring up a demon - as this Reverend Rochester was supposed to have done - to seem horribly plausible. She understood, too, how in the weakened state of old age, the Reverend Benchley's mind could have become unnaturally fixated upon this tale; how he might have convinced himself that the demon still haunted the darker recesses of the house and grounds.

Even so, she smiled to herself. She refused to become that kind of silly woman who starts at every floorboard creak and sees hobgoblins in every shadowed corner. The repetitive beat of hammering came from outside and she walked through to the hallway at the back of the house and looked out of the window. Robert had evidently found a hammer. What on earth was he up to?

Mrs Sackville did not like the darkened patch of garden and she noticed that neither the maid nor the cook, nor indeed Mr Fenner the gardener, ever seemed to go there. Only Robert frequented that area; only Robert and the big old cat he seemed to have adopted as a playmate.

It was curious, the change that had come over Robert. He seemed to have retreated into himself since they moved here. He