As Meera started talking about Uncle Ram, it was as if a ghost passed around the table. Dr Renfield reached for her sweater, and even Dick huddled into his jacket a little.

“He’s always been strict,” Meera said. “It’s never been that. He just got so mean. When Sama and I first got here, he was always far away and cold. He’d have us driven to school, and when we’d come home, he’d be in the drawing room, studying some old book or polishing one of his artifacts.”

“What sort of artifacts?”

“Anything from the war. Any war, but he fought Hitler. The spare rooms in the house are full of things. A suit of armor. A hub cap from one of the American Jeeps. One of those fake Vermeer paintings that the Nazis thought were the real thing, and after the war it came out that they were just fakes. Uncle Ram thought they were even better for that. He’s such a Panjabi Sikh old man. Dagger and sword first.”

Dr Renfield nodded slowly.

“It wasn’t until Sama brought home her first test scores. Anything less than full marks got glowers from Uncle Ram for a week. He’d just silently steal about the house, glaring at both of us as if we were invaders, never saying anything. He usually doesn’t say much, but those times, he wouldn’t even answer questions. Like we were ghosts.”

“What happened with Sama?”

“She lost it. I think it was the silence. She never made very many friends here. She just turned inside and never came out. She stopped doing her schoolwork. You probably saw.”

“I only manage the upper classes.”

“Oh. Well. She just stopped. Stopped going to school. Uncle Ram ordered his driver to come upstairs and fetch her. She climbed up into the attic through the door in the closet ceiling. It was boarded up years ago, when they redid the house. They left that spot open, I guess. The driver was so upset by the whole thing. The poor man. When he came back down to take me to school without Sama, Uncle Ram just lost it. Yelled and screamed at him. The man dropped his uniform hat and was too terrified to come back for it. We never saw him again.”

“Your Uncle’s getting pretty old.” Dr Renfield made it sound like a question.

“You’d never have known it. He’s almost eighty. I’d seen him tear a door off its hinges when he’d been in one of his moods.”

Dick was nodding at everything Meera said.

“That night I went to Dick’s. The sheep were birthing lambs, and he was going to be up all night. He said I could watch. I thought maybe I wanted to go into medicine, and it seemed like it would be interesting.” She didn’t mention how they’d passed the time waiting for the lambing, and had to think of Uncle Ram screaming at her to keep the blush off her face.

“I got back late. It wasn’t quite light out. Dick drove me home, and made sure I made it inside. I should have known something was wrong when the door wasn’t locked. It’s strange how you just know, isn’t it, when things are wrong?”

“Yes.” Dr Renfield looked even more thoughtful than usual. Meera wondered if there was a story there.

“Sama’s room was turned about. Muddy footprints on the floor. Uncle Ram was gone, he wasn’t asleep in his room either. She tried suicide that night. While I was out with Dick. The medics got her, and she was in hospital. It looked like a kidnapping you see in the movies, though.”

“Where was your Uncle? No note?”

“Nothing. I still don’t know where he went. He didn’t go to the hospital with Sama.”

“Did you go see her?”

“I didn’t know what happened. I tried to sleep. I watched the sun come up. Uncle Ram finally came home at half past ten. I was so tired. He just came in and said ‘Your sister’s in hospital’ like that and went to bed. Just cold.”

Dr Renfield’s grey hair swung back and forth as she shook her head.