I ease the door shut behind me, making sure it’s locked, and then dash across the room and into the filing storeroom. The shelves run all the way around the room, right up to the ceiling, and above the filing cabinets are old cardboard boxes stacked here and there, and dusty piles of old ledgers. God help me if the entail is in one of those, because I’ll never find it.

Most of the labels on the cabinets are incomprehensible to me, but I scan them in sequence, looking for something to pop out, and when, halfway through the alphabet, I come across LEGAL, my heart leaps. I pull out the drawer and start rifling through the categories. Disappointingly, it seems full of endless letters from the McAndrews’ solicitor about zero-rate band trusts, codicils, land registry filings, and lots of things I don’t understand and really hope don’t hold secrets that I’m incapable of working out. But eventually I find a section marked ENTAIL/DEED OF TRUST, and I pull out the folder eagerly, carrying it through to the main desk in the office and opening it up, careful not to disturb the order of the various papers it contains.

Again, there are tons of letters from the firm of solicitors, the paper getting yellower with age as their dates go more and more into the past, the neat computer printing yielding to jerky typewriting. Though I squint dutifully at each one, I can’t see that they have any bearing on the fundamental question of how the inheritance for Castle Airlie works. I look at my watch. God, I’ve spent half an hour in here already! How did I use up that much time? And how long does a church service take?

Probably an hour, I think. Add on a minimum ten minutes each side for the drive to Airlie village, and I still have a bit of time. But take off ten minutes for waiting for the jeep to disappear, and then making my way here, and take off another ten minutes for putting everything away and getting far enough from the office not to raise any suspicions, and that means I only have another half hour in here. And I’ve had thirty minutes already, which has flown by, and in them I’ve found nothing of any use whatsoever.  .  .  .

Fingers trembling with haste, I rip through the rest of the folder, desperately hoping to find what I need. And there it is, right at the back in a plastic envelope, typed on the wobbly old typewriter, dated April 20, 1924, and titled:

COPY ENTAIL/DEED OF TRUST FOR CASTLE AIRLIE, AYRSHIRE PREPARED FOR LAIRD MCANDREW ON HIS REQUEST

Laird, I know, is Mr. McAndrew’s title. It’s like lord, in Scottish, and it means you own an estate. And like lord, it’s passed down through the generations. When Mr. McAndrew dies, Callum will be the next Laird McAndrew.

I read through the entire entail—it’s only three pages, but the legal phrasing is incredibly dense and complicated. Then I go back and scan through it again. It’s only on the second reading that I come to the crucial bit, and I read the sentence at least three times before I fully take in what it means. It’s very long, like all sentences in legal documents seem to be. My brain is concentrating so hard that it feels twisted up into a tiny little fist. I don’t think I’ve worked this hard on anything in my entire life.

Castle Airlie and its land and domain shall be given TO THE USE of the said Trustees TO THE USE of the existing Laird McAndrew for his life, without impeachment for waste; with remainder TO THE USE of the first and every other son of the Laird McAndrew according to their seniorities and the heirs male of the body of each such son; with provision however that should the said heirs male of the body of each son fail to attain their majority, which for the purposes of this entail shall be defined as the age of eighteen, the aforesaid estate shall pass with remainder TO THE USE of the first and every other daughter of the Laird McAndrew according to their seniorities and the heirs of the body of each such daughter, with the provision that such heirs shall take the name McAndrew upon inheriting.

My heart is pounding with what I think I’ve found out. But it’s such contorted wording that I can’t completely trust my own judgment. I get a pen and a piece of paper from the desk and I copy the sentence out, slowly, meticulously, double-and triple-checking to make sure I’ve transcribed every word, every clause, in exactly the right order.

And just then, I hear someone outside the door.

I freeze in position, my pen in my hand, as if I’m playing a game of musical statues all by myself. My ears are pricked up, desperately trying to hear if the person outside is just passing by—which I fervently hope—or about to come in—which would be the worst possible scenario.

For about thirty seconds, there’s complete silence. But I could have sworn that I heard quiet footsteps on the stone flags of the passageway coming to a halt outside the office door. I look around me, quickly assessing potential hiding places. Behind a door’s always good, but I can see both doors from here and they both open flush to the wall, which means there won’t be any space behind them to squeeze myself into. I shove the pen into my pocket and close up the folder as silently as possible, getting ready to move if I have to.

The silence is still total. I’m just beginning to breathe again when there comes the most ominous sound, in these circumstances, that I could possibly hear.

It’s a key being inserted into the lock.

I move so quickly that I probably leave a vapor trail in my wake.

By the time the door swings open, I’m curled up in a tight ball in the best hiding place I can find.

I can’t see anything but a small piece of very dusty, cobwebby wall. There’s no way I can turn my head enough to see who’s just come into the office. And since that’s the case, I squeeze my eyes shut and pray that they don’t see me either.

I hear footsteps, a rubber-soled tread which could be anyone’s. I’m hoping it’s someone who just came in to get something they need, which would mean that they’d grab it and leave straightaway.

Though, on a weekend, with Mr. and Mrs. McAndrew at church, I can’t imagine who that would be.  .  .  .

The footsteps walk slowly around the office. I hear a chair being moved, which probably means that whoever’s come in is looking underneath the desk. I’m incredibly grateful I didn’t duck under there, because that was my first idea.

There’s nowhere else to hide in the main office. The footsteps move closer now, coming through into the filing room. The door is pushed open, against the wall, as if to check that no one’s hiding behind it.

The dust where I’m lying, stirred up by my arrival, is rising up my nostrils. The lining of my nose is itching. I’m fighting a powerful urge to sneeze.

Then the footsteps stop and make a sort of muffled squeaking noise, which indicates to me that their owner is standing in the middle of the room, turning round, surveying it.

I staple my lips together and hold my breath. If I don’t breathe, I can’t sneeze.

I really hope that’s true.

My chest heaves with the effort of controlling the itching in my nose, which by now has become so powerful that it feels like it could explode at any minute. For a brief second, I let myself wonder who it is standing so close to me, so close they could maybe even take one more step and reach out and touch me, and then the thought panics me so much I shut it down as tightly as I’m clenching my entire body at this stage, fighting the urge to sneeze with everything I’ve got—

I hear footsteps again. My heart leaps in my chest with fear. And then I realize that they’re receding.

They move back into the office again. I’m still not out of the woods: if I sneeze now, they’ll still hear me. I manage a huge swallow, more of a gulp, which seems to help.

And then I hear the office door being pulled shut again, and the lock clicking into place.

My right hand’s cramped under my chest, and I take the risk of wriggling it up till it reaches my face, so that my index finger and thumb can clamp over the bridge of my nose. I squeeze it so hard it brings tears to my eyes, but the pain seems to stop any further impulse to sneeze.

I’m not going to move for at least five minutes. Whoever just came in here might still be inside: they might have shut the door to make me think it was safe to emerge from my hiding place. Or they might be waiting on the other side of the door, to see if they hear any movement inside the office.

I close my eyes and try to go Zen, ignoring the screaming of my cramped muscles and the soreness of my nose. I breathe slowly, gently, taking little sips of air through my lips, fighting the urge to cough as the dust particles trickle into my mouth. I try, actually, to relax as much as possible, because I know from gymnastics that it’s much easier to hold a position when you relax into it than when you’re tensed up. I pretend to myself that I’m falling asleep.

I don’t know how long I wait. Long enough to be sure there’s no one in the room with me: I’m sure I’d have heard movement by now. Long enough to take the risk that anyone standing outside the door, listening, will have decided that it was a false alarm and gone away.

Slowly, painfully, I unwind myself. My feet have gone to sleep, which isn’t good, because I need them for climbing down. I manage to extend my legs a bit along the shelf, and I swivel my ankles in circles, grimacing at the pins and needles till I think it’ll be safe to put weight on them. Then I edge them out into the air, lower them, and, grasping the edge of the shelf with my hands, I lower myself down, walking down the edges of the shelves below me as if they were the rungs of a ladder.

Thank God whoever built these shelves was a good carpenter. When I was panicking in the office, the only hiding place I could think of in which I might stand a chance of not being caught was to grab the highest shelf in the darkest corner of the filing room, haul myself up as fast as I could, and curl myself into a ball under the ceiling, hoping that no one would think to look up that high.

People generally don’t, in my experience. It’s always better to hide higher than lower. They’re much more likely to look under desks than at the top shelf of a cupboard.

I retrieve the folder from where I hid it, under an old cardboard box. I take out the piece of paper on which I copied what I think is the crucial sentence, fold it up, and put it in my pocket. Then, as silently as I can, I slide open the D–H drawer of the filing cabinet marked LEGAL and reinsert the folder in the correct place. I close the drawer and pad quietly out of the filing room, into the office, over to the door. And then I stand there waiting, listening, for another couple of minutes, before I dare to turn the knob of the lock and open the door.

I’m holding my breath. A pulse is pounding a military tattoo at the hollow of my throat.

There’s no one there.

I literally sag with relief. My knees buckle for a moment; I feel as wobbly as a baby animal taking its first steps.

And then I pull myself together and set off down the corridor—not back into the Great Hall, just in case someone’s sitting on a sofa there reading a magazine, waiting to see if anyone comes out of the door that leads to the estate office. I go in the other direction, with no idea where this passageway might lead and not caring that much either. It has to go somewhere, after all. I’ll follow it round and find my way out of Castle Airlie.

After what I’ve just been through, finding my way out can’t be that much of a challenge, can it?

I have an agonizing twenty-minute wait behind the converted stables before Taylor finally shows up on her bicycle. She’s panting, her cheeks flushed, her nose sweaty, which means that she’s really gunned it: Taylor’s so fit that she only shows signs of real physical effort when she’s gone way beyond what most people would consider normal exercise.

“What is it?” she gasps, swinging one leg off the bike, snapping off it, and propping it up against the wall of the stables in a single practiced movement.

I hand her my transcription.

“I copied it from the entail,” I explain.

“What does it say?”

“You read it and see what you think. I want to make sure I’ve got it right.”

It doesn’t take Taylor that long to absorb its significance. She has a brain like a steel trap.

“Oh my God,” she says, raising her head from the paper. “This is horrible.”

I nod bleakly.

“If there were male heirs, but they die before they’re eighteen, a daughter can inherit,” I say. “It’s a loophole, really. And then it goes down through her kids, but they have to take the surname McAndrew. So there’s always a McAndrew at Castle Airlie,” I add, remembering my conversation with Mr. McAndrew in the dungeons.

“So a daughter can’t inherit otherwise?”

I shake my head. “I checked the rest of the entail. It looked like the estate just gets passed down through the male line, to the next male relative. That means her kids couldn’t inherit either.”

“Sexist,” Taylor says angrily. “Isn’t Catriona the oldest kid?”

“Yes.”

“So it should be her who inherits!”

I shake my head. “It skips over her and goes to the boys.”

“Unless they die before they attain their majority,” Taylor says, reading from the paper. “I wonder why they put that in the entail?”

“Maybe, when they drew it up, there were sons but they were all sickly,” I suggest, having had some time to think this over. “You know, likely to die young. There was lots of infant mortality in those days—I think more children died young than made it to adulthood. And they were frightened that there wouldn’t be anyone in their family to inherit the castle. So they wanted to make sure that if the sons all died young, it would go to one of their sisters, rather than going out of the immediate family to a distant cousin.”

“It’s as good a theory as any,” Taylor says, shrugging. “So where’s Callum?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we have to find him.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a note of panic in Taylor’s voice. “It’s his birthday day after tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah, but how can I confront him and tell him what we think? I’ve got no proof! I can’t just start throwing accusations around. And if no one believes me, it could be really dangerous.”

Taylor’s face falls. “You’re right.”

“I think I know a way. Plus this, of course.” I tap the piece of paper. “Yesterday evening, I rang Nadia.”

“You did what?”

“I wanted to find out who was at the party when Dan died.”

Taylor shrugs. “So? She couldn’t have seen everyone.”

She waves the paper at me.

“They’ve got security cameras in the hallway at Nadia’s place,” I say. “Upstairs, just outside the lift.”

Taylor immediately gets it.

“You think they save it all?”

“It’s a computer feed. The security guy archives it and backs it up. Apparently they keep it for a year. They’ve got tons of insurance, and Nadia’s parents are really paranoid. That’s what she told me. Also, she said they think it means she can’t bring boys back, because they’d see.”

“Well, that’s pretty dumb,” Taylor comments.

“Exactly. She just goes to the boys’ places instead. But anyway, she said she’d look at the backups and let me know if anyone shows up from the photos I sent her.”

“What photos?”

I wiggle my phone at her. “I took photos of everyone. Smart or what?”

“Good thinking,” Taylor says respectfully. “Did you tell her we’d delete that video of her puking?”

Now it’s my turn to shrug. “What’s the point? She wouldn’t believe us. No one trusts anyone. Basically, until she gets something on me or you, we’ve got the advantage. We can make Nadia do us favors, as long as we don’t push it.”

“We’d better just make sure she doesn’t get something on us,” Taylor says grimly.

I grimace. It isn’t a pleasant thought.

“You ring her now,” I instruct Taylor. “Tell her to get on with it, if she hasn’t done it already.”

“Me?” She stares at me. “What about you? What are you going to be doing?”

“I’m going back into the castle,” I say. “I’ve got an idea about something I might find in Catriona’s room.”

“Be careful, Scarlett,” Taylor warns. “Dan’s already been killed, and you’ve been shot at. This is getting beyond dangerous.”

She’s right.

But the deed of trust isn’t enough. It’s only motive—it isn’t proof.

And proof is what we desperately need right now.