When the family found an odd piece of string, tied at equal intervals into nine knots, under Miles Despard's pillow, they dismissed this trifle from their minds.

But then the housekeeper, a normally sensible woman, told an incredible story of a beautiful woman in the old man's room - a woman who had "walked through the wall". Who could go through a door which had been bricked up and paneled over for two hundred years, leaving an old man to a hideous death?

Edward Stevens smiled at their fears of the supernatural - until he read a manuscript on female murderers. On one of the pages was a clear photograph of a woman. Under it, in small letters, had been printed:

Marie D'Aubray
Guillotined for Murder, 1861

Edward Stevens was looking at a photograph of his own wife.