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‘You can take a nap now if you want,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s nice and soft.’

Then, as she heard the Littleslades climbing the stairs, talking softly and quite innocently about the pond they had apparently just walked around, she dived back into her room and shut the door.

She hid inside her room for a few minutes until she felt sure the coast was clear. Then she sneaked out and hurried downstairs. She wanted to look at the phone, but there were too many people in and around the pub now, so she went out into the beer garden and down the path up which the Littleslades had just come.

The path meandered through a series of small marshy ponds, with boardwalks crossing from one to another, towards the trees at the base of the bluff on top of which the Hanging Tree stood. She knew there was a river down there, one that wasn’t connected to the aqueduct carrying the canal back towards Brentwell, but rather a meandering stream along which ran numerous nature trails.

She went just far enough to be out of sight of the Howling Gail Inn. Then she sat down on a bench overlooking a pond and opened her rucksack.

Larry was sitting quietly on top of the wedding dress, although she noticed he had relieved himself a little. Beside him, lying beneath one big webbed foot, was the phone.

Kelly detached it from Larry, who looked about ready to make a phone call of his own, and lifted it up so she could see the screen.

It was ancient, probably fifteen years old, but it did have a colour display, and it required an eight-digit passcode.

Kelly had absolutely no idea what it could be, but figured she could try today’s date and see what happened.

The result? Nothing happened. The screen just went red for a second, and then the message appeared:

Incorrect. Try again.

Concerned that she would run out of attempts, she put the phone back in her rucksack and tried to think what the passcode might be.

Eight digits could easily be someone’s birthday—but whose?

She had made notes on her computer about what she had discovered online in the café yesterday, so she eased her laptop out of her bag past Larry, whose closed eyes suggested he was taking a nap, and opened it up.

She had some details for both Mr and Mrs Littleslade, so she tried both of their birthdays using the standard way of writing dates in the UK.

Both resulted in the same error message.

She pulled up her other notes, scrolling through them, but she really had no idea.

‘What do you think, Larry?’ she said, giving the rucksack a gentle shake.

The huge toad opened one sleepy eye and peered up at her.

‘Come on. You’re my lucky mascot. Give me a hint.’

Larry simply closed his eye again, then let out a croak followed by a longer, belchy croak.

It sounded uncannily like “one hundred.”

Kelly stared at the toad, a tickle of horror running down her back. Had Larry just given her a clue, or was she completely out of her mind?

She decided to try again and entered a date one hundred years in the past, thinking perhaps the passcode could be the date of the very first Halloween parade.

However, not only did the error message appear again, but another message followed.

Four incorrect attempts. You have one more attempt before your phone is locked for 24 hours.

‘Jesus, Larry. That wasn’t very helpful,’ Kelly said.

The toad responded with the same double croak—a short one followed by a longer, bouncy one.

What if it wasn’t the date of the parade? she wondered. What if it was the date of something else that had happened a hundred years ago?

She went back through her notes.