Pig-headed figure in flames, Japanese back design

'Mind the snake,' he says from the landing, quite pleasantly. 'She is sulking about the train.'

You do not look. You set the trunk down outside room seven, where the wallpaper is printed with small grey waves that seem to lift whenever the sea wind gets under the sash, and he presses a coin into your palm. It is warm and has a square hole punched through its middle. Downstairs the kettle starts to sing. Then the smell of scorched cotton drifts down the well, and you climb back up to find him at the open window in his dark green robe, one arm raised toward the clouds over the harbour, the curtains already burning in long orange tongues that do not catch on anything else.

Nothing burns. The flames lick the ceiling and go out politely, like candles at a wake. He turns, regards you with eyes far too calm for such a face, and asks whether the tide has come in yet. It has not. He nods as though you had lied to him kindly.

By morning the room is spotless and smells of rain. The curtains have been replaced with yellow silk stitched with coins, and Mrs Pryce, who has never forgiven a guest for anything, leaves a plate of ham on the landing without comment. You never find the snake. You find only a single pale scale caught in the lining of the trunk, and when the tide turns you hear a small bell ringing somewhere beneath the floorboards.