Phyllis spends breakfast time thinking about the problem of how to search the attic, and concludes that if she and Molesley go haphazardly poking into the hundreds of trunks and boxes it holds, they could be at it until both of them are dead of old age. The first thing to do, she thinks, is to have a look at the space in full daylight, without relying on torches and electric bulbs that may or may not be working. Not wanting to encounter Edwin's ghost just at the moment, she asks Anna to go up with her, on the not-completely-false pretext that she needs help packing away some of her Ladyship's out-of-season dresses that were missed earlier in the autumn, and Anna agrees at once.

"Lady Mary's got a few things that need to go as well," she says, "and it'll be nicer doing it with company. That attic's a spooky old place, if you ask me."

Phyllis thinks that truer words were never spoken, but manages a smile and goes off to collect the dresses, which have already been aired and brushed and folded in paper in preparation for their months in storage. She meets Anna at the foot of the attic stairs and they climb up together, Anna talking cheerfully about the upcoming holiday and the new scarf she's been knitting as a present for Mr Bates. The sight of the white-panelled door gives Phyllis a twinge of anxiety—what if the ghost thinks she has brought someone to disturb him?—but Anna reaches for the knob without a moment's hesitation and pushes the door open.

It's been so long since Phyllis set foot in the attic during the day that at first she feels she's come to the wrong place. All the familiar shapes of furniture and heaps of boxes are there, but with the clean morning light pouring in through the windows on the far wall, they look smaller and more ordinary, not at all the shadowy, ominous hulks that have menaced her on her last few visits. She stands frozen in the doorway, clutching her stack of soft parcels filled with fine silk and linen, until Anna breaks the spell with a laugh and says, "Well, come on, Miss Baxter, these things won't put themselves away, will they?"

"No, I suppose they won't," Phyllis says. She steps in and has a quick glance around, immediately spotting the area where the ghost appears most often, tucked away behind the heavy sheet-covered wardrobe. If she looked inside, would Reggie's canvas bag be resting there, still protecting the fragile dry bones after all these years? It seems too easy a solution, and she's not even certain the wardrobe is old enough to have been there since Reggie and Edwin's time, but she supposes it's the first place to look. She's tempted simply to fling the doors open now, but can't think how she would explain it to Anna, who is on her knees in front of one of Lady Mary's trunks.

"It's hard to believe we'll be taking it all out again soon enough," Anna says, tucking in a final bundle and smoothing a layer of clean newspaper over the top . "When it's cold and snowy like this, I feel as if spring will never come again, don't you?"

"Yes," Phyllis says fervently.

"But it always does, so we've just got to wait for it." Anna stands up and brushes her hands together briskly. "Ugh, it's filthy up here. When I was a housemaid, we always came up to dust and sweep the floors during spring cleaning. I don't know what those girls are doing with their time these days." She giggles. "I'm starting to sound like Mrs Hughes, aren't I? Here, let me help you with those."

They lay the dresses away together, and then Phyllis closes and latches Lady Grantham's trunk. She's still looking around surreptitiously, wondering where Edwin is and what he makes of their presence in the attic. Now that she's mostly overcome her fear of seeing him, she finds it bothers her almost as much when she can't. She's on edge, waiting for the sounds and sensations that herald his appearance, but nothing happens, and she and Anna finish their work and leave without incident.

In the servants' corridor, she thanks Anna sincerely for going with her, and Anna says that it made a pleasant break in the day, and she was glad to do it.

"And it's good to see you're looking better rested, if you don't mind me saying so," she adds with a smile. "Did you try that sleeping powder?"

"I did," Phyllis says, thinking a bit guiltily of the bottle that went unused last night. "It works beautifully."

"I thought it would," Anna says. "It did Lady Mary so much good when Mr Matthew died. She was waking up every night, screaming as if she'd seen his ghost."

Phyllis is certain this is just a figure of speech, but it gives her a nasty turn anyway. She thanks Anna again and hurries off to see if Lady Grantham is ready to change for lunch, trying not to dwell on the possibility that the house is absolutely stuffed with spirits she hasn't yet seen. She's managed to hold onto her sanity in the face of many trials, but that, she thinks, would be the final straw.

She dresses Cora for the afternoon and then catches Mr Molesley in the long corridor where the downstairs storage rooms are, pulling him into the nearest unlocked one before he can do more than say her name in greeting. It's a tiny, cramped space lined with shelves on three sides, and there's barely room for the two of them to stand face to face without touching, but Phyllis is too intent on her mission to give it much thought.

"I'm going up tonight to look," she says. "For the box, but for the bones as well, if I can find them. Will you come? You don't have to—you've already done more than enough—but it would be such a help."

"Of course I'll come if you want me."

"I want you," Phyllis says firmly, and for once he doesn't blush or stammer, but gives a single, resolute nod of assent. "We'll do it the same way as before. Two o'clock, and I'll unlock the door for you."

"What if the ghost tries to—you know?"

"He won't if I ask him not to," Phyllis says. "We've got an understanding now, he and I. You'll see."

With the humiliating oversleeping incident still fresh in her memory (and, she has no doubt, in Mrs Hughes' memory as well), this time she tries to get some rest during the hours between when she retires to her room and when she ventures out for her rendezvous with Molesley. She daren't take any of the sleeping powder for fear she will sleep right through their meeting time, but she does manage a restless doze, from which she wakes with a gasp when the wind-up alarm clock goes off under her pillow. She sits on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, head between her hands, and when she feels she can function properly, slips out to unlock the connecting door. Molesley is already there, waiting at the other side, and she feels a nervous, excited flutter in her stomach as she turns the key, as if she really is letting him in for the sort of carnal purposes that the door is meant to thwart.

I wish I were, she thinks, as she climbs the stairs just ahead of him. It would be simpler.

She's come armed with Daisy's torch again, and it turns out to have been a good decision: when she tries the pull cord, the overhead bulbs remain cold and dark. Molesley comes up beside her as she switches the torch on and takes it from her hand, keeping the beam low.

"Where should we start?"

"I think over there." She nods in the direction of the wardrobe. "That's where I saw him the first time, when he said he was looking for his name."

They thread their way through the stacks—Molesley twisting and turning to fit his taller body through some of the narrow places—and find that the wardrobe doors are blocked by a huge, flat-lidded trunk fit for a months-long trip across the Continent. Phyllis tugs at one end and finds she can't begin to shift it, so Molesley puts down the torch and helps her, both of them straining to slide it even a few feet across the boards.

"We had better look in this first," Molesley says, out of breath. "It's heavy enough for ten bodies."

"We're not looking for a body, Mr Molesley, only bones," Phyllis says, but she kneels and unclasps the latches, heaving back the lid to reveal books stacked deep and wedged in at the sides. She pulls out enough of them to be sure that nothing is hidden underneath, then piles them back in and turns to the wardrobe. Though she doesn't like to admit it, this one frightens her; she can't stop imagining a clattering hail of bones, or something even worse, falling out on top of them both when the doors are opened.

"We'll do it together," she says to Molesley, who looks tense and hollow-cheeked, his mild features thrown into sharp relief by the light from the torch. "Each take a side and count three."

The hinges are frozen with age, and it's a struggle that showers the floor with powdery, clumpy rust, but reluctantly they give way, revealing heaps of stiff, moth-eaten clothing in the style of forty years ago. Molesley rifles through it, pulling a disgusted face at the smell of dust and mould, and then opens the drawers in the bottom to check there too, finding only a collection of old hats and shoes.

"Nothing here either," he says. "What now?"

"We'll have to start looking into the boxes all around." Phyllis puts her hands on her hips and blows a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. "But one at a time, and we've got to put things back as we go, otherwise we'll be left with a mess too big to tidy up. I don't think anyone will notice if things have been moved a bit, but they will if it looks as if they've been searched through."

"We ought to mark them somehow too, oughtn't we?" Molesley digs into his trouser pockets and pulls out a pencil stub she recognises from the day she first drew the coin. "Otherwise we'll waste time looking in the same ones over and over."

"That's a very good idea," Phyllis says warmly, and Molesley grins, pleased at the praise.

"We can put a cross on each one, just lightly so we can rub it out later if we want to. If we do it in the same spot on each one..." He breaks off suddenly, alarming Phyllis, who touches his arm in concern.

"What's the matter, Mr Molesley?"

"I thought I heard something."

Phyllis starts to ask what it was, but before she can get the words out, she hears it too. It's the sound of the ghost.