The fire in Lady Grantham's bedroom has burnt down, but once Phyllis builds it up again for the night, it casts enough light for her to switch off the torch and go about her work in its rosy glow. She's turned down the bed and laid out her Ladyship's nightdress when Cora herself comes in, carrying a lit candle with her hand cupped round the flame to protect it.
"I thought I might as well come up now," she says. "We haven't got dinner guests, so there's no point forcing ourselves to go through the whole dressing and dining rigmarole, and I'm exhausted anyway. I hope I'm able to sleep tonight."
"I do have a bottle of Veronal powder, milady, if you'd like to try it," Phyllis offers. "Dr Clarkson suggested it when I was having trouble sleeping recently."
"Did he? Does it work?" Cora sets the candle on her dressing table, sits down, and peers into the mirror, frowning as she touches manicured fingertips to the puffy dark crescents under her eyes.
"Like a charm," Phyllis says. "You feel a bit light-headed in the morning, but it passes. Shall I fetch it for you? It's in my room." She's trying hard not to sound too eager, for fear of rousing suspicion, but the truth is that the task ahead will be much easier if she knows Cora is sound asleep and unlikely to ring for her. She thinks of the fairy tale where the whole castle slept for a thousand years, and imagines herself going around the house, slipping a dose of the powder to everyone from Daisy to Lord Grantham, to keep them out of harm's way until she is finished.
"I'll see how I feel after I'm ready for bed," Cora says. "Gosh, this power cut is an awful nuisance. It's strange how you get used to things, isn't it? We never had electric lights when I was a child, and now it's a disaster if they're out for an evening."
"That's true," says Phyllis, who has clear memories of eating meals and doing her lessons by candlelight in order to save on the gas. "It's the same with everything, I suppose, cars and telephones and the wireless and all."
"Mmm." Cora stands up so Phyllis can unbutton her dress at the back, and then lets it fall to the floor and steps out of the puddled material. "I wonder what someone from a century ago would make of everything we have now."
Phyllis is bending over to pick up the dress, and this comment makes her stay there just an extra half-second before straightening up.
"What made you think of that, milady?"
"It's been on my mind all day, actually," Cora says. "Thinking about the people who lived here in the past, that is. I suppose it's because we talked about his Lordship's book this morning. Do you know, I even thought of sending you up to the attic to look for old photographs from the Crawley side. Most of them are at the Dower House, but I'm sure we have some here too. It's just I only ever look at the ones of my own family."
"Perhaps tomorrow," Phyllis says. She's turned away, smoothing Cora's dress out flat on the bed to be taken downstairs when she finishes here, but her mind is whirring at a thousand miles a minute, wondering if what she's witnessing is another manifestation of Edwin's increasing unhappiness. It hasn't escaped her attention, either, that looking for old photographs in the attic is how this whole ordeal began. She doesn't want to start seeing secret meanings in every coincidence, but this particular coincidence makes her feel colder than the lacework of frost on the windows.
"Yes, perhaps." Cora has shed her layers of undergarments on her own, and now she raises her arms for Phyllis to help with her nightdress. "I think I would like to try that powder of yours after all, Baxter. Would you mind very much going to get it? I can brush my own hair."
"Of course, milady." Phyllis adjusts the nightdress and holds Cora's white satin dressing gown up for her to slip into it. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
"No need to rush," Cora says, taking her seat in front of the mirror again and starting to pluck pins one by one from her hair. "I'm not going anywhere."
It's an abrupt and unpleasant transition from the warm, fire-lit bedroom to the black chill of the corridor, and Phyllis pulls out her torch and switches it on at once, half expecting something—perhaps the ghost, perhaps the devil himself—to come leaping out of the shadows at her before she can complete the action. Further along, she hears a door open and jerks the light up to splash across Thomas, who shields his face with one arm.
"Good Lord, Miss Baxter! Get that out of my eyes before you blind me."
"I'm sorry." Phyllis lowers the light hastily and trains it on the floor instead. "I didn't know it was you."
"Clearly." Thomas switches on his own torch and comes down the corridor to join her, his polished shoes making no sound on the thick rug. As he gets closer, she sees the tense, strained look on his face.
"What's the matter, Mr Barrow?"
"I've just come from the nursery," Thomas says. "Nanny said the children woke up crying almost at the exact moment the power went out. She thought they'd had nightmares, both of them. They're too little to really explain, but she said Miss Sybbie was talking about a big fire. And then, if you can believe it, she told me she'd dozed off earlier herself and dreamt that she was drowning in a lake. What the hell is going on in this house tonight?"
"We've got to get through it, that's all," Phyllis says. "Things will be better in the morning."
"How do you know?" There's something of the small boy about him as he says it, and in the dark she can almost imagine that she is twelve years old again and he is six, and they are telling ghost stories in the dark with the other children, both of them scared silly, but too proud to admit it.
"I just do," she says, and Thomas grimaces.
"Maybe you ought to come back to the hall," he says. "I'm sure it sounds strange, coming from me, but I have a feeling we'll all be better off sticking together, at least until the power's on again."
"I've still got work to do up here," Phyllis says, "but as soon as I can, I will. You'll look after everyone until I get there, won't you?"
"Yes, yes, I'll keep your precious Molesley safe," Thomas says irritably. "I won't let him walk headfirst into a wall or fall down the stairs or whatever else he might get up to."
"Thank you," Phyllis says. "And keep yourself safe as well."
He makes a rude scoffing noise. "As if you care whether I'm safe or not."
"You know that isn't true."
There's a long pause, and then he looks away from her and fiddles with the buttons on his livery. "I suppose I do. Though I can't think why you would. Anyway, that's enough of this soppy talk. Go on and finish whatever it is you've got to do, and then come down and join the rest of us. I'm sure Mrs Hughes will be waiting with a great big mug of warm milk to fatten you up."
She leaves him there and goes up to the servants' corridor with no idea what awaits her on the other side of the door. It opens onto thick, velvet blackness that somehow seems oppressive, as if it's constricting the beam of her torch and dimming its light. The attic door is still closed up tight as a drum, but she senses the ghost somewhere behind it, too wrapped in his misery to notice yet that she is here.
She has already fished the key to her room out of her pocket so she won't have to fumble for it, and as she pushes it into the lock, a blue arc of electricity leaps from the metal to her bare skin, making her cry out and jerk away. The pain is not a sharp sting like the sparks she's felt before, but a deep, sick hurt that makes her arm ache all the way up to the shoulder. The fingers on that hand feel weak and useless, so she tucks her torch between her arm and her body and uses her other hand to tentatively touch the knob and then turn it.
There's a little pale moonlight coming through the window inside her room, just enough to let her see the shapes of furniture before she shines the beam in ahead of her. The glass bottle of sleeping powder is still sitting on her bedside table, and she scoops it up, then turns and leaves without bothering to lock the door or even pull it closed: she doesn't want to risk another shock, and it isn't as if anyone is likely to venture up here in the dark to poke about in her room. The door to the staircase is still ajar is well, letting her wedge the toe of her shoe into the gap, lever it open that way, and make her exit, still holding the torch awkwardly under one arm.
By the time she reaches the corridor where the family bedrooms are located, her dead hand has come back to life and is throbbing fiercely, and before she can go in to her Ladyship, she has to stop and cradle it for a moment, rubbing it with her other hand to soothe it until she thinks she can keep a neutral face. Knocking at the door, she goes in and finds Cora still seated at the dressing table, apparently lost in thought. Her hairbrush is in her lap, but Phyllis can't tell whether she's used it or not.
"Milady?"
"Hm?" Cora turns and looks at her. "Oh, Baxter. I forgot you were coming back. What time is it?"
Phyllis glances at the clock. "Not quite ten yet. I haven't been gone very long. I have the sleeping powder for you."
"That's good." Cora smiles, but there's a vague, confused expression on her face that Phyllis finds rather frightening, as if she's already asleep and speaking from the depths of a dream. "Will you get it ready for me?"
"Yes, of course. Perhaps you ought to lie down, and I'll bring it to you in bed?"
Cora obeys, and while she settles herself, Phyllis holds the bottle up to the candle to carefully measure the right amount of powder into a glass, then goes into the bathroom and trickles in water from the cold tap for mixing.
"Here you are, milady. It's bitter, I'm afraid."
"That's all right." Cora tips the glass up, swallows the contents and hands it back to Phyllis, who sets it on the bedside table. "Does it take long to work?"
"Not long at all," Phyllis says.
"I'll see you in the morning then, Baxter."
Her Ladyship's eyes are already beginning to flutter closed as Phyllis leaves the room. She shuts the door behind her and stands with her back against it, flexing the fingers on her still-aching hand and trying to gather herself together for the next step. With Cora safely disposed of and Thomas on guard downstairs, there is no reason to put it off any longer.
"I'm coming, Edwin," she says softly, and begins the long climb back to the attic.