The house was named `The Cave'. It was a large old-fashioned
three-storied building standing in about an acre of ground, and
situated about a mile outside the town of Mugsborough. It stood back
nearly two hundred yards from the main road and was reached by means
of a by-road or lane, on each side of which was a hedge formed of
hawthorn trees and blackberry bushes. This house had been unoccupied
for many years and it was now being altered and renovated for its new
owner by the firm of Rushton & Co., Builders and Decorators.

There were, altogether, about twenty-five men working there,
carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, bricklayers and painters, besides
several unskilled labourers. New floors were being put in where the
old ones were decayed, and upstairs two of the rooms were being made
into one by demolishing the parting wall and substituting an iron
girder. Some of the window frames and sashes were so rotten that they
were being replaced. Some of the ceilings and walls were so cracked
and broken that they had to be replastered. Openings were cut
through walls and doors were being put where no doors had been before.
Old broken chimney pots were being taken down and new ones were being
taken up and fixed in their places. All the old whitewash had to be
washed off the ceilings and all the old paper had to be scraped off
the walls preparatory to the house being repainted and decorated. The
air was full of the sounds of hammering and sawing, the ringing of
trowels, the rattle of pails, the splashing of water brushes, and the
scraping of the stripping knives used by those who were removing the
old wallpaper. Besides being full of these the air was heavily laden
with dust and disease germs, powdered mortar, lime, plaster, and the
dirt that had been accumulating within the old house for years. In