[b]1:15 AM[/b]

The ball has been in full swing, but now it’s clearly winding up. The Guests of Honour have to all intents and purposes retreated, though they are, by now, no longer a novelty to the Germans, who have carried on without them. Sol takes the main stage and thanks the band and the attendees, though he is in no great fit state to do so, barely able to stand at this point and, at one point, he literally, to great amusement, hiccoughs halfway through his brief speech. There is, apparently, just one song left, and so, even the guests that have been long since exhausted get up for one last blast; Sol takes an apparently unwilling Klara as thanks for her work that evening; Michael pairs with one of the twins (the other of whom has already made her excuses); while Gertrud is indulged by a patient Félix in a charming, if stiff, foxtrot.

With the last dance over, the band packs down and the attendees begin to disappear, suddenly equals with the band members and the service staff as they vanish into the night like dust in the wind. With the ball now officially over, Michael and Félix leave by the front door, presumably to wherever they each live on the grounds, joined shortly by Klara, who locks the front door behind her. If the shudder of footsteps and German chatter perhaps just audible in the guests’ rooms is anything to go by, the Wolfs are heading upstairs, too.

With the ball over, and everybody turning in, it can only mean a restful night and sweet dreams for all and even Wolf Manor itself somehow manages to appear sleepy, as it bathes in the dark wilderness of the secluded Bavarian valleys.

But not everybody is in bed. And things go bump in the night.