Book excerpt: 'Geoffrey Household's prose is as clean and spare and unwaveringly efficient as are his plots' Sunday Times On the death of his father, artist and mystic Alfgif Hollaston returns to his Somerset house. There, he befriends Paddy Gadsden, a saddler and horse psychiatrist, and inherits Paddy's polecat, Meg, after Paddy's violent and inexplicable death. But innocent and playful Meg isn't quite what she seems. Soon Alfgif's life and sanity are threatened by a relentless terror, resembling the sixth sense of an animal, which warns when danger is imminent ...