At dinner, Mrs. Pounds steers Winifred into the chair furthest from the others, seating her in shadows, in keeping with Mrs. Able’s instructions to be inconspicuous. After Mr. Pounds delivers a welcome speech plagiarized from Dickens, Winifred pinches Drusilla for slurping, which inadvertently draws the attention of a fellow guest, Mr. Art Fishal. Mr. Fishal is visiting without his wife, whom he has left in confinement for “hysterical” behavior following the drowning of their son. During the meal, the Dowager openly insults Winifred for her presence at the table.

After dinner, the party moves to the library, where Mr. Fishal presents his “surprise”: The unwrapping of a female mummy he looted from a mummy pit inside a buried pyramid in Egypt, which he calls “The Mummy of Gourna.” While Mr. Fishal rhapsodizes during the unwrapping, Winifred steals a letter opener from a nearby davenport. As Mr. Fishal unwraps the corpse for the guests’ entertainment, a necklace falls to the floor, and Mrs. Fancey covertly steals it. 

Later that night, after the guests have retired, Mr. Pounds brings Winifred back to the library to show her his collection of pornographic books. Their encounter is cut short when a maid walks in, prompting Mr. Pounds to return to his chamber.

The next day, Winifred takes Andrew to watch the men’s shooting party on the moors. While there, she sneaks off to the gamekeeper’s cottage and steals a metal leghold trap.

During lunch, a locket containing a chalk-and-crayon likeness of the painter Gotthard Johnson falls from Drusilla’s dress. Enraged, Mrs. Pounds drops the locket, slaps her daughter, then stomps on it until the glass is crushed. Mr. Pounds then escalates the punishment, forcing a terrified Drusilla to hold the damaged locket out at arm’s length. He retrieves his firearm and, as the guests watch, shoots the locket from her hand. The guests applaud his aim, and Drusilla flees the room clutching her trembling hand. In the aftermath, Andrew discovers the stolen trap in Winifred’s pocket, and she kneels to open its mechanism for him.

Winifred follows Drusilla to her room, intending to prevent her from confiding her sorrow in anyone else. Drusilla, distraught, whispers that she knows Winifred’s secret: She mistakenly believes Winifred is in love with Mr. Pounds. Drusilla then reveals that Johnson has asked her to stop writing to him because he “does not like it when I bite him” (135).

After Drusilla falls asleep, Winifred finds a letter from Johnson citing Drusilla’s “alarming” character, and also soliciting referrals to her high society friends with his portraiture rates attached. Tending to the girl reminds Winifred of the poisoning “incident” at the Clergy Daughters’ School. She recalls whispering to her sick schoolmates that her father was actually a man named John Pounds who lived in Harley Street, revealing her hidden connection to the Pounds family.

One night, Winifred hears singing and follows the sound to the gallery, where she hallucinates that the portraits have come to life. Believing she sees a portrait of Grandfather Pounds with strange green eyes, she stabs it with the stolen letter opener. However, it is revealed that she has actually stabbed Fergus, the hall boy, who was hiding in the shadows.

Fatally stabbed in the eye, Fergus cries out. Winifred presses her hand over his mouth and drags him, already dying from the wound, into her bedroom. The sounds awaken the guests, who gather in the hall. Winifred muffles Fergus’s final word as he dies from the stab. She then opens her door, feigning confusion, and the guests, led by Mr. Pounds, set off on a quest to find the source of the noise. Left alone with the body, Winifred prepares to bring it up to the attic.

At breakfast, the guests discuss seeing a ghostly silhouette in their chambers during the night, and the household embraces the idea that Ensor House is haunted. Drusilla adds to the stories, reporting that servants have noticed paintings becoming lopsided and curtains drawing themselves. Fear of a ghost spreads among the staff, leading to a series of mistakes and accidents, including a laundry maid ruining the linens and a kitchen maid falling down the cellar stairs, claiming she was pushed.

Three nights before Christmas, Winifred has a vision of “Original Baby” (William Fancey) standing by her bed. The apparition shows her glimpses of the future: The Reverend dying by assisted suicide by paying a match girl to set him on fire, an adult Andrew being flogged by a sex worker dressed as a governess, and a pregnant Drusilla on her way to her husband’s country house, where she will die. Miss Notty is left to wonder if these are visions of what is destined to happen or only what might be.