‘That’s better, Mary,’ she said softly, but then looked more closely at her sister’s face as she lay on the pillow. Her eyes were half open but they were fixed and sightless. Sheila was not a nurse or a doctor, but she had worked in the dispensary of a London hospital during the wartime Blitz and knew death when she saw it.

At first almost rigid with shock, she rapidly recovered and felt for a pulse in the wrist and then the neck to confirm that life had ebbed away. Though she was quite sure that her sister was dead, she realized that a doctor should be called immediately and hurried out of the room. Back in the hall, she brushed away a haze of tears with the back of her hand and turned down a passage that went across to an internal door into the veterinary annexe. As soon as she went through it, she was in the waiting room, lined with a collection of hard chairs, now empty as the next surgery was not until the late afternoon. Another door led into Samuel Parker’s examination room, and as she burst in she urgently called out his name. He was not there, but she could hear the sounds of a dog barking and water running. Yet another doorway led to several more rooms containing animal cages, an operating table and all the paraphernalia of a vet’s practice.

‘Samuel, quickly!’ she cried out urgently. ‘Where are you?’

‘Coming, just washing my hands. What is it?’

He appeared in the doorway, rubbing his hands on a towel. A tall, stooping man, Samuel Parker was in his late forties, his dark hair forming a prominent widow’s peak on his forehead.

‘Mary! It’s Mary. I’ve just been in there and I think she’s dead!’

His long face, normally ruddy from working outdoors, instantly blanched.