In honesty her heart was pounding and she was beginning to regret making the offer, but Amber was one for keeping her word so she strode purposefully to the door of the funeral parlour and entered. Heavy purple velvet curtains hung at the window and the heady scent of lilies met her as the bell tinkled. Mr Hackett appeared in a starched white shirt, a black cravat and a black suit with tails on the jacket. He was a tiny little man with sparse white hair and a pair of gold pince-nez glasses perched on the end of his nose.

He smiled at her. ‘And how may I help you, my dear? Have you suffered a bereavement?’

‘Not personally, Mr Hackett,’ Amber told him quickly. ‘But my employer, Mr Greenwood from Greenacres, has asked me to come an’ identify the body of a woman you have here. We fear it might be the nurse of his late wife.’

‘Ah yes, of course. Well, she’s outside in the morgue. Would you follow me please?’

Amber gulped before following him through the door at the back of the parlour and yet another door that led out into a yard.

‘That door there leads to the chapel of rest.’ He pointed to the first door and moved on. ‘And this is the morgue. But are you sure you are up to this, my dear? You’re not going to faint on me, are you? You wouldn’t be the first.’

‘I shall be quite all right, thank you,’ Amber told him with her head held high and so, after extracting a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and ushered her into a large gloomy, windowless room.

‘I’ll just light the lamp,’ he told her as he hurried over to an oil lamp that was standing next to a long trolley on which lay a body covered in a crisp white sheet. Amber supressed a shudder.

‘So are you ready?’

She gulped again and nodded, praying once more that this would not be Mrs Ruffin, and very gently he peeled the sheet back from the corpse’s face.

Amber’s breath caught in her throat as she stared down at the serene face of Mrs Ruffin. She looked so peaceful that Amber could almost imagine she was simply asleep and would wake up at any moment, although of course she knew this wasn’t so.

‘Y-yes, that’s Mrs Ruffin,’ she said in a choked voice as a tear slid down her cheek.

Nodding gravely, Mr Hackett quickly pulled the sheet up again. ‘Then could you ask Mr Greenwood what he wishes me to do with the body? Would you happen to know if Mrs Ruffin had any next of kin that I could inform?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Amber admitted as she turned and stumbled towards the door. ‘But I’ll go an’ ask him now.’