So on Thursday Marjorie phoned. She chose the morning just in case that man might answer. Doctors are never free to make social calls in the morning. Pauline answered.

‘OK. Tomorrow, if you like.’

‘It’s what you like, Pauline,’ said Marjorie, feeling that her sister might at least have said thank you.

She added that they would be there at seven. But by seven George hadn’t yet got home, so Marjorie dialled her mother’s number. It didn’t matter if he answered. Show him she wasn’t the indifferent creature he took her for. He did. And he was quite polite. Mr and Mrs Crossley couldn’t get there till eight thirty? Never mind. He would still be there and would be delighted to meet them at last.

‘We’re going to get a look at him at last,’ said Marjorie to George as he came in at the door. ‘Now don’t you forget, I expect you to back me up if we have any more nonsense about us having Mother and all that. United we stand, divided we fall.’

Mother’s house was in darkness and the hall light didn’t come on when Marjorie rang the bell. She rang it again, and then George rang it.

‘Have you got a key?’ said George.

‘In my bag. Oh, George, you don’t think . . .? I mean . . .?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Let’s get this door open.’

No one in the hall or in any of the downstairs rooms. Marjorie, who had turned on lights, began to climb the stairs with George behind her. Half-way up, she heard a man’s voice, speaking soothingly but with authority. It came from Mother’s room, the door of which was ajar.

‘It was the best thing, Pauline. I gave her two hundred milligrammes crushed in her milk drink. She didn’t suffer. She just fell asleep, Pauline.’

Marjorie gave a little gasping whimper. She clutched George, clawing at his shoulder. As he pushed past her, she heard the voice come again, the same words repeated in the same lulling hypnotic tone.

‘I gave her two hundred milligrammes crushed in her milk drink. She didn’t suffer. It was the only thing. I did it for you, Pauline, for us . . .’

George threw open the bedroom door. Mother lay on her back, her face waxen and slack in death, her now totally sightless eyes wide open. There was no one else in the room but Pauline.

Pauline got up as they entered, and giving them a nod of quiet dignity, she placed her fingers on Mother’s eyes, closing the lids. Marjorie stared in frozen, paralysed terror, like one in the presence of the supernatural. And then Pauline turned from the bed, came forward with her right hand outstretched.

In a deep, cultured and authoritative voice, a voice whose hectoring manner on the telephone was softened now by sympathy for the bereaved, she said:

‘How do you do? I am Dr Pavlov. It’s unfortunate we should meet under such sad circumstances but . . .’