In his wake he had left a thin trail of blood. May followed the blood trail into the drawing room. June stood by her desk which had been torn open and all its contents scattered on to the table. She was trembling, tearful and laughing with shaky hysteria, pointing to the shards of cut glass that lay everywhere.

‘I threw the decanter at him. I hit him and it cut his head and he ran.’

May went up to her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘He didn’t touch me. He pointed that gun at me when I came in, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t bear to see him searching my desk, getting at all my private things. Wasn’t I brave? He didn’t get away with anything but a few bits of silver. I hit him and he heard you coming and he panicked. Wasn’t I brave, May?’

But May wasn’t listening. She was reading the letter which lay open and exposed on top of the paper the burglar had pulled out of the desk. Walter’s bold handwriting leapt at her, weakened though it was, enfeebled by his last illness. ‘My darling love, It is only a moment since you walked out of the ward, but nevertheless I must write to you. I can’t resist an impulse to write now and tell you how happy you have made me in all the years we have been together. If the worst comes to the worst, my darling, and I don’t survive the operation, I want you to know you are the only woman I have ever loved . . .’

‘I wouldn’t have thought I’d have had the courage,’ said June, ‘but perhaps the gun wasn’t loaded. He was only a boy. Would you call the police, please, May?’

‘Yes,’ said May. She picked up the gun.

The police arrived within fifteen minutes. They brought a doctor with them, but June was already dead, shot through the heart at close range.

‘We’ll get him, Miss Thrace, don’t you worry,’ said the inspector.

‘It was a pity you touched the gun, though. Did it without thinking, I suppose?’

‘It was the shock,’ said May. ‘I’ve never had a shock like that, not since I was a girl.’

A Needle for the Devil

THE DEVIL FINDS work for idle hands to do, as Mrs Gibson used to say to her daughter, and Alice had found that in her case the devil (or her own mysterious inner compulsions) led her to violence. As a child she would strike people who annoyed her and when she was fourteen she attacked her sister with a knife, though no harm was done. But if her hands itched to injure, they were also gifted hands and as she was taught to occupy them with handicrafts, the impulse to violence grew less. Or was sublimated, as she learned to say when she began training to be a nurse.

Only her mother had opposed Alice’s choice of a career. Perhaps it was only her mother who understood her. But her objections were overruled by Alice’s father, her headmistress, the school careers officer and Alice herself. And certainly Alice did well. There were no unfortunate incidents of the kind Mrs Gibson had feared.