‘What . . .? Who . . .?’ he said, quavering, his throat dry.

The shape grew fluid, glided away, and the door closed softly. They wanted to see if he was asleep. They would kill him when he was asleep. He sat up, switched on the light and put his face in his hands. ‘O, never shall sun that morrow see!’ He’d put all that furniture against the door, that chest of drawers, his bed, the chair. His throat was parched now and he reached for the water, taking a long draught. It was icy cold.

They weren’t whispering any more. They were waiting in silence. He got up and put his coat round him. In the bitter cold he began lugging the furniture away from the walls, lifting the iron bedstead that felt so small and narrow when he was in it but was so hideously weighty.

Straightening up from his second attempt, he felt it, the pain in his chest and down his left arm. It came like a clamp, a clamp being screwed and at the same time slowly heated red-hot. It took his body in hot iron fingers and squeezed his ribs. And sweat began to pour from him as if the temperature in the room had suddenly risen tremendously. O God, O God, the water in the glass! They would have to get him a doctor, they would have to, they couldn’t be so pitiless. He was old and tired and his heart was bad.

He pulled the coat round the pain and staggered out into the black passage. Their door – where was their door? He found it by fumbling at the walls, scrabbling like an imprisoned animal, and when he found it he kicked it open and swayed on the threshold, holding the pain in both his hands.

They were sitting on their bed with their backs to him, not in bed but sitting there, the shapes of them silhouetted against the light of a small low-bulbed bedlamp.

‘Oh, please,’ he said, ‘please help me. Don’t kill me, I beg you not to kill me. I’ll go on my knees to you. I know I’ve done wrong, I did a terrible thing. I didn’t make an error of judgement. I sacked Hugo because he wanted too much for the staff, he wanted more money for everyone and I couldn’t let them have it. I wanted my new car and my holidays. I had to have my villa – so beautiful, my villa and my gardens. Ah, God, I know I was greedy, but I’ve borne the guilt of it for months, every day on my conscience, the guilt of it . . .’ They turned two white faces, implacable, merciless. They rose and came scrambling across their bed. ‘Have pity on me,’ he screamed. ‘Don’t kill me. I’ll give you everything I’ve got, I’ll give you a million . . .’

But they had seized him with their hands and it was too late. She had told him it was too late.