Everybody – Aunts Maxine, Grace and Loo, Uncle Preston and the three children – arranged themselves comfortably on the old chairs of blackest oak and worn crimson leather, beauties which Dr Garden had picked up in an antique shop some eighteen years ago, and which Sophia had known and loved since she was a child.

The Surgery contained much old and beautiful furniture and china which he had collected; he had a flair for recognizing such things.

It always seemed strange to Sophia that she could hate the Surgery itself, yet love the oak bookcase carved with Adam and Eve and wreaths of black apples and leaves, the two little footstools embroidered with beads in the shape of baskets of flowers, the two bronze storks from Japan which stood on the sitting room mantelpiece; and above all the little painting on wood of a dark girl in a Greek dress patterned with a red key design, who was holding out an apple in her gentle, olive-coloured hand. Sophia thought of her as Nydia, the blind girl in The Last Days of Pompeii, and loved her very much.

Mr Marriot had gone to the table which stood between the two windows, and now stood facing the room, resting his fingertips lightly on its surface. He waited until the rustlings and other tiny sounds had stopped; then he coughed and said mildly and a little nervously, staring down at the table:

‘I shall not keep you very long; there is not very much to say. As you know,’ here he lifted his eyes, and looked round impersonally at his intently listening audience, ‘Dr Garden was very much distressed, naturally, at Mrs Garden’s sudden death. Naturally. After the funeral I approached him more than once on the subject of making a new will, but I could not get him to do so. He wrote to me a week after her death, instructing me to destroy the will in her favour, but he did not want to discuss the matter of a new will at all. In fact, on the last occasion when I mentioned it to him, by letter, I had a very strongly worded reply’ (here Uncle Preston and Aunt Grace exchanged looks and Aunt Grace compressed her lips, shook her head, and looked down severely at her shoes; Harry’s lips, to the horror of Sophia and Francis, could be seen to form the words ‘Atta boy!’). ‘Very strongly worded indeed. So I decided to leave the matter over, for the moment, until the shock of Mrs Garden’s death should have been – er – softened by time; and then open the subject again. Unhappily, Dr Garden died before I could do so.’

He paused, and coughed again.

Sophia happened to glance at Francis. He had turned extremely white and was sitting straight up in his chair, staring at Mr Marriot. She saw that his knees and hands were trembling, and wondered what on earth was the matter with him? He can’t care about the beastly money, she thought; who wants it, anyway? Then she glanced at Harry, who was also staring at Mr Marriot with his head on one side and an expression of sentimental interest on his angelic face. Sophia doubted if he were taking in a word of what was being said.