‘All my trouble stems from Jane’s departure,’ said Sir William. ‘Not only do my patients clamour for her – on and on, on and on – but I can by no means get her to agree to come back to Bath, not even for Christmas. She will not do it, telling me my sister “needs” her in London for a portrait she is painting. And then my cook leaves. A lot of mumbling about dry goods and non-payment of wages and out she walks from one day to the next. But for you, we would have no lunch of any kind.’

‘Well Sir, it is only simple fare …’

‘It may be simple, but it has saved us. I thought all might go on calmly here after you helped us out, but now my nurse is scuttling for the omnibus. Some foolish business about a nickname!’

‘A nickname?’

‘Yes. And tears – as you witnessed – all for that futile reason. But tell me how I am to open a man’s chest this afternoon and endeavour to save his life, under circumstances like these?’

Mrs Morrissey fanned her face with her hand, as though it might have been too warm in the room, when in fact it was cold, with a damp fog pressing at the windowpane.

‘Open a man’s chest?’ she said. ‘Lord in heaven! And I sometimes think that folding enough air into a Victoria Sponge to make it rise is difficult enough!’

Sir William now found himself smiling. Only moments before, he’d felt as if he would have nothing to smile at again in all this present time, and now Clorinda Morrissey had succeeded in spreading a small grin across his severe features.

‘We all have our talents,’ he said, ‘and I think it’s high time I told you properly how much Doctor Ross and I appreciate your pies and puddings. I do declare that you are keeping us alive!’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Morrissey, ‘but not alive enough, Sir William. Isn’t that so?’

‘What d’you mean, Mrs Morrissey?’

‘Well, now. I’m thinking of Doctor Ross. To my eyes, he seems anxious of late and he does not look well.’

‘I know. You are quite right. You have lighted on another of my troubles. There is something the matter with him. I have asked him many times what it is, but he won’t give me any answer. If I were to lose Doctor Ross …’

‘He used to come to Camden Street quite frequently, to take some Assam and smoke a cheroot. But after that day when he met your daughter there, I do not often see him. I only observe him here and I note—’

‘He met Jane in your tea room?’

‘Yes. Just before she went away. And perhaps I should not speak of this, but it did seem to me as though there was a little misunderstanding between them, during the tea.’

‘What kind of “misunderstanding”?’

‘I don’t know, Sir William. Miss Jane left rather abruptly and Doctor Ross seemed downcast after she’d gone.’