“I did, yes. I was fourteen years old and had just lost my entire family. Dr Ginzberg was extremely helpful to me. I thought I should return her kindness by showing her how things turned out.” Was this the place to drop casual mention of a donation to the hospital, I considered? Perhaps not just yet.

“I see,” he said, reassured that I was not about to launch myself in a lunatic rage across the desk. He seemed to be wrestling with a decision; I was just opening my mouth to play the money card when his eyes came up to meet mine. “Well, Miss Russell, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this, but Dr Ginzberg died several years ago. It must have been shortly after you knew her, and she was . . .”

But the growing noise in my head obscured his words, although I could see that he was talking, could see too when he stopped talking and his eyebrows came together in an expression some part of me recognised as concern. Then his mouth moved again and his hand came out but I couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything but the roaring of a great waterfall, and for a while it was hard to see anything as well.

With no helpful nurse around to press her cool hand against the back of my neck to force my head down, it was a wonder I didn't end up on the floor. I came back to myself to find that my body had assumed the head-down position under its own power, my forehead resting on the heels of my hands, lungs pulling in, slow and deep. It could only have been seconds that my awareness faltered, because two suited legs had scarcely had time to clear the desk on their way to the door.

“I'm all right,” I croaked.

He paused, out of sight, and I cleared my throat and repeated the assertion, with sufficient strength this time that he could understand me.

“Can I get you something?” he asked, sounding nervous. “A glass of water?”

“That would be good, thank you.”

By the time he returned, I was sitting upright, feeling the colour seeping back into my face. I drank the water, thinking somewhat nonsensically that Holmes would have given me brandy, and placed the glass on his desk. My hands were steady enough to reassure him.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he said. “I should have realised that the news would be a shock.”

“How did she die?”

His long pause made me think that perhaps he had already told me, while my ears were filled with the rush of receding blood, but by that time I was more concerned with the information than reassuring him as to my sanity. I looked at him sharply and said, “Please, how did Dr Ginzberg die?”