It was still dark when a constable came into the dimly lit, antiseptic-smelling waiting room and told them the body of Daniel Bell had been found some streets away from the shop. Such was Ruby’s state of mind about Edward the news barely registered, but Godfrey ushered the policeman outside and returned some time later, his face grim. It appeared Bell had died of a crushed windpipe, he told the three women, and had eventually choked on his own blood. Pity he’d died so quickly, he’d added bitterly. He would have liked him to suffer more.

Dawn was creeping into the dour little room through the tiny high window when an expressionless-faced sister popped her head round the door.

‘Mr Harper will see you now if you will come this way,’ she said primly, although her eyes couldn’t quite conceal the avid interest this case had caused among the hospital staff. A handsome rich patient, a beautiful young woman, and an attempted murder. It was like a story from the penny journals she secretly enjoyed so much when she had a minute or two to herself.

Mr Harper turned out to be a tired-looking, middle-aged man who had met Clarissa and Godfrey socially in the past, having connections in high places. He was also an excellent surgeon with a first-class reputation who had chosen to leave a prestigious London hospital for the north-east when he had married the daughter of a wealthy Durham landowner, the lady in question preferring the north to the capital. As Godfrey remarked afterwards, it had needed an Augustus Harper to bring Edward back from the brink.

The patient was still seriously ill, Augustus had told them, but miraculously the knife had missed any major organs. Unfortunately, one of the two wounds had caused significant damage to the left shoulder, which almost certainly would result in restricted use of that arm in the future. Was the patient right-handed?

Ruby didn’t hear Clarissa’s reply to this, having fainted clean away.

It was a full eight weeks later before Edward was allowed home to Foreburn, and four weeks after this Clarissa handed over care of the invalid to Ruby, on Ruby and Edward’s wedding day.

It was the quietest of occasions, the guests comprising Ruby’s mother and sister and Alice, a frail Mrs Walton and thrilled Mrs Duffy, and on Edward’s side, just Clarissa and Godfrey. As far as the bride and groom were concerned, it was exactly as they wanted and they couldn’t have been happier.

Ruby was a vision of loveliness in a simple white lace gown and short veil, and Alice, as bridesmaid, was as pretty as a picture in a frilly powder-blue frock and matching shoes, of which she was inordinately proud.