Fifteen years ago, when he’d had no money for such an enterprise, the idea of starting his own clinic was just a pipe dream. But after a former patient died of cancer, he was shocked to learn she’d left him the bulk of her fortune. The poor woman suffered from a recurrent somatic disorder, resulting in paralysis and extreme distress. She’d seen a dozen specialists to no avail, until at last, under Gessen’s ministrations, she was able to resume her old life. While under his care, though she’d talked extensively about herself, he’d had no idea she stood at the helm of a vast fortune.

In her will, she made it clear he should use the money to establish a private clinic, where he could help lift others out of the terrible mental and physical anguish that had beset her in midlife. Along with a considerable sum of money, the bequest included the manor house and surrounding property that would become the heart of the clinic.

Over the years, with a seemingly endless stream of funds at his disposal to create a bucolic respite from the world, he’d been profligate to the point of irresponsibility. What did he care about money? Mental health was the holy grail, and on many occasions he would waive the fees for patients who couldn’t pay, or reduced the costs for others.

But as the reputation of the clinic’s facilities and storybook setting grew, the thorny psychiatric cases he’d sought to treat had somehow transformed into the wealthy and bored who found their way to his door. He welcomed a few of these individuals, seeking nothing more than relief from their malaise, though always with a twinge of guilt, as a way of injecting some much-needed cash into the clinic’s depleted coffers. He justified this treachery so that those truly in need, but unable to pay, would benefit from his skill as a clinician of the mind. Now, according to the grim reckoning of his accountant, and having taken a major hit in the global financial crash, the hour had arrived to pay the piper.

He poured himself a coffee and opened the Berner Zeitung to read again the news item about the Cambridge don in Copenhagen. It was only three lines and gave no details, but one of the London papers online provided a more tantalising summary: