“Yes, I did. I said it was the light flickering in the stones that had frightened me and was keeping me awake. That’s why I wanted the tea. And I wanted company. But Kimberley didn’t stay long. I suppose she’s not allowed to chatter to the patients.”

Chandler-Powell suddenly intervened. “You didn’t think of waking Sister Holland? You knew her room was on the corridor next to yours. That’s why she sleeps on the patients’ floor, to be available if a patient needs her.”

“She’d probably have thought I was being foolish. And I didn’t think I was a patient, not until the operation. It wasn’t as if I needed anything, medicine or sleeping pills.”

There was a silence. As if realising for the first time the importance of what she had been saying, Mrs. Skeffington looked from Dalgliesh to Kate. “Of course, I could have been mistaken about the light. I mean, it was late at night, and I could have been imagining things.”

Kate said, “When you went into the corridor with the idea of visiting the patient next door, were you certain then that you’d seen a light?”

“Well, I must have been, mustn’t I? I mean, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone out like that. But that doesn’t mean it really had been there. I hadn’t been awake for long, and I suppose, looking out on the stones and thinking of the poor woman burnt alive, I could have imagined I was seeing a ghost.”

Kate said, “And, earlier, when you heard the lift door clang and the lift descending, are you now saying that, too, could have been imagination?”

“Well, I don’t suppose I could have imagined hearing the lift. I mean, someone must have been using it. But they easily could, couldn’t they? I mean, anyone wanting to come up to the patients’ corridor. Someone visiting Rhoda Gradwyn, for example.”

The silence which fell seemed to Kate to last for minutes. Then Dalgliesh said, “Did you at any time last night see or hear anything next door, or anything in the corridor outside your room?”

“No, nothing, nothing. I only knew that there was anyone next door because I heard Sister going in. I mean, everyone is kept very confidential at the clinic.”

Chandler-Powell said, “Surely Miss Cressett told you when she took you up to your room?”