Sharon had been sitting very still, with a look which, Kate thought, could only be described as sulky, throughout the proceedings, but when asked where she had been and what she had done the previous day, had at first embarked on a tedious, sullenly expressed review of every detail of the morning and afternoon. Asked to confine herself to the time from four-thirty onwards, she said that she had been busy in the kitchen and dining room helping Dean and Kimberley Bostock, had had her meal with them at eight-forty-five and had then gone to her own room to watch television. She couldn’t remember when she went to bed or what she had seen on television. She had been very tired and had slept soundly throughout the night. She knew nothing about Miss Gradwyn being dead until Sister Holland had come up to waken her, telling her to come on duty and help in the kitchen, which she thought had been at about nine o’clock. She liked Miss Gradwyn, who had asked her to show her round the garden on her previous visit. Asked by Kate what they had talked about, she said it was about her childhood and where she had gone to school, and her work at the old people’s home.

There was no surprise until Dean and Kimberley Bostock gave their evidence. She said she was sometimes asked by Sister to take food to the patients, but she hadn’t visited Miss Gradwyn because she was fasting. Neither she nor her husband had seen the patient arriving, and they had been particularly busy that evening, preparing meals for the extra operating-theatre staff who would arrive next day and always had lunch before leaving. She had been woken by the telephone just before midnight on the Friday evening by Mrs. Skeffington, who had asked for tea. Her husband had helped her carry up the tray. He never went into the patients’ rooms but had waited outside until she came out. Mrs. Skeffington had appeared frightened and talked about seeing a light flickering among the stones, but Kimberley thought this was just imagination. She had asked Mrs. Skeffington if she wanted her to call Sister Holland, but she had said no, that Sister Holland would only be annoyed with her for waking her unnecessarily.

At this stage Sister Holland had broken in. “Your instructions, Kimberley, are to call me if patients ask for anything in the night. Why didn’t you? Mrs. Skeffington was pre-operative.”

And now Benton, raising his head from his notebook, was alert. He could see that the question was deeply unwelcome. The girl flushed. She glanced at her husband and gripped his hand. She said, “I’m sorry, Sister, I thought she wouldn’t really be a patient until the next day, so I didn’t wake you. I did ask her if she wanted to see you or Mr. Chandler-Powell.”