Fretting once again over the exact alignment of the cup, saucer and milk jug on the tray, she turned to Dean, her face puckered with anxiety. “Perhaps I ought to take it up. Sister said seven. Perhaps she meant that I needn’t wait for the ring, that Miss Gradwyn would expect it promptly at seven.”

Her face, looking like that of a troubled child, induced as always Dean’s love and pity tinged with irritation. He moved to the telephone. “Sister, this is Dean. Miss Gradwyn hasn’t rung for her tea. Shall we wait or do you want Kim to make it now and take it up?”

The call took less than a minute. Replacing the receiver, Dean said, “You’re to take it up. Sister says to knock on her door before you go in. She’ll take it in to Miss Gradwyn.”

“I suppose she’ll have the Darjeeling as she did before, and the biscuits. Sister didn’t say any different.”

Dean, busy at the Aga frying eggs, said shortly, “If she doesn’t want the biscuits she’ll leave them.”

The kettle boiled quickly and within minutes the tea was made. Dean, as usual, came to the lift with her and, holding the door open, pressed the button so that she had both hands free to carry the tray. Emerging from the lift, Kim saw Sister Holland coming out of her sitting room. She expected the tray to be taken from her, but instead Sister, after a cursory glance, opened the door to Miss Gradwyn’s suite, obviously expecting Kim to follow. Perhaps, Kim thought, that wasn’t surprising: it wasn’t Sister’s job to carry early-morning tea to the patients. She was carrying her torch, so it wouldn’t in any case have been easy.

The sitting room was in darkness. Sister switched on the light and they moved to the bedroom door, which Sister opened slowly and quietly. This room, too, was in darkness, and there was no sound, not even the soft noises of someone breathing. Miss Gradwyn must be sleeping soundly. Kim thought it was an eerie silence, like entering an empty room. She wasn’t usually conscious of the weight of the tray, but now it seemed to grow heavier by the second. She stayed in the open doorway holding it. If Miss Gradwyn was sleeping late, she would have to make another pot later. No good leaving this to get over-stewed and cold.

Sister said, her voice unworried, “If she’s still asleep, there’s no point in waking her. I’ll just check that she’s all right.”

She moved to the bed and swept the pale moon of her torch over the supine figure, then switched it to a powerful beam. Then she switched it off, and in the darkness Kim heard her high, urgent voice, which didn’t sound like Sister’s. She said, “Get back, Kim. Don’t come in. Don’t look! Don’t look!”

But Kim had looked, and for those disorientating seconds before the torchlight went out, she had seen the bizarre image of death: dark hair sprawled on the pillow, the clenched fists raised like those of a boxer, the one open eye and the livid, mottled neck. It wasn’t Miss Gradwyn’s head—it was nobody’s head, a bright-red severed head, a dummy which had nothing to do with anything living. She heard the crash of falling china on the carpet and, stumbling to an easy chair in the sitting room, she leaned over and was violently sick. The stink of her vomit rose to her nostrils and her last thought before she fainted was a new horror: what would Miss Cressett say about the ruined chair?