By eight o’clock on Friday 14 December, the operation on Rhoda Gradwyn satisfactorily completed, George Chandler-Powell was alone in his private sitting room in the east wing. It was a solitude he often sought at the end of an operating day, and although there had only been one patient, dealing with her scar had been more complicated and time-consuming than he had expected. At seven Kimberley had brought him a light supper, and by eight o’clock evidence of the meal had been removed and the small dining table folded away. He could be confident of two hours of solitude. He had seen his patient and checked on her progress at seven o’clock and would do so again at ten. Immediately after the operation, Marcus had left to spend the night in London, and now, knowing Miss Gradwyn to be in the experienced hands of Flavia, and with himself on call, George Chandler-Powell turned his mind to private pleasures. Not least among them was the decanter of Château Pavie on a small table before the fire. He prodded the burning logs into greater life, checked they were carefully aligned and settled into his favourite chair. Dean had decanted the wine, and Chandler-Powell judged that in another half-hour it would be right for drinking.

Some of the best pictures, bought when he purchased the Manor, hung in the great hall and the library, but here were his favourites. They included six watercolours bequeathed to him by a grateful patient. The bequest had been totally unexpected, and it had taken some time for him to remember her name. He was grateful that she had obviously shared his prejudice against foreign ruins and alien landscapes, and all six showed English scenes. Three views of cathedrals: Albert Goodwin’s watercolour of Canterbury, a Peter de Wint of Gloucester and Girtin’s Lincoln. On the opposite wall he had hung Robert Hills’s painting of a view in Kent and two seascapes, one by Copley Fielding and Turner’s study for his watercolour of the arrival of the English packet at Calais, which was his favourite.