‘It’ll do till the doctor comes. Tom, there’s a bottle of codeine in the bathroom cabinet. And fetch the whisky. Gracious, child, what a yawn. You can go and pop into my bed. It’s next to the one you put the bottles in. Or would you be hungry?’

‘I’m always hungry,’ Ethel said.

‘Look in the larder, then; that door there. There’re sausage rolls, I know, and . . . see what you can find. Thanks, Tom. Sugar it; you should always have a sweet drink after a shock, and a little hot water. Now, Miss Mayfield, if you’ll just swallow these and wash it down with . . . that’s right. You should sleep after that. And now can you face the stairs, or shall Tom carry you?’

Remembering that she had been carried once that evening, Miss Mayfield elected to walk. In the bed, just before its warmth and softness engulfed her, she thought, the camera! But she was too far away to make her voice heard.

When she woke, it was bright daylight and the sun was shining on the gypsy geraniums and fuchsias on the wide window sill which Mrs Maverick used as a greenhouse through the winter. Ethel sat in a chair between the foot of the bed and the window; pale and red-eyed from lack of sleep, she looked more like a white rabbit than ever.

Miss Mayfield said ‘Ethel’, and was surprised to hear her voice come out so firm and clear.

‘Hullo, Miss. I thought you’d never wake up. Thass gone ten. But we didn’t get to bed till nearly six. Mr Maverick went straight off to see to the milking, and Mrs Maverick said it weren’t worth her coming back to bed. I went in her bed, but I never closed my eyes. Thass the first time in all my life I gone through a night without sleeping.’

‘Ethel, have you the camera?’

‘Right here, where you towd me to keep it,’ Ethel said, striking her chest. ‘Mrs Maverick did give me a nightie, but I felt a bit cowd, so I put it on over my things and the camera stayed right where it was.’

‘I shall need it presently.’

‘What are you going to do with it, Miss, exactly?’

‘If Mr Maverick has a safe, I shall ask him to put it in until tomorrow. Then I shall take it to the Bank and ask them to lock it up. Then I shall write letters to several trustworthy people, telling them where it is, and what is in it, and saying that if anything happens to you or to me, they’re to get it out and have the film developed. When I have done that, I shall be in a position to deal with your granny and with the Canon and with Miss Thorby.’

‘Not Miss Thorby, you ’on’t. She’s dead.’