Toby watched Mrs Gabriel opening chocolates.

Resentfully.

She never gave him chocolate. If she had toast or cheese or digestive biscuits, he could rely on tasty morsels being lobbed in his direction but never once, in a lifetime of pampering, had his mistress ever offered him so much as a crumb of her own favourite, tantalisingly aromatic, treat.

The scent of it seeped out from the box on her lap, intensified as she peeled away the cellophane paper, erupted with mind-blowing intensity when she lifted the lid.

Mrs Gabriel exhaled an appreciative sigh and clasped her hands together, as she always did when preparing to choose a sweet. Only this time she did not choose: instead she slumped into her cushions and let the box slide off her knee, scattering its contents across the floor.

Toby looked from the sweet that had landed nearest him to his apparently sleeping mistress, then back to the sweet. Gingerly, he extended his tongue to explore the taste. When this misdemeanour elicited no reprimand, he opened his jaws and snatched it up.

Oh ecstasy! New and exotic flavours flooded his senses and he leapt to his feet and ran round and round gobbling up the usually forbidden fruits. Blood pounded through his veins, his heart raced, his head spun round and round and ...

Suddenly the spaniel's legs gave way and he flopped to the floor and lay, motionless, at the feet of the lifeless old lady in the chair.