This woman was a genius! She’d developed a new business model for raising funds for charities and was raking in thousands. The way it worked was that she would set up shop in the house of the recently deceased, then open the doors to shoppers who were free to work their way through the dead person’s belongings. The customers paid cash on the spot for anything that took their fancy.

The first time that I attended such a charity sale I really enjoyed myself combing the cupboards of a dead woman from Newington. Not only did I find a bargain white bath towel, but I also had fun playing detective work on the dead. My investigations revealed that the deceased was a size 8 spinster in her mid-sixties who had worked as a primary school teacher. She’d left at least one nephew, and it was probably he who was responsible for the huge quantity of unopened gift packs of bubblebath, soaps and the like stockpiled in the bedroom wardrobe.