The rest are quasi-absurd, comical. Despotic Mrs Churchill, appreciated only when she proved she was not a demanding malingerer, is redeemed by death for the Highbury folk, then given the adjective ‘poor’. Gluttonous Dr Grant in Mansfield Park, killed by ‘three great institutionary dinners in one week’ so that the worthy Edmund Bertrams can move into the rich Mansfield rectory. Fat Mrs Musgrove’s unsatisfactory son Dick dying largely unlamented even by the family that sent him as a child to sea.

Speculative deaths are more common. In that naughty way she had with her characters, Jane Austen revealed that Mr Woodhouse of Emma, for whose convenience the master of Donwell Abbey gave up his proper place, would not keep his son-in-law from home for many years. Like Mrs Churchill, he was not in good health after all. In Mansfield Park, Mary Crawford fantasises the death of Tom Bertram so that the man she loves, the more nobly named Edmund, might inherit house and baronetcy. Mrs Bennet fixates on the death of Mr Bennet, which threatens the loss not so much of a husband as of a house. It results in one of those little chats between the senior Bennets that are the delight of the book.