A little damped, Joseph said: ‘You had better serve dinner. The master would not have wanted his guests to make any difference, would he?’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Sturry, declining to give an opinion on this moot point.

He withdrew, but the shreds of his disapproval remained behind. Remembering the overwrought questions and exclamations which his entrance had interrupted, Nathaniel’s guests felt uneasily that they had lapsed into bad form. Mottisfont cleared his throat, and remarked that one hardly knew what to do.

‘I know!’ Valerie said. ‘I mean, I’ve simply never dreamed of such a thing happening to me! Oh, Stephen, Mummy will be utterly furious! I do think I ought to go home!’

‘The trains are very infrequent over Christmas,’ stated Maud. ‘And, of course, when there is snow they get held up.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t go by train!’ Valerie said. ‘Stephen brought me in his car.’

‘Sorry,’ said Stephen. ‘I can’t leave.’

‘But, Stephen, you could come back, couldn’t you? I don’t want to be a nuisance, or anything, but actually my nerves aren’t awfully strong, and the least little thing like this upsets me for weeks! Literally!’

He returned no answer. His look of derision had given place to one of strain; even her absurdity failed to conjure up his familiar mocking devil. It was left for Roydon to respond to her. ‘I wish I could take you home,’ he said. ‘I can see you’re one of those tremendously highly-strung people whose awareness is almost hyper-acute.’

‘Actually, Mummy says I simply live on my nerves,’ Valerie confided.

‘You haven’t a nerve in your whole insensate body!’ said Paula, with shattering effect.

Valerie had never sustained such an insult in her life. She flushed poppy-red; her eyes flashed becomingly, and it seemed as though the tension was to be relieved by a very satisfying exchange of personalities between the two ladies.

Sturry came back into the room to announce dinner. The quarrel petered out; and Nathaniel’s guests filed out of the room in depressed silence.

Sturry had swept away the knives and forks from Nathaniel’s place at the head of the table. This vacancy struck everyone immediately, and brought his death suddenly and foolishly nearer. Joseph was inspired to exclaim: ‘It will seem strange to me, and melancholy, to see another in Nat’s place. It must come: I know it, and I shall accept it bravely, but I can’t help feeling glad that for just this one evening I see only Nat’s empty chair.’

No comment seemed to be required; indeed, it would have been impossible for anyone except Stephen, Mathilda reflected, to have made any. Half expecting him to utter some blistering remark, she glanced across the table towards him. A wryness about his mouth informed her that the tactlessness of the reminder had not gone unobserved, but he gave no other sign of having heard Joseph.

Joseph whispered: ‘Help me, Tilda! We must be natural! We must try not to let this horror get on top of us!’