‘Amateur company in Leicester are doing Wizard of Oz next week,’ he explained rapidly, ‘and their costumiers have let them down. They’ve asked us to help them out. So we have to get everything ready for the morning − the couriers are coming to fetch it all at nine.’

‘Good job I’ve got the afternoon free.’ I would normally have been cleaning for Mrs Berkeley-Smythe, but she was away on a cruise.

‘Maurice is up in the workroom,’ Ricky went on, ‘you go on up. I’m just printing off the paperwork on the computer and I’ll be with you.’

I negotiated my way around the laundry hampers, and climbed the curving staircase, unable to resist running my hand up the smooth, polished bannister. Morris was in the workroom, shaking out a jumble of fur fabric and muttering to himself.

If Ricky was Rochester, then Morris was Pickwick. If Ricky’s features were carved in granite, Morris’s were moulded in clay, all roundness. He peered over his little gold specs and grinned at me like an elderly baby. ‘I swear this lion’s got moth—Hello, Juno! Good of you to come.’

I bent down and planted a kiss on his soft cheek, ‘My pleasure.’ I could see the Wicked Witch of the West was already occupying an otherwise empty clothes rail, her black pointy hat hanging on elastic.

Ricky came up the stairs, puffing slightly, clutching a sheaf of actors’ measurements that the Leicester theatre company had emailed through. ‘Wizard of Oz isn’t a huge show,’ he told me as he ran an eye over the lists. He raised an eyebrow. ‘Their Dorothy’s a bit of a porker! I doubt if that blue gingham will fit.’

‘What would you like me to do?’

‘Find the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man!’ He thrust sheets of actors’ measurements at me. ‘And make sure the Tin Man’s got all his bits!’

‘If you don’t mind, Juno,’ Morris added, more politely.

For the next two hours the three of us hunted, sorted and packed, but the Tin Man had lost his funnel hat, we could only find one of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, and we’d lost Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, altogether. We decided to stop for tea.

‘You got any time tomorrow, darlin’?’ Ricky lit one of his menthol cigarettes as we sat around the breakfast-room table, lifting his chin to aim his puff of smoke above our heads.

‘’Fraid not. Busy day tomorrow and I’m seeing a new client at lunchtime – well, he may turn into a new client … Mr Nickolai.’

‘You don’t mean Old Nick?’ Ricky gaped at me.

‘Is he still alive?’ Morris frowned. ‘He must be older than God.’

‘Mr Nickolai,’ I repeated. ‘He runs an antique shop in Shadow Lane, although it always seems to be shut whenever I go by.’