‘Miss Meade is – she’s – I imagine, not an intellectual type.’

‘She’s so stupid,’ Peregrine said thoughtfully. ‘But so, so stupid it’s a kind of miracle. Darling Dessy. And yet,’ he added, ‘there’s an element of cunning too. Certainly, there’s an element of cunning.’

‘What a problem for her director, in such a subtle role!’

‘Not really. You just say: “Darling, you’re sad. You’re heartbroken. You can’t bear it” and up come the welling tears. Or: “Darling, you’ve been clever, don’t you see, you’ve been one too many for them” and she turns as shrewd as a marmoset. Or, simplest of all: “Darling, you’re sending him in a big way,” and as she never does anything else it works like a charm. She does the things: the audience thinks them.’

‘Temperamental?’

‘Only for form’s sake when she fancies it’s about time she showed up. She’s quite good-natured.’

‘Did she slap Knight back smartly or gradually?’

‘Gradually. You could see it coming at rehearsals. In their love scenes. She began looking at her fingernails over his shoulder and pulling bits of mascara off her eyelashes: And then she took to saying could they just walk it because she was rethinking her approach. She talks like that but of course she never had an approach. Only an instinct backed up by superb techniques and great dollops of star quality.’

‘She divorced her second husband, I believe, and lives alone?’

‘Well – Yes. Officially.’

‘Anything else about her?’

‘She’s a terrific gambler, is Dessy. On the share-market, with the bookies and everything on the side that offers. That’s really what broke up the second marriage. He couldn’t do with all the rouletteparty and poker-dice carry-on.’

‘Is she a successful gambler?’

‘I daresay she herself scarcely knows, so vague are her ways.’

‘And Miss Bracey?’

‘That’s a very different story. I don’t know anything about Gertie’s background but she really does bear out the Woman Scorned crack. She’s – she’s not all that charitably disposed at any time, perhaps, and this thing’s stirred her up like a wasp’s nest. She and Marco exhibit the heads-and-tails of despised love. Marco is a sort of walking example of outraged vanity and incredulous mortification. He can’t believe it and yet there it is. Rather touchingly, I think, he doesn’t until today seem to have taken against Dessy. But I’ve trembled lest he should suddenly rear back and have a wallop at Harry.’

‘Hit him?’

‘Yes. Bang-bang. Whereas, Gertie doesn’t vent all she’s got on her rival but hisses and stings away at the faithless one.’

‘And so Miss Meade is let off lightly at both ends and Grove is the object of a dual resentment?’

‘And that’s throwing roses at it,’ said Peregrine.

‘Knight and Miss Bracey have a real, solid hatred for him? Is that putting it too high?’

‘No, it’s not but – ‘Peregrine said quickly: ‘What is all this? What’s it matter how Marco and Gertie feel about Harry?’