‘On the evening of the last Thursday in January, 1942,’ he began, with the air of repeating something he had memorized, ‘my aunt by marriage, Florence Rubrick, together with Arthur Rubrick (her husband and my uncle), Douglas Grace (her own nephew), Miss Terence Lynne (her secretary), Miss Ursula Harme (her ward), and me, sat on the tennis lawn at Mount Moon and made arrangements for a patriotic gathering to be held, ten days later, in the wool-shed. In addition to being our member, Flossie was also president of a local rehabilitation committee, set up by herself to propagate the gospel of turning good soldiers into bewildered farmers. The meeting was to be given tea, beer, and a dance. Flossie, stationed on an improvised rostrum hard by the wool-press, was to address them for three-quarters of an hour. She was a remorseless orator, was Flossie. This she planned, sitting in a deck-chair on the tennis lawn. It may give you some idea of her character when I tell you she began with the announcement that in ten minutes she was going to the wool-shed to try her voice. We were exhausted. The evening was stiflingly hot. Flossie, who was fond of saying she thought best when walking, had marched us up and down the rose garden and had not spared us the glass houses and the raspberry canes. Wan with heat and already exhausted by an after-dinner set of tennis, we had trotted at her heels, unwilling acolytes. During this promenade she had worn a long diaphanous coat garnished with two diamond clips. When we were at last allowed to sit down, Flossie, heated with exercise and embryonic oratory, had peeled off this garment and thrown it over the back of the deck-chair. Some twenty minutes later, when she was about to resume the garment, one of the diamond clips was missing. Douglas, blast him, discovered the loss while he was helping Flossie into her coat and, like a damned officious booby, immediately came over all efficient and said we’d look for it. With fainting hearts we suffered ourselves to be organized into a search party; this one to the rose-beds, that to the cucumber frames. My lot fell among the vegetable marrows. Flossie, encouraged by Douglas, was most insistent that we separate and cover the ground exhaustively. She had the infernal cheek to announce that she was going off to the wool-shed to practise her speech and was not to be disturbed. She marched off down a long path, bordered with lavender, and that, as far as we know, was the last time she was seen alive.’