Alleyn looked up at Fabian and saw his lips tremble into a sneer. He made a small breathy sound something like laughter. He wore the conceited, defiant air of the neurotic who bitterly despises his own weakness. ‘Difficult,’ Alleyn thought, ‘and damned tiresome. He’s going to treat me like an alienist. Blast!’ And he said: ‘So you had a row?’

Ursula bent forward and put her hand in Fabian’s. For a moment his fingers closed tightly about hers and then, with an impatient movement, he jerked away from her.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m afraid, since I’ve started on my course of indecent exposure, I’ve got to tell you about that too. I’m sorry I can’t wait until we’re alone together. Very boring for the others. Especially Douglas. Douggy always pays. And I apologize to Ursula because she comes into it. Sorry, Ursy, very bad form.’

‘If you mean what I think you mean,’ said Douglas, ‘I most certainly agree. Surely Ursy can be left out of this.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Douglas,’ Ursula said impatiently. ‘It’s what he’s doing to himself that matters.’

‘And to Douglas, of course,’ Fabian cut in loudly. ‘Don’t forget what I’m doing to poor old Douglas. He becomes the traditional figure of fun. Upon my word it’s like a fin de siècle farce. Flossie was the duenna of course and you, Douglas, her candidate for the mariage de convenance. Ursy is the wayward heroine who shakes her curls and looks elsewhere. I, at least, should have the sympathy of the audience if only because I didn’t get it from anybody else. There is no hero, I go sour in the part. You ought to be the confidante, Terry, but I’ve an idea you ran a little sub-plot of your own.’

‘I told you,’ said Terence Lynne, clearly, ‘that if we started to talk like this, one, if not all, of us, would regret it.’

Fabian turned on her with extraordinary venom. ‘But that one won’t be you, will it, Terry? At least, not yet.’

She put her work down in her lap. A thread of scarlet wool trickled over her black dress and fell in a little pool on the floor. ‘No,’ she said easily, ‘it won’t be me. Except that I find all this talk rather embarrassing. And I don’t know what you mean by your “not yet,” Fabian.’

‘You will please keep Terry’s name…’ Douglas began.

‘Poor Douglas!’ said Fabian. ‘Popping up all over the place as the little pattern of chivalry. But it’s no good, you know. I’m hell-bent on my Buchmanism. And, really, Ursy, you needn’t mind. I may have a crack in my skull and seem to be a bit crazy but I did pay you the dubious compliment of asking you to marry me.’