Unfortunately, neither Bertie nor Pinky was at home but she left messages. It was now one o’clock. Half an hour before luncheon in which to relax and skim through Richard’s play. Everything was going, in the event, very well. ‘I’ll put me boots up,’ she said to herself in stage cockney and did so on the chaise-longue in the bow window of her room. She noticed that once again the azaleas were infected and reminded herself to spray them with Slaypest. She turned her attention, now growing languid, to the play. Husbandry in Heaven. Not a very good title, she thought. Wasn’t it a quotation from something? The dialogue seemed to be quite unlike Dicky; a bit Sloane Square, in fact. The sort of dialogue that is made up of perfectly understandable phrases that taken together add up to a kind of egg-headed Goon show. Was it or was it not in verse? She read Dicky’s description of the leading woman.

‘Mimi comes on. She might be nineteen or twenty-nine. Her beauty is bone-deep. Seductive without luxury. Virginal and dangerous.’ ‘Hum!’ thought Miss Bellamy. ‘Hodge comes out of the Prompt corner. Wolf-whistles. Gestures unmistakably and with feline intensity.’

Now, why had that line stirred up some obscure misgivings? She turned the pages. It was certainly an enormously long part.

‘Mimi: Can this be April, then, or have I, so early in the day, misinterpreted my directive?’

‘Hell!’ thought Miss Bellamy.

But she read one or two of the lines aloud and decided that they might have something. As she flipped over the pages she became more and more satisfied that Dicky had tried to write a wonderful part for her. Different. It wouldn’t do, of course, but at least the loving intention was there.

The typescript tipped over and fell across her chest. Her temperaments always left her tired. Just before she dropped off she suffered one of those mysterious jolts that briefly galvanize the body. She had been thinking about Pinky. It may be fanciful to suppose that her momentary discomfort was due to a spasm of hatred rather than to any physical cause. However that may be, she fell at last into an unenjoyable doze.

Florence came in. She had the flask of scent called ‘Unguarded’ in her hands. She tiptoed across the room, put it on the dressing-table and stood for a moment looking at Miss Bellamy. Beyond the chaise-longue in the bay window were ranks of tulips and budding azaleas and among them stood the tin of Slaypest. To secure it, Florence had to lean across her mistress. She did so, delicately, but Miss Bellamy, at that moment, stirred. Florence drew back and tiptoed out of the room.

Old Ninn was on the landing. She folded her arms and stared up at Florence.

‘Asleep,’ Florence said, with a jerk of her head. ‘Gone to bye-byes.’