Warrender picked up the tin and stared at the label with its red skull and crossbones and intimidating warning. ‘Shouldn’t put this sort of stuff on the market,’ he said. ‘My opinion.’

‘Exactly. Let Florence throw it out, Mary.’

‘Put it down!’ she shouted. ‘My God, Charles, what a bore you can be when you set your mind to it.’

Suddenly she thrust the scent atomiser into Warrender’s hands. ‘Stand there, darling,’ she said. ‘Far enough away for it not to make rivers or stain my dress. Just a delicious mist. Now! Spray madly.’

Warrender did as he was told. She stood in the redolent cloud with her chin raised and her arms extended.

‘Go on, Maurice,’ she said, shutting her eyes in a kind of ecstasy. ‘Go on.’

Charles said, very quietly: ‘My God!’ Warrender stared at him, blushed scarlet, put down the scent spray and walked out of the room.

Mary and Charles looked at each other in silence.

The whole room reeked of ‘Unguarded.’

CHAPTER 3

Birthday Honours

Mr and Mrs Charles Templeton stood just inside their drawing-room door. The guests, on their entry, encountered a bevy of Press photographers, while a movie outfit was established at the foot of the stairs, completely blocking the first flight. New arrivals smiled or looked thoughtful as the flash lamps discovered them. Then, forwarded by the parlourmaid in the hall to Gracefield on the threshold, they were announced and, as it were, passed on to be neatly fielded by their hosts.

It was not an enormous party: perhaps fifty all told. It embraced the élite of the theatre world and it differed in this respect from other functions of its size. It was a little as if the guests gave rattling good performances of themselves arriving at a cocktail party. They did this to music, for Miss Bellamy, in an alcove of her great salon, had stationed a blameless instrumental trio.

Although, in the natural course of events, they met each other very often, there was a tendency among the guests to express astonishment, even rapture, at this particular encounter. Each congratulated Miss Bellamy on her birthday and her superb appearance. Some held her at arm’s length the better to admire. Some expressed bewilderment and others a sort of matey reverence. Then in turn they shook hands with Charles and by the particular pains the nice ones took with him, they somehow established the fact that he was not quite of their own world.

When Pinky and Bertie arrived, Miss Bellamy greeted them with magnanimity.