Pauline, Millamant and Desdemona had forgathered in Pauline’s room, Bernhardt, and had talked exhaustively. They went together to the bathrooms at the end of the passage and encountered Mr Rattisbon, who had evidently come out of Sir Henry’s rooms. Alleyn, who knew him, guessed that Mr Rattisbon, skipped, with late Victorian coyness, past the three ladies in their dressing-gowns and hurriedly down the passage to his own wing. The ladies performed their nightly rites together and together returned to their adjacent rooms. At this juncture Pauline began to look martyred.

‘Originally,’ she said, ‘Bernhardt and Bancroft were one large room, a nursery, I think. The wall between is the merest partition. Milly and Dessy shared Bancroft. Of course, I know there was a great deal to be talked about and for a time I joined in. Milly’s bed was just through the wall from mine, and Dessy’s quite close. But it had been a long day and one was exhausted. They went on and on. I became quite frantic with sleeplessness. Really it was thoughtless.’

‘Dearest Aunt Pauline, why didn’t you beat on the wall and scream at them?’ Cedric asked, with some show of interest.

‘I wasn’t going to do that,’ Pauline rejoined with grandeur and immediately contradicted herself. ‘As a matter of fact I did at last tap. I said wasn’t it getting rather late. Dessy asked what time it was, and Milly said it couldn’t be more than one. There was quite an argument, and at last Dessy said: “Well, if you’re so certain, Pauline, look at your watch and see.” And in the end I did, and it was five minutes to three. So at last they stopped and then it was only to snore. Your mother snores, Cedric.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘And to think that only a little way away, while Dessy and Milly gossiped and snored, a frightful tragedy was being enacted. To think that if only I had obeyed my instinct to go to Papa and tell him—’

‘To tell him what, Aunt Pauline?’

Pauline shook her head slowly from side to side and boggled a little. ‘Everything was so sad and dreadful. One seemed to see him rushing to his doom.’

‘One also saw Paul and Panty rushing to theirs, didn’t one?’ Cedric put in. ‘You could have pleaded with him for them perhaps?’

‘I cannot expect, Cedric, that you would understand or sympathize with disinterested impulses.’

‘No,’ Cedric agreed with perfect candour. ‘I don’t think they exist.’

‘T’uh!’

‘And if Mr Alleyn has no further absorbing questions to ask me I think I should like to leave the library. I find the atmosphere of unread silent friends in half-morocco exceedingly gloomy. Mr Alleyn?’

‘No, thank you, Sir Cedric,’ Alleyn said cheerfully. ‘No more questions. If I may go ahead with my job?’