‘It’s the way she took it that’s important,’ Fenella continued, still gazing at Alleyn. ‘I must admit she took it pretty well. She said, quite calmly, that it was all very fine for me to talk, but I didn’t know what it was like to be on my beam-ends with no chance of getting anywhere in my job. She said she knew she wasn’t any good for the stage except as a showgirl, and that didn’t last long. I can remember the actual words she used. Fifth-rate theatrical slang. She said: “I know what you all think. You think I’m playing Noddy up for what I can get out of him. You think that when we’re married I’ll begin to work in some of the funny business. Look, I’ve had all that, and I reckon I’ll be as good a judge as anybody of what’s due to my position.” And then she said she’d always thought she was the Cinderella type. She said she didn’t expect me to understand what a kick she’d get out of being Lady Ancred. She was extraordinarily frank and completely childish about it. She told me she used to lie in bed imagining how she’d give her name and address to people in shops, and what it would sound like when they called her m’lady. “Gee,” she said, “will that sound good! Boy, oh boy!” I really think she’d almost forgotten I was there, and the queer thing is that I didn’t feel angry with her any longer. She asked me all sorts of questions about precedence; about whether at a dinner-party she’d go in before Lady Baumstein. Benny Baumstein is the frightful little man who owns the Sunshine Circuit shows. She was in one of his No. 3 companies. When I said she would, she said “Yip-ee” like a cow-girl. It was frightful, of course, but it was so completely real that in a way I respected it. She actually said she knew what she called her “accent” wasn’t so hot, but she was going to ask “Noddy” to teach her to speak more refined.’ Fenella looked from her mother to Paul and shook her head helplessly. ‘It was no good,’ she said, ‘I just succumbed. It was awful, and it was funny, and most of all it was somehow genuinely pathetic.’ She turned back to Alleyn: ‘I don’t know if you can believe that,’ she said.

‘Very easily,’ Alleyn returned. ‘She was on the defensive and angry when I saw her, but I noticed something of the same quality myself. Toughness, naivety, and candour all rolled into one. Always very disarming. One meets it occasionally in pickpockets.’